Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

  13 December Christmas Countdown #25envelopes - Family Christmas . Today was the Simmons Family Christmas get-together. This is an annual event - some would say a family tradition. This year, a slight change from the traditional party in someone's home, we had a picnic in the park under the shade of big fig trees on a mild summer’s day - perfect! Today’s envelope acknowledges the togetherness of this loving and supportive family with a stitched paper collage and a celebratory postage stamp

Today, the Simmons family ( my husband's family, and hence my family too) is celebrating Christmas together for the 32nd year. As in all good loving families , there is most likely some disagreement about the actual number , but as far as some of us can remember, the family came together for Christmas for the first time in 1985 and that is, in another  home rather than in their childhood home in Bonnell's Bay.  This was some years after the tragic death of Rose Simmons , my mother-in-law who had previously always welcomed everyone "home" for Christmas and by 1985,  owing to various locational changes for work , most of the family were within reasonable travelling distance from one another.  Simmons Family Christmas 2008  And this is how the Simmons family Christmas works - one of the Simmons siblings organises the date and hosts the gathering in his or her home.  Simmons family siblings  Everyone in the family is allocated some food t...

'Passengers'  Exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum  In one of history's great migrations, more than six million people have crossed the world to settle in Australia.  At the Australian National Maritime Museum, the Welcome Wall stands in honour of all those who have migrated to live in Australia with names of individuals and families permanently engraved in bronze. Looking out onto the harbour from the Australian National Maritime Museum  Located outdoors on the museum's northern boundary, the wall faces Darling Harbour and Pyrmont Bay where some of the many new settlers arrived. Accessible all year-round,  it's lovely to stroll along the bronzed panels and learn more about the migration experience as well as reading the names engraved. Welcome Wall Plaque  In 1950, my husband Jim was a three year old and he travelled on the SS  Chitral  with his mother and father, Rose and Don Simmons and his sisters Patricia ...

Today, 18 April is World Heritage Day and today, on Tag Tuesday  , I am the featured designer , Naturally , I chose the theme Heritage .   Hope you will join us and create an art tag and put your own link on the Tag Tuesday site. If you don't want to make a tag, just go to the link and have a look at the tags others create - each fortnight, there are lots of new ideas! My first tag uses a torn section of one of my photos of a temple dancer carving in the World Heritage complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The background is so far removed from that - it is waxed and painted 'butcher's paper' but I like the aged look it has.  The second tag is very simple - a manipulated photo ( again from Angkor Wat) transformed into a line drawing for the background. The panels pasted over the top are strips from a magazine page. And the gold blob is my attempt to gild one of the visible statues. A couple  of years ago, I also made a 'family heritage ' tag so though...

Most of us know about the holly and the ivy - plant symbols of Christmas, but have you heard of "The Story of Holly and Ivy"?  watercolour, pencil and ink sketch - Wilma Simmons  I is for Ivy...  Ivy is the main character in a heart warming  1950's Christmas story by Rumer Gooden.  The Story of Holly and Ivy  has the sparkles and sugar of Christmas, the wish fulfilment and whimsy and talking toys. It's also a story about lonely people finding solace in acts of charity, and the importance of taking care of the weakest members of society. A fairy tale with a social conscience. from  http://www.goodreads.com/ I vy is the only child from St. Agnes orphanage not placed with a family for Christmas. Ivy tells the matron that she could go to her grandmother's in Appleton, although there is no grandmother and Ivy wasn't even sure if a place called Appleton even existed. Ivy is put on a train and arrives in Appleton on Christmas Eve, left to ...

My Mother's Christmas Cake...  Each year, I try to blog a visual advent calendar . This year, my mother turned 90 and I am dedicating this series of blog posts to her because this year, it's all about Christmas Cake, and of course I am starting off with my mother's much loved Christmas Cake - moist, delicious and  intoxicatingly rich.  For more years than I can rem ember ( probably about 40 years) , my mother has been sending me Christmas cakes, so I don't remember ever making a cake for Christmas! You might think that this is not such a significant gesture, but my mother lives  interstate 1593 km ( 990 miles) away, so she has had to depend on Australia Post or adding to the luggage allowance of visiting relatives.The longest distance Christmas cakes have had to be sent is when we were living in Bombala, NSW  which is 2393 km (1486 miles) away from Townsville, Queensland. Throughout the years, it has never been just one cake - there is always one for my hu...

Walter and Rose Sophia Jones with their son, James Alfred  Meet the Jones family.... The photo is of Walter Jones, his wife Rose Sophia ( nee Redrup) and their son, James Alfred, of  Birmingham, County of Warwick, England. Walter was born on 3 March, 1865 and Sophia on 1 January 1867.  They married in February,1929, many years after the birth of their son, James (1903). It can be speculated that they married, aged  64 and 62 respectively, because by that time, Walter was suffering badly from work related emphysema and chronic bronchitis  and in 1925, legislation was passed which granted "widows"  government support. This is, of course, retrospective conjecture! Walter appeared on the 1891 census as a 'spade maker', and when his son was born, his occupation was recorded as a 'garden fork drawer and later in this life, his illness affected his capacity to work - in 1911, records show that Walter was working as a bricklayer's labourer.Walter's death ce...

 Happy Chinese New Year - the first day of the lunar year was last week, but with celebrations continuing  for at least two weeks, we had our family get together last night. We all look forward to the celebrations because they all mean something special to each of us Chinese New Year = colourful Lion dances  Chinese New Year = loud music and fun  Chinese New Year = lucky red packets of money  Chinese New Year = a special event and dressing up Chinese New Year = yummy food and lots of it Chinese New Year = family and friends celebrating together All the best to my family and friends all over the world during  the Year of the Snake.

Charles James and Florence Beatrice Simmons  My husband’s grandparents were both English politicians.  Jim’s grandfather, Charles James Simmons represented various constituencies in the Birmingham area, and his grandmother  Florence Beatrice Simmons was an alderman in Birmingham City Council  in the 1940’s to 1950’s.( they were known as Jim and Beatrice). Their individual stories take more than a blog entry to cover – in fact, Jim’s (Charles James)  autobiography, The Soap Box Evangelist , tells his story while  he was a member of the  House of Commons  and a conscientious objector in khaki during World War 1. So, this blog post focuses on the fascinating story of their house at 20 Slack Lane ( corner of Slack Lane and College Road , Handsworth)  which we visited recently. 20 Slack Lane ( corner of Slack Lane and College Road, Handsworth, Birmingham    Known as the Handsworth Town Hall , the former  home of the...