The view from my chair at the hairdresser - the best of the best?

This is a photo of one of the most iconic bridges in the world

Below it sits arguably the best-located public swimming pool in the world

And following the relocation of my hairdresser three weeks ago

I believe here I may be sitting in the best-located hairdressing chair

In the world

Mother son bowling night and lessons on being careful what you ask for

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Last night Year 4 at my son's school had a Mother Son Bowling Night. It was a lot of fun and while we mothers felt we would love to have a mothers-only bowling night as well we wouldn't have the excuse to raise the lane bumpers if the boys weren't there!

All was going most excellently with the sauvingon blanc and soft drink flowing nicely until one mum decided it would be a great idea to issue balloons to each mother-son combination. We were to write a loving message to each other on the balloon and then keep it as a memento of the night.

Right.

So without any instructions like "Write what you love about your mum" what do you reckon the boys wrote? One boy in our team wrote "You stink unless you give me $20".

And my beautiful blue-eyed boy? This is what he wrote:

They thought they were being hilarious.

I'm not sure whether I feel amused by the message, concerned about the spelling or just relieved he wrote "you are" and chose not to get confused by "your/you're".

What did I write in return you say?

"I may be grouchy but I still love my blue-eyed boy".

Be careful what you ask for, I say.

The horror of builders' quotes

Once upon a time there was a big lush garden here. And vines all over the house. I've had the garden cut back [perhaps a little severely] and my favourite plants moved out of the way of the impending builders.

That now seems to have been a complete waste of time.

We've had the first quote in on the work and it has blown our socks off. We've renovated before and I don't believe we are going into this process with rose-colored glasses. Last time our builder was de-registered half way through the build so we understand the downside of choosing the cheapest builder.

This quote was WAY above even our WORST SCENARIO quote which included a 25% contingency. It was - sit down - 47% dearer than we expected and 100% dearer than estimated by our architect.

Three quotes are still to come so, hopefully, they will be more reasonable but there's a little niggling doubt in my mind which means that we may have to rethink this entire project.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.

Crazy Neighbour Solution

Six mature Lilly Pillys on the boundary to screen out the knickers on her clothes line.

She's SO cross.

Can your Pilates instructor do this?

Mine can.

She's South African by birth. So she's scary as well as talented. :)

This school building program isn't ugly

A large proportion of schools in Australia are building sites at the moment. This makes a large proportion of school yards ugly, surrounded in ring fencing covered in shade cloth.

Not so my daughter's (public) primary school in Sydney. A three storey, 12 classroom block is being built at her school and the building site is surrounded by the fence above.

Instead of ring fencing the Principal argued for white board fencing like the sort you see on commercial building sites. Then a school parent, who is a well-known local artist, outlined a mural and it was painted by the students with paint donated by our local Bunnings. The scale of this mural is enormous, by the way.

Rather than being an eye-sore, I can't imagine the school ever wanting to take it down.

Has anyone else got examples of artistic alternatives to the ring fencing/shade cloth options at our local schools?