Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

My favourite Steve Sheridan tea bowl has been given a new lease of life!

Some of you might remember how Pete bought it for me in July 2015 at the Brewery Yard Markets. I wrote about it again last year after it was chipped, reflecting on how my daily use of it had become an exercise in mindfulness.

After it was damaged, my friend Little Kevin turned it into a candle for me…

When that had burnt down I was planning to repurpose it as a succulent pot, but Steve mentioned that he could mend it for me. He popped in to return it on his way home from the markets last Saturday, and I couldn’t be happier to have it in my hand again…

The repaired patch has been sanded perfectly smooth…

I have several of Steve’s tea bowls and I love them all, but this was my first and I’ve missed drinking out of it. And now that it has an extended story to tell, I’ll treasure it even more! ♥

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We were given an emu’s egg!

It’s stunningly beautiful – richly coloured, speckled and perfectly shaped. It looks exactly as you’d imagine a dinosaur egg might have looked, which is hardly surprising, given that emus are the modern day descendants of raptors.

It’s also as solid as a rock. The only way we could get the contents out, short of smashing the shell with a mallet, was by drilling a hole in the top and bottom, then blowing as hard as possible. 500g of white and yolk eventually came out – that’s the equivalent of ten large chicken eggs…

We fried half to use in noodles…

…then turned the rest into a zucchini slice…

It was a bit too rich for our old digestive systems, but the kids loved it.

The shell was rinsed clean and allowed to dry, and now sits on the mantelpiece in our living room. Google tells me that the eggs are seven layers thick and often used for intricate carving. It’s a perfect fit with our rocks and fossils!

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Small Man is the King of the Balancing Jungle Animals.

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while now, you’ll know all about these, as we’ve been playing with them since 2005. In all that time, we’ve only had one broken piece out of the six sets we own, and Pete fixed that pretty quickly with a little wood glue.

Most of the pieces are a bit dinged and chipped now, and some of the edges a bit rounded which makes balancing a bit trickier, but they still work quite well. And right now, they’re proving to be the perfect lockdown distraction. This week, we’ve had the Balazoo game on our table (it actually lives in the dining room). Please don’t ask me how the elephant’s trunk is balancing in the lion’s mouth. After 15 years, I still haven’t figured out why it works…

Here’s a video of Small Man in action yesterday…

And here’s his finished construction…

. . . . .

The sets are all manufactured in New Zealand. I checked with Adrien who owns Tarata, and they’re back in operation now that their stage 4 restrictions have been lifted.

We have the Balazoo game, plus a set each of the elephants, dinosaurs, kiwis, apes and jungle animals. The last one is our favourite, but in the past, Small Man would build huge structures using all the pieces…

Each set is cut from a single block of wood and can be balanced in a myriad of gravity-defying ways…

The dinosaurs are especially cool, as they can hang off tables…

Only Pete the engineer can manage the kiwis well…the curved surfaces make them trickier to balance…

We had all the sets out yesterday so I that could write this post, and I built a four-pack-stack. As you can see, the pieces are in surprisingly good shape given their age and the number of times they’ve crashed onto the floor and table. The giraffe’s hind leg has been glued back on…

If you’re looking for a lockdown distraction, visit Tarata’s online shop. I don’t have any affiliation with them, but they’re a great company to deal with and their products are superb and endlessly entertaining. Adrien tells me they’re shipping internationally again now that their restrictions have been lifted! ♥

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Good morning folks! Hope you’re all well.

A little footage from Bondi Beach (Sydney) shot last year by the Drone Shark App guys. Amazing stuff! ♥

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