Final Day

We squeezed a lot into our final day - including a morning nap for Adoring Husband and an afternoon nap for me.

The Mooloolaba Spit was our lunch destination and ‘Fish on Parkyn’ was our restaurant of choice.

On the way there, I discovered my new favourite shop and spent about 30 minutes browsing. I could have spent two or three hours easily because it was a treasure chest of awesomeness!

I bought two pairs of the same shoes, one black pair and one red pair. I wore the black ones tonight and they are sooooooo comfortable and for high shoes, very easy to walk in.

I also found a small silver glomesh clutch.

I definitely needed a nap before our big date at the racing track. 

What a fantastic night we had! Buying the temporary ticket to the members area was SO worth it. We had a perfect view of the finishing line, were in air conditioned comfort, had access to the main restaurant and the food was amazing, no queue to place bets and great service over the bar as well as in the restaurant.

I was so excited about the main meal (I had the chicken), I forgot to take a photo!

It was a wonderful four hours and we finally won on the last race of the night.

Adoring Husband is now snoring loudly in the bedroom so I shall go place a pillow over his face (joking of course) so that I can get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, we pack up and leave. On the way home, we’ll stop in at Eumundi Markets, so there is still something to look forward to at the end of our holiday.

I think I’m done for the day. 

Nite all.

Thank You Surf Club

We had a lovely day.

It was a slow, lazy start but we eventually pulled into the driveway of Rebel Mardi and The Lifesaver to begin our lunch date.

It was so good to see them and it was generous of them to give us some of their precious time because they’ve been very busy lately with lots happening and not much time to themselves.

Thanks 🙏 lovely people.

We enjoyed a delicious lunch at the golf club where the views were amazing and the service very friendly, but the noisy raffles after lunch sent us in search of the quiet outside deck at their home so that we could hear each other speak.

After three enjoyable hours - still not long enough to really catch up properly - we hugged goodbye.

Rebel Mardi had recommended The Wharf where, she said, it had been done up with great restaurants and little shops so we stopped in there on the way home to have a wander round and buy our afternoon coffee.

I checked out a couple of boutiques and bought a top on sale 🥰

Adoring Husband drove us home and then he walked downstairs to get our afternoon tea.

GF choc chip gelato in a GF cone. Holiday heaven!

I was feeling really worn out at 4.30pm and lay down on the bed. If I’d fallen asleep, it would have been all over for me so I jumped out of bed and suggested to AH that we walk to the surf club so that I could play the pokies while he watched an old footy game on the telly, followed by an early dinner.

It was a very successful visit. AH got to watch an old Cronulla Sharks footy game from last year where they had a good win! I won almost as much money on the pokies as I’ve spent since we arrived!! Now I can start again!

I ordered a roast dinner, which was just ‘ok’ and AH ordered a surprise seafood curry, which he really enjoyed.

We walked home along the beach path and even though it was dark, there were lots of families on the well lit beach, playing in the parks, sitting at the picnic tables and playing beach volleyball. The energy was fantastic and made me feel like it was an area I’d enjoy living in.

Now we are parked on the couch in our apartment trying to keep our eyes open at 8pm!

All this fresh air and socialising and shopping is wearing us out!

This is my new top ...

Nite all.

All The ‘M’s

A huge day of shopping yesterday (Tuesday) because the constant heavy rain ruined any other plans that we might have had, so Adoring Husband volunteered to stay at home so that I could drop til I dropped.

As you can imagine, I was just a little bit in heaven!

I had lots of interesting business conversations with other shop/boutique owners. Except for the obvious tourist seasons, we all agreed that there is no pattern for busy days. We can never rely on any one day of the week to be the best money making day.

The shops on the main drag of Mooloolaba do however have much better days during wet weather because there’s nothing else for people to do except shop!

A lot of shops here sell what we sell and in 99% of cases, The Happy Abode has much better prices, and that’s for all our clothing lines, jewellery, Ivys bags, snap buttons, glass figurines, teapots and cups, wine coolers, hand creams etc etc etc.

I found lots of stuff that we DON’T sell and the only thing I did not purchase was a beautiful designer top for $499. 😳

I walked into this shop and selected a couple of tops (without looking at the prices) to try on. There appeared, on the surface, to be nothing special about these clothes and the saleswoman offered to put my clothes in a fitting room for me, which I agreed to and thanked her.

It was then that I looked at the price of a singlet top - $369.

THAT is when I realised that these clothes were all from different designers - most of whom I didn’t recognise - and I immediately thought to myself “I don’t spend that kind of money on regular clothes! Maybe for a special occasion, but let’s be honest, my only special occasions these days are Friday nights at the club. Friday raffle night does not deserve such expensive tops!” and I considered leaving.

But then I thought “Come on. Indulge. There is no commitment to buy. Just try them on and enjoy yourself!”

So I did.

Of the four outfits that I tried on, only one top looked and felt amazing. It was a Trelise Cooper top and this photo just doesn’t do it justice because it was beautiful to look at, to touch and felt amazing on.

$499 was more than I was willing to pay. The experience of trying on clothes a price level up from my norm was nice - and my next challenge is to go to a higher level again to see how the rich and famous feel! Haha!

I indulged in some other beautiful tops and jewellery that I love. And shoes of course! Here are just a few of my purchases. The pics are pretty bad but the white top is linen and much nicer than the photo shows.

Retail therapy at its finest.

Today we drove to Montville, Mapleton and Maleny. The weather was humid with a few soft showers along the way, but otherwise very conducive to sight seeing and walking.

We lunched at Mary Cairncross ...

By the time we arrived home, we were both exhausted and instead of dressing up for a restaurant, we got takeaway from that delicious seafood takeaway place. Sooooo good!

Tomorrow we lunch with Rebel Mardi and The Lifesaver and we’re both really looking forward to that.

So I’d best get some sleep!

Nite all.

Bit Late

Here we are on our holiday week on the Sunny Coast.

The trip here was just horrible with the weather turning bad between Tiaro and Gympie. In some places, the road had huge streams of water flowing in the tyre tracks because the rain was so heavy.

The car aquaplaned a couple of times, so we stopped at a servo and waited for the rain to ease.

All we could have was a coffee while we waited because there was nothing gluten free on their menu.

After about 30 minutes, the rain had eased enough to make a move, but all the way, in patches, the conditions were difficult to manage.

We used the satellite system as our navigator, which took us to the completely wrong destination and the lady at the reception desk said that there are three locations that satellite systems go to for their address and people get lost all the time. We didn’t feel so stupid after that.

The lady at reception was just lovely. So warm, friendly and welcoming.

We found our room car space way down in the bowels of the earth and then brought all our luggage to our apartment via the lift but then the electronic key did NOT work so Adoring Husband brought our reception lady up and she showed us that it DID actually work. 🙄

In our defence, the handle does ‘stick’ a bit.

We were very happy with our apartment ...

... we dumped all our gear and headed out to check the nearby restaurants. Eventually we chose the fish and chip place because they catered to our dietary requirements and we had the choice of battered or crumbled fresh fish.

After such a stressful trip here, we decided to get takeaway and eat in our room on the first night and the food was absolutely delicious!!

Of course, I did squeeze in some retail therapy before the shops closed ...

It was lights out by 10pm but I was awake again by 2am and did not get back to sleep. I always struggle on the first night out of my own bed.

By 3.15am I was sitting in the lounge room feeling sorry for myself.

At 5am I was watching the runners from my balcony as they jogged in the pouring rain without any protection.

At 5.30am I was noticing people parking their cars and walking across the road in the direction of our building, then leaving 5 mins later with coffee in their hand. If I wasn’t so lazy, or worried about disturbing AH, I would have got dressed and gone in search of said coffee!!

It’s now 6.40am and I’m hanging for some caffeine, so it might be time to disturb AH.

I’ll be shopping this morning and sleeping this afternoon!

Have a wonderful day!!

Day of Lists

Today’s lists include:

• A list of duties, in order, for the cleaning job
• A list of possible psychotic dog problems and how to fix them
• A list of names and phone numbers of the people most able to help in certain situations
• A list of ‘must dos’ on each day
• A list of last minute packing needs before we leave
• A list otherwise known as an itinerary
• A list of spices required for dinner tonight - butter chicken

Bubbles went with Adoring Husband to learn the job this morning and then after lunch she and I played Yahtzee all afternoon.

The weather was really not conducive for swimming today, but that gave Bubbles time to work on her relationship with the psychotic dogs. Their age and inability to see or hear properly has left them a little tentative in her presence ... which is very unusual and a little disappointing for Bubbles.

No doubt she’ll have them wrapped around her little finger before she leaves, but it’s taking longer than usual.

This is a short post because I’m in bed ready to sleep and there are two buzzing flies annoying the hell out of me right now. I’m about to go to town with the big green fly swat!

Nite all.