Whose your Daddy?

Last Saturday night rock and roll royalty came to town, none other than Ross Wilson of Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock fame. He played at the Gibraltar Hotel here in Bowral. Which I must say has been an excellent addition to life here in the Highlands. We have now seen Glenn Shorrock and Richard Clapton here and there are many other musicians who have come or are coming soon to play here.

We had an early dinner before the show at what I think is one of the best places to eat here in the highlands (and there are a lot!) Cafe Rosso. Every time we have eaten there, the service has been flawless, the food fresh, tasty and seasonal and a great ambiance with Sebastian, mine host schmoozing with the diners. In fact last time we ate there we had a cannelini  bean bruschetta which was amazing in its simplicity but wonderful in taste and texture. Well the next day we ran into Sebastian at the local green grocers and I told him I was trying to recreate his dish at home that night, he gladly gave the recipe and some tips and tricks, I love that! 

anyway back to Ross Wilson....




He played a good mix of his old and new material and of course it was the famous  "Eagle Rock" that got the audience up and dancing ( even my significant other did a turn on the dance floor with me!)

Ross Wilson 

I can say that he still sounds as good as ever and was supported by an excellent ensemble of musicians. I downloaded Daddy Cool's greatest hits on the old i-phone and relived the concert on the way home!

Me, channeling my inner rock chick!

Spending time, losing time.

It's a sunny, but cold and windy day here at GG central. I am sitting here in the lounge room next to the fire, doing what I do best.....wasting time on the internet.

It all started today when the Significant Other went to a community meeting about our local hall. In many country towns around Australia there are school of Arts, or community halls that are falling into rack and ruin because of lack of funding to keep them going, ours is one of them.  So it looks like the local council will take over the responsibility for the on-going maintenance and insurance  of the hall and the local community will continue to fund raise to provide better facilities for us all.

Anyway, I got to thinking about how we could do some fundraising and then had the scathingly brilliant idea of having a 1920's/Great Gatsby ball next April. As our hall is officially known as the "Glenquarry Peace Memorial Hall" and was opened on April 29 1920 I think this theme would be entirely appropriate.

So I began searching on the internet for any references to our hall and then somehow I got onto this amazing site which is a treasure trove of all types of stuff, go on check it out.!

And so I found out a lot more about our hall, and the fun and merriment that used to go on there during the 1920's. Also a piece of trivia for you, our hall has a link to Don Bradman, can you guess how? (answer at the end of the post)


So now I find myself looking through back issues of the Women's Weekly 1966 editions (don't ask how I got there) but I found  this beauty  and remember when my friends and I would strike poses like this when pretending to be models!  What is it about the leg thrusting????  And of course  you should always wear a rain hat when wearing your swim suit (!)

Do you find yourself losing great chunks of your life while on the internet?

* Jessie Menzies family donated the piece of land upon which our Glenquarry Hall was built.!

I have been musing the last couple of days about things, really important things, like why do people (me, included) like to have Eiffel tower candle holders, diaries, phone covers ( in fact for me anything with an Eiffel tower is a given that I will purchase it)  pictures of the New York city skyline etc etc, you get my drift when we live in Australia?

There a number of shops here in Glenquarry Goddess land that survive on selling such paraphernalia and whole furniture stores devoted to recreating the whole french country home experience right here in the southern highlands. So I am not criticising, I just started to wonder if people in USA or Europe feel the need to have an essence of the Australian way of life as part of their home decor?

I imagined there were homes all over Europe and North American that had Opera House lampshades and Harbour Bridge coathangers 

Made from hard wearing Australian made polypropylene, these funky lamps add atmosphere to any room. They are easy to assemble and come in a variety of colours.
Product Number: 3409
Price: $89.95
(All prices are shown in Australian dollars)

or how about something really useful

or something a little retro..

a doily from the Powerhouse museum collection, 1941.

So on this Friday afternoon, I will leave you with those thoughts and perhaps any readers from outside Australia might like to share with us if they like a little bit of "down under" in their home decor.

It's mad mad world....

Last Friday night we hosted here at GG central a dinner party for 6 of our friends with a theme of "Mad Men". Mad Men is one of my all time favourite TV shows, I love the era, the clothes, the music and the drinking and smoking (at work no less!).

I decided about 2 months ago this was to be my theme and I set about to orchestrate my dinner party with the right mix of people, food, wine and of course dressing up!

First of all, in the mad men days dinner parties would have been a rather formal affair,  so in true GG style a formal invitation was sent out, ( my concession to modern times was that it was via e-mail rather than snail mail), here it is

Personal information is redacted for security purposes.
Hello, NSA! :-)

I googled images of Don, Betty et al, to create my invite, also searched for old (read here sexist) advertisements which I then put together  and laminated to make placemats,  here they are below , and the best thing I have them for the future  (or available for hire, at the right price! :-)

I love setting the table to look special, so I worked out how to fold my lovely white linen Nanna napkins (from my op shop scouting) to make them look like a man's white shirt, then I used a thin black velvet ribbon to make it look like a man's tie, and I was rather thrilled with the result.

My effort is on the left, in case you could not tell!

Some funky orange and hot pink coloured dahlias in a vase set the scene perfectly.

Ready and waiting for the guests to arrive, the Parker furniture is rocking this theme!

Now the menu...
this had to be authentic to the era, so I went through my cookbooks, internet and my own (repressed) memories and came up with this menu, and then added a touch of my own sub-editing to it and then, folded them in thirds to create a place card for the table.

My Beef Wellington! Thermomix making a guest appearance

so I had the invites, table decoration and menu sorted, what else was left but my apparel. 

Luckily for me,  one of the Junior Glenquarry Goddesses is a very skilled needlewoman, and a couple of years ago she made for me a skirt based on a design that Grace Kelly wore in Rear Window, here is the original

and here is GG herself in her interpretation of "being Grace Kelly"

Now some pics of our fabulous friends, and see if you can spot the photo(s) taken later in the night.....

there is no prize for guessing correctly!  And they all were great and got into the spirit of the evening and made an effort dressing up. I must say it is so much fun to be a little bit special and dress for dinner, why don't we do that anymore?  ( I think I might have another post on that topic).

My  chocolate mousse with pistachio Persian Fairy Floss! 

My very dear friend, the Pyrenees Princess, we went to school together , not with the dog of course! It was a Ladies College after all! 

Well, this has been a long post with lots of photos, I hope you enjoy reading about my dinner party and I am now thinking about my next "themed" dinner party, any suggestions?

BTW I have to hold another Mad Men dinner for the rest of the family and offspring who were not able to attend this one, so stay tuned.