Adventures in Hervey Bay: Sunday, 22 October, 2017

Tuesday was another visit to the doctor to have another excision done on one of my freckles that he was not happy with. He is a very thorough doctor and so if he is the least bit concerned about something on our skin, he will check it out. On Thursday, he checked out how the stitches looked and he was very pleased with the progress of them. He also told me that he had received the results back from the biopsy and it was an all clear - yippee!!!

For lunch on Thursday, which actually was our anniversary day, we went out to celebrate Dad's birthday. There is a restaurant here called 'Hogsbreath' which sends out a coupon for a free meal if it's your birthday, which you can redeem any time during the month of your birthday. Dad chose a prime rib and pork ribs combo meal - he said it was most delicious. My chicken guacamole on a bun was okay. We didn't go out to celebrate our anniversary as there aren't really any amazing restaurants in Hervey Bay, so we just bought a chocolate mud cake and enjoyed every morsel of that. 😃

Dad with his meal at 'Hogsbreath'

Chocolate mudcake - our favourite Aussie dessert next to pavlova

On Friday, Dad worked on modifying some items in the trailer while I worked on sewing up a knitted teddy bear which I had made. Yesterday was Homemaking at church and the activity was making up Christmas boxes for needy children overseas. Each of the sisters were to collect at least 6 items to be placed in a box for either a boy or girl aged between 2 and 13. One of the items was 'something to love' and so I wanted to put the knitted teddy bear in my box as something to love. I was very pleased with how it turned out - it was so cute - I wish I had taken a pic of it to show you.

Since we were filling up Christmas boxes at Homemaking, I wanted the theme of the refreshments to be Christmas-based. So, on Friday, Dad and I made up 20 bowls of jello (first layer red and second layer green) and some sugar cookies. It turned out that the cookies were quite a bit of work - we had to divide one recipe in half and add green gel food colouring to one of the halves. Then, we had to cut out circles in the dough and then use a Christmas tree cookie cutter to cut out a tree in each circle and then change the trees to the other colour of cookie (see pics below). They looked fabulous, but it sure took ages to make them. After they cooled, we spooned melted white chocolate on the edges of the cookies and sprinkled 100s and 1000s over the chocolate - yum!

One of the Christmas cookies - with a green dough tree cut out and laid into the plain dough cookie

Yesterday, Dad and I met up with Robyn before Homemaking to put together the rest of the refreshments - we made a Christmas tree shape with grapes and different kinds of cheese (I love Pinterest - I get so many great ideas on there). Only seven ladies showed up for Homemaking, but we had a really good time together. We ended up assembling 29 Christmas boxes - some ladies, who were not able to make the meeting, gave us items beforehand to use to fill boxes for them. We were really pleased with that effort. We enjoyed our time after the meeting, eating food and chatting and getting to know each other better.

Sandra and I filling Christmas boxes

All the Christmas boxes we assembled

Christmas trees made out of cheese and grapes (with a celery stick for the trunk and a cherry tomato for the ornament on top of the tree and little sprigs of rosemary)