A little baking, animal watching and creativity

I love it when I find a super easy recipe that's delicious.  I made this Easy Lemon Slice yesterday and it's delicious with a cuppa.  The recipe can be found here.  I would add a little more lemon juice to the icing as it's quite stiff.

 

I came across this DVD in the local library "The Ocean's Supermum", a natural history documentary about the Australian sea lion.  It was beautiful and I can tell you, sea lion pups are incredibly cute.

In rather disheartening news, our protest about the McDonalds

development in Tecoma appears to have failed.  During the past week about 50 police were deployed one morning at 4a.m. to secure the site and stop any protesters entering.  The police presence was in addition to security working on behalf of McDonalds.  There is nothing more distressing and intimidating than to see police dressed in semi riot gear.  For goodness sake, what were they expecting.  We are a peaceful community protesting a development by a multinational foreign corporation taking over our beautiful part of the world.   Buildings standing in the way of the development have since been demolished. 

On going for my daily walk with Sophie I discoverd the footpath I usually walk on along Burwood highway was/is closed to pedestrians.  Police and security staff were positioned along the footpath and I was told it was closed for safety reasons.  I think not.  If it was that dangerous, nobody would have been standing there at all, more rigid barriers would have been put in place rather than the thin timber fencing that is currently in use.  To continue my usual route I had to cross two roads with pedestrian lights which is safe.  I then had to walk on the other side of Burwood highway and cross over this busy road without the safety of pedestrian lights.  I was assured by the security guard I would be assisted across the road by the police but no such help was forth coming.  High school and primary school students use this footpath as a safe way to walk home.  I saw today that the footpath has now been totally closed off and boarded over.

We feel totally gutted as a community, we feel sick and disappointed that the only voice that is heard anymore is the one that has the money.  We feel betrayed, bullied and intimidated, our faith in democracy challenged.  Thank you to each and everyone of you who has taken an interest in this story and supported our cause.  Thank you for helping shout out loud that we don't like or agree with what is/has been done.

In bid to calm my distress after my walk, I decided a little creativity was in order.  Over the past year or so I've been collecting free postcards from the local library which advertise all manner of things from cultural performance, education, awareness of social issues and the work of artists.  I based these collage pages loosely on colour themes.

I intend hanging these in a new creative space coming soon to our backyard.  :)

In other creative endeavors, I've entered the world of journaling, a totally new way of creative expression for me and I love it.  There are no rules, even better.  I've started by cutting out images from magazines and going from there.  The brain storming that was going on while doing this was so much fun.  Here are two pages I've completed, I think.

The two pages look better seen together.  I know these first two are quite basic but as I learn more about this genre and learn new techniques, I'm sure they will become more interesting.

The pages currently being worked on.

 

 This is my preferred page so far.  I've lots more work to do on these two pages incorporating stamped and hand drawn images.  I used light water colour washes on the pages before adding other elements.  The flowers in the vase above are an image from a magazine and I've used a black fine line pen to highlight different areas.  It's always a big risk to put your artwork out there.  I hope I haven't bored you all to tears.

 Melbourne is currently experiencing it's worst winters day this year with rain and lots of it, cold and extreme wind, the type that turns you umbrella inside out.  Wishing you all a lovely weekend and better weather than what we are having today.

Anne  xx