Kids' paintings

Here's some pictures which the kids have done recently. Feel free to print them out and put them on your fridge!

Louisa comes to visit

Amy's friend Louisa came to visit us from Adelaide. It was really nice to catch up with her and show her around. Here's some pictures around the National Art Gallery and Lake Griffin A fairy for all seasons. Despite the chilly weather nothing stops Audrey wearing her fairy dress..

Children and technology

Amy's friend Louisa visited us this weekend and the five of us went to the National Art Gallery. In the indigenous galleries the kids found some information screens which (without any instruction) they took delight in using as the video shows..

The finished article

Still not exactly the Savoy, but a step up from Prisoner Cell Block H which was there before...

many hours and swear-words later

Audrey in her dungarees

Audrey as a clean cut (Wolverhampton born) Kevin Rowland from Dexy's Midnight Runners.

Audrey loves these dungarees. She can put her hands down the side pockets (and keep them warm)

Our bathroom

This is the reason why blog posts have been in short supply recently
We had an old (mouldy) vanity unit in our (too small) bathroom and so Amy and I stripped out the nasty flooring and dumped the wreck of a unit outside of the back door. It's taken me many hours of cursing, studying DIY books and trips to DIY stores to put it all back together but it looks a lot better now (picture to follow once the grout has fully dried!)

If you think the picture looks worse than it actually was, it doesn't

Elephant Paths

A few weeks ago I read a friend from Warsaw's blog about 'Elephant Paths'. I won't repeat/copy all of her blog post, so if you want to read it click here.

Essentially an 'Elephant Path' is a shortcut that people take to get them from a to b whilst ignoring the more conventional route. If you Google it you'll find there's different metaphors for the phenomenon, from 'Easy Way' in Hindi, to 'Donkey Trail' in French. Wikipedia (fountain of all knowledge) refers to them as Desire Paths - here's their definition

"A desire path (also known as a desire line or social trail) is a path developed by erosion caused by footfall"

Since I read Gill's original blog post I've become slightly obsessed with trying to spot them in and around Canberra. The Wikipedia link here gives some instances where planners have actually based the positioning of footpaths on where people WANT to walk rather than where they would like them to walk. It all seems to make a lot of sense to me.

There's a desire path/elephant path/shortcut near where we live which cuts through a large grassy area and the back of someone's hedge. It's a really well worn path and (despite efforts to barricade the hedge with old posts, branches, clippings etc) people have continued undeterred to find the shortest route between where they are and where they want to go.

Last Saturday I also noticed that the grassy area outside of our local swimming pool was full of 'elephant paths' I've grown to love the rebellious nature of them - going against the desire of authority to take us some (less convenient way).

Here's a couple of (my pics) together with a link to a flickr site if you want to get obsessive about it all as well..Long live elephant paths!