Paddy had a milestone birthday this year. He turned the big "three-oh" in March. Happy birthday Paddy!

Since Paddy was going to be far away in Hong Kong, I wanted to organise something special for him so that he felt loved on his birthday.

A while ago I'd read about a birthday project on OhHappyDay.com. The project involves cutting up a poster into a number of pieces. Each piece is mailed to a friend of the birthday person along with a note asking the friend to write a message on the piece and mail it to the birthday person. During the week of the birthday, the birthday boy/girl receives all the pieces of the poster in the mail like a puzzle and feels the birthday love. I decided that this was the perfect project for Paddy's 30th birthday.

I picked a photo of ours that Paddy liked and got it blown up into a poster size.

When the poster arrived we cut it into postcard sized pieces and stuck a bit of cardboard on the back of it. Then we mailed the pieces out to Paddy's family and friends, asked them to write a special birthday message for Paddy on the back and then asked them to mail them to Paddy.

And it worked! Paddy received cards in the mail on his birthday and a few weeks after. He sent me some photos showing the progress on the puzzle as more cards arrived.


They almost all made it there too. I'm not disappointed that the puzzle isn't complete though. It just adds to the story of the project.


A big thank you to everyone who took part and a special thank you to Sue who was my secret helper in Hong Kong.

Happy 30th Birthday Paddy! You are loved!

Look who's in town! It's Paddy! My wonderful, loquacious, gregarious and hirsute brother! I was pretty excited when we picked him up from the airport. In typical Daley fashion, he emerged from the arrivals gate with several stains down the front of his t-shirt. (aha! You can tell we are related!)

It's been 18 months since I last saw my little brother. He's been globetrotting for the past year and a half. Backpacking around South America and learning Spanish, hanging out in Vancouver and not updating his blog. It doesn't seem like it has been that long. In the few past few months we've been chatting on MSN almost everyday. Truthfully, Paddy has been my afternoon saviour from my daily dose of tedium (also known as my job).

I'm quite impressed with his Spanish skills. On the tube ride home this morning he started a conversation with the Argentinean couple sitting across from us. I guess he's using every opportunity to practice.

Unfortunately we only have Paddy for a brief and fleeting period... 31 hours to be exact (most of which I will spend at work or asleep.) He's on his way to Italy to spend time with the cousins and hopefully learn Italian. We'll have to squeeze as much spaccahead goodness as possible out of him while he's here.

(Paddy arrives home in August too. We'll all be staying with the rentals in Pyrmont for the month of August. I'm sure they are delighted at that prospect!)

My darling brother has left us for adventure in South America. He is currently in Santiago, studying at a language school and living with a lovely Chilean couple, Pedro y Lydia. You can keep up with Paddy's exploits on his blog, The Unicycle Diaries.

Paddy's motto is "Why say something with 2 words when 8 will do?". You have been warned; content may include the enthusiastic ramblings of a passionate 24 year old. Be sure to leave a comment!

Recently Paddy celebrated two milestones; (1) a couple weeks ago he moved from the familial home into his first share house (complete with brown couch) and (2) last week he turned twenty-three. Last Friday, we went out to celebrate Paddy's birthday and before heading out to dinner we popped into his new home for a quick visit. When I heard Paddy was moving out into a share house with 4 girls, my initial thought was "oh no... poor girls!". However, after a tour of the house, I realised that Paddy's room was actually the cleanest room in the house. I'm not sure if it was a result of the impending visit from "the mother" or if it's because Paddy's actually a clean person. We shall see!

The house has a very interesting colour scheme, with a bright feature wall in each bedroom of the house. Of course, being a house which is almost in Newtown, the feature walls aren't exactly painted in tasteful colours. There is a bright blue, neon orange, lime green, turquoise blue and a violent violet wall. I wonder what drugs they were on when they decided on that colour scheme?

Paddy's birthday dinner was held at Manna @ Petersham. The food was lovely but they missed on a couple of points; (1) With concrete walls and tile floors the place gets very, very noisy when it's full. So, noisy in fact that you can't hear the conversation at the other end of the table (2) One of their signature decorations seems to be mismatched chairs; each table has a different assortment of chairs. Unfortunately, many of them are uncomfortable and at the end of the evening some of us had a very sore bum. (3) After Dad wrote a "polite" note about the uncomfortable chairs on the butchers paper table cloth, our dessert mysteriously took almost half an hour to appear. Were the two events related? (photos)

Paddy is now a graduate! On Friday afternoon he received his first degree, a Bachelor of Economics (Social Sciences) from Sydney University. It's a shame that the ceremony to mark such an important occassion is so boring! I reckon they should introduce some acrobats, juggling and clowns to make the event more memorable. Or at least pick an interesting guest speaker, I think the topic of "what I ate for breakfast" would have been more exciting than the rambling discourse we were treated to.

I think one of the most important things to consider when choosing a degree is how many letters you'll get after your name when you graduate. Paddy is now Patrick Daley BEc(SocSc). After he completes his Law degree he'll be Patrick Daley BEc(SocSc) LLB. Now that will look impressive on a business card. (photos)