montage monday: brewery xmas

I got inspired by the theme of today's Monday Montage when Ma and I were out and about on Saturday... we happened to drive past the Brewery's Christmas Riverbank Display... and I figured it would probably make a halfway decent Montage, so I went back yesterday and snapped some shots.

For the record...

The display's history evolved from an idea by South Australian Brewing staff back in 1959 to tidy up the Brewery's back yard and plant trees and grass. As an additional attraction, each Christmas the area is adorned by an attractive display of Christmas decorations. During the 1960's staff of South Australian Brewing built more display items, and many still remain today.

Interestingly enough, the display is actually a part of the Linear Park system (which goes all the way from the hills to the ocean)... although I don't know that I would have made the connection if I hadn't done far too many things involving the River Torrens and Linear Park of late...

I have to say, the display is one of those things were when you're a kid it's all magical and interesting (especially since a number of the figures actually animate to a limited degree... but seen with adult eyes (and during the day too I guess, as opposed to lit up at night), the whole thing has a slightly sad edge to it...

And the whale in the middle of the top row made headlines last year when the river flooded, sweeping away various parts of the display, and Mr Whale broke his shackles and took off down the river...

Oh Lordy... speaking of Christmas, the closer it gets to that silliest of seasons, the more Ma and my adventures on Saturdays turn into a shopping orgy of some kind... not always a successful one, but quite often many and varied in it's scope.

And I think it's also the reason why I don't bother doing a post-shopping round up on Saturdays (other than the fact that I would have a whole world of not very much to ramble about on Montage Mondays)... I'm just too damn exhausted by the time Ma toddles off home on Saturday afternoon... even with my weekly exercise, it still knackers me out...

Anyway... this weekend's adventure was a whole world of Random Christmas Shopping... and we still managed to come back with pretty much nothing for anybody other than the pair of us... part of the problem is that Ma knows who she wants things for, but not what she wants (yaaaaay, the inability to make a decision, gotta love it)... whereas, in this instance anyway, I knew what I wanted (things for my cousin's two girls), but couldn't bloody find them in the places we went.

After the usual food shopping adventures, we hit the Red Circle Boutique, and because I'd been having a Fashion Crisis earlier that morning and couldn't make up my mind what to put on (as well as the fact that a lot of the stuff that I have is actually starting to swim on me... yay), I decided to have a look in Menswear and see if they had anything halfway decent... it's actually been a pretty lean time of late trying to find anything with any kind of style. But, for whatever reason, the appropriate gods were smiling down on me (which, in this situation would be Machine Washable, God of Clothing) and there seemed to be a ton of stuff that, on the hanger at least, looked pretty good.

And the double bonus? The stuff that I picked was either one, or in one case, two sizes smaller than the teeshirt I was wearing (and at least two or three sizes smaller than some of the stuff in my wardrobe), and it all fit! Like really well! Yay me! Granted, some of it looked kind of shitty once it was off the hangers and on me (which I'm choosing to blame the designers for), but there were four tops that actually looked really good (including one that I wasn't sure about on the hanger... horizontal stripes, never flattering... but that looked amazing once it was on). And double double bonus, they were all about 25% off... yay again.

After the fashion related frivolity, we headed into town, to revisit the East End Rundle Street Markets again, and we went back to the stall that sells the "quasi twisted designs on cloth bags" I mentioned once before... only the stall was sans the purple haired girly from last time... anyway, they're now doing the same quasi twisted designs on teeshirts, and they look AMAZING... and really professionally done... so I ended up talking to the equally nice lady who was manning the stall, and she may be able to organise an appropriately sized teeshirt (since all the ones they had there were not only way too small, but also all women's sizes) for me... she's not 100% sure since they're having trouble with their teeshirt process at the moment... but fingers crossed... and I'll so be blogging a photo of the tee if I do get it...

I also realised that next time we plan on hitting the markets, I REALLY should take my camera along with me... I'm not sure how easy it would be to take a lot of shots around the stalls, but there's very probably a montage in there somewhere.

Then after the slightly overheated fun of the Market, we hit Borders again (bloody emailed vouchers... 40% off anything last week... 50% off children's books this week)... and while we were in there, I noticed the first book in the His Dark Materials Trilogy that Andrew mentioned a while back.

That then made me pick it up when I saw it at Kmart later (in a whole other shopping location)... and turns out it was only $6... in hardback... I nearly fell over right there and then... they had the whole trilogy actually, in hardback, $6 each... I only realised later on that I bought the books completely and utterly on Andrew's very brief recommendation of the first one... and the fact they were $6 each obviously... I didn't even read the blurb on the dust jacket... which I always do... even if something is recommended, I still read the blurb... whoops...

Since we were looking here, there and everywhere for Christmas Ideas, I steered Ma into The Body Shop, which actually turned out to be a very good idea indeed... I asked the Nice Retail Girly behind the counter about their Tea Tree Mattifying Facial Moisture Gel (which I used to use back when they just called it Tea Tree Moisturising Gel... which would have been at least fifteen years ago now... scary), and after being massively indecisive for a few moments (mostly because I was trying to back away from actually having to buy anything then and there), she gave me a little bit of the gel, and a little bit of the For Men Face Protector in little sample pots to take home. Woohoo for being indecisive!

I did end up buying a bracelet for The AIDS Trust of Australia... it's like my Livestrong bracelet (well, they're all knock offs from that concept really, since, as far as I know, the Livestrong one was first), but like most of the non-Livestrong ones it doesn't feel like it's as good quality... plus it's grey, so that just clashes with the yellow. I'm not sure if it's going to be a permanent addition, I might just wear it up until World AIDS Day, since this whole wearing two bracelets thing could get annoying really fast.

Oh, and I've discovered something else I don't like about the new Blogger system... if you add a post, name it one thing, save it as a draft, go away, come back, then rename it before you publish, it keeps the old title... which is why the Photo Friday: Mirrored Junk post actually has "photo-friday-jacaranda.html" as it's URL. And it's particularly annoying because I like to have a bunch of unpublished posts waiting in the wings... and now I can't (or, I can, but I'd have to name them the right thing right off the bat).

And I mentioned this in the comments of the No More Lemming post, but I figured I would mention it here too... Larry's "no more blog" thing lasted a grand total of like two days... he's got a new blog... silly Larry...

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