Gearing up for the festive season, Sue Southern taught us all the basic stitches to create Embroidered Christmas Ornaments to decorate our homes. Our cute packs contained everything we needed to create a Xmas tree and each of us could select the beads, paillettes or buttons to decorate it. After finishing the two sides of the tree, we cut it out, stitched it together and finished our lovely decorations.
Changing direction quite dramatically we talked about Trauma: the Brain and the Body with Peter McKay. After working out what the difference is between stress, trauma and lasting problems such as PTSD, we talked about the physical and chemical changes that can occur in our bodies and our brains as we experience and start to deal with trauma.
Some people say baking is more chemistry than cooking; Maia Sauren helped us understand in The Science of Baking. We talked about sourdoughs, starters and scobys, rolled and kneaded dough and had all our questions answered. And to top it off we finished the class with some fresh sourdough straight from the oven.
Then we had the privilege to welcome the guys from the Melbourne Meat-up group to show us all how to turn pork belly into delicious Cured Bacon! We learnt all about the process or curing, how to be safe and we all had a go and walked away with our very own self-cured, vacuum sealed, bacon. In a few weeks it is going to be ready for slicing and frying and I have a funny feeling it is going to be immense!
In Wholefoods: Maintaining a balanced Life, Sandra Dubs taught us all about the Harvard food pyramid and why we probably aren’t eating the right things for us. We learned why eating wholefoods is good for you and that it is all about balance and making sure you chew!
Casey Bodycoat from Tillda Flowers showed us how to make pretty Posies with seasonal flowers. We learnt to place the flowers in a spiral and each slanted over the previous one. In modern posies there are no rules so we all created our posies to our whim and later Casey wrapped them in pretty paper for us. We also learnt a new flower name: the chincherinchee. How cool is that!
At Walk Like an Egyptian: Belly Dancing, we put our coin belts on, switched on the Middle Eastern beats and got belly dancing. Kirsty & Caroline from Urban Gypsy Belly Dance Stuido taught us the moves like how to shimmy, shake our hips and move our arms to the music. We also played with different belly dancing props like veils, Isis wings and finger cymbals.
Finally, did you ever wish you were as stylish as some of those celebrities? We had the great pleasure of welcoming back the wonderful Lisa Ballek to tell us 6 Tips for Better Style. We learnt all about different body shapes, what we should be aiming for and how to do it! So whether you are a pear or a rectangle, being more stylish is always possible.