Canberra Trip 2018

Its been almost 2 years since our jaunt around tasmania.
I was itching for another road trip {I wanted to drive to Melbourne!}

Since our kids school doesnt do The big Canberra Trip like most schools do and our kids missed out (loved mine as a kid) we decided to do our own.

We drove about 3000 km. I wanted to experience the countryside not just drive through the night without stopping. So we basically broke our trip up into 400km stretches with stops to see something every two hours or so.

Brisbane - Armidale

Birthday {Camping Theme}

I love a good birthday party theme.
Helps me immensely.
We had a few ideas back and forth {unicorn theme is being saved for another day}
and settled on a camping/woodland theme.

Perfect for winter too. {An aussie winter that is} Party was 5-8pm.
Elements listed below:

Campfire cake

Campfire cake instructions found HERE

This was a chocolate cake with marshmallow fluff (from candy time) covered in chocolate icing, topped with mini flakes (confectionary warehouse) wafer sticks (big w) and chocolate rocks (confectinary warehouse). The flames are made by smashing boiled hard candy (woolworths) and melting in oven for 10 mins then let harden and then crack into flame shapes. I purchased a wood slice to display it on from a Gumtree seller. Decorated with christmas swag and llights.
A very easy cake that looked impressive.
I was very happy.

Invite

I love Canva so much I actually made like 3 different invites. Cute stuff. Above is twig cake toppers. They were a bit heavy for the toothpicks so didn't stand up too long (use skewers maybe) but I just loved them as decorations too. Hot glue and twine and twigs. Super Cute.

Woodslice craft

I always love to have a craft idea or activity at every party to keep them busy for a while. My brother sliced up a branch for me (how awesome) and every child had a wood slice to decorate. I painted one side with leftover chalkboard paint. I supplied sharpies to decorate the other side along with some wooden feathers (dollar store). The slices had a hole drilled in the top (by dad and the birthday girl!) and children were given twine and beads to decorate as they wanted.

Painted paper trees

We are lucky to have a resident artist. We rolled out lengths of kraft paper and using a water pen and watercolours painted a birch tree effect. Then cut the paper into trees. Probably would have worked better on white paper but hey we just use what we have... I cut letters out of black card and used double sided tape to stick them to hessian bunting (so it can be reused ;)

our other decoration was a shanty tent. I would have loved a beautiful big white tent or yurt. That was out of budget so a makeshift tent from old lace curtains, crochet table cloths and some fairy lights.

Fireplace

We are lucky to have a fireplace. One of the reasons I chose a camping party actually. We made a fire, roasted massive marshmallows and sat on our woodslice and log pillows (kmart). We had hotdogs for dinner and a hotchoc bar with our marshmallows.

karaoke 

One of the birthday party ideas we threw around was to go to a karaoke bar. So we ended up with a bit of our own thanks to The MR. He was a perfect DJ. We set up our projector and screen so everyone could see and they all sang along together next to our makeshift tent outside. 

Singing by the fire? (kinda)

Party Thankyou

I made up little hessian bags with chocolate rocks, gummi hotdogs and caramel swirls (looks like woodslice?) and pop rocks. Each child also got  Be wild stationary set ($3! kmart) which they all loved and twig pencils! (oxfam)

The end. I loved the camping/woodland theme. Would do again.

10 minute Glue Gun Birthday Shirt

Ah its that time of year.
I didn't make birthday shirts for the older girls this year.
{sniff sniff.. I'm ok with it} so I almost forgot to make one for the next birthday girls.

So after some googling to come up with quick new ideas, stencils and glue resist came up.

This was so easy and I had all the tools at home.

All you need is a shirt (I got mine $3 target)
Glue Gun and Glue
Spray paint


On some baking paper write out the number (or word or whatever) in Glue.
Let dry and peel off.
Place word on shirt and spray with spray paint {place some cardboard between shirt}
I'm sure fabric paint would work better but all I had is white spray paint so I used that
- Miss would have loved some pink spray

Because the shirt was light and the paint was light the number came out very subtle.
But that's ok. Easier to wear stealthily after the day.

I also sprayed the bottom back for a bit of fun.

Previous Birthday Shirts:

Paint Stencilled Birthday Shirt

Letters {ONE} Birthday Shirt

Felt and Fabric Birthday Shirt

Ribbon Birthday Shirt

Reverse Applique Birthday Shirt

Zig Zag Stitched Birthday Shirt 

Spotty Reverse Applique

2 Birthday Shirt

Recycled Corderoy Pants 5 Birthday Shirt

Felt and Fabric double layer 10 Birthday Shirt

Felt Cat and Reverse Applique 11 Birthday Shirt

Felt Snowflake and Stitched #6 Birthday Shirt

Bleached Out Number Shirt

Fabric Marker Shirt

24 Hrs in Byron Bay

I was annoyed that we hadn't been on holiday in over a year.
Nowhere on the Easter Holidays, nowhere on Christmas, nowhere in September Spring holiday...
The Mr was away for work so I took a quick solo holiday with the girls.
I have never done this before so I was actually anxious! Can you believe it? Gah.

We arrived around 3pm Monday and left just after 3pm Tuesday. All up it was only 24 hrs!
But we achieved alot in 24 hrs. Byron Bay is the perfect spot for that.

We stayed at Discovery Parks Byron Bay . Mainly because it was cheap and slept 6. Got a cabin.
The girls loved it (kids don't often need fancy. Its lovely that they think anything is awesome ha.)
They were a bit devastated that we were only doing a short stay and it was a bit too cold to utilise the 2 pools and splash pad. They did dip their toes in. The jumping pillow did get a bit of a work out though. Town was only a short drive. Park had some old parts, but some lovely new bits. Reasonable.

We jumped on the jumping pillow, put our bags in unpacked and jumped in the car to beat the sun so we could watch the sunset while up at the lighthouse. Byron Roads are a bit small so traffic is always interesting. We got a park in the second carpark on the way down luckily. Then ran up that hill. We saw so many Whales splashes! The girls didn't believe me at first when I said look a whale! Wish we had binoculars but we sat and watched whale splashes for quite some time. So fun to think that just a little ways away are a bunch of whales having a grand old time.

^Next to our restaurant for dinner. Fun.

Next day we woke and headed off to macadamia castle for pancakes for breakfast. Yum.
Then the scenic route up to Minyon Falls. Road had some potholes and dirt for the last few km but we made it! I'm always surprised to see buses at these types of places. I feel scared enough in a car let alone a bus going up tiny roads. Minyon falls is about a 100 m drop. If we had time I would have loved to walk to the bottom. Next time!

^sneaky photo bomber fingers

The night before we went to main beach in the dark after our dinner. I promised we would go back to the beach. I wanted to try another one (insert sads from the kid who wanted to go back to the beach playground.) I missed the first turn off to the other beach and we ended up 6km out of town at Broken Head. Turned out to be awesome as we had the beach to ourselves except for some surfers floating on boards out to sea. score! Two of the girls got into the water. Winter or not nothing was stopping them.

 ^^ Panorama - Byron Lighthouse headland this end. Broken Head the other end.

 ^^ Heart rock. Byron beaches are just sand - clear of most debris. Lucky to find this one.

Towelled off, stopped by the Farm and headed back home via Ikea (of course!)
And that was our 24 hours in Byron Bay.