Torrential rain threatened to dampen Paris’ Australia Day celebrations today. The party pooper in me was hoping that it would be too wet to host twenty 17-year-old girls for a pool party! But the sun shone through and the party went ahead.

Of course a sausage sizzle was a must!

And there is nothing more Australian than finishing with a ‘pav’ (pavlova).

Happy Australia Day! How did you celebrate?

Today feels very strange! You see, school is back after the summer holidays. And for the very first time in 16 years there was no back-to-school stress in our household. No shoes to buy, books to cover, lunches to make…I am free! Well sort of.

I didn’t realise how much I used to enjoy having the house to myself during the day! I don’t know if anyone else can relate to this? But I do enjoy my own company. Seeing the kids young adults still in pajamas at lunchtime will take some getting used to. Only 4 more weeks until uni starts, but who’s counting!

We really loved having my nephew Sam and his girlfriend Wei home from Beijing for the holidays. Wei is an absolute darling and such fun to have around.

One night she cooked up an incredible Chinese feast for us all, including dumplings from scratch!

There was plenty of laughter and frivolity, a given when my family’s together. And Wei’s feast was amazing!

I really recommend staying downtown in New York City, as it is away from the shopping madness of midtown/uptown. You really get to feel like a New Yorker rather than a tourist. We frequented the Birdbath Bakery in the heart of SoHo for tea and muffins and it was fun watching the locals come in to grab their morning fix!

Birdbath Bakery is on the grounds of the former Vesuvio Bakery, a legendary, old, Italian family-run operation, with no new signage. So I almost missed it. Thank goodness for Maddie’s navigational skills.

Their muffins are something else. Our favourites were the Blueberry Cornmeal and the Raspberry Bran Muffin, and we sampled a few! We did try their famous cookies too and boy are they good – crunchy on the outside and chewy in the middle. Just how a cookie should be.

Birdbath bakery – 160 Prince Street, SoHo

No visit to New York City is complete without a trip to MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art)!

The museum highlights the best of modern and contemporary art, showcasing the evolution of artistic expression through the 20th century and into the 21st century.

We loved seeing famous artworks by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Andy Warhol, to name a few.

It’s no wonder MOMA makes the best museums in the world list!

What are your favourite Art Museums?

Whilst I was in London in October I took a Mystery Photo Tour with Hairygoat Tours (funny name, hey). My mystery tour ended up being in the financial district, discovering the often un-noticed and unexpected treasures, including a beautiful church and garden.

It was not instructional, so there was not too much in the technical help or composition department. I think I prefer photographic tours where the leader is a professional photographer and can be a little more directional. All in all though, it was a nice way to spend an afternoon with my camera.

2012 was certainly full of formal occasions for Paris. I’m not sure how she was able to focus on her studies or whether it was what kept her going.

Trends have really changed over the years, now girls are wearing both long and short dresses. I think the shorter dresses actually are a lot more practical, in that they will get more wear out of them, but there is certainly something glamorous about a long gown. Earlier in the year Paris wore a long gown to her school Ball and a short one to this formal.

Paris’ own School Formal (Prom) was in early October but because I flew out to London the next day I never got around to doing a post, until now.

Doesn’t she look gorgeous in her Carla Zampatti dress? A little parental bias here

Now a Formal is almost a 24 hour event! They start getting ready early in the day with hair and make up appointments. Then they go to a Pre-Formal Function late in the afternoon, where the parents get to socialise, see the girls and their partners all dolled up and get photos. Then they go to the actual Formal which is a sit down dinner with dancing (Paris and her friends went in a stretch Hummer).  And then when you think they should be exhausted and wanting to going home to bed…haha…they have a Post Party, at one of the student’s homes, until the wee hours of the morning! Oh to have that kind of stamina again .

On our Nov/Dec trip to New York, I stole someone’s suitcase!!!

Not intentionally, but all the same, some poor person was standing at the baggage carousel in Los Angeles for what probably seemed like forever until the steady flow of bags on to the conveyor belt slowed to a trickle, then stopped. And their bag was nowhere to be seen.

And I was the culprit! It must have been one of the very first bags to have been unloaded! And in my half awake state after the 13 hour flight from Australia, I saw a blue bag come around straight after my khaki one. I remember thinking how fortuitous it was that our bags came out together. Being in a rush to get through customs and drop our bags back off and head to terminal B to make the connection, neither Maddie nor myself noticed anything astray. When we handed the bags over to the baggage staff, they noticed that one bag was only tagged through to Los Angeles and the other to New York. We questioned how that could have happened and no-one seemed phased. They said we just had to go up to the departure check in on level 3 and get the bags re-checked in there! I then explained to the check in staff how weird it was that one of our bags was not checked through to New York and gave them our luggage claim tags (you know the tags that identify your bags by matching the numbers to the tag on your luggage). Obviously I wasn’t the only one half asleep! They rechecked both bags reassigning them with new numbers, no questions asked!

When it was time to board our flight on to New York, we gave over our boarding pass and the lady said ‘Oh you didn’t pick up one of your suitcases in customs, but don’t worry we checked it through for you to New York’. Maddie and I looked very puzzled and I replied that we actually did pick up both bags. The lady replied back ‘Oh there must be someone else with the same name’, and we thought nothing more of it. Well that was until about 2 hours into the flight when I leant over to Maddie and said ‘I’ve had a terrible thought that I may have grabbed the wrong suitcase’. She said ‘Oh Mum, don’t be ridiculous’.

When we arrived in New York, I discovered that I was a thief. I took the stolen bag straight to the lost luggage department and made sure they tracked the owner of the bag and send it back to Los Angeles. I still can’t believe I did it, especially when the bag was nothing like our bag. Well it was blue (I will give myself that) but it was half the size of ours and it had a black luggage strap around it and ours had an orange one?

I feel so bad and will probably be in therapy for the next 10 years.

Have you ever had missing luggage? Or perhaps taken the wrong one?

After having eaten at Hidden Kitchen in Paris twice, I am hooked on the underground dining experience. I was sure New York would be in on the trend and was delighted to discover the Brooklyn Edible Social Club! Chef Andres, with a decade of fine dining experience (The French Laundry, Gordon Ramsay) and his partner a food loving designer, host a five-course dinner party featuring seasonal ingredients from local, responsible farms, in their eclectically decorated apartment.

It definitely was one of the highlights of our recent New York trip. We loved the fact that the other guests happened to be all New Yorkers, bar one. The conversations made us feel like we were in an episode of ‘Sex and the City’!

I’m salivating looking at these photo’s again, the food was amazing!

We hosted Christmas Day at ours…and it was a glorious day in every way!