We had a pleasant, relatively quiet weekend.

We went with Lindsey and Ian to the Bridge Mall market on Saturday morning, then to Bunnings and to a couple of other shops.

We went with Lindsey to Elaine to the Farmgate shop on Saturday afternoon to look at their meat selection.

We pottered around at our place, planted a few herbs to start our Home garden, as opposed to the allotment at Lindsey and Ian's place.

We sorted out a few things in the unit.

We had Sunday dinner at Lindsey and Ian's place, in celebration of Jim's birthday which Ian won't be able to celebrate with us.

Monday was Jim's birthday and he had a proper fried Sunday breakfast on a Monday.  He spent most of the day up at Hill House digging potatoes and I finally got around to sorting out the study, the desk and the wardrobes so that things have places and we know more or less where things are.  I'll do it again when we have got some more chests of drawers and some shelves but it will do for now.  Eventually I'll reorganise the kitchen cupboards but, again, they'll do for now.

In the evening Jim, Lindsey, Emily and I went to the Tokyo Grill in Ballarat for a celebratory birthday dinner.  Lindsey, Jim and I arrived and were seated at a long table - it was more or less an oblong with a teppanyaki grill in the middle for the chef to cook for us.  Along two of the other sides was a group of cheerful young women obviously celebrating someone's birthday.  When Emily arrived they greeted her with surprise and joyfulness.  Turns out she used to work with them when she was physio-ing at the Base hospital.  So we had a double birthday celebration.  It was also Tokyo Grill's birthday and they had a 9 course birthday set menu which the four of us had.  So did many of the young women.  It was splendid.  Except that I ate so much yummy protein that by the time the veg and rice came out I was too full to do it justice!

I have been looking for a knife block, without knives, for sometime.  They are surprisingly difficult to find.  Shops sell all sorts of knife blocks, but they all come with knives and I don't need knives.  While we were at the market on Saturday, we ambled into the craft market where I found someone who had been making chopping boards with wood off cuts.  I hadn't been particularly looking for a wooden cutting board, although I had been musing that my plastic ones weren't very sturdy.  But when I saw a lovely piece of jarrah for $20 I had to have it.

It is, I hope you will agree, beautifully sturdy.
And beautiful 

And as we were walking past the sausage sizzle on our way back to the carpark (we didn't need sausages - we had had egg and bacon rolls for breakfast from the pork people) I noticed empty wooden knife blocks for $5 each!!! I should have bought two :-D

Very colourful :-D
I already had the dinosaur ladles but now
my colourful knives can join them