In 2010 my brother got married to an amazingly awesome gal, called Anna. This year was the first year we have had extended family Christmas (our family + Anna’s family).

On Christmas eve the Stam clan: Mum, me, Pat & Anna met up with the De Vries clan: Martin, Mumfie and Joel at the new-ish Stam shack, Utopia, at Coles Bay. (Mum and I arrived a little earlier than the others, so we went exploring and checked out Sleepy Bay before the others arrived)

We started our Utopian adventure by putting the boat in the water at Swanwick and cruising down into Pelican Bay, checking out the local sights. A bit after lunch time we headed indoors where Anna constructed the gingerbread scale model of utopia she had backed. Once the foundations were sturdy we all got stuck into decorating it.
We ended the day with a big dinner: a huge spread of Indonesian dishes with rice. It was delicious, thanks Mum!!

Christmas morning we all slowly got up, had coffee, ate the muffins that Anna made for brekky. And then got stuck into opening our christmas bons bons and unwrapping presents. We all got lovely gifts from each other – all presents were very thoughtfully made or selected.
THEN it was time for evil Christmas!!!

Evil Christmas: You each pull a number out of hat. Number 1 chooses a present off the pile, and unwraps it. Person number 2 can then steal number 1’s present if they really like it OR they take a new present off the stack. It continues until everyone has a present. (The last person obviously has a lot of responsibility – they can either steal from someone else to keep the game going or pick the last new present to end the game)

The first present was opened by Anna, and she got a Nerf Gun. Unfortunately for Anna, Joel also liked the Nerf gun and he stole it from her. Then Joel lost out when Pat stole it from him, Pat lost it to Martin, Martin lost it to me and finally Joel stole it back. (the other presents were also amazingly and everyone ended up with something awesome!! But the story of the Nerf gun was by far the most entertaining!!)

After all the presents we launched into our Christmas lunch: Prawns, Oysters, Salmon, Ham, Cherries and Cheeses. Accompanied of course by a lovely bottle of champagne!!

Joel put his Nerf Gun to good use by shooting the motion sensor Santa, and sneaking up on people and unloading a clip of Nerf darts at them. (Its ok though, others got him back when he wasn’t paying close attention to the whereabouts of his gun). Anna built her lego lighthouse. I attempted to make a haiku with Anna’s haikubes. We generally spent the afternoon fluffing around and enjoying each others company.

Boxing day was a bit of a dud in terms of the weather. The bonus of this is that our water tanks are full!! We used this time to eat, build furniture for the shack and snooze. We did spend some time fishing in the morning and again in the afternoon. The morning session saw three fish hauled in. Two were undersized, but Martin caught an australian (cocky) salmon that was sized, so we brought it home. The evening session didn’t produce a single nibble, but it was so perfectly still out on the water, that we had a splendid evening anyway.

The 27th was an absolute cracker of a day!! We had 24degree weather with clear blue skies. So a few of us headed out on the boat. We went out the barway at Swanwick, went past Coles Bay and headed around the Hazards. Just at the start of The Hazards we came across a pod of dolphins. They were fishing, so unfortunately they weren’t overly interested in visiting us. But we followed them along the coast for a while. Such stunning creatures!!!

After a while we thought we should leave the dolphins in peace, so we zoofed around to Hazards Beach where we found a great spot to drop anchor and go for a swim. The water was perfectly clear, a stunning blue and … freezing cold!!!!!!

I dived-bombed into the water and the air was sucked out of me by the cold water! After a little while though it wasn’t too bad and I swam around and enjoyed the amazing scene around me. Once I started to go numb, I climbed back onto the boat and wrapped myself up in a towel to warm up.

After our swim Captain Joel took us back to the shack for some lunch before an afternoon adventure. At this point int time my camera had dried up, so I thought I’d whack it on the charge so I could take plenty of pics in the arvo. Unfortunately, water got into the camera somehow and at this point in time my camera died 🙁

So I drowned my sorrows by eating a few pieces of pavlova. Then put on my walking shoes and headed out with the crew to walk up to the Wineglass Bay lookout. As we went walking around 3pm, we didn’t suffer too much with the heat and the walk was really pleasant. We stopped and checked out the views along the way, as well as some of the furniture. Once at the top we were all impressed with the view (and for those of us who had been a few times, we spent some time admiring the newly designed and built lookout – so much better than the old one!!)

After absorbing the scenery for some time we started the wander back to the car park. One the drive home we stopped and checked out the Cape Tourville lighthouse.

All in all, it was a fantastic Christmas adventure with fun, and a great opportunity to get to know the new, extended family a bit better. I had a blast!!!

Christmas is a time of year when we often think more about our family and what they mean to us.

I’m obviously biased, but I think I have the worlds best and most amazing family.

I was raised in a very loving and supportive home environment, I am the baby of the family, which of course makes me the center of attention a lot of the time, and I certainly loved the attention my family gave me.

Every big decision I have made in my life has been supported by my family. A pretty amazing example was when I finished school at age 18 I said I wanted to move to The Netherlands, so my parents bought me a (return) ticket, and two weeks later waved goodbye to me at the airport.

As a family we spent a great deal of time together, travelling around the world, camping, going boating, working on building projects together and chilling out at home.

We have always been very close, and have continued to be a tight-knit unit, even when the world seemed to be against us. In July 2008 my Dad was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Unfortunately for us, it was diagnosed way too late. A week before Dad lost his hair, in April 2009, we had our last family photo. At 12:15pm on July 29th, 2009 I lost my favourite person in the whole wide world.

While nothing can prepare you for such a loss I think I am very lucky to have such a supportive family and amazing group of friends. I am also amazingly lucky and thankful to have had the worlds best dad. To have been close to him, to be able to share my thoughts, feelings and dreams with him. To have known that even when I did stupid stuff, I still made my dad proud to have me as a daughter.

So this year I want you all to be thankful for your family, spend a bit more time with them and appreciate what they mean to you. But also consider donating to cancer research, to help others keep their dads (mums, brothers and sisters) a bit longer.

I’m not sure which organisation is the best and most effective at passing donations onto cancer research, but some organisations that are all fighting for the same thing are: the Fight Cancer Foundation and the Australian Cancer Research Foundation

So we all know I have been obsessing over Kindles for the last little while, and I decided that I totally wanted the Kindle Touch…

I heard/watched/read some reviews and it wasn’t all amazing, and at the end of the day I was thinking: What am I going to do with this kindle? and the answer is: read.
So why exactly should I spend more money on a touch interface (and have to order it via a third party, also costing me more money, since they aren’t available in the US,) when all I am really going to do is select a book and turn pages.

My impatience finally caught up with me and I went ahead and ordered the base model.

Now I am waiting for it to arrive… (it may even arrive while I am at work today!!!)

The final frock is a cute little number I bought in Hanoi, for next to nothing.I hope that you have enjoyed my frocktober fashions.

As much as I love a good frock, I am looking forward to getting back in to my old favourites: jeans!!

Thanks for your support!!!

I realised this week, that apart from wearing one skirt twice in the first week, every day of Frocktober has seen me wear a completely different skirt/dress every day! This really surprised me!!! I didn’t realise my wardrobe was quite so extensive!

Finally we have had some good weather that has fallen on my days off!
This weekend has seen two gorgeous sunny, blue sky days in the mid 20s.
My tan for the summer is coming along nicely, and my garden is looking rather tidy.
Yesterday I went out to the hardware store and bought some pots and some herbs: parsley, sage, thyme, mint, oregano and basil. So the new addition to my deck is a little herb garden.
In the past I have had lots of trouble growing herbs, they either die or suffer from bug infestations, so I’d appreciate you all keeping your fingers crossed for me!!
With all my busy-ness in the garden and sunbaking, I’m now taking the time to sink into the couch with a cup of coffee and a book…this is the life!!

Lucky for me, this week has been a bit warmer, so I had the chance to get a few of the more colourful frocks out of the wardrobe.

Wednesday gave me a little ego boost with the staff commenting: “Love the frock!” “Forget the frock, love the shoes!” and “Nice Legs!”

By Friday though, I was freezing my little legs off, so the summery frock certainly wasn’t the smartest option.

So being the little nerd that I am, I’m quite interested in the Amazon Kindle bookreader gadget. You see, putting gadget and book in the same sentence is like putting candy in front of a child. I love books, and I love gadgets, that means the Kindle is a go-er!!!!

So looking at it, I have come across some things worth considering:

• Books available for Kindle – not all books that are published have a kindle version, so its a matter of sticky beaking around amazon.com (and elsewhere) to see what books I could get
• Available formats – thankfully the kindle doesn’t only support special kindle format stuff, it supports: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced(AA,AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion. This struck me as particularly useful when I came across I book I am interested in that can be purchased in mobi format.
• Publisher restrictions – Digital Rights Management is a really big deal for publishers of electronic material (and I can understand why). What this means for a kindle user is that there are restrictions on how times you can download a book that you have purchased, and to how many of your own devices you can download it. One guy had a huge rant about it, and spent heaps of time dealing with Amazon customer service to understand what was happening. I think the end result was that it is up to the publisher to decide how many devices you can share your purchased book with, and if you exceed that – typically exceeded by upgrading your devices – you need to contact Amazon to get them to release a ‘contract’ with an old device, and issue a new one to your new device, so that you can access the books you paid for. Sounds a bit nightmare-ish!!!
• Geographic restrictions – depending on where your device says you are, you may have to pay more for your books, or you may not be able to get some books at all. When books are published, they are published in a certain area, and that can prevent people from other regions having access to the digital version (obviously with hard copies you can just post them anywhere, and they can’t be tracked so easily) I found some really great comments on the geographic thing and publishing laws, but I can’t find it now – sorry.

THEN once I decide whether or not I want a kindle, which I am still going for the nerd option of..its a book gadget and I want it…then I need to choose WHICH kindle I would want.

Because its a gadget for the sake of a gadget I certainly wouldn’t want to pay a whole lot of money, so I have been weighing up the two cheapest options.

The factors that affect my decision include:

They both use WiFi, are roughly the same size and weight, they are both ad version (you pay more to get one that doesn’t push advertising to you).

Fingerprints on the Touch could get annoying, but for the extra capacity and battery life (for not much extra cost), I’m willing to give it a whirl. Actually I briefly played with my sister-in-law’s non-touch screen kindle on the weekend and I kept trying to poke the screen, because thats obviously how I felt it should be used..so I think the Touch would probably suit me better!!

The Touch also does audiobooks, not that that rates highly on my lists of ‘wants’. Also I do wonder how the cost (and possibly availability) will change based on me being in Australia.

So after all that the Kindle Touch I’m keen on won’t be released until November 21st!!So I have downloaded the free kindle app for my iPhone, and have started downloading free kindle books that sounds vaguely interesting, to see if I like the concept of reading on an electronic device (though a shiny small iPhone screen won’t really compare to the slick matt finish of a kindle).

Being a nerdy lover of gadgets is surely terrible for my bank balance!!!

Let me know your thoughts on the whole kindle thing, and … I’ll keep you posted!

Unfortunately with the weather still cold and miserable, I haven’t had the chance to wear any cute and quirky frocks.

Even so, check out this weeks frocky fashion…

I also want to shout-out to Alyce, who did a fabulous job of supporting my Frocktober efforts, by wearing a frock too.

A big THANK YOU!!! to all those who have donated so far!

Even with the cold and rainy weather, I have stuck to my mission. I have worn some dresses (Monday and Thursday) and some skirts (Tuesday, Wednesday and Casual Friday) this week.

I am looking forward to a weekend of jeans, and starting Monday will be straight back into Frocktober. Have a good weekend!!!