I ♥ Benoni Because ...

I ♥ Benoni

Hi, I’m Michelle Smith from Avoca Lodge in Benoni on Gauteng's East Rand.

Benoni IS BEST KNOWN FOR being the City of Lakes.

GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN AT Ebotse Golf and Country Estate, which is a pic­tur­esque golf estate around the Rynfield Lake. The estate makes the most of its nat­ural envir­on­ment and includes boat­ing, fish­ing, cyc­ling, jog­ging and walk­ing trails.

THE BEST nature PICTURES CAN BE TAKEN in the fields at Bullfrog Pan when the cos­mos flowers are in full bloom. The pan is a won­der­ful spot to escape city life and it boasts over 150 spe­cies of bird includ­ing the African purple swamp hen, marsh owl and in winter flocks of spur-winged geese. Flamingos are often seen in the open water dur­ing the colder months. Continued

The International Stamp Show in Gauteng from 27 to 31 October 2010

International Stamp Show

When I was younger I used to col­lect stamps, I’m not sure if this was because I was try­ing to get another badge to sew onto my uni­form or if I just decided to do this as a hobby. Either way, I spent a fair amount of time col­lect­ing a vari­ety of stamps and put­ting them into my stamp book – which I am sure is col­lect­ing a ser­i­ous pile of dust on my mom’s book­shelf now. Stamp col­lect­ing, or phil­a­tely, is an extremely pop­u­lar hobby world­wide and this October you can visit the International Stamp Show at the Sandton Convention Centre from 27–31 October 2010. Continued

Activities at Maropeng Centre on Heritage Day

Maropeng

As I am sure you are well aware there is a pub­lic hol­i­day this week – Friday 24 September 2010 is National Heritage Day in South Africa. If you’ve for­got­ten or (shock hor­ror) you don’t know why we cel­eb­rate Heritage Day let me tell you. It is a fairly recent pub­lic hol­i­day which recog­nises all aspects of South African cul­ture. Which I think is some­thing quite spe­cial besides mean­ing that we get the day off.

Now if you’re not already cel­eb­rat­ing the day with a braai – National Braai Day, and you can’t think of any­thing to do, rather than spend the day laz­ing about why not head out to Maropeng in the Cradle of Humankind for their cel­eb­ra­tion where more than 8000 people are expec­ted ... Continued

Visit the Irene Dairy Farm for a farm style breakfast or five litre bucket of milk!

Irene Dairy Farm

I have vis­ited Irene in Northern Gauteng a hand­ful of times and one of my most favour­ite spots is the cen­tury old Irene Dairy Farm.  The farm star­ted oper­at­ing in 1889 and now, five gen­er­a­tions down the line it’s still the van der Byl fam­ily at the helm.

The farm was ori­gin­ally pur­chased by an Alois Nellmapius and after nam­ing the vil­lage for his daugh­ter (Irene means peace) he set about cre­at­ing Irene Estate.  Farmlands were expan­ded but only five years later the land was sold to Albertus van der Byl and its still belongs to that fam­ily.  Albertus built up the dairy herd, planted hun­dreds of trees and laid out the beau­ti­ful Irene Golf Course (I’ve walked the course and it’s lit­er­ally a walk in the coun­try).  The vil­lage of Irene has grown with the gen­er­a­tions and through this time the fam­ily has worked tire­lessly to keep the farm atmo­sphere ... Continued

It’s fun, it's exhilarating, its Extreme Enduro X this weekend

Are you look­ing for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent to do this week­end? Does action get your heart beat­ing a little bit faster? Well then, wel­come to the world of Extreme Enduro X — Say what?

This is every adren­aline junkies dream as it is action packed, full of fun and bursts with energy. Enduro X is described as a hybrid­iz­a­tion of super­cross and enduro racing so while you’re watch­ing from the side­lines you can be sure that the riders will be bat­tling it out in the field. Not only will you see some top riders you’ll wit­ness them tack­ling tech­nical obstacles (think log pits, mon­strous rocks, con­crete pipes, ever chan­ging mud baths and truck tires). I’m tired just think­ing about what hard work that is but at the same time sit­ting on the edge of my seat! Continued

Johannesburg Good Food & Wine Show serves up fun for the kids

Fun for the kids

Here’s a great chance for kids to learn all about cook­ing… the Johannesburg Good Food & Wine Show 23–26 September will have a fant­astic pro­gramme for chil­dren this year. Bring them to the Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg and let them loose in the CBeebies Kids Fantasy Food World where they’ll be able to meet and play games with pop­u­lar CBeebies presenter Sid, and cook with Katy from “I Can Cook”, and The Little Cooks Club.

“I Can Cook” was launched in South Africa on DStv in August. The hugely suc­cess­ful kid­dies cook­ing pro­gramme serves up a selec­tion of simple recipes and cook­ery tips for the under sixes and helps chil­dren dis­cover the magic of the food cycle as they learn to con­nect what’s on their plate with the world around them Continued

Discover a world of tastes and flavours at the Good Food & Wine Show Gauteng

Diarise 23–26 September now for the Spring Good Food & Wine Show at the Coca-Cola Dome in Randburg and dis­cover a world of tastes and fla­vours. Experience new products and see the latest global food and life­style trends. Cook with the top celebrity chefs in the world at the hands-on work­shops, and watch them in action at the Chefs in Action Theatre, cook­ing their sig­na­ture dishes.

The fab­ulous line-up of inter­na­tional celebrity chefs would whet anyone’s appetite:

• James Martin star of the BBC Lifestyle series “Saturday Kitchen”, “Sweet Baby James” and the “Great British Village Show”
• Eric Lanlard, mas­ter pâtis­sier and star of “Glamour Puds”, who will launch his new book Home Bake at the Show
• Continued

Dream it, do it at the 2010 Vaal Homemakers Expo

Vaal Homemakers Expo

Whether you’re renov­at­ing, pre­par­ing to makeover a par­tic­u­lar room, mov­ing into a new home, or just want to try some­thing new for your liv­ing space, you can dis­cover new ideas and trends at the 5^th annual Vaal Homemakers Expo, on at Emerald Resort & Casino in Vanderbijlpark from 17 – 19 September 2010.

The Homemakers Expo is a won­der­ful plat­form where you can view the latest trends in fur­nish­ing, décor, and gen­eral home improve­ment.  With the reces­sion hit­ting hard on the pocket more and more people are opt­ing to invest in the improve­ment and refine­ment of their cur­rent homes instead of mov­ing. Continued

Brightwater Commons "Serving up Soccer" for the school holidays

Serving up Soccer

The Brightwater Commons in Randburg has come up with a few ideas to keep act­ive chil­dren busy and frus­trated par­ents calm dur­ing the World Cup. With the long school hol­i­days approach­ing it is an excel­lent idea to keep your fin­ger on the pulse of things you can do with your chil­dren and we’d like to make your job a little bit easier.

Keeping with the phe­nom­enal spirit of the 2010 World Cup, Brightwater Commons will be host­ing a num­ber of activ­it­ies and events that will be enter­tain­ing from 11 June to 11 July 2010. And to use a soc­cer ref­er­ence the good times will kick off at 12h00 on Friday 11 June with an African Tribal Show. Get into a spirit of Africa with this col­our­ful extra­vag­anza fea­tur­ing a Marimba band, tra­di­tional sing­ers, dan­cers and the soul­ful beat of African drum­ming. Continued

Mountain Sanctuary Park — effortless time-out

The Views at MSP

The Magaliesberg makes one want to write a poem that starts: 'I saw the Magaliesberg'.

There is noth­ing quite like it. Stressed out Gautengers use this part of the world, but an hour and a half's drive from Johannesburg, as a retreat; the hills, kloofs, moun­tains and springs a way to re-connect with them­selves, and nature.

It's not sur­pris­ing to find that con­nec­tion almost imme­di­ately when out in the open-skied, moun­tain­ous sur­rounds. This moun­tain range is one of the old­est in the world – roughly 100 times older even than Everest. They're at least 2 400 mil­lion years old, to be more pre­cise, and they span 120 kilo­metres from Rustenburg in the west to Bronkhorstspruit Dam east of Pretoria. Continued

Goblin's Cove in Magaliesberg – an escape from the humdrum

Goblin's Cove

If a faerie won­der­land, home to gob­lins and the little folk, a garden over run with trees — every droop­ing branch of which hints at the gos­samer caress of a wing against your cheek and the innu­endo of a poin­ted calf skin, shoe-clad toe of a pixie – grabs you, then Goblin's Cove in the low lying hills of the Magaliesberg is bound to delight you.

It's far enough out­side of Johannesburg to serve as an escape, yet close enough to mean that ven­tur­ing out there simply for a cup of tea in amongst the olde world magic of the res­taur­ant and tea garden is not too much of a trek. Goblin's Cove is a clas­sic case of Lord of the Rings meets The Dark Crystal, and you'll have to pinch your­self a couple of times when first enter­ing the 'circle of influ­ence' as you des­cend the path to the thatched roof res­taur­ant. Continued

Johannesburg — musings of a former resident returned

Welcome to Jozi

Johannesburg is covered in rain. Outside there is a deluge. Inside the car, we are fight­ing to nav­ig­ate the M1 – the east­ern bypass around the city some people liken to New York (won­der if the Big Apple could func­tion without any road mark­ings?) — whilst the wind­screen soon begins to mist over. We crank up the heater and lean for­ward in a bid to make some sense of the mess in which the M1 finds itself.

It's around 60 days and count­ing to the World Cup and Johannesburg, like most of the other major cit­ies of South Africa, is reel­ing. Continued

A different forest — stories from the road by Ruan

Joburg Skyline

The Johannesburg Skyline lies in front of me and it shows the vari­ous stages of growth that this city has exper­i­enced. Buildings rise ambi­tiously, keep­ing watch over a city that unites South African cul­ture and serves as a place where dreams are hunted. I breathe deeply, this is it. This is 9000km, the last two months of a jour­ney that star­ted in the exact same place. As the cars fly past me on their way to another meet­ing and another deal, I get on my cycle and start the last stretch ... Continued

For Brides To Be — Win a Little Pink Book (closed)

Ah!  He’s pro­posed and you’ve accep­ted and now its wed­ding plan­ning time.  In as much as this is a very excit­ing time in a couple’s life, plan­ning a wed­ding can be stress­ful (I should know, I got engaged over the Easter week­end this year and mar­ried in September!)

The Little Pink Book is designed to help you with all the aspects that go into plan­ning your dream wed­ding; from find­ing a coordin­ator, or if you are going it alone, to find­ing everything else you need.  The book is packed with inform­a­tion on trends for the com­ing sea­son, stun­ning wed­ding ven­ues (don’t for­get to check www.SA-Venues.com/weddings/ for more wed­ding ven­ues and other wed­ding ser­vices), pho­to­graph­ers, dress design­ers, sta­tion­ery pro­viders, min­is­ters and last but not least budget and plan­ning tips ... Continued

Johannesburg Mozart Festival Programme

Mozart Festival

Lovers of clas­sical music will be glad to know that the pro­gramme line up for the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival has been announced. So here is just a little taste of what you can expect from 23 January to 9 February 2010.

Originally organ­ised in 2006 in cel­eb­ra­tion of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250^th birth­day anniversary this year’s fest­ival will see almost 20 per­form­ances in vari­ous ven­ues around Johannesburg ... Continued