~Dust~

Easy peasy home grown guide!

2009-10-11T12:53:00.002+11:00

Been extremely busy... not just with the new baby (sophia who is now 8weeks old) but out in the spring sun (or outside when it isn't raining) weeding, pruning, sowing etc.
So to get to the point. i thought i'd quickly share some things weve discovered and done!

Seeds & seedlings

While its great fun to watch seeds grow into seedlings, we see no harm in getting the crop/garden going sooner and doing both! Buy seedlings (from nurseries or bunnings) and seeds (any will do but if you're in it for a tasteful experience & abundance of crops go with diggers.com.au or any other heirloom or organic veggie suppliers) I go with diggers from my experience with them, they also supply seedlings to bunnings, you can buy from them online and they are in my state.. so anything that grows with/for them will grow for me! To cut costs ive gone to the mark down section (usually right up the back) and bought many seedlings for 50c-$1. I still don't know if i have 6 chilli plants or if they are 6 capscium plants. (not that it matters) but its a downside of buying mark down stuff missing their labels! Other than that we have at least 3 different tomato seedlings growing well from the markdown and some digger seedlings (a $6 splash) of another 4 varieities including the tommy toe we had last year/early this year that made more than we could eat and made awesome tomato puree. Anyways my point is seedlings give you a crop at least 6weeks before your seeds will. (depending on type and how well you look after them from snails & toddlers!)

Easy raised beds/planter boxes.

We used some old fence/wood scraps laying around the backyard and more recently bought some pre-cut pine. The bought option came to about $52 in materials (the wood, screws & brackets) Hubby says he has done them the easy way which is using small metal brackets to hold them altogether instead of dove tail etc.

Our soil is bit to much on the sandy side... the top soil gets washed away and drains much to fast (not to mention sandy soil usually lacks minerals etc needed for good plants) so we have used composted cow manure & coir peat. Weve found the best source for coir peat is at K-mart (k-mart gardners choice brand) for $5 gets you a 5kg block which makes some 20litres???? i think. Not to mention its from New zealand and not Sri Lanka... so its a bit more local. coir peat is basically adding more organic material into the soil and also holds moisture!

ABC Gardening Australia Expo

2009-10-06T16:37:00.003+11:00

All 5 of us rugged up nice and warm and went on Day 1.(with the last expo/con we went to, we went on the last day. While we enjoyed the bargains to be had in the final hours from stallholders, we really did wish we didn't just have the choice of "leftovers". Which is what it felt like)

The crowd was small! Which was awesome. It had been forecasted to rain that day, it was really windy and freezing! (looked miserable too) But lucky for us it didn't rain!

Picked up a cute pansy ($2), sugarsnap peas seeds ($4.50), venus fly trap plant ($3), thornless blackberry ($6), raspberry ($6), 4 flowering tulips (for Tia) ($4), 6 cacti/succulent cuttings ($10) not sure if i missed something there.... next time i will have to put more money away to spend! I could have bought something from almost every stallholder.. lol! There were seeds, bulbs, flowers, fruit trees, trees, shrubs, cacti, grasses... inside there were products from lavender farms, demonstrations and samples on how to cook asparagus & mushrooms, bee farms... i could go on and on! ^^ (photos soon?)

I almost got a beautiful little japanese red maple tree and there was a cute pink chinese maple tree to (that Tia loved!) but the stall holders were to busy and taking forever... *sigh*

Trip home was rather bad... It was a friday afternoon 4-5pm... peak hour trains! For some reason during peak hour the disabled section fills up with bikes and alot of other un-disabled (or un-pram) people. So i figured it equalled up.. those who were lucky in 10 seconds to scramble into the disabled section made me cranky and us with the twin pram in the doorway (who couldn't make it further down the station in 10 seconds to the disabled section) now standing up made other people cranky!

2009-06-23T09:40:00.001+10:00

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im awful at coming up with titles...

2009-06-12T17:03:00.003+10:00

While i could write non-stop bout things happening in australia today.. i thought.. maybe.. perhaps.. then i thought maybe i should write about what i've been up too... so i'll give it a shot ;)

Weve all had at least 2 rounds of the cold virus...

Hubby has been loosing weight, cutting back too much smaller portioned meals. I never knew a mans belt (as they gain weight) could hold such a time-line "i was here when we moved to melbourne, here when Alyssa was born" etc. Im happy for him, makes cuddling easier when its just 1 big belly in the way!

Tia has lost 1 front tooth and now the 2nd front middle tooth is loose.. so in 3-4 days she will be lookin' a bit weird with no front top middle teeth! She bought home a bean plant from school, its now in the garden! Wonder what kind of bean plant it is exactly...

Alyssa is up and walking (or "toddling" as we call it) She figured out how to open cupboard doors today! (argh!) She loves cups and tries to drink from them (doesn't matter if they are empty) She chases the cats (at baby speed) and squeals! (meanwhile the cats look scared) She finds them when the curl up in the sun on the floor and mwhahhaha goes in for the attack! She has waved once and is learning & saying "ta" (baby for "please can i have it?" and "thank you!")

My pregnancy is going well. The baby is still pretty active. almost 8 weeks to go. Have my 1st hospital/midwife appointment this month. LOL! Yes i finally rang them up.. TMI- i have 'roids from hell (should be a title of a horror movie!!)
My feet get fat and puffy quickly. My right foot I've hurt, so when i step a certain way or something i get instant pain and then hobble for a hour or two... but usually its fine. My feet will love the relief when this bub gets out! I seem to wake in the middle of the night, needing liquid to drink & needing to pee.

Ive been having alot of Branxton Hicks. I find it hard to believe that some study could come out and say that Sex does not trigger labor... As i get fake labor pains (branxton Hicks) after being intimate... not to mention it triggered off the other 2 births! (i have a laugh when i remember scenes from movies where they with the BH/fake labour pains. think its the real thing, pack up and go to the hospital to end up coming home!) I like how the baby is where it is, i dont need extra effort to feed it, no dirty nappies and it doesnt cry.. it just disturbs my sleep! :) But i am looking forward 2 getting my body and bladder back to myself, the 'roids to go, my feet to not get so puffy, fit into normal clothes, not waddle and loose the reflux & heartburn bleh!! :)

so thats bout it from me... i havent done anything interesting! Not even reading (listening to the kids read their books) at tia's class, as Alyssa has the cold.. and a 11month old can't cover her mouth when she coughs. (not to mention alot of the girls can't keep their hands off her, not kiss her cheeks etc..)

Alyssa will be 1 soon!!! (still blue eyes!)and um we still plan on having Tia's birthday party... even tho that was back in may??!! :)

Stay Swine flu safe ;)

oh and thank you 2 maria for the award!! I w

Indians Vs Australia racism & not cricket... :(

2009-06-05T08:40:00.003+10:00

So, from news reports there have been 2 separate attacks on Indian students. Apparently 2 separate attacks can be called "a spate", "a rising number of attacks" and enough to brand aussies as racists.

While i dont condone or agree with violence, beating people up, putting one badly on life support.. and i also dont think we as aussies are all rascist. And i certainly dont think aussies are the only racists on the planet either...

I think its interesting that indians are pointing the finger at us "shame shame australia". When there was a time where indians discriminated against their own kind with the caste system. Altho i have heard that it is still practiced in some regional areas.. (im not saying that other countries didn't have the same kind of thing e.g japan) (weak point i know.... but when it comes down to population in the world, Aussies (as in citizens! Not just the born n bred here peeps) are a minority! (22 million)

I also think its interesting that street voilence isn't getting any better, or is it still the same? I do agree with the police when they say it was a attack of oppurtunity. Not racially motivated. If you look passive, skinny and like you might have some good shoes on, a nice wallet then youre a target whether your a caucasion, european, asian or indian.... My understanding is that a racially motivated attack doesn't mean you have your wallets stolen and that they don't just stop.

I think the whole shame us as a nation, as a whole... does make a few people mad. I can understand that. Im not quite happy with it either. But who else can we get to try to talk to these people?! I mean the police have, the PM has the latest i believe is shane warne?! ( famous for cricket, his hair, his luv life/marriage)

It doesn't help that a political party has gotten into this... fuelled it. So then the government on india has to be seen as doing something bigger than a rival political party! Otherwise they risk the scorn and backlash.

However threatening a 2 billion "industry" of overseas Indian students bring into (victoria or australia?) isn't cool... i mean hey New zealand have said they'd happily have the students.. but if new zealand was a better option for study, wouldn't they have the "2 billion dollar industry" already?! (just a thought)

Not to mention pulling out, cancelling, banning etc of bollywood movies in australia over this?! Sure, hey! Give the racists what they want! Don't come, Don't film, Don't study here.... that's what they'd(rasicsts) want isn't it??!!...

after all not forgiving us for those attacks and keeping it going on... doesn't help or solve the problem...

wishing the guy a God speed recovery!!!

pig flu

2009-06-02T23:26:00.002+10:00

I do wonder why it is mainly mexicans who make up most of the 100+ deaths. I can only guess that they had very poor health to begin with (as in low immunity, existing health problems. At least one was a pregnant woman (tamiflu isn't really recommended for pregnant women from what ive read) I think USA has had 3-6 and canada 1-3? Anyways whatever the numbers its not cool.

Theyve been saying we have a "mild" cold variation of Swine flu. But how can they say that, when with the mortality rate worldwide being 0.05% or something like that(maths never my strongest)... surely Swine flu is a mild flu. However fatal for pregnant & low immunity people e.g elderly, chemo patients, leukemia, HIV+ & 3rd world countries.

At least 6-7 people have been hospitalised... but doing ok.

There are now 2 confirmed cases in my suburb!

Our state has moved from contain to sustain... which means they only give out needed tamiflu, don't close schools, don't close events, concerts, football etc.. Its to "sheild" those most at risk.. e.g elderly... yet the advice given to pregnant women is "consult your GP or obestrician" Why? because pregnant women can take tamiflu apparently... its classed "c" by the USA drug people for its safe level.. (not good enough in my opinon) Tamiflu is to be taken if it can benefit the unborn child! Their is no known issues as Nobody wants to be tested on.... they overdosed mice on it and the results were far less than perfect....
"Sustain" phase is basically saying.. its out of control... life goes on... go get sick?

The other states are saying, if you visit Melbourne and come back. Then quarantine the kids for 7 days. Our state is saying thats crazy. Frankly i dont see how!!! Nationally there is a quarantine for people & kids to be quarantined if they come back from overseas! The difference with melbourne is???? nothing.. we have swine flu.

Cadbury whinge & berry panacotta review

2009-05-27T13:03:00.004+10:00

So Cadbury has decided to lower their standard of chocolate & the weights. (but charge us the same) Its that not-so-new thing that companies do to get a bit more profit in their pockets.

I did some investigating on the old cadbury and new the cadbury.

I can tell you that the new cadbury family blocks of chocolate with more added vegetable fat come in harder card boxes. Instead of the old paper wrapping. (which i still think is better.. made of less tree, takes less space in the recycling bin)

I can tell you that old cadbury did have vegetable fat in the ingrediants but it was listed as 5th ingrediant after milk solids, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa -something, *vegetable fat

the new family blocks of chocolate it is listed as the 3rd ingrediant milk solids, sugar, *vegetable fat.

However the amount of milk chocolate solids is both the same 70%?. i think i was looking at Cadbury almonds & cadbury desserts creme brulee..

I can tell you that coles has cadbury on special this week (2 for $6), as does woolworths ($3.49?) and k-mart has only the old family blocks for $3.20. (whatever the instore stock is) K-mart the new and less chocolate family blocks you will pay up $4.00.

The desserts old range was 235g and is now 200g. The Norm family blocks was 250g and now 220-210 depending on plain vs almond etc? (i think)

I can tell you that its not just the purple wrapping/now boxed family blocks that are suffering the downsizing-yet-price-the-same. Cadbury's range of Old Gold chocolate is also affected.

I can also tell you that Lindt chocolate has no vegetable fat whatsoever that i could see!!!! :)

Cadbury argue that the tasters said the fat improved the flavour and made it easier to bite (i didnt think we were a nation of denture wearers) It does make it easier to snap off a piece from the block. However when i did so to the berry panacotta from their deserts range i ended up with 2 pieces.. i had the bottom layer square of choc with the filling and the top shell.. something that hasn't happened before.. might just be me but it screams "CHEAP!!!!" to me!

With cadbury now being easier to snap off, bite or what have you... i am wondering of the party game used at parties, classrooms, youth etc. The game where you roll a die and then you can chop using a knife and fork only those pieces off one at a time. For older teens a 30sec time limit is given or so and no matter what you roll you will always get one piece!

Also i have to think... you add more fat to a block of chocolate.. surely that ups the fat content and people would less likely buy it? hmmm

and the fact that we have long hot insufferable summers!! Climate change people would argue, that with the increase of temperatures. Not to mention the on-going above average heat waves during summer etc. That Australia would have one of the hardest chocolate family blocks to combat the heat!

The berry panacotta Cadbury dessert family block was uber sweet. More sugar than berry... but was expected after trying what they considered "tiramisu" & "creme brulee". Both girls loved it. Was addictive... not sure i'd buy it again honestly.. so full of sugar, melted quickly when held (at norm body temp. its pretty cold at the moment)

Susan Boyle again

2009-05-25T14:56:00.002+10:00

Took a screenie of a youtube vid of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent. Semi finales? Her 2nd performance.. not as good i dont think compared to the "ive got a dream" les miserables song. But that was, what before all this attention, all the hype, before speaking to oprah, before being a youtube star, before fans wrote letters to her cat. The pressure was on, we were all expecting another great performance... and i think you could see with her mistakes that she was feeling it!

Im just glad that she still seems to be her. She was gracious with the judges on-air apology of them judging her before she sang. That was a really nice touch! :)

Tia's 6th birthday

2009-05-23T17:07:00.003+10:00

Tia and her present. "Bratz the Movie" on the wii.
Tia's birthday cupcakes/cake
Tia and Anna the cat

Tia had her 6th birthday this month. This birthday was alot different that her previous birthdays..

First off it was a school day. (monday)
Her birthday falls on or just off mothers day. (she was born on a mothers day)
I usually do some sort of character cake.
Tia hasn't eaten or finished a piece of birthday cake since her 1st birthday. (too much party food? or does slicing up hello kitty give a child nightmares?)
Im not sure but i think she may have gone to bed without eating any cake (i typed cat then lol!)
Her dad came home and went out, doctors maybe? can't remember
We had macdonalds at home. She also had a sundae (maybe why i didnt give her cake)
Her present was not wrapped (that's daddy style for you)

Progressing along...

2009-05-19T14:07:00.003+10:00

Im now 28weeks pregnant. I need to get a wriggle-on with some things that NEED doing.
They are:
1) book in with the hospital midwives. Answers questions when i feel like they are just thinking "ok why did she leave it this late? whats wrong with her?" When in simple truth.. i feel fine re pregnancy! Everything is progressing well, im getting a big belly.. lots of kicks.. reflux, veins... and stuff thats TMI ;)

2) Looking at a double pram. Alyssa will be 13months old. She will be walking by then.. but have u ever walked at baby speed for anything longer than a few minutes? lol..

3) Figuring out Alyssa & Baby sleeping arrangements. Will Alyssa still be in our room + the newborn? How will Tia's room be changed to possibly even fit Alyssa's cot in there?!

4) Move or not to move... gah x.x i think this is up in the air, much like the sleeping and living of all the girls. If we find a place big enough & still be a fair price then i guess we would move. It would have to be somewhere between the shops and Tia's school. (not that i'd feel particularly safe living in those streets. I know alot of people in government housing or 1-2bd flats are NOT crims but our first place down here REALLY has me scarred!)

5)catch up with all the mail & stuff.. ive got prez, bills and cards that i need to send off. The post office moved & I'm silently protesting! x.x

Alyssa is slowly undoing the filing.. and eating it apparently. Better sign off here then! Hope everyone is having a great week and getting stuff done!

feelin' sleepy...

2009-05-08T16:56:00.002+10:00

first off the picture sorta explains itself.. lol. However alot more went into than just going "oh darn spanish subs" first there was the searching, i looked at a few options, decided on this one... waited for it to download, went to play it using quicktime and got a "error 2002" some movie atom error x.x searching that error only gave me the ways to fix it if u had vista, ipods etc (not helpful in my case at all) considering we run XP and its just a MP4 file. Tried using microsoft media player and no it didnt have the codec for it to run, therefore it would not work thru the 360. Anyways (hope im not boring u with all this..if so go to next paragraph) decided on converting the file from MP4 to avi.. seeing that it would take 90mins on this slow pc i decided i'd use a feature in the converting software that plays the file.. hmm yes it did work. Ok now then.. lets check the subs takes screenshot (the preview window is so small i couldn't work out the words). Finds screenshot and oh darn?! spanish?! gah x.x looks up file again reads "spanish subs" ROFL!!!!!!!!!

My lack of good sleep... thankful that i can sleep.. i am just now entering the phase of where i have to wake up to roll over, and no i cant sleep on my back (bad for circulation) *sigh*

a bill for health...

2009-04-28T16:37:00.002+10:00

There's this story of a 20yr old aussie male who lost 80kg+ (half his body weight) over a year and how its going to cost $40k for a tummy tuck? and breast etc reconstruction all to remove the excess skin. Not being too happy about the bill and not getting anything? back on medicare...

If excess skin reductions were covered by medicare... do you think it would spur on weight loss of obese/overweight people? I think i'd be encouraged.... (however it doesn't encourage the thought of operation/stitches/weeping/infections... ive got enough stretch marks from weight and 3 pregnancies to disguise myself as a tiger if i painted them black after using too much fake tan LOL! would i even care if i had another that went 360 around me?)

I mean before we think of slimming down, cutting it off and now looking like a new person... its 7hours+ of surgery.... i remember watching one of those extreme makeovers and this huge woman had so much excess skin cut off everywhere it was a marathon surgery and yet this was round one for her. Each hour of surgery increases risk of infection (hence pass the bucket of iodine)

If it were open for medicare rebates.. would it not create a influx those who are just with a wee bit of excess skin that more weight loss would benefit more than just a nip & tuck? and make a waiting line huge that the people who do indeed "need it" (e.g half their body size) would have to wait longer?

I watched the biggest looser finale... up till 10.20pm so i didn't see the finalists weigh up, im not sure i even saw them come out? It was just crazy as usual the wait.. pointless... The eliminated people did really well all but the first couple voted off (my only criticism) Alot of them looked amazing.. one of the brother couple looked a bit like david hasselhoff i think the one who won the 30k? The most outstanding couple had to be the winning one, Tiffany and Bob? the father/daughter in law? couple. Well done and congrats to them!

Talent should have no face...

2009-04-27T13:34:00.004+10:00

and what i mean is that talent as we see it... shouldn't be limited to people we judge to beautiful. Even with those annoying episodes of tv shows where they have beautiful girls whose character is that of a no-brainer.. all looks and no brains.. is the other kind... she looks quite normal in a way.. so why should she be able to sing?

I'm talking about Susan Boyle... and unless youve been under a rock for the last 2 weeks? you'd know who i was talking about.
Just go type "susan boyle" on youtube and you'l see just how massive she is... all those results and then all those views! 15million.. 2million.. crazy!!! (no one wants anyone to embed the vid it seems... what youtube trying to save bandwidth? or users trying to be the #1 susan boyle hit video? pfft!!!)

shes been called the next paul potts?!! even "paula potts" But I'm sorry, i think he is the next step up, perhaps it was just song choice..

I usually rush out when ET is on, the other day as i did i heard one of their stories coming up "Susan boyle and her new makeover". Something inside me groaned... something inside me thought "so shes pretty now? plastic surgery perhaps? already?!"

But when i saw pictures later online... of this "makeover" the eyebrows were tamed, a bit of lippy and maybe a hair colour? (can't remember exactly) You can still see that it is her, same unruly curly hair, flat face etc...

How does one handle "overnight stardom" Must be a thrill to ride and yet the crash? (i guess while youre having fun you wouldn't think about the end of it..)
So while im glad she didn't get a full makeover, botox, hair straightening, wardrobe etc.. i think if i was in the spotlight so much as she is... then wouldn't i be wanting it?! lol...

She has been invited on oprah... simon cowell has talked alot about her saying she should focus on winning, on doing better... i think after weve all ooo-ed and ahh-ed over her song we should be giving her space to breathe, to get on with it, to focus... 4 weeks till the semi final. Time will tell!!! :)

housing thoughts

2009-04-24T13:58:00.004+10:00

I've been thinking about housing stuff recently. Hubby has been working on the plans for the "dream house" or "project house".. the dimensions have alot to do with phi. Its absolutely massive, lots of big rooms, entertaining, kitchen, kids bedrooms, indoor courtyard, our own private retreat (spa, kitchen, bathroom, wardrobe, lounge area, sleeping area) with an upstairs library.. on the block of land theres a office building, carpark, huge garage, gardens, indoor pool area. With alot of japanese stuff e.g decking around most of the house that can be shielded with moveable walls in case of rain etc) but enough about that (pending on project being finished & sold)

Shortly the lease on this house will be finished. And so weve been thinking do we need more room? Is there somewhere nicer and better that we could get and be happy with? or do we stay here and wait it out? or do we sign up and have the security of a lease again? (remember pending baby #3 in august)

If we move, i'd love to have great central heating! and even better a central heating that actually had the air conditioning side of it?!! *rolls eyes* I can remember looking at the central heating control panel and seeing "cooling" only for me much later to think.. now air conditioning they usually have a box on the roof or outside that does that... and we dont have one?! argh!!! No cooling!!!!

I'd rather be closer to the school than the shops now. Altho most of the houses (well flats) between here and the school are amongst public housing... Which means i'd have to be west of the school just not the beach zone area (like right on the water)

But then theres thoughts on buying a house... no longer having to worry bout being kicked out (e.g the landlord sells the house) no longer dealing with agents, no longer waiting on someone else to organize fixes etc (who then end up doing a cheap job anyways) I do think buying a house is waay out of reach still. Yes at the moment our government give $26k grant when buying your first home that you must live in for a year (so not for investments)But i have to wonder exactly, if the grant was gone would the house prices drop? Because lets face it, some houses are insanely inflated... theres million dollar houses in A.C.T, and they just look like a house!

Some say the grant inflated costs. Some say that it should be scrapped and those getting the grant could end up unemployed. Some say that the grant covers state taxes that should have been scrapped when the GST came into effect. The oldies say that they got no grants so why should anyone else (but then pfft to them... buying back when a house/land was actually affordable and those who bought for so little can now cash up and sell for tons more.) Some say its not creating more new houses, that land release is slow (usually in the middle of nowhere). Some say its a waste of money that it doesn't stimulate the economy, create jobs etc. Some say its a waste and should be spent in hospitals or roads etc..

but hey if i knew i was buying a house, i'd love every cent of that grant ;) and i guess that's what it comes down to! I mean people can go on about the baby bonus ($5k over fortnightly installments thanks to all the teen mums) mostly coz they aren't getting/going to get it.... and they'd be alot of people who missed out on it (late 1990's?) and there's people who recently reckon that australia should have a 1 baby policy to stop "environmental suicide" to cut Australia's population of 22million back down to a more environmentally friendly 7million... but that opens a big can of worms of "who should have children", "Who can come here as a immigrant" etc.. its nuts! (and when aren't the out-there greenies who believe a animal has more rights to live than a human?)

Bumper crop of tomatoes

2009-04-14T14:17:00.002+10:00

(tia with the crop, just before easter)

So i bought a burke's backyard magazine awhile back last year? and it came with some digger club tomatoe seeds. And it was some big hearty variety which i can't remember! (Not at all a miniature or cherry type) I was excited with my first lot of digger club seeds. Bought some potting mix on cheap and some seedling trays from the reject shop (mistakes 1 & 2)

I made the mistake of thinking potting mix after its useby date is still alright... i mean it is just dirt in a bag isn't it?!!! But no... apparently after this useby date the potting mix its very water resistant and down right crappy!

With Tia being into mud, dirt, making a mess (like she has for the past 5.9years) i thought seedling trays on the deck out of direct sunlight they will grow... and they did. About 3-4cms high and then they stayed that way for 2 months or so.. i weeded out the seedlings. I hadn't expected that each seed would germinate! I thru these seedlings on the ground.... and left them

its now after christmas and ive forgotten about the seedlings in the tray... they are dead anyways..

after christmas we started noticing all these tomatoe plats growing. (the ones i had thrown out!)
and now we have alot of tomatoes!!!! and will have until the frost comes in or if we get alot of rain with snails and it rotts/gets eaten.So i had to do something with them. We would find more in a day then we would eat them! It seems i was just in time as some had over ripened and burst a bit And one had started to get a tiny bit mouldy. yuk! I followed instructions to what i don't remember.

Basically boil tomatoes for a bit. Put the lid on, take off heat. Then take lid off pot. Drain water. Let cool to touch. peel off the skin (which was so unbelieveably easy! and somewhat messy fun!)
Then boil off any excess water and there it is! What i'd usually buy in a tin. Fresh from the garden ready for my meatballs (when i get around to it) Instead of mucking with jars and water baths etc i just froze it! :)

The easter bonnet hat

2009-04-14T10:53:00.004+10:00

Noooooooooooooooooo lil birdy don't jump! I found these cute lil chicks at the $2 shop! Painted some dollies(sp?) which was tricky, i'd forgotten how thin they could be. and then glued the edges and dipped it in pink glitter. :)Off to school!
Made the mistake of stapling the cardboard together then to protect her hair getting tangled i put clear packing tape over it and then painted it... so got some pretty tape from Smiggle that i had already.
These are taken after the hat parade. Tia's broke (the ribbon came off) as they were going back to class. Which was great because it meant i got to take it home.. instead of tia having it all day.
Luved the green chicks lol! The creche paper flowers were done at 1-2am easter hat parade morning! eep! Hubby found a website showing how to do it easily. If i started it sooner, perhaps i'd done some Martha stewart pretty flowers..
Tia's class of course was the last one... she also had a fill-in teacher for the week. She got up and said "My hat is pretty pink!". She loved and was so proud of her hat! :)
You could easily tell those whose kids had done their own hats and the ones the parents did... and then there was a few hats from the reject shop! lol... All the kids had a great time, they loved the easter bunny and got a egg and a hug each. Tia even had to tell her neighbour friend that she had in fact hugged the easter bunny!! (Not that we involve the easter bunny or santa here at home)

Zack and Miri make a Porno

2009-04-14T10:28:00.003+10:00

* You can't judge a movie by its title *

First up. (keeping this PG as possible) There is as much full frontal nudity and sex scenes as in the Sex in the city movie. (For all the OHMYGAWDSEX people)

Secondly. Its one of those weird chick flicks that they are making more of these days that a MALE can go watch and not complain... (so its not all that chick flick, like kids movies these days they put in a adult joke or two that goes waaaaay over the kids heads yet the adults find it amusing/funny)

Thirdly. Its a weird movie, in that it has comedy, gross moment (poo), sex and a actual love plot line..... weirdly just like the sex in the city movie! (Charlotte poops her pants, not that u see the poo tho)

I did like the movie.. it had ALOT of swearing! But it had a sweet side that you don't see (or i didnt) coming. Zack and miri agree on making a porno (with other people doing the sex bit) after Zack buys ice skates & things instead of paying the rent, water and electricity (his month). Miri becomes a internet celebrity after she changes at Zacks work without her knowledge is filmed by some teens who can see her.. all they film is her topless (but from behind) with her HUGE "Granny panties" (Full control brief undies)

Zacks first idea is a Star wars idea but they get duped by the landlord. So Zack comes up with the idea of filming it at his work (beans n go. A coffee shop) With a coffee/cafe theme. Zack and Miri end up falling in love, the porno is never finished...

New furniture

2009-03-31T17:31:00.002+11:00

A painting/collage done by Aunty Kristy for Tia during her last stay. Note in the bottom on the photo (on tia's bed) is a new butterfly shaped cushion, story time grandpa bear and a teddy bear wash station made by Tia at school made out of boxes and things (destined for the recycling bin sometime soon!)
Tia's room all neat and tidy! Horray (and yes day 2 and it still looks like this albeit the desk mind you, its full of papers, drawing and writing) I love the new desk (the mint green might have something to do with that) It was a 56kg box from Officeworks... "Ready to assemble" should have said "Ready to assemble every single piece" true flat pack furniture!!! $169 for the desk and $39 for the bookshelf.

observations...& a catch up

2009-03-11T14:02:00.003+11:00

Been pretty busy! so here's a quick run down of things!

* I had the parent teacher & child interview this tuesday @ 4.25pm. A bit annoying.. seeing as it meant waiting around for 55mins! (by the time we walked home we'd have to walk back and end up being 5mins late for the interview. We could have walked 15mins to hubbys work and sat there for 30mins.. but too tired. Also staying at school meant Tia was entertained with the play equipment, sand pit and various classmates coming and going. She also had all her fruit for the day which she hadn't eaten. So it all worked out to wait around!)

* Tia has started home readers. Interesting considering she has some difficulty saying her alphabet and recognizing letters.. yet surprisingly she knows what some of the words are already! She also wrote "dad" the other day without any help. Weirdly tho she wrote both D's before adding the A in the middle. LOL! Ive noticed that with some words even doing her name sometimes she will write it out of order (like she did with "dad") Im helping out in her class on a monday afternoon while they do hopping, jumping, balancing, stilt walking etc time and tuesday morning i help out in the class, listening to each kid read their home readers, let them pick a new book and mark it off on the list. I might help out on a friday morning as there doesnt seem to be a helper written down on that day... altho that would conflict with a morning friday parents meeting but they were trying to figure a new time seeing as the board member of the spot i declined can't make it that time! lol!

* Alyssa has 2 new teeth. A total of 4 teeth which are all cut thru (2 bottom around 3months. 2 top at 7months) and i can feel and see 1 more bottom one starting to poke thru. She has a very toothy cheeky grin now!!!

* Alyssa got her 6month needles today. A rotavirus imm (rotatek) by mouth (which is meant to be sweet but she hates it) and a needle in each leg of just about everything! They do it now both shoots at the same time, hence why its a nurse and dr doing the injections these days! (you'd hate it, if u hated needles... they um, count it down.. so yeah.) Again tho Alyssa cried right after but after a few seconds was her happy self again! (not like the baby we heard while we waited! GOSH did she scream!!)

* I think it was the bush fire warning sms day.. i predicted no such heat wave. Walked out to collect Tia and swore that we were having a dust storm. made me wish i had a pair of sunnies!!!

* I took a break from video games to go on hubbys pc. Which is moved from office/guest room into the lounge room.. and was a bit freaked to feel the chair and table shake..(i believe i told the boys that the table was shaking... so it was interesting to tell them that it was a earth quake, that they did not notice! LOL!) there was no noise.. the next day i read online that there was a earth quake in melb that measured 4.6 on the scale! That makes 5 or 6 earthquakes ive experienced in my lifetime all in australia!!! (only one in victoria)

*went to a parents etc group meeting at the school... it was there AGM which they changed the constitution. interestingly that some take it all veeeerrrryy seriously while others are relaxed, wanting to make it easier etc... you can imagine which side i'd rather be on! ;) Luckily its not like that normally, im told! I was offered a spot on the board but declined after i thought "can i do it?" and no i can't... I'll have my hands full come august with the new baby and a 13month old... it would take me awhile to adjust to the new bub, feeding, sleeping and collecting tia schedule!

*Im now 18weeks preggy! whoot!!!! Have my first drs appt tomorrow! If started to feel it kick, usually when im trying to go off to bed! Time is flying! Now that morning sickness is over, i dont really feel pregnant, to me i dont really look pregnant (altho i do, as hubby keeps going on bout the mummy tummy) i guess it comes down to me remembering the last few weeks of enormous mummy tummy and yet its not like that yet! I just look fatter! LOL!

* Congrats to Maria & Paul! :) God bless your family and all the best!!!

Observations today!

* spotted a pair of undies on the footpath on the way to the drs.. suppose someone is missing their spare pair? lol

* 2 Ladies (in separate places) with awful dress sense.. imagine blue pattern pants mixed with a old looking bright floral pattern t-shirt!

* a sign read "hot chips" "charcoal souvlaki" yumm burnt souvlaki anyone?

* another sign said "no alcohol zone. Max fine $2000" now thats a expensive drink!

* the new dr on days of our lives (given that Australia is waaaay behind thanks to cricket, tennis and golf) looks like Ben cousins!

* bought hubby a new razor today. interestingly it has a personal trimmer at the bottom powered by 1 AAA battery. Is shower OK.... Im not keen on the facial hair thing he has going on and he is pretty aware of it. If its there i prefer it short.. im just not into feeling facial hair when i kiss him... bleh!!!!!!!!!!!

Twilight...

2009-03-02T19:46:00.003+11:00

The baby and i arrived at the movies to see Twilight. I had decked out the pram with all the essential quiet baby toys (teething items mostly), bottle and some biscuits.

It was in cinema 8... which im guessing means it will shortly stop showing. It seems thats how this cinema runs.. you go to see a movie "on its last legs" and its in the smaller cinema rooms (and definately not in the club lounge)

Twilight was interesting. Im a sucker for a love movie, preferably with no big names, no blonde men (just not into them), and not in some well known city e.g New york, paris...
I also do enjoy the odd vampire movie... not the ultra ugly ones (e.g count nerfatu? the old black and white movie) not the over-the-top gore n crap (e.g blade)...

anyways back to Twilight... i thought the vampire speed and grace of climbing
of which there was alot of... reminded me of ang lees (crouching tiger hidden dragon) and of Zhang Yimou (hero) use of wires in those jumping, flying, climbing vertical walls scenes...

Its a dead give away what the cullen family (kids are "adopted") are (being vampires) and a dead giveaway that the native americans in the movie are werewolves.. (obviously something in the next movie) but everyone else just seems "charmed" and oblivious to the facts.. lol.

The main characters being isabella (human) or "bella" and edward cullen (vampire) are acted out well. Edward in the first 15-30mins wasn't attractive... once he stopped looking soo angry/sick he really was stunningly pretty.. (matter of opinon i suppose)

I was intrigued just how this movie would turn out, i didn't watch any trailers or look up story lines.. so i feel partly dispointed in that it wasn't a huge story line with tons of plots, weaves in and outs of story etc.. But i did enjoy it for the simplicity!

It was interesting that these vampires had reflections in water & mirrors and that they could go out in the sun (and not fry to a crisp) they just glowed a bit... a nice twist on the old traditional.

My favourite scene was Bella going to meet the Cullen family. The "dad" is Dr Cullen, his wife and they have 5 vampire teenagers. Anyways you see the Cullen family watching a italian cook on tv making dinner (if not for the first time in a loooong time) i thought that was really sweet. Upon entering the kitchen the mum says hi and whatever and then says "youve given us a reason to use the kitchen for the first time!" LOL!!! and then edward says "she's already eaten", bella "yes, im sorry..i just thought since you didn't" and then the mum "of course.. you were just being considerate" (but in a happy voice)

*the cullen family only feed on animals. None of them make proud of what they are.. they are very much aware that they are monsters..

March into Merivale

2009-02-27T12:22:00.003+11:00

Thumbs up to the event/advertising people behind march into Merivale. The advertising is eye catching, bold, tasteful and arty... "Exposing our chiefs cuisine"

Its a Sydney event, so will be passing it up unfortunately.. starts March 3
If youre interested in their pictures ;) go have a look

One the home page... i know it must be awkward being in a room full of nude chefs... is that why so many are busy looking at the guy slicing up the fish? are they thinking "wow he must be nervous no one cuts a fish like that..."

breville wizz mix professional stand mixer prezzie

2009-02-22T18:24:00.007+11:00

Ive been using my new christmas present! :) and decided lol, i should probably blog about it.. seeing as its late feb already!

I had been eyeing off this beautiful kitchen appliance for quite a long time, waiting for it to be on special... or perhaps be released in green (Not going to happen)
If it wasn't green i was deciding between the silver/platinum look and the red... So many decisions..
It wasn't cheap so i did do my research into the best mix masters... and since my budget is only half? of that of a kitchenmaid...(which i'd have to hunt down to goodness knows where to buy) well.. i wasn't going to get one of those. Altho it would be a preference.. having all those attachments a mincer too?!! would save in the cupboard space but then how often would i make my own mince?!Altho style wise i dont like how the kitchenmaids look.. must say the attachments for the breville are funky!The pav in its mighty glory..... before it sinks after i take it out.. out of practice!

Goji berry cupcakes... late addition of vanilla.. how could i forget??!!Goji Berry cupcakes all mixed and ready to spoon out.

Choc chip cookies (recipe without PB) mix.. looking yummy!!!!!!
Out of practice again... giant thin, chewy, hand size choc chip cookies

My review: Its pretty cool.. many settings (think ive forgotten one?); folding, mixing, beating,creaming, whipping and the last one aerating (yet to get there)

I do find that when i'm creaming sugar and butter it sticks to the side, so when it comes to adding the egg it needs to be scrapped off the sides before turning on again. Only a tiny bit at the bottom usually is left un creamed or mixed, but so tiny u can mix it altogether and not notice.

Is awesome with the whisk attachment... can't leave cream on and walk away as its quick to whip! Pavs go stiff nice, easily and quick.

Its pretty quiet, compared to my mums old one (if she still has it.. must be as old as me!) and much quieter than previous hand held mix masters!

Easy to lift beaters out of bowl and no chance it will fall back down when your trying to scrape off the mixture.

Easy to take beaters off and on!!!! YAY!!!

Not much room when it comes to adding ingrediants into the bowl while working. So needs a bit of careful addition or just turn it off and lift attachment/head out of the bowl.

Love the big bowl and big attachments! I'll have to get around to making one of those 10egg whites pavlovas one day... lol!

am yet to use the dough hook... while i do appreciate and love using my hands to play with pasta dough (rare) and feel like a jamie oliver (visions of mixing in the egg yolks into a pile of flour on a bench.. yes why use a bowl?!! LOL!)

Tia's first day of school! :)

2009-02-09T14:16:00.003+11:00

On Monday 2nd of feb we had a interview/assessment time with Tia's teacher. We had to bring all the books and things we bought via the book list thru officemax or something like that. I was unsure whether the books had to be covered... in my school years it wasn't until high school or year 6 when they HAD to be covered. (i think because young kids go thru the books so quickly perhaps? but then our books were free and supplied by the government/school)
Anyways we did a crazy dash and had these covered just in time to leave! 8 books and 8.8m of contact later.. lol Tia wanted lil bratz covering. But i thought it would be to distracting.. i could envision her in class just looking at the bratz pictures and tuning out everything else! So I found a optical illusion pink and red metallic contact instead and cute lil bratz name stickers.

Its a good 30min walk to her school. Its lovely when the weather is nice.... but in the heat there isn't much shade on the way :( She has a school hat, supplied by the school that stays at school. So i bring along a hat from home so she has some sun protection on the way home.When tia gets to school she puts her bag in a line and goes off to play in the sand pit or equipment in the fenced off prep area. When the bell goes she has to get in the line, take out her classroom water and a piece of fruit & put her bag on. Once the teacher says they may go in she walks in to the bag room and puts her bag in her cubby hole.Then she is meant to put her class water bottle & fruit on her name on a special desk and sit down on the floor. The past 2 days (friday and monday) ive noticed she skips putting her bag away (as she has her hands full already with the water and fruit) and puts her water and fruit away and then the teacher or aid will notice she is in the classroom (about to be fully dsitracted by kids, toys etc) with her bag on her back! LOL!

Enough of the heat already...

2009-02-08T14:33:00.005+11:00

So yesterday places here in Australia were hotter than the sahara, then kenya and so on... Im just thankful that i still live by the coast! Where there is a great breeze off the water and if need be theres the beach. (if i brave the UV rays, no shade etc)

Hubby decided i would be spoiled and at 11am we all headed off to the shops!Goodbye 27deg heat in our house ;)
It was much hotter outside! Hurrying off with nappies and formula supplies we went off to go shopping. Hubby decided he would look at water pistols.. i was more interested in the slime gun ;) only draw back is the expensive slime refills x.x

But we came back with none. James decided he'd had enough shopping.. we'd gone to myer (several times) in which we all came out smelling; James- Kourkos or something like that. I like frangipani (found some interesting body mists) and Tia like lime and coconut. I also found a pot that said perfume balm, but there was no tester. :(

When i got back at 3pm with the kidlets, it was 33deg cel in the house. It rose to 36 deg cels and then started dropping when i noticed it was cooler outside.

Decided to have a very early night, not even staying up to finish watching iron chef. I woke up at 5 am to a storm.. a few minutes later (we had our window open) there was a huge crackle of lightning and flash what seemed just outside. The noise was huge! I was pretty freaked out and checked outside to see if there was a tree on fire or something.. but everything looked normal.
Today has been a really nice day (max of 22deg c) with rain and storm up to lunch time. It was not until 10 had a break with the news that we found out that overnight or yesterday many lives had been lost, with fires burning in our state. :( I hope the houses lost were insured, that the people affected will go on to bigger and better things as they start over.

If this was...cake??!!

2009-02-05T21:59:00.002+11:00

then i would NOT have a weight problem! lol!

The above picture was taken on wednesday.. i believe it is cottee's orange and mango crush cordial (straight) and milk.. its curdled and was pretty chunky.

This is what Tia made while she was waiting (impatiently in the kitchen) to make some betty crocker cookies with me.. she did come to me asking for some eggs.. i can only imagine how much worse this could have been? lol

I found popplers!

2009-02-04T09:45:00.006+11:00

Above is the theme song.. which is all ive managed to find on youtube..
Popplers are from a episode in the cartoon Futurama.

But here are the real life popplers (minus the whole live baby alien thing but i'll get to that..)
(what it is actually is oven ready salt n pepper squid made by pacific west?) We had oven chips, beer battered flake n salt n peppa squid for australia day dinner! Altho i just had chips ;)
Popplers are actually omicronians in their baby larvae form!
When eaten of course they didn't speak, move or have the whole face thing going on.. humans didnt know what exactly they were.. other than delicious and very addictive! You can imagine how peeved the omicronians were when they found out that humans were eating their young?! From memory they said they would eat every young human for every poppler.. but i think they had eaten more popplers than there was humans?

SO it was decided that the first person to eat a poppler would be eaten by the omicronian ruler... but she (leela) was not eaten as she had stopped eating as soon as she knew they were young aliens ( it spoke got eyes) and saved one.. it in return saved her from being eaten!

I remember the funny was that the omicronians had a nanny camera watching their babes on the nanny planet! LOL!!!!!!

Oh yeah.. as cute as the young are the uglier they get ;)

Lameway er Laneway festival

2009-02-03T13:55:00.003+11:00

Reading up on the news i came across a article...

basically it said that due to mass numbers (all ticket holders paying out $100) they had to shut doors to keep ticket holding fans out of stage areas (like where u stand to watch a band on a stage).... interesting

Ive never heard of the laneway festival b4, its held in the cdb Melbourne (and in other cities) and boasts indie music as its main drawcards.. i guess also the fact that its held in the streets??? little lonsdale(sp?) was mentioned.. would make it that bit different and interesting??

Anyways from what i read stages where walk away (on different streets) there was ONE toilet block on offer... so i pity anyone walking in the same spots today!! IT MUST REEEEEK!!! (especially in the heat?!!) PEE-YEEW!!!! You had to line up to get in to any stage area.. and apparently people would line up to see a band and by the time they got in that band had already played and finished! OUCH!

But i guess the real thing thats up laneway goers is that the company behind the festival blames the crowd of people at the event for having to close the doors.. leaving some crazy people to climb and get in dangerous spots.. and yet the company isn't accepting that the locations weren't thought out.. that ticket/crowd numbers werent thought out (another big money grab no doubt) that managing the crowd wasnt thought out..

While i might be on some sort of live music hiatus.. not purely by choice.. and i feel old just thinking about how many years ago it was since i went to a BIG event (not something meant to be "little event" like lameway er laneway (no really thats how i typed it.. lol) Big Day out in sydney 2000... 9years ago!! I bought a bottle of coke for $6 and kept it for a year or so (empty).. who pays $6 for a 600ml coke?!! Big day out is always well planned, lots of toilets, planned acts on different stages.. true i did mostly miss out on foo fighters due to lining up to go (and once u get there u dont need to go anymore.. whats with that???!!!) i opted to go to the toilet block and avoid the rental portable loos...

(Its very sad that girl died at perth big day out this year.. and the fact that she took them for fear of being caught out by the sniffer dogs and yet because she was dropped off and didnt arrive by train meant she wouldnt have been searched anyways! Why take all 3 tho?! Could she not have taken one.. or just thrown them all away? ah well..)

anyways clearly these guys dont know how to do a event or accept responsibility in mismanagement and should refund those who had a right to be there but couldn't due to the size of the crowd??!! Until then i suppose the facebook site, LOL! (which was also included in the article) with all the comments left by those who went, saw and want a refund will be a ton of bad press/media for the festival.

Quickly in other festival type stuff.. i missed this years chinese new year.. but how cool did sydneys CNY look! It was the biggest CNY celebration (road parade) outside china! I also read that Melbournes china town is the longest settlement of chinese in the western world.. hmm..

Adventures of Lil Alyssa

2009-01-29T20:57:00.003+11:00

Hello! My name is Alyssa ;) This is my adventure.... (pic below is me in my new playpen.. read on ;) )

Im a bit young to put 2 and 2 together.. or even know about numbers... but i kinda figure that this new "playpen" bought from a toyshop! who knew my fav shop (other than a milk bar) sold such a contraption! (note to: Tommy from rugrats mine has no door.. screwdriver hidden in nappy is useless what do you suggest?) At least this keeps my toys within a 1m radius... which i suppose is a plus.. anyways im a bit young to know how to keep on track.. but i noticed ive rambled and to finish my point i guess this is why i got a "playpen"....

My big sister was given hot cross buns for breakfast... i found them really nice!! I think plate sizes should come in baby sizes (as in floor sized!)

Next on my ~~big sisters~~ my menu was strawberries! You thought strawberries would be too hard? think again! I have the bite of a shark (whatever they are.. some sort of furry cat thing?) my mum says that alot when i catch her unawares *sneaky grin* Im on the "baby led solids" diet so i'm really into feeding myself, trying new things (i hate eating purree stuff now too.. like how uncool is untextured drippy stuff in a jar! Am i spoilt or what!! *angel smile*)

Here is proof that i did take a break from the crawling/rocking pose & comando crawling (using my toes, legs straight) duties... i can stay still for awhile.. Anyways i really had a thing for wanting to chew electrical cords (like the furry cats).. and there is alot of them where my mum & dad like to be.. not to mention i liked to play with the volume control of the surround sound especially early in the morning.. i also managed a trek into the kitchen all by myself where i discovered a powerpoint.. (but my mum was watching me) and i also managed to get around the side of the couch, my head or bottom stuck under the couch (thanks mum & dad again)

Also its a shot of my new 24/7 milk source... its like mum in a way... only it doesn't scream when i bite it *which i think is funny* I can't pinch it like mum.. but i can hold it the way i want to without being wrestled by my mum which is a plus! I know i need to roll onto my back before i can have it. i know that if i loose my bottle, i can roll over grab it, roll back and stick it in my mouth! You can imagine how long that took to ace! (actually not very long..)

Thanks for reading! :) If you like my story be sure to give me credit and milk.. lots of milk hehehehehehheheehehehehehehehhehehehehehehhehehehehe!!!!! j/k

Happy Australia Day!

2009-01-26T17:30:00.005+11:00

Hope youre having a good one!!!

Observations on how to celebrate being australian on Australia Day in our house:

-There was talk over wearing a aussie flag as a super hero cape & getting drunk (to a american xbox360 friend... Yes having a xbox360 is a VERY CHEAP OPTION FOR LONG DISTANCE CALLS/CHATS!!! ($299 console + $60 headset. lasts until 1) kitten chews thru headset cord 2)you have no broadband 3)xbox360 dies) so far the boys have had a few drinks... (but it is still only 5.30pm-ish here as a type!!)
it would be polish imported vodka they are drinking too.. lol.. shame its not the aussie made & exported sake made by Sun Masamune *link*( they usually drink. Go shu nama, Go shu blue & go shu... with the expensive Go shu 40 only at special occassions!)

-Someone had vegemite?!?! I found it left out.. not sure if someone just wanted to smell the australian spirit? lol!!! As people had for breakfast: cheesy baked beans n toast (boys), fruitloops (tia) and lite PB on toast for me. :)- Someone (no guess as to who eh!) had gone shopping and bought food! Coming back with the very australian.. wagon wheels, steak, white bread, frozen chips, some brand of salt n pepper squid and a box of beer battered flake... oh and the very cute finger buns in safeway today (4 for the same price of 1 at brumbys!!!!)So Lunch was steak sandwiches with white bread (tom sauce for me, HP sauce for the boys :/ yuk!) With the yummy rice bran butter or is it marg?! gah.. anyways its on special this week @ safeway 2 for $6 (save $2) and the oil is on special too $2.78?

I finally got a calendar for this year!!! Its actually a 17month calendar but those extra 5 months have long gone! (last year) Ive been eyeing it off at officeworks... i saw alike ones in k-mart etc but after christmas and the sales all that are left are boring calendars.. altho i did see a slow cooker recipe a day calendar you know the little ones the size of a post-it on sale at myer but still $20-odd! :/ and of course the day i had $0! ah well... ;) one that got away! hehe
anyways my calendar was $14.. it has 5 spaces at each day, stickers and a pocket for ("reciepts, coupons etc... lol) ive noticed it has international holidays marked on it e.g martin luther king & a coming of age day in Japan..

anyways have a good one!

Hope & Joy a historic day

2009-01-21T20:49:00.003+11:00

Well you'd have to be away on a no contact retreat or a underground bunker to NOT hear bout what happened today..

Obama has coated our tv hours much like the solid chocolate (milk, dark or white) on a magnum ice cream.. no doubt we started to suffer after the 6th hour of obama-news... (morning show, 4.30ppm news, 5pm? news, 6pm news, 6.30pm Current affairs, 7pm news.. every news update inbetween... the replays of the walk down penslyvania ave to car, the Beyonce .."Aaaattt lahssssssssssstt..... my love" obama's waltzing, the lemongrass yellow to the ball gown all beautiful... gah x.x

much like that magnum... the chocolate is irrestible, amazing.... and towards the end youre feeling a little bloated and not so keen anymore. (no offence)

I do have (magnum craving aside) a big expectation now.. There is Hope again! (not that ive had hope b4 or anything. Im just older now.. my priorites are higher than the price of a icy fruit cup from the school canteen lol)

Obama has the task of cleaning the chopping board of bush's mistakes (iraq, terror suspects & their rights, economy, regulation of banks n lenders, education, health care).. there will be that stain left ingrained in the chopping board.. but with some good coarse salt im sure Obama will get it clean! ;) Well we are all hoping anyways.. Seems his first act already done (and we all thought he was busy waltzing and groovin with beyonce eh?!) A halt to the military trials of those terror suspects for 120 days.. hmmm interesting. But he sees more than just fixing Bush's errors and ways.. i thought he hinted at starving countries, dictators (mugabe yeah?) Well with a clean chopping board why not put it to use and create some masterpiece eh?

Off the boob..

2009-01-19T12:56:00.003+11:00

Just thought you might be interested in a update..

Im happy and sad... Its just like last time too (with Tia now 5yrs old)!

Ive breastfed Alyssa for 6months and 2 days. What was different this time around is Im Pregnant and my nipples r sooo sensitive.. also Alyssa has had a 4-5pm bottle every day since she was 5months? Tia however went from all breast milk to all bottle. I stopped with Tia as i was Over the leaking thru the night, leaking thru the day, leaking during feeding.. messy side of breastfeeding...
This time my supply seemed to even out or even drop some days i suspect due to falling pregnant. So i had a earlier relief of that wet feeling!

On saturday morning I got the WORST bite from her i screamed! It was sore all day (preggy sensitivity not helping) I put off feeding her breastmilk till the afternoon.. i felt her go for a bite and took her off.. I put it off again till the 5.30am sunday feed and felt her go for a bite and took her off & put her to bed. (she did feed one side and apparently that was enough for a hour) Each time the fear would build up more and more.. ive gotten thru fear of baby on my nipples alot with Alyssa a few times now.. but enough was enough. (Alyssa hates the nipple shields now lol)

So im happy that i no longer have to hide away in a parents room to feed her.. happy that she could even go to occasional care.. you know just that relief knowing if im not around (like out shopping) she can be fed by anyone (minus tia)

Its also pretty cool as Alyssa is awesome at holding her bottle. Her hands would pinch, scratch and be sooo busy when i breastfed her.. for a long time i would have to wrestle her little hand/arm as she liked to push my boob like she was holding a bottle.. not nice!

She is on some pretty expensive :/ formula at the moment..its nice this time around that she isnt on the cheapest formula like tia was (from memory it was a nestle tin)
Alyssa is on "s26 gold alpha pro. 0-6months" How on earth do they come up with a name that?! Whats so Gold about it? (besides the amount of $gold u spend on it!)
Anyways the biggest downside is we all HATE the smell of it! IT SMELLS LIKE VOMIT!!!

Alyssa may have vomited maybe 5 times when she was on breastmilk. she was awesome (unlike her sis who didnt have reflux but just the normal lil spew with burp) However now on formula she does puke after a feed.. probably due to the fact that once she has finished her bottle she is up on her tummy (and sometimes hands and knees) getting around on the floor. :) So that probably is the cause of it..

That's right, Alyssa will be crawling in a few days. At the moment she is awesome at "comando crawling" (on tummy using toes to go forward) shes had turning around while on tummy down pat for awhile now too... lately its been alot of up on hands and knees rocking while sometimes a hand might move or the knees might move just a little bit..so shes taken a few one-off crawl steps.

More of Christmas 08

2009-01-06T14:59:00.004+11:00

chair decoration
Christmas dinner meat on the table
hubby with his big helicopter.. flown it once and shredded a butterfly :/
Asha not sure on the new "carpet"
Alyssa chewing on a little box.. girls with santa hats on.. Tia got one with "bah-hum bug!" written on it.. not knowing how 2 read or what it meant she didnt care..

Christmas 08 phots just a tad late..

2009-01-06T14:48:00.002+11:00

Happy bubby in her new dress! With Granma Rose
Tia in her new dress with a bubble blower from Grandma Kay
Alyssa eating christmas wrapping.. (i knew i 4got 2 serve something at christmas dinner lol!)
Uncle Mat & Grandad Leo with their helicopters
Alyssa approving of a picture? lol..

2009-01-01T18:51:00.000+11:00

The New tickers for 2009. less confusing? :)

Thats a bit rich

2008-12-31T18:09:00.006+11:00

The last hmm rant for 2008?The whole world vision tom costello going on about how paris $120 or so a minute spending spree grand total of $5000 could have fed a whole village.. has me cranky. Im no paris wannabe (clearly im no size 0, 6 or whatever size it is that should you eat a cheeseburger, the tabloids instantly think you have a baby bump) and Im no paris fan. I own 0 perfumes and 0 of everything else paris sells or sold out too..
Yes its great when charities get publicity but instantly creating hype, publicity... Charities may be doing it tough as we all are??!! (apparently) but isnt that because some would be richer people have just lost a ton of money (in stocks or currency).. i read that elle macphersons sister declared herself bankrupt with $8 in the bank just the last week.. that and we have big companies closing e.g starbucks closed 50 stores this year ahead of the wall st/big us banks crash.. but then theres local factories like truck makers, car makers... but im getting off track. Yes its horrendous that kids die much 2 often from "preventable" diseases, from bad water & sanitation, from starvation.. much would be easier if certain continents got off their backsides and say outed mugabe (like stage some sort of harrold holt disapearance. no offence 2 holt family) if they could figure out the fianances, if the governements had gr8 people, with gr8 aids & advisers... getting off track. yes poor countries can help their people, yes they need money to do it.. yes people should be given free medicine (why dont they set something up that part of the money the doctor gets for aussie imms goes towards the drug companies immunisating others in poor countries for free?) Why can't all charities globally work together? in some sort of way place by place systematically immunise and give clean water and so forth? Why dont all charities disclose how the money is spent each year? I know compassion does.. but what of other charities say salvos, red cross etc etc..
anyways..
Paris spending money and getting a nice 50% off her clothes (due to working with the designer a few yrs back) is good for our economy.. she would have paid gst even! A dollar spent in australia is a good dollar!

next on my list... lol
the new mayor of melbourne *groans* how i miss the old dude! This new one.. "bogan it up at home" implying that only bad dressed and groomed people get drunk in public places in the city?! Yes i hate hate hate hate drunk people walking my street. In newcastle we lived down the street of a pub.. i also hate drunks on the road, train or nearby....
I know some people think new years is a "piss up"... honestly why would u want the first day of the year to be spent with a hangover? or waking up in a place you dont remember? or being one of those weirdo's who crashed on the beach usually filmed by a news crew?(LOL!) 2 say something like bogan it up at home and then say bogans are welcome? umm??? which foot is he standing on? i for one am glad im not spending NY staying in the formula 1 hotel in the city where the walls are paper thin..... its worse enough when people decide to take phone calls out in the hallway?!!

next...

i was in the carpark at the shopping centre on my way home walking with tia and alyssa in the pram. When this female driver hooned around the corner like being a nutjob.. how much noise and how fast can i go around a 90deg corner?! like should i be impressed of the power steering?! if that wasnt enough.. there was a secruity officer (female) who stoped and talked to the woman (in 30s) driving with a lollipop i may add.. and the driver denied doing anything wrong!! she didnt do anything unsensible.. the secruity officer couldnt believe it and wrote down the number plate.. i dont know what she plans 2 do with that but yeah.. i mean come on.. yes she didnt hurt anyone but still denying it.. gah x.x

the ugly..
the latest in the israel war.. i have 2 admit i had been away from the news to know when they got serious straight up. I support israel, i hate that innocents and civillians have died.. however for many it is a stubborn choice 2 live there in the first place and to have "voted" hamas in (i do understand that leaving after it was locked in would be tough) I do feel for the women and children and the families anyone innocent.. i do believe that a day will come when the USA stops backing israel. I think its numbers 33 i always think of when something palestine vs israel comes to mind..

anyways enough of my rants and israel biggotry(i am flawed)

Everyone have a great new years, a safe, happy, healthy, debt free new year!! :)
(sounds good dont it!)

hugs
tiffany

Kettle

2008-12-30T18:38:00.004+11:00

Christmas tree with the lights on (8 AA batteries needed) in the dark..

Playing catch up here!! So bare with me!!
Hubby and i recieved a lovely gift this year of a kettle bbq just before christmas. A great suprise being that well, we had been thinking and planning on getting one... probably would have settled for some cheap one from k-mart had we found one.. But instead we were blessed with a big Weber kettle bbq! It meant christmas cooking would be smooth and the heat outdoors (not that it matter we had a very mild christmas day may have reached 25deg cel?The meat on the test run was a lovely bolar blade from the butchers. The woolworths roasts i found had to little fat on the top than i wanted.. I am learning that my butcher has far superior quality of meats than the supermarket/safeway woolies. And i love my butchers diet mince for $9.95 a kg or 2kgs for $16? It truly is diet mince, none of this stuffing around with star ratings that coles and woolworths offer.. anyways getting off track.
hubby out the back with the kettle.. the meat is inside.. and he is pretty much "are you quite alright taking photos of me?!!" (notice the awful amount of cardboard rubbish we have.. with expansion comes rapid carboard.. my recycling bin is always full.. we have more carboard in the laundry too..)
The end product, was delish!!!!! I requested more! (that is more frequent roasts. Not more on my plate) hhehehehe!!!

Tough holidays

2008-12-21T12:52:00.004+11:00

Most christmas movies are filled with that good cheer, joy and coming together thats uplifting. E.g We watched Eloise at christmas? movie last night. It was awesome, i at 26 enjoy her cartoon so i liked the movie too.. (which is rare having such a good match from cartoon to real life) Tia enjoyed the movie also. And lately what the last 10-15years the majority of christmas movies now revolve around comedy, the what else could possibly go wrong now?! theme.. what weird in-law thing will they do next?

And then there's life.... i dont think ive seen a movie and gone yup that's what uncle marty did last christmas (i dont have a uncle marty) i remember the long car trips to visit my grandparents, in the back with my brother and sister "are we there yet?" will come back to haunt me.. lol.. and i can't say anything went wrong.. no missing presents/luggage, hitch hikers, not even a stop to get food.. maybe my parents got lost but i wouldnt know..

I am thankful that my family has stayed safe at christmas. I have no compassion for those caught drink/drugged driving at any time of the year.. and i deeply feel for anyone who as a bumper sticker i see on my walk to tia's kinder and now school says "ive been touched by the road toll" it just makes you stop and think! While everyone is getting upset at burning some food, dropping a bottle of wine or destroying a ornate metre long ceiling light with the champayne cork and having the shards rain down on the table full of christmas lunch (my dad did that, sure ive mentioned it b4. The kids got fed, the adults sat down and well.. christmas lunch was thrown out, vaccummed and mopped up. ) We all have each other and can think and pray for that someone who is spending a christmas without their loved one.

have u seen the andrew o'keefe vid yet? i cannot imagine how mad his wife is!!!! Everyone is busy concerned bout how seven tried to buy it out or something.. yet what about his wife?
another bummer christmas goes to the Johnston & Palin families... Sarah palins daughter (18) is due to give birth in a week and her mother in law has just been charged with 6 counts of producing, distributing narcotics! I dont think any of us saw that coming! imagine if mccain did win what then would happen now?

I suppose you only have to watch the news on any given week to hear that a family will be missing someone for christmas, birthdays and other holidays.
Ive only lost my great gran, 1 cat, 1 dog, 1 bird, 3 fish, 50+ mice, 1 rabbit and i do miss them, i do think back and remember them fondly, the good times, the letters, cards and visits.
Ive been blessed that my children are safe and healthy, that they arent in/out of hospital, on a transplant waiting list.. and that they are still here with us on earth.

This christmas amongst all the sweets im making, the nice food and company i will take time out to pray for those finding christmas difficult & thank God that this christmas all my family have one another (even if they all dont get along)

God bless and have a awesome time with the family you do have close by.

random pics

2008-12-19T10:12:00.003+11:00

All the bubs taking a nap on the office floor today. Alyssa just woke up!

My cheap shoes that broke :) Yes happy, have new shoes!!

The naughty kittens caught in the pram.. NOT HAPPY SAM! (sam.. pram.. get it.. ugh..)
If its not the pram its the cot?! If its not those 2 places its the rocker?!

The christmas list

2008-12-19T09:23:00.004+11:00

Tia has gone into bratz. We have avoided the barbie/bratz thing for awhile now and now she is old enough that she is influenced heavily by her friends, tv advertising and what she sees in the toy section whether its k-mart or the tiny toy section at safeway/woolworths. Our next door neighbour has bratz everything... and to Tia she is a bratz and every other girl is a bratz and sometimes even her mum is a bratz.. lol! I did want to get her a 6-7 pack of disney princesses (made by mattel?) this year they even had a mulan doll? i missed out last year as target sold out.. and ive probably missed out this year too.. considering b4 they went on special there was just 3 left! They were $45 on special and $59 not on special. I know that she is getting a Yasmin doll today, but considering how every bratz comes in glamour, skii, etc themes... ah well i'll find out soon enough which yasmin it is..

James is buying himself a bigger remote controlled helicopter. he has checked them out and says they wont fly around in circles like his mini ones!

Alyssa gets??? well lol, she has been spoilt plently already... but ive bought her a dress for christmas day, and goodness knows maybe she will get the matching mummy dummy set to her current "daddys little girl", "i love my daddy" dummies... however much it makes me wince that the 2 cost $13-$15! (for dummies???!!! that get lost all the time.. lol well not that these ones have!)

I will get??? ummm.... perhaps some new jeans and another pair of shoes??

the end of challenge

2008-12-19T09:17:00.003+11:00

:) The No takeaway challenge is complete! Hiccups 3/21 is not bad... one being a anniversary pizza dinner. (hubbys back was thrown out the day b4)
Thank you to Maria for joining on with me! :) That was some great support!
and thank you also to my hubby for reminding me that i was on a challenge when i really wanted something deep fried or home delivered! :)

Christmas is here..

2008-12-13T10:13:00.003+11:00

Our christmas tree went up on the 2nd of december.. so ive been meaning to post for awhile now! ^^

We have the tree up and decorated (well there are some more decorations around somewhere along where the stockings are hiding)

Only enough batteries for one string of lights! >< We have i think 3 or 4 strings of LED battery powered lights. I have been tempted to buy some cheap plug in lights, as they have come down in price heaps this year! But no... its bit dangerous with the kids, the kittens and the battery ones mean the tree can be anywhere and not somewhere near a power point!

This christmas i do intend on getting a battery recharger, but finding the right one that is good enough (the come with numbers now 2550, 2650 etc) to recharge batteries for the digital camera & wii remote is a must!

James put the star on top of the tree, he enjoys doing his little contribution..
that portrait photo of us on the wall was taken when we were engaged! We were both so young & skinny back then! hehehe

Oddities, Solids, Poo & biting..

2008-12-02T20:48:00.006+11:00

I realized something odd, peculiar today... on the usual walk to pick tia up from kinder, something i do 2 days a week.. and i never thought about this before until today. Its no biggie.. no "scoop".. (so if i talk it down will it then be more interesting?) err.. anyways..
Ive said before that the suburb in which i live has a macdonalds on a main road (just like back in newcastle it too had a jenny craig office next to it for a bit, until they pulled out. Right next to maccas, across the road from korean food, henny penny, subway, dominos and the cheesecake shop! LOL! ) anyways this maccas in my current 'burb, opposite it is ww office and on its other opposite is jenny craig. ww has the better spot as its neighbour is subway and more in the hub (some of us are just to lazy to cross one more set of traffic lights away from the hub?)

and as i was walking.. (no biggie.. like dont be disapointed..) i thought it was odd that right next to a "all you can eat" resturant was a gym! I immediately thought, you know had any of the health junkies thought or dreamed on binge eating and then going back to a spin class? lol.. had anyone looked at their reflection in the tinted windows of the resturant and then hurried over for a gym membership. I also thought, well they have cardio tv... do you feel odd walking or running on the treadmil while watching a hungry jacks commercial? or feel the need for drive thru kfc or red rooster to feed the family?

I hate walking past the gym when theres a spin cycle class on... you can see right in on the 2nd floor.. all these people sweating away and I just swear that their sweaty faces and tired legs just get a sudden burst of energy as they watch all that wobbles on this body of mine as i walk into their view! lol.

When walking past a gym i always try to see if anyone rode a bike... i dont know if that screams louder gym monkey or health freak.. or whether it makes those who drive to and from the gym lazy? Very judgemental i know... something i will have to break. Inconsiderate too, i mean what if their shedules dont allow even watching the news? or what if they live 3 suburbs away.. or what if they spend all their disposable income on gym they can't afford a bike, or what if they have some medical condition? or what if they dont want to risk their lives riding on the same road with bad drivers? There are no airbags on bikes.. no 'safety cage'...

Yes i am on a roll with ranting tonight!!!!!! and i thought i was tired? or maybe im overtired and cranky! lol!

to the subject of poo...
(nah this isn't going as down hill as you think....)
Alyssa occasionally has a bottle, altho its once a day.. if that! If i need to be leaving the house in 5mins and she is screaming.. a bottle! If i will be out during her next feed and have no option for privacy then i will take a bottle (not yet, but i think for tia's kinder concert last day party where i will be staying, i guess...) and if ive had enough of biting, tender and fearful that im going to be nibbled on again.. BOTTLE! Ive long had the "if you bite YOU WILL BE WEANED!" thing going on.. Tia bit me a few times around 7 months and that was it! But this time around i wanted to get past the biting, had i known Alyssa would be teething at 3months old!!!!??!!! I might have changed my mind bout that!!!..

Alyssa has also started solids (2 weeks now? off/on 1/2 a little jar at 6pm after a feed. She has moved that screaming down the house time from 8pm to 6pm! Feeding at 10-12, 2-3, 5-6 and cranky wanting out of bed & cuddles by 6.40-7am right when we are trying to get the last minutes of sleep!

Alyssa dislikes rice cereal.. and so the odd thing is she is completely on bought pureed carrot baby food(i dont have a blender). She loves it! Not into apple (like Tia) but carrots and it must have been on special as i have a ton of carrot baby food in the pantry! I think i'll start to add a bit of carrot to rice cereal (is meant to be more digestible) and freeze the rest of the jar in ice cube trays (as it says keep for 48hrs)

Her poo went from a odd smelling baby breast bub yellow poo (which i really like AS its a newborn, young baby thing i suppose.. it only lasts awhile & then its brown and being used as a art tool or in a nappy left on the floor by a bare bum toilet training toddler) to a brown, with occasional runny patches of watery carrot (gee i hope no 1 is eating this.. i mean lol. i hope no 1 is eating while reading this.. lol..) and the last 2 days she has had little hard stools.. so i think she is constipated! x.x Surely she can't have poo with any sort of form/hardness yet?!

Christmas Pudding Trial

2008-12-02T10:56:00.004+11:00

Christmas is 23 days away! No longer months, but weeks and days! Im trying to be organized (if you call leaving it to late nov/early dec) before the mad rush of christmas sales, the crowds and being in lovely company of friends & family. Finding table stuff e.g servingware (since i have very little), more wine glasses, placemats, bon bons, probably another dinner set?!, cheese knife) At least this year! Being that we are usually guests and do the mad shopping on christmas eve or the days before as prezzies dont normally fit in suitcases (altho theres always room for a xbox 360 and laptops?!!) This year we will be at home with family visiting! Whoot!

Ive got all the sweets sorted; Pistachio & cherry macaroons but will change to almonds & cherry?, gingerbread men, white christmas version of choc crackles, little choc balls that look like puddings, gingerbread house, shortbread, christmas bark (white choc and smashed candy canes), stained glass effect cookies, rum balls, perhaps a hedgehog slice), the pudding & cake worked out. (might settle for bought custard?! lol!)

I have one smoked salmon on a herb frittata (i dont eat fish but others do) little appetizier recipe(recipes+ dec 08 mag), a jar of semi dried tomatoes, 3 jars red, white, green of cocktail onions (gee i hope someone likes cocktail onions lol!) so im working on a deli meat/cheese/antipasto? platter.

Some sort of roast meat, gravy, potatoes, carrots, green salad.
Some sort of undecided cocktail? Punch, Wine(not in charge of) & soft drink..

BHG Issue Dec2004 The pudding above
(my modified recipe for a 5cup pudding tin)
530g of mixed dried fruits (currants, sultanas, minus the peel)
100g of extra glace cherries chopped
3/4 cup of brandy (not halved like rest of ingredients! if u dont like do orange juice?)
1tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup of brown sugar (meant to be dark brown)
1 tsp of golden syrup (meant to be treacle)
2 eggs
125g soft butter
3/4 cup plain flour
1/3 cup self raising flour
bit of cinnamon, mixed spice n nutmeg

grease tin/basin/bowl with butter & line.
Add fruit to bowl (look for sultana stalks) add brandy & let sit for 20mins
add cherries, vanilla, gsyrup & mix.
add sugar, butter, eggs & stir.
Sift flours & spices. Stir well.
Spoon into basin/bowl/tin.
place basin/bowl/tin in a larger pot/pan so the water comes up half way. place in oven 160deg cel for 3hrs.

*Very nice pudding. Hubby says its very sugary, i think thats due to all the sultannas/fruit etc! As i dont remember even adding the sugar?! I somewhat wanted more 'pudding' and less fruit in this! The pudding is lovely and soft when warmed!(not rubbery or crumbly) Obviously the pudding would have been darker if i used the dark brown sugar and treacle (both i didnt have) Also if you add the cherries in with the alcohol and leave to soak the colour will bleed out, which doesnt effect the end result at all.. just weird seeing red coloured brandy!

The thing is i dont want the cake & pudding to be basically the same e.g both dark or both light. I am a fan of store bought light fruitcake over the dark... perhaps coz its not so strong and i can eat more of it?! lol! (oh thats sad!)

My kitchen was in such a mess with ingrediants everywhere on this day.. or night rather these pics were taken at 11pm. (with one downlight working in the kitchen!)

I dont think it needed the greaseproof paper. And if your a dill like me and try to up-end it on a plate after spending hours in the fridge.. let it come to room temperature as the 'greasing' kinda chills it into place! ROFL!

Fast Food challenge week 1 complete

2008-11-30T21:41:00.002+11:00

I did it!!!!!!!!
I went to macdonalds on day 1 or 3 (cant remember) but we only had iced coffee's, tia had a pink donut (i didn't even taste a single pink delicious sprinkle).
Tia and I went out around 11.30am, bad time to go out! We came home at 3pm and had lunch!
I did not go late night shopping til hubby is on his way home/meeting me out and then eating kfc on thursday, friday night!
Tia and i sat down at a milk bar/corner shop/hot food shop for 40mins while we waited for 3.15pm to walk back near kinder to the school & then buying school uniform. Could have easily asked for a burger with the lot (like everyone else) but relaxed in the air con, with flav water & magnum expresso ice cream x.x
Went out shopping on saturday, did not have lunch out!
(Alyssa was cranky on/off from 5am til 7am, when she decided she was fully awake) on sunday was/is uber tired... did not feel like going shopping for milk.. did not feel like cooking.. thought seriously bout pizza.. how easy it would be.. then wondered if hubby would cook *sigh* ended up going out shopping to woolies, grabbing stuff coming home and cooking dinner!
Mula saved= $60-90!!!!

Excited about school..

2008-11-28T08:38:00.002+11:00

Tia is growing fast. Her speech is getting better, her vocabulary is getting bigger.. All good to hear! Yesterday after dropping tia off at kinder, i stayed and did "kinder duty" which is staying to help for a hour and a bit while they do several craft things. My table was making cards. Basically sticking a recycled christmas card front picture onto a piece of red carboard decorating with sparkles, sequins and little christmas tree & star sprinkles with the glue in pots and then using a glue stick to stick a little piece of paper that said "To my family, Merry christmas Love" on the inside.

I had one little boy (not going to prep next year) with the best manners stubbornly decline any decoration! I had one little girl who wanted the card to be horizontal and open that way. I had another girl who would only use the glue stick. I had a little boy who decided that using 10% of all decorations on offer should be put on his card. It looked so blinged! The teacher told him that was a bit silly as they would not all stick.. And then someone up-ended one of the sequin containers onto the floor and i was down after that picking them all up! lol!

Alyssa was pretty good.. up till the end. I had her in the bassinette pram thing (basket with canopy(think like a convertible), held in pram by 3 clips) and then on the floor towards the end so she could roll around and see more than just the ceiling..

The other 'stations' were making angels (painting and using glitter) and making christmas trees (threading and glitter) This all comes home on the last day which is also the concert/party day... i think i might stay and do kinder duty again that day. as the note says drop off the kids with morning tea as usual @9.15am and come back at 11am with plate of party food. It takes me half hour to walk there or back home.. which means i'd spend less than a hour? at home b4 walking back.. I'll just take a bottle that day, i think. (Yes Alyssa is having on average 1 bottle. Basically for when i'm inconvenienced(trying to run out door), think im empty (only been 2hrs) or know she will bite me (so impatient!)..

Dieting sucks

2008-11-26T12:09:00.003+11:00

(note ive eaten mud cake today and baking further yummy stuff.. so im not 'dieting', i am not eating fast food & i do plan on eating much better very very soon..lol )

NO TAKEAWAY/FAST FOOD Challenge 3wks!!!

2008-11-23T19:02:00.003+11:00

Starting Monday 24th Nov.
Ending Monday 15th Dec.

If you'd like to join in on the challenge, leave a comment and then drop in once in awhile as i'd love to hear how your doing!

I was pretty successful in the times ive done it.. i remember some 2 years back when i went months without any bad fast food! And while sticking to any "plan" has not been planned or implemented successfully over the past 4months (with the aid of ~~being tired, breastfeeding, busy~~ many excuses)

For me I will be passing up the usual fast food (kfc, pizza, macdonalds, chips.. pretty much all that we have thats on offer a 5minute walk or ph/net order away)..
I will instead be having salad sandwiches, veggie subs, ham n salad subs, (not the meat n cheese subs) steamed dim sims or home-made (no i dont own a deep fryer).

I'm wondering whether i should include cake, donuts, thick shakes also??!!.. baby steps i think for the first week? We shall see how it all goes!

So my first steps for a successful week will be:
1) Meal planning (including new recipes to avoid eating out due to 'boring' meals)
2) Buying ingredients for the planned meals.
3) Eat brekkie/lunch/dinner b4 going out.
4) If out walk towards the short line of subway not the huge line up of kfc/maccas.
5) Throw out pizza coupons & forget about the online sites of pizza vouchers.
6) Include perhaps a tray of oven fries (no extra added oil) or home made pizza planned for the weekend.
7) Have some fuss free meals (stag chili in a can & cc's, canned soup, dim sims) available in case i'm tired.
8) Blogging about the week challenge wise next sunday!

my visual dna..

2008-11-20T13:30:00.001+11:00

Saw this on maria's blog! thought i'd have a go at it!

Picnic Cob & dinner pic

2008-11-19T08:38:00.004+11:00

As usual i changed it a bit..
the recipe called for zuchini, eggplant, sweet potato, basil leaves, bocconcini.. none of which i have and in the case of the zuchini & egglplant both i dislike! I was going to get some bocconcini to try out.. but i forgot!
I substituted the bocconcini for some pepato cheese (pretty waxy, hard but crumbly) & some normal cheddar. I substitued the chunky red chili dip for pizza paste sauce, the semi dried tomatoes for fresh tomato and the veggies for triple smoked ham, mild italian salami & pepperoni... and i forgot about adding any salad greens to it.. thinking about it now wouldn't have done well anyways (considering in the recipe, which i didnt read to the end) they cook it.. i put 1 quarter in the oven, was yummy and the other quarter for 1min in the microwave and it was just as yummy, if not more melted and hot..
the next morning while clearing the bench i realised i left out the leftover salami & pepperoni! whoops!!!! Worked it out to be roughly the same cost as the veggie version, i found that the deli was cheaper than buying 100g packs from the over-packaged fridge deli section.. but then thats probably normal.. however the over packaged deli meats probably last longer in the fridge unopened..

finish up with a dinner pic, veal chop or cutlet.. with some salad.. i did add some addictive whole egg mayo to this..

Pnotes & portable HDs cool applications

2008-11-16T14:54:00.006+11:00

P-notes is a very handy application!!! Hubby and I both have portable or personal hardrives.. the kind that are external to the pc. Recently he came across all these programs for portable/pocket hardrives.. like msn (imagine having the same version of msn where ever u go at work, home, from pc to ur laptop or friends pc.. u get the idea?) while some portable hardrives have insane storage e.g 1TB or 700GB.. these portable apps are quite small.. im guessing for ease of use for ur little 1G USB drives! lol!!!! :) But thats still good news for big or small stroage devices!!
Portable applications cane be found here
theres thunderbird (email), Firefox (browser), bible study tools, Pnotes...

what is Pnotes? hehehehe

Post it notes for the PC! How cool is that!!! Relatively environmentally friendly (assuming u turn your pc off every once & awhile..) No desk clutter (like ur guests care or even see your terrible desktop clutter on ur pc/laptop lol!) its also pretty Hard to loose them...

Pnotes can be found here

Ive been playing around with the skin editor.. but havent been able to make a successful one.. (must be something i am not doing right..) theres a few cute already made skins by other people to choose from that u can download optionally like the 'bunny notes' by Deepthi (shown in screenie) or the 'apple' & 'clasic pink' by Andrey Gruber (shown in my screenie, click for better view?!!)... *note my pnotes are transparent due to a option, u can have them as transparent or as none transparent as u prefer..
*note you do not need a portable HD or usb stick to use this program, its just handy if u regularly access more than one pc or are paranoid about loosing data...
*note pnotes is freeware

Disclaimer***I AM NOT PAID TO POST ANYTHING (never have or will). THIS IS NOT A ADD. THIS IS A UNPAID SERVICE I LIKE P-NOTES SO MUCH THAT I WANT 2 SHARE IT WITH YOU! ;) ***

Love handles increase death risk: study

2008-11-14T13:34:00.000+11:00

November 14, 2008, 3:18 am

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A thick waist almost doubles the risk of premature death, a major European study has found, showing there's nothing lovely about love handles.

Importantly, the risk is similar even when body mass index (BMI) fell within normal range, according to the authors of the study of 359,000 people aged 51.9 on average, including 65.4 percent women, appearing in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The research found that excess fat stored around the middle of the body was a major health risk even when people are not considered obese or even overweight by statistical BMI standards.

In fact, each five centimetre increase in waist size increased the risk of death by 17 percent in men and 13 percent in women.

"The most important result of our study is the finding that not just being overweight, but also the distribution of body fat, affects the risk of premature death of each individual," said Tobias Pischon, the lead author of the paper from the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam-RehbrÃ¼cke.

The data should encourage physicians to routinely measure patients' waists as well as their BMI on routine office visits, according to the study carried out by the Imperial College London (GB), German Institute for Human Nutrition and other European participants.

"The good news is that you don't need to take an expensive test and wait ages for the result to assess this aspect of your health - it costs virtually nothing to measure your waist and hip size," said Elio Riboli, the European coordinator of the EPIC study from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Imperial College London.

"If you have a large waist, you probably need to increase the amount of exercise you do every day, avoid excessive alcohol consumption and improve your diet. This could make a huge difference in reducing your risk of an early death."

Amaretto mud cake

2008-11-14T12:59:00.005+11:00

I made a interesting mud cake for Jamie's 31st Birthday!!! :)
Here is the caramel mud cake recipe that i tweaked:
Caramel Mud cake
From AWW Cook

Prep time: 30 mins (plus cooling time) Cooking time: 2 hrs 10 mins Serves: 12

This cake is so moist and dense that it can be difficult to determine if it is cooked. The baking times given are your best guide, and when cooked, the cake should have a thick, sugary crust. If you like, cut the crust off the cake, although the frosting will soften it.

250g unsalted butter, chopped
200g white eating chocolate, chopped coarsely
2¼ C (495g) firmly packed brown sugar
1½ C (375ml) water
2 C (300g) plain flour
2/3 C (100g) self-raising flour
1 tspn vanilla extract
3 eggs, beaten lightly

1. Preheat oven to slow (150°C/130°C fan-forced). Grease deep 22cm round cake pan; line base and side with baking paper, extending paper 5cm above edge of pan.
2. Stir butter, chocolate, sugar, and the water in medium saucepan over low heat until mixture is smooth. Transfer mixture to large bowl; cool 15minutes. Whisk in sifted flours, then extract and eggs.
3. Pour mixture into pan. Bake, uncovered, about 2 hours. Stand cake 10 minutes then turn onto wire rack to cool.
4. Make caramel frosting. Place cake, top-side up, on serving plate, spread with frosting.

Caramel frosting
125g butter, chopped
1 C (220g) firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 C (80ml) milk
1½ C (240g) icing sugar

or
MY caramel glaze
(doesnt keep for longer than 3 days or in high heat)
2C icing mixture
1/2C brown sugar
dash of amaretto & water to right consistency

Melt butter in small saucepan. Stir in brown sugar and milk; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, 3 minutes, cool 10 minutes. Gradually stir in sifted icing sugar until frosting is of a spreadable consistency.

I had just only came back from shoping before i made the cake, so i wasnt about to go out again. i had just about 100g of white chocolate... for some reason i thought some cream would make up for the difference.. the cake was moist, dense.. very dense.. very sweet..
I used 1/3cup of amaretto tasted the mixture.. and tasted some more.. lol needed more amaretto and tested some more.. yummm .. lol do u see a pattern?
the recipe makes alot of cake batter! I baked mine in a large loaf tin that i have.. i wasnt keen on putting it in a round cake tin or 2 slice trays.. i measured out my loaf tin and my round tin and found my loaf tin was larger in capacity and its a good thing it did too! Either because the recipe uses mainly plain flour or because its so rich with sugar.. it does not rise much at all.. nevermind that it cooks for 2hrs! The most expensive part was no doubt the amaretto! In the end i made a $15 mud cake.. lol.. just with the alcohol!

i also added some thickened cream & some extra flour to get the consistency right. (mine was too runny thanks to the cream & amaretto) I also brushed some extra amaretto on top of the cake, to soften the crust and add more flavour..

It was a great cake, terrible served cold from the fridge... but great at room temperature! Very easy to make in very little time. * i used choc thins in a lazy attempt to decorate the cake..

Anna & Asha

2008-11-05T00:27:00.001+11:00

Tia named the kittens Anna & Asha... I do think Tia meant 'sasha' but i prefer 'asha' ;) I could not decide on names.. did i want to continue the spice theme (previous bunnies were pepper & vanilla) did i want to continue the japanese theme (in memory of Nori)... in the end Tia had names she liked, and well we go past the pet shop on our way to safeway/woolies & she likes to name all the animals... even tho i tell her she can't, we dont own them etc.. i think she misses playing nitendogs!
The above is Asha (pronounced ash-ah) she is the alpha kitten (she attacks lil anna into submission) she growls when eating if she can see u, if she has her pom pom orange ball she growls if u come near... but she is gorgeous! She does look after her sister and grooms her, hubby lol'd when i said "anna u are getting your asslicked so grin & bear it..." seems the downside of being a kitten & having long fur.. stinky bums OH YUCK!!!!! plus side.. ur sister might clean you.. down side.. ever felt the sand paper feel of a cat lick?? now can u imagine it on that sensitive spot? LOL! We think Asha is the one least toilet trained x.x NOT HAPPY!! (just as long as it never happens on the carpet!) She also purs the loudest..

This is Anna! She is pretty but only 2 colours black n white.. she is a guts! (if asha doesnt push her head out of the bowl) she can smell food that she will like from a mile away (seems smaller tho than her sister)! She is a sook, most likely to want a cuddle.. slightly lacking in the grooming department and has had 2 baths were asha hasn't yet had one..So yeah.. found out this afternoon that they or one of them had been peeing on my magazine on the slate floor just out from the fireplace & that someone had done a #2 on the floor in the back corner of the lounge room.. yesterday i caught anna scratching the inside door mat and peeing (on the floor not the mat) so that got moved.. x.x Im gagging with each stink of the #2's!!! *shudders* am looking forward to the kitty litter tray moving from near the front door to the laundry... i think its the reason i have not had a appetite for the past few days!!! no kidding!!!

We were told that they are calico long hair cats.. i made the mistake of calling them tortiseshell but no.. they have patches of colour which is calico apparently..

come on OBAMA!!!!!

2008-11-04T15:30:00.004+11:00

LOL!!!!!!! my prediction, it will be close.. no doubt there will be a few recounts, cries of rigging & failed electronic voting. the winner will be obama!

I think americans have seen enough of old war dogs, capitalism, poor getting poorer, education in usa sucking further (who was the beauty queen that said americans kids were dumb because they didnt have maps? lol), deregulation... (note mccain wants to privatize social security... can u imagine if cenrelink was owned by a bank? i mean americans already have to pay tax on welfare and pay back any welfare later..)

besides this 'free country' the country of 'milk n honey' weve all known how BS that is.. next election will we see a native american? or a multilingual hispanic? or even perhaps just one person who doesnt have white hair and a creepy smile (mccain)?? (when will we finally see a aborignal PM or a 4th generation chinese/australian PM? hmm...)

isnt about time intelligence won over war mongering? Hope and change won over fear?

sure the conservatives are all over palin saying she cant control her "teenage daughter" so how can she control the whitehouse? (but this teenager is 18yrs old.. i mean sure in usa u cant drink till ur 21.. but still..)

Wrestling with time management.. etc

2008-10-27T09:52:00.005+11:00

well..

wow..

its been awhile since ive sat down and blogged.. for me it feels like its been forever.. *fingers crossed this wont stay a draft..*

Ive been busy... and looking at that sentence.. i almost feel like its a half truth, (while trying to ignore my semi-dictionary mind telling me that is soo cliche) and boring. Seriously how boring would blogs be if all they said was "ive been busy.." or something along the lines of .. ive been absent, forgive me.. read me again.. i promise i'll try to be more interesting, more pictures, more often.. only for your concious telling you.. dont commit.. you can't do it.. nows not the time for a big blog project.. x.x And then for me i feel like i'm stuck.. in between what i want to do, what i want to achieve and what i know i can do.. and what other things take priority.

Which leaves me with time management..
and..
fessing up..
toTRUTH!

What do i spend my time on? Where am i most of the time?
(*insert noise of rusty cogwheels* as tiffany tries to remember what she did last week..)
hmm...
Well i cant recall exactly what i did all last week.. i can recall the weekend.. pfft! that is easy!
Saturday james and I played fable II. Alyssa had a good day but with a annoying trend of snack feeds at 5pm, 6pm, 7pm and 8pm before finally going to sleep.
Sunday james and i played fable II co-op doing the troll (like a very fat treeant), balverines (think werewolf) mission, spire mission (think evil gothic looking cornetto building). Alyssa had her annoying feeds, had a chicken satay stir-fry and the girls had a bath together.. it was hot and yukky..

but generally.. my week days..
i've worked out equal a load of washing every day. (not including towels or sheets)
generally some house work (not always the dishes.. as i loathe it..and put it off) my spring cleans i seem to be doing thru the weekdays end up with more mess as i dont always find a 'home' for something and i get distracted.. and it doesnt go anywhere....
Some relax time which includes lunch, watching the view or playing video games
do revolve around getting tia to and from kinder on those days..
do revolve around alyssa and whether she is happy fed, dry, comfy, entertained, cuddled and close by.. anything noisy waits till she is awake!!!!!!!
my weekends.. no housework gets done, i struggle to cook most of the time, generally do stuff with hubby games, dnd.. usually doesnt feel right either until we have all gone out to the shops together at some point during the weekend (even tho im trying to stop that 'want' as it ends up with blowing the budget and going on the evil (but not as evil as some) credit card!! x.x

lately been doing major spider killing.. and dead/dying spider avoiding.. i am completely paranoid. (i did wake up one morning and looked up to see a daddy long legs quite close to my pillow on the bed head bit.. too close for comfort!!!!) there was one daddy long legs (rather huge) that i never got around to killing as it was always on the move.. never stayed in one spot.. i did a dumb thing and watched it for a bit and then lost where it went.. i feel my spider woes make for a whole blog post in itself!!!!! EEP!!!!!!

What i'd like to get done:
Blog wise- New layout, colours, pictures, update side bits, twitter, visit & read more blogs more often.

Health wise- Manicure & pedicure, Wii fit every day, keep to planned meals, go to bed before 11pm no 11am and 4pm snacking on junk.. eating more salads (with help from growing our own)

House wise- Clean and organise and keep it that way! Kill all spiders, Work on folding & putting away clean clothes and not just have baskets of clothes everywhere.. Kill fleas in the house (where on earth did they come from??!!) start packing away winter clothes, blankets and wash summer stuff

Garden wise- Keep it weed free, grow grass back on nature strip, get my seedlings to grow bigger, get some lettuce & spinach seeds, encourage james to finish his backyard project, dig up a garden patch for veggies, get a lattice thingy for jasmine to climb, kill all red back spiders..

Family wise- have some planned outings, especially since tia is old enough to appreciate a trip to a zoo, movies or aquarim etc, more time with tia working on her sounds, counting etc. Get to church every sunday! Send out thank you notes (still), Stick to budget, take more photos & remember to upload it onto pc. find tia a dance class or activity to do with other kids. exchange details with the parents of tia's friends from kinder so she can play with them over the holidays

Christmas wise- organise & finalise meals/menu, organise sheets etc for guests, think about table piece, where christmas tree will go etc, find & do christmas cards, think about presents & budget, keep buying a few christmas food stuffs each week, Does anyone know a good whisky and brandy to cook with?????

Shopping wise- Stick to budget, buy only whats on the list, get some new shorts and t-shirts for summer, buy another fan for summer

hmm... think i will have to print this out and put it on the fridge!!..

Pomegranate

2008-10-01T10:24:00.002+10:00

wiki page on pomegranate
Im curious bout pomegranates, so i bought one... but now dont have a clue what 2 do with it.. i think it was nigella?? that did a recipe, with the other summer fruits thing she did (a book or 1 show i saw, not sure..) but the colours were so rich and red! It was a feast for the eyes to remember thats 4 sure.

Sensodyne ProNamel Toothpaste

2008-10-01T10:06:00.004+10:00

Bought it not soon as it came out (been meaning 2 blog it)... some ridiculous price $6-$7? from memory.
I was somehow suckered in over the whole 'acid wear' thing... but the taste (yeah i know its not 4 eating) is absolutely AWFUL (like berry i think)!!!!! (anyone like a barely used tube for free?) its gentle cleaning alright... makes tooth brushing in a hurry useless.. may as well had not even bothered!!

247 photos downloading....

2008-09-25T17:07:00.005+10:00

This week i remembered to buy AA batteries... after much deliberation at woolworths, trying to remember the adds did the duracel bunny over take the everready battery guy or vice versa?? lol.. and then comparing the huge packs of 16/20something batteries to the price of the woolworths select? brand of batteries (which work out to be $1 each in a 4 pack) and decided on a pack of 16 duracell batteries for $16 or $17 which is almost the same (on special this week)

I am just now downloading the movies and pictures off the camera that were on it before the batteries died (all other batteries in the house for remotes etc did not have enough juice left to power it) The pictures go back to around august 10th-ish when Tia did not have a fringe (self inflicted) and now its almost time for a fringe hair cut for her.. soon she will have a straight fringe (kinda hard not to notice it being right in the middle of her forehead!)

Hopefully will get some photos out to family & close friends and post some here too. I need to get a photo of Alyssa smiling since she has been doing that for awhile now.. and i need to get a picture of our neighbours flowering plum tree/cherry blossom tree as it looks totally funky like the branches are pink sausages.. lol.. just masses of flowers!

We survived the gale force winds alright... had to move Tia's cubby house back on the deck a few times as the wind was strong enough to push it! Unfortunately the roof on the deck suffered some damage am yet to get the info over to agents.. my bad.. so busy, forgetfull and all..

Nori has gone missing, she did her usual rush out of the house at a time of oppurtunity (door opened or left opened) on saturday/sunday and hasnt been seen since. Hopefully she will turn up again soon, everyone keeps saying that cats do often go away for a week and come back again.. so hopefully she will!

Hubby decided to re-format our pc and has yet to put it back to how it was, with my login etc.. all our photos are on his portable HDD that he takes everywhere he goes.. otherwise id have a flyer out already with Nori's pciture on it.. *sigh* i miss my bookmarks i had on that pc also... u know how it is with computers.. u have everything set up just fine and then its gone... i dont have the time to put it back to how it was/how i like it

Ive been kiinda avoiding the laptop & pc as it seems the instant i go to post or comment Alyssa wakes up from her sleep!

Tia has had a cold and has a bad red mark under her nose from using toilet paper?!! to wipe her nose (and i gave her a box of tissues and the next morning they are all used and all over the floor in her bedroom... not happy!!!)

have to leave this here... as Alyssa is awake and wanting cuddles/milk/nappy/burping one or a few of the above..

Subway dumps Anzac biscuit from the menu Article from: The Advertiser

2008-09-22T16:39:00.002+10:00

SEAN FEWSTER

September 22, 2008 12:01am

THE traditional ANZAC biscuit has been dropped by one of the world's biggest fast-food chains because it cannot be made cheaply and correctly by an American corporation.

Subway restaurants have stopped selling the ANZAC biscuit, which has been part of the nation's diet for 93 years.

Earlier this year, the Department of Veteran's Affairs ordered Subway to bake its ANZAC biscuit as per the original recipe, which is protected by federal legislation.
When Subway's U.S.-based cookie dough supplier could not cost-effectively duplicate that recipe, the biscuit was deleted from the menu.

Returned and Services League South Australia president Jock Statton said Subway's decision was "ridiculous".

"I find that bloody insulting," he said.

"So many companies try to jump on the ANZAC bandwagon and they were obviously trying to appeal to Australians by having the biscuits in their stores."

But Subway's Australia and New Zealand regional manager Brian Tap said the decision was not meant to offend.

"Our intention was not to upset anyone, but to show respect to the Diggers and the term ANZAC," he said.

"It's got nothing whatsoever to do with our product coming from, or being made in, the U.S."

Under federal law, only biscuits based on the recipe used at Gallipoli may be called ANZACs.

Mr Tap said the department gave Subway a "time frame" in which to bring its biscuits up to standard.

"For us to make sure our recipe is correct, it would be about six months' work for us . . . we made a pragmatic decision to delete it."

He said the ANZAC had been outsold 15-1 by chocolate cookies.

"Our supplier has already expressed interest in producing the biscuit,'' he said.

"If the community says it wants Subway to carry ANZAC biscuits, we will put a team behind it.''

Mr Statton said Subway should leave the biscuit alone.

"The biscuits made in Australia are the only ones that should be sold – money from their sale goes to the welfare of veterans," he said.

World War II veteran Jack Dickens said he would have liked to have seen more ANZAC biscuits while fighting in New Guinea.

"Soldiers who were issued an ANZAC biscuit would be most delighted," Mr Dickens said.

"Back in our day, getting stuff like that to the places we were was very difficult, if not impossible."

Very interesting.. theres a anzac biscuit in subways range??? i wonder how many other people had no idea that the plain looking golden biscuit was meant to be a anzac?

Rice bran oil spray & spread Alfa One Review

2008-09-17T08:33:00.007+10:00

Been meaning to try the alfa one range of Rice bran oil products.. but the price and thinking.. well its not dairy, its not canola will it taste weird????? has usually deterred me from buying it...

See Rice Bran Oil wikipedia page

The Rice bran oil spread- is now my favorite spread! It doesnt exactly taste like butter.. and it is slightly salty! It passes the toast test! LOL! melts nicely, nice colour. Im wondering if most spreads/butter/marg have hydrogenated oils or not.. as the 'normal' one says it doesnt yet on the light version theres no mention or claim that it doesnt contain hydrogenated oil. I used some when browning some onions, it was quite alright for cooking. :) It also gets soft very quickly when left out of the fridge!

The Rice brain cooking spray- has no weird taste. Sprays clear (im used to the ones spraying white whether it was the cheap no-name ones or the old ww endorsed canola sprays) Not bad... nothing fantastic either.

The brand 'Alfa one' do u think its pronounced 1) 'Alpha one' or 2) 'All for one' hmmm

Birthday Girl! 8th sept

2008-09-08T08:36:00.001+10:00

I had my birthday on monday. Thats right i turned 26!
I cant remember what i did other than the usual trying to get something cleaned in the house (floors or dishes), possibly tried to play video games, watch tia play outside and the usual hands-on little bub Alyssa stuff.... i do remember that Hubby didnt say happy birthday to me b4 he left work, i called him in his lunch break and he said that he was the first one to wish me happy birthday at midnight last night (while i was asleep and i grunted..) LOL!
i do remember that i started cooking dinner at 11am, meatballs... this was while Alyssa was asleep and i thought id make it easy on hubby or myself when it came cooking time later that night. (This interuppted and less sleep IS making me nutty!! Me, ok with cooking dinner on my bday?!!!! LOL)
At 4pm i realised i wasnt going to get my birthday present wish in time to make my own cake. (its the breville wizz mix professional)

So us 3 girls headed off to the shops to find a ready-made cake.. to my absolute horror (ok not so bad but still..) ALL of their choc mud cakes had "happy fathers day", "no.1 dad" on them!!!!! So i decided to boycott the woolies taste-like-packet-mix-fake-cake and go get a frozen choc bavarian cheesecake! Hubby left work 15mins early than everyones normal knock off time (he usually does 30mins overtime each day) to buy me a present.. so we met up, had coffee and went to find my present... however it was then somehow 5.30pm and the shops were all closing (as in kicking everyone out closing) Hubby said he was surprised i didnt want take-out to which i said yeah chinese woud be great! lol. So we got rainbow beef, chinese sausage, fried wontons, steamed rice & green chicken curry. YUM!!!!

mum sent me a giftcard & some cards she had made (no pics yet)
my brother rang me yesterday (a day late) to wish me happy birthday, thinking that he had the right date, lol.
also yesterday our gas meter got read, sure to be scarier than the last bill, for sure! EEP!! So might have to put my bday prez on hold?? hmm

the queen of whisky fudge

2008-09-05T18:48:00.002+10:00

Lets skip the usual, "yeah ive been busy" thing and get into it eh.. ;)

My latest addiction is 11 ww points to a box. A box of 150g scottish malt whisky fudge. Yes i regulary contribute to global warming by indulging and getting addicted to imported foods... not ashamed of it either.. may as well make sure that the packaging, shipping was worth it than let it go to waste right? My box of fudge is use by this month so its come down to $1.95 a box at the imported/mass lolly shop. Ive been thru 2 boxes since wednesday! Its obviously not a overpowering whisky flavour.. (and its flavouring not actual liqour in the ingrediants list) If i can smell alcohol i usually know i wont like the taste that goes for drinks and foods. I dont like real wine in food.. i dont mind real rum tho in rum balls.. i do drink alochol but in eye dropper amounts! LOL! Ive never had the head over the toilet drunk experience, ive never gone past tipsy! control freak alert!! ^^

next to get on the soap box. I know the republicians havent stopped the whole lets dump the queen thing. But honestly doesnt anyone else find it offensive that just because the role of GG has been given to a woman that it some how makes it (the GG) even more redundant?! Also that they have to bring it up again on the eve of a history making woman GG instead of like tomorrow?! Does anyone else get up my nose more than Mr bob brown?! hmmm id have to think about that! He said wouldnt it be even more history in the making if the first woman GG handed it over to a president. hmm uh, NO! pfft.

Alyssa is home from her walk.. cranky still.. (and of course its dinner time, no less!)

what a day...

2008-08-15T17:04:00.002+10:00

Oh boy!!
or rather..
Oh Girl!!

Today it rained.. of course it did.. weve had nothing but rainy days for 2 or 3 weeks straight!! The grass path next door (short cut to shops) is a sloppy, slippery mud path now... its almost like walking on ice, but its mud?!

All week ive been at home, finish the 11am-midday feed and then off to the shops, as a pram ride will normally put alyssa straight to sleep. But today i had no urge to go out! I thought id see how we all would cope being stuck inside with the rain. (seeing as Tia has been told to clean her room all week, yet being out so often for so long, means its still in a bombshell state..)

This is how my day went;
Feed alyssa 6.45am, burp, she fell asleep in our bed, get out of bed without waking alyssa. Have quick shower, get bra off clothes line, get dressed fully, make coffee, drink coffee, alyssa wakes up, finish feeding alyssa, burp, she falls asleep, put her down on couch, find all the bowls have not been washed by the dishwashing faeries change brekkie plans, alyssa wakes up and cries, make brekkie, scoff it down while settling alyssa with a dummy. place alyssa in the pram, quickly pick up mess off the floor thats been there all week, move boxes, put a quick load of washing on, vac the floor, settle alyssa, change nappy, play with alyssa and tia. think about lunch, feed alyssa watching dr phil, alyssa falls asleep in cot, phone rings 3 times and stops & washing machine beeps alyssa wakes up (of course while im on the toilet, when else do home phones ring?! lol) settle alyssa, eat icecream.. change nappy, feed alyssa, successfully get off couch and walk to bedroom without waking alyssa, put alyssa down in cot, alyssa wakes up instantly, settle alyssa, alyssa sleeps 10mins, alyssa wakes up.. and now its 5.30pm! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hubby comes home.. alyssa falls asleep

Nori update **** she is in heat AGAIN!**** FULLY INSANELY IN HEAT!
Tom cat has pee-d out the front & is stinking out my house (having serious thoughts bout getting one of those automatic every 15mins room spray things) and i thought male mice STANK! (like 10 male mice.. but no this tom cat STINKS!) The tom calling doesnt bother me, when im asleep i have the ability to sleep thru james alarm going off (at the moment anyways).. just cant sleep thru alyssa starting to wake or alyssa crying (which james can sleep thru) Previously didnt know there was any other cats on our street.. so no idea what this tom looks like.. The tom has found Nori as she has been outside a fair bit.. and today i did not want to deal with all 3 girls wanting my attention, all 3 making noise.. 2 is enough!! Id just like Nori to fall preggy have her kittens and get her desexed!! which is what ive wanted from the start (the desexing bit.)

1 handed post

2008-08-14T10:08:00.002+10:00

one of these days i will finish a post i start... Alyssa is a month old. it seems to have gone fast in some aspects and in others just seems to drag on... mainly getting her to sleep during the day NOT in my arms!! she will fall asleep in the pram, so the past 2 days ive been out shopping, walking 4 hours.. its waaay 2 cold 2 walk outside for that long specially out that late.. yes shopping for 6hrs!!!!!!!!

been trying 2 get tia's room more organised, with tubs for toys.. hoping it will then stay miraculously clean.. she is on a tv ban until its cleaned.

nori with her winter coat is driving me insane leaving hair everywhere and anywhere..

hubby been cooking dinner, unless alyssa is blissfully asleep at that time.. very rare tho. he did a nice chicken curry one night and steamed dim sims the next..

Let the Games begin...

2008-08-09T20:33:00.002+10:00

Well im pretty sure the olympic games opened last night.. im glad the rowing dude got the flag holding rights, i did hear the aussies would march out 1am our time.... i wonder just how many people stayed up that late to watch it? (i believe china is roughly 2hrs behind?)
and thats about it.. that i know bout the olympics. Wish the athletes well and all those who breathe the air over there!

Today ive woken up late, gone shopping, been out weeding & watching dvds... Ive noticed that theres a good reason to watch channel 10 during the olympics as they are giving away money each day, not sure on the details tho.

We bought season 3 of battlestar galactica today and have been re-watching our old Ghost in the shell, stand alone complex boxset since we have our old 5.1 surround sound system back!!! :D I also have sex in the city season 5 (miranda has a baby episodes..)

Jazz up ur day ;)

2008-08-08T10:13:00.000+10:00

Alyssa Grace easy arrival birth story 14/07/08

2008-08-05T13:45:00.006+10:00

Thank You Maria for the cute bunny hat & slippers!

Alyssa grace easy arrival 14/07/08
(or at least i think it was, lol)

Hubby and I had spent the weekend yet again trying to bring the labour on... only to get tons of pre-labor pains that would last all day.. just being a pain! In the end it left me tired and cranky! Monday arrived and i asked hubby to chuck a sickie, i wanted him to stay home with me. (so he did, just so happened he wasnt feeling great and had a headache that wouldnt leave even with pain killers) I decided that i would avoid anything that would bring on those pains, so sex, curries, walking were off the list! I had a huge urge to clean the windows and frames in our bedroom behind our blinds that i had noticed bots of mould starting to grow and used alot of undiluted tea tree oil. I started getting pains, i was somewhat excited and somewhat skeptical. I hadnt done anything on purpose, maybe it was going to be this time? I kept cleaning those windows! (theres alot of them in our room)
The pains were starting to last longer and get more painful!
I kept going to the toilet, keen on seeing a show! But with no luck!
I finished on the windows and started to play a bit of uno on the xbox360 to take my mind of it, like i did the other times...until it got really painful!! I finally had a show and was thrilled!!! woohoo!!!!! i then puked (how lovely) and hubby said he would clean it up.. (well i wasnt going to!)

The bub was on its way.. when a contraction hit, i closed my eyes, leant over the baby change table in our room or on the walls if i was in the hallway, swinging my hips around helped deal with the pain. I tried remembering that the pain was ok, not to panic and that it would soon be all over and finally we would know the sex of the baby and be in awe of that precious little bundle we had been waiting to meet! I also kept thinking to myself "darn whoever, whatever said, that you will know youre in full blown labour when your asking yourself why am i doing this again?" (this is bub & pregnancy number 2) I was certainly doing that, why did i choose to get pregnant again?! Why did i choose to re-live this pain?

I asked hubby to time the contractions and not to tell me what they were. When i asked 20-30mins later he said they were coming every 3-5mins and lasting 2minutes! ouch! He rang the labour-phone for the hospital... to which the midwife asked to speak with me, she started asking me for my info and another contraction hit and i passed the phone back to hubby without saying anything really but "oh God!" i felt pretty pissed off that for some reason my hubby wasnt good enough for them to get stupid stuff like my birth date and all that.. why they were asking again, i have no idea.. i was in the computer, been to my appts.. I didnt want to talk to them thats for sure, not when there was someone not in pain who could give them the info they were asking.

Hubby called up his bosses wife to please come get our girl (5yo) to look after (awesome people) she turned up half hour later with her grandkids in tow, much to the pleasure of our daughter! not only was her baby sis/bro on the way but now she would get to play with some kids while she waited!

Hubby then called up a taxi and it arrived pretty quick. I did alright on the 10min trip to the hospital, the bumps sucked (if only hospitals had a entrance to the hospital purely for women in labour that didnt have speed humps/bumps!!!!!) I didnt puke or have my waters break, so that was a relief!!! ROFL!

Arrived at the midwife desk at the ward and was directed into a small consult room. Where they wanted to ask more questions! Excuse me id like to fracking give birth and im still getting questioned?! argh!!!!!! I then found the results of my strep b test was negative (phew! Yay me!) I was then told again about not to be stupid, if i was bleeding bad they would give me the synto injection that i didnt want in my birth preferences. I did bring along my prenatal sheet and my birth preferences but for some reason hubby never handed them over.. My Bp was checked & was fine. The baby heartbeat was fine. It dragged out pretty long due to the contractions.. i was feeling them in my back mostly now and it really was painful. The midwife kept asking me if i wanted saline injections in my back to help get thru the pain, something about feeling like 4 mozzie bites.. i then was given a VE to which she replied i was already 8cms! (and that the saline injections she had offered to me was out of the question) i was given a white sheet to tie around my waist and i waddled down the hallway to the labour room with midwife & hubby in tow.
I kept getting asked if i felt any pressure... i think i did.. i worried that maybe i was pushing to early and part of me worried that i might be missing the cues to push and the bub would go into distress.. somehow i did get back into the zone, relaxed on the floor over the birthing bean bag on the floor and just pushed... it was then that i felt the baby move further down.. it was weird. With each little push i could feel the end getting closer! I was really so very happy. The midwife told my hubby to push a button behind him when she said so (that was just behind him & me) I pushed with each contraction, i dont remember what the pain was like at that time.. I gave 3 almighty pushes, the button was pressed, 2 other midwives (1 in training) came into the room.. someone said 'everything is bulging!' (odd how u remember the weird things) Then my waters broke.

The crowing this time didnt have that burning ring of fire of my first. No i think it happened a bit quicker? There was a ton of pain and i felt pain like a snip! I panicked and thought "oh crap they gave me a epistomy!(sp?)" I was breathing really fast, i heard the midwife say breathe slow and hubby repeated it and thats when it sank in and i calmed down. One last push and it felt like the body of the baby was being pulled out of me.. odd that it felt like that. i actually said "stop pulling the baby" lol.. (it wasnt being pulled out) 2nd stage lasted 8mins! (it felt much longer than that)
I moved from hugging the bean bag to sitting on my knees and picked up our little girl. She was gorgeous, all covered in vernix and screaming. lol. She did a bit of a poo before i picked her up and then 5mins later when i was holding her she peed on me!

I was then told by the midwife that i had a hour to deliver the placenta and bubs to have delayed cord clamping and if the placenta wasnt delivered in that hour id have to have the injection. I was shaking and getting cold, which i knew was a bad sign. However i delivered the placenta naturally. The placenta was complete but the membrane wasnt complete, i think tho it came out in the shower afterwards (sorry TMI) 3rd stage lasted 15mins!

I was asked if they could use my placenta in one of the classes. Which i agreed too, i was amused that my placenta was going to gross alot of mum n dads to be out! ROFL!
I was then told i had a graze and it didnt require stitches, thats the snip pain i felt!!!
I completely forgot about the advice id heard to kiss or laugh during labour to help with the pain. I got thru it pretty alright anyways without any meds..
The midwives were all so happy afterwards. Im really relieved that i only had 1 midwife thru the whole thing. (only later when i did the forms did i see that the midwife made a mistake on the medicare form saying she was born in august! whoops!)

we were left alone for quite some time, hubby had some skin to skin time with her... I noticed that our little girl was tongue tied (like her dad was)

and thats about it!
My dinner/lunch was plain cheese sandwich (already eaten), some sort of tomato soup, orange jelly and tea :( (i didnt have the soup)

How to wake up a baby

2008-07-31T22:33:00.002+10:00

Heres my list

1) Decide to have a rest or
2) Decide to have a rest and lay down, get comfortable, close eyes.
3) Change the tv channel or
4) Change the tv channel to play video games.
5) Talk excitedly.
6) Start cooking dinner or
7) Serve dinner.
8) Arrive home from a walk in the pram that put them to sleep.
9) Sit down to blog, read email, write email.. anything to do with contact with the outside world lol.
10) Place the baby in the cot and take 2 steps towards the door

whats normal?

2008-07-26T21:58:00.004+10:00

For 2 weeks now we have pretty much;

woken, started the day at 10am, breakfast from 10-11am
had lunch anywhere from 1pm-5pm
dinner (altho sometimes just desert as in icecream or a snack as in tim tams) anywhere from 7pm-10pm
sleep for me starts at 10pm-1am depending on Alyssa, whats on tv and what naps ive caught thru the day

For 2 weeks james has had off work, he has made me countless breakfasts, lunch, dinners, drinks and always happy to. For 2 days solid he changed all the nappies (hehehehehe)

we have managed to go out to the shops on a few occassions, ah what fun! Alyssa loves being in the pram, she has looong sleeps in the pram while shopping. However our first time out was a bit of a refresher.. as in babies can sleep and poo/wee at the same time.. never thought of changing her. was glad to get home!!!!

Tia had her last day at little school, i bought chocolates and flowers for her 3 teachers/carers shes had for the past year.. lots of tears!!! Worried and excited that Tia will be getting into a preschool (yes even tho its called 'kinder' down here, this is kinder but the centre is called ... preschool) hope that made sense. I think its just as well that was her last day as sad-to-say there was a absolute horror of a kid who started that day, a young boy maybe 3years old who was nasty to all the kids, pushing them repeatedly and stuff.. just awful (very sad) ive seen bad kids, but this lil bloke takes the cake (in a big way!) Tia actually attempted to spit as we were walking to the shops today, i was shocked!!! Needless to say i told her princesses did not do that, yukky people did or if u swallow a fly perhaps.. and that people who smoke spit in public coz they are sick.. Considering this is a girl who loves to eat toothpaste and not spit it out.. im not sure where she got it from or what she thought it would achieve!

my preggy belly is all gone, totally deflated... however all the sweet cravings have done damage and i'll have to work it off to get back to where i was..

Enjoying this song lately...

Our new lil girl bub Alyssa

2008-07-24T12:53:00.004+10:00

Born on monday 14th july (1 day early) at 4.23pm. 6hrs 40-something mins labour.. no drugs (until after the placenta delivered naturally), no stitches, delayed cord clamping, 2nd bub born on the floor (lol) bean bag this time.. interesting..
8lb 2.5oz, 35cm head circ. 50cm length (not tall apparently, lol) 7.5oz or 225g lighter and 2.5cm shorter than tia.

got 2 hospital via taxi.. arrived at hosp & got asked lots of questions while in labour, was examined 2 find i was 8cms dilated!!!!

bub poo-d n wee-d when she came out (and screamed) we then got a private room (lucky lucky) which was right near the nurse/midwife desk & the front doors (boo hiss!!! way 2 noisy) stayed 24hrs in hospital went home 2 a quiet house & my comfy bed and slept!!!!!!!!!!

typed 1 handed, hope every1 is well.

Updates

2008-07-13T21:38:00.002+10:00

Lets start with the obvious.. no baby! ;) Due date is on tuesday (2 days to go!!), next appointment with the hospital is not till the 22nd of july, same day (but at night) as the information night for the primary school i want Tia to go too..

I think the baby is training for the olympics!??!! As it sure hasnt stopped kicking me or seem to have 'run out of room' at all..

Been getting alot of cramps, pains... same result as the past 2 sundays, just add saturday and this sunday and thru the week ive had days of pain... no show, no baby. Ive worked out that i will know its the 'real thing' when im in pain, puking and with the show.. until then we will just all be kept waiting!

*fingers crossed NOT A 1AM-6AM surprise*

Tia cannot wait to see her grandmas again! We hear all about how grandma will be visiting and come to see her :D

Nori has been farting really bad lately!!

Double standards.. fallout 3 rant warning drug content

2008-07-10T17:04:00.003+10:00

ugh! Fallout 3 the much awaited sequel in the fallout series.
I remember playing one of the fallout games, it was a turn based action, rpg? Fallout- being whats left of the world after a nuclear fallout, so rats, bandits, pubs and travelling... everyone for themselves.
Fallout 3 would be a R18+ game, which arent allowed for sale in Australia. Only games M15+ can be sold? I remember back in the old days, where the latest tekken, thats right a playable tekken demo in a video shop had curtains around it, just so the lil kiddies didnt see.. fair enough, not that i can remember whats in tekken that wasnt in Dead or alive or something..
All this because of realistic drug use.. Im sorry??? what???
I can play the games;

Saint Row, i can walk into a shop and buy bongs and smoke them (the character not me) from memory there were other drugs and alcohol you can buy in game as well..

Bioshock M15+ (British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Game of the Year, 2007. ), how can i paint the picture for you? well u can see for yourself, its 34secs into this you-tube vid

hmm nothing quite realistic like a huge needle *shudders* I did enjoy that game a bit.. being a hero! :D

thats only 2 i could rattle off the top of my head..
Double standards no doubt..

1) gamers are mostly 30+ year old males..
2) what parents buy their kid(s) a M15+ game?
3) Its ok for movies to have sex scenes, ok for brothels, ok for all those naughty adds right next to the garage sale adds in the newspaper, ok for music vids 2 have half naked booties... but not ok for a game to have a sex scene, pixels people! its just pixels!! :) and it shouldnt be a game that a parent or anyone would buy for a child!!

the midwife booking appointment

2008-07-09T15:48:00.003+10:00

Monday i had the midwife booking appointment. The appointment where they figure youre to lazy to read the pamphlets they give you to read while you wait in the waiting room to see the midwife... the appointment that you go to where they also point out and circle in pen the phone numbers you need in call, in case something happens, in case your in labour, in case you have a question...
the appointment where they ask you 40 questions, that no doubt get asked at every appointment..
It went well, she said something bout being a bit late.. i shrugged it off saying something bout can never be to late to which she said something bout those who never see midwives and come in and deliver bubs in a tsk tsk naughty mothers tone.
I took in my birth plan, i winced at how many bits of bold text i had used, perhaps i should have done the same and circled the 'assuming all goes well', 'id like the option too'.. as the midwife hmm-ed thru it.. and then said id have to sign a consent form about not getting the synotocin jab to deliver the placenta *groans* i didnt want to do that, i wanted the option to decline it if all is well and to have it if it wasnt going all well..
The next point was that with a IV the tube bit that goes in, i would be better mobile if it was in my hand.. as opposed to it being in my arm.. which i had heard makes you more able to walk around etc.. ive never had a IV drip, so i have no clue.. if they put one in me and tell me i wont be able to walk i'll be very tempted to take it out and walk.. (during labour)
the next point she bought up was "hmm they wont be too happy about that" oh? "during a emergency cesear at frankston hospital. they dont want the hubby/partner in the same room, its too traumatic", Hubby who was there said that he had seen worse.. Which had me thinking.. whats more traumatic being right next to me, holding my hand (whether im awake or not) or more traumatic watching behind glass.. i mean come on.. and what bout me? if im awake, all by myself with alien looking doctors how traumatic is that going to be to me!??!! "they" dont have to like it, they just have to make it happen the way i want it! :D

So i went home, took out some lines, changed others, reduced the amount of words in bold..
Birth Preferences
(using a template from www.bellybelly.com.au)

We’re hoping for a natural childbirth without unnecessary interventions or the use of drugs. We appreciate your support with our birth preferences.This plan represents our preferences; however we recognise that in the event of unforeseen difficulties it may need to be re-negotiated. Please discuss all options with us.
We would like the birth experience to be respectful and private as we know this is conductive to a successful birth, with minimal interruptions, quiet voices and dimmed lighting.

ACTIVE BIRTH

§ I’d like the freedom to choose positions and walk around in labour as desired.

§ I’m happy to have intermittent external fetal monitoring unless continuous monitoring is medically necessary.

§ Please don’t offer drugs; I am aware of the options for pain relief and will ask for it if needed.

§ As long the baby and I are fine, I would prefer to be free of time limits and not have my labour augmented.

§ I would like to deliver in any position that feels right to me at the time, including on the floor. I wish to avoid being on the bed in a back-lying position.

§ I’d only like an episiotomy if there is a genuine medical emergency. Please allow time for the perineum to stretch naturally. I prefer a small tear to an episiotomy.

BIRTH AND SOON AFTER

Presuming baby and I are well, we’d like:

§ The option for my Husband or myself to ‘catch’ our baby

§ To discover the sex of the baby ourselves.

§ The option for my husband to cut the cord

§ To hold our baby immediately after the birth. (We'll cover the baby with our own blanket that we'll bring from home.)

§ For all newborn procedures (weighing and measuring) to wait until I have had time to bond with and breastfeed our baby at least an hour

§ Assuming blood loss is acceptable. I’d like the option to have or not have the routine Syntocinon injection to help deliver the placenta & in the event of declining the Syntocinon, no controlled cord traction. Please let me have half an hour to a hour to deliver the placenta naturally if I decline.

· To wait until the umbilical cord stops pulsating before clamping (or at least 3-5mins), to allow my baby to receive the valuable blood and iron stores.

§ For baby to be given only breast milk – no water or formula.

§ That the baby has Vit k and Hep B shots shortly after bonding time.

§ I would like my husband to stay with me for as long as possible so that the baby has time to bond with him

INDUCTION / AUGMENTATION

If baby and I are well, I would like my baby to decide his/her own due date. Should labour induction become necessary at any time, I'd like to start with the least artificial means first - i.e. nipple stimulation, massage or a stretch and sweep before a medical induction. I would like time to allow the natural inductions work.

If this is unsuccessful and a medical induction or augmentation becomes medically necessary I’d like:

§ To only have my waters to be broken at first instance if my cervix is open. I would like to be given a generous amount of time for labour to establish upon rupture of membranes before other forms of medical induction / augmentation. I would like to go home if all is well, until labour is established.

§ If I require Syntocinon, I would like a very low dose, to be increased gradually and slowly. Once my labour is established I would like the option to choose to stop the dose being increased, lower the dose or stop the drip to allow my body to continue to labour without artificial oxytocin.

CAESAREAN

If a caesarean becomes medically necessary I’d like:

§ For my Husband to be given the option to be with me regardless. I believe he can make his own decision on if it would be traumatic for him to be there or more traumatic being out of the room watching.

§ For discussion to be respectful and minimal - only what is required medically and to inform me of what is happening

§ For the screen lowered so we can witness the birth of our baby

§ Unless prevented by medical emergency, I would like my baby to be placed on my chest while you complete the procedure

§ To be sure that a double layer suture is used and not a single layer in order to improve my chances for a future VBAC

§ For the cord to stop pulsating before clamping for reasons mentioned

§ I would like only my husband to hold our baby until I am fit and able.

Still here

2008-07-06T10:59:00.003+10:00

Still waiting for bub to arrive.
*sigh* got crampy feelings down there, but doubt anything will happen today... bub is still so very active, kicking, moving.. my first appt with the midwives tomorrow (that is if they havent screwed me over again) Not much longer to go now! :)

i have been getting some more decent sleep, partially due to my cold getting better.. i still have it but loose my voice less often now. Better sleep being yes i first wake at 1-3am and then every hour or two after that.. but im falling asleep faster after waking that im not minding it too much.

Hubby made brekky this morning, scrambled eggs with fried up bacon and onion on muffins (had no bread) He was going to make a omelet, but im not a omelet person....

Tia has been playing in a big box for the past 2hrs, sounds as if she was tearing it apart from the inside and having lots of fun. LOL! (fine if she cleans up afterwards)

Friday i packed all the bags ready for hospital.. and realised i had no newborn socks (the new bonds wonder suits dont come with feet..) that i had 1 bib and 1 girly hat. So i found 4 pairs of white socks, 3 white bibs, 1 white hat and a marked down cute pooh bear singlet at target yesterday.

I also now have to unpack my hospital bag, as the plan is to stay overnight (if all is well) and come home asap.. (so i dont need 7 t-shirts now, lol.. etc etc) which i dont mind, altho i did keep hearing about how lovely the rooms were.. but knowing my luck id probably end up in some shared crappy room!

hope everyone is getting over colds or not getting sick! :)

Sick and pains

2008-06-30T09:04:00.006+10:00

Just 16 more days to go... if the bub doesnt come early or late..
Ugh!!!!! Sunday was painful, exciting, yet sooo painful! It has me wondering if the bub will be coming earlier. If pregnancies and birth times could be predictable, following a pattern.. I would say the bub would be arriving next sunday! seeing as thats what happened with Tia, a week before she was born i had the same cramps coming and going that i took a panadol and it stopped. (panadol contains anti-prostagladins) I had the cramps again in a week followed with all the other signs that this time it was for real. (show, vomiting, the runs.. real pretty)

I had those nasty cramps, rotten back pain too.. and oh joy the memories come back.. I was pretty sure it was a 'false labour', all i had was the pain for 4hrs! The timing was all over the place and sure it started out ok then went "OMG this hurts" back to "meh, guess they are going now". It was somewhat of a 'training exercise', thinking how do i deal with this pain again? DH was busy working in another room... when i told him just before lunch, he was sooo excited! and asked how i knew it wasnt the real thing! LOL! I was told not to have the baby while he went and got some take-out for lunch... pfft!!!! and surprise! Still no baby when he came back!

Ive been gradually getting Tia's nasty sore throat, runny nose cold. Which she seems to get the most, i suppose i should be happy she doesnt get the barking cough ones. My lymph nodes are so swollen!! My throat is so sore and i feel like crap.

Sleeping these past couple of days has been AWFUL!!!! I wake up every hour, sometimes twice in the same hour after 1am until i get sick of it and get up at 7am or i finally get some sleep and get woken by DH alarm. Ive had that many dreams in a night, its crazy!!!
last night i dreamt;
1) i snuck in to some government intelligence building (to do with aliens) with friends and yet we were unsuccessful in escaping (i had the earth credit card that was on dr who last night. Voyage of the damned episode, with kylie minogue and Clive Swift (better known as Mr Richard bucket, from keeping up appearances).
2) i was chasing my pet monkey around a large mcdonalds in the girls toilets area. My mum was working there?! (i had a pet monkey?! what the?!)
3) i was taging along with a friend who won a prize of a makeover on a tv show, where they bought her a bunch of flowers that had some sort of electrical appliance in there too like a vaccuum cleaner?!4) i was at a huge kids play area (you know one of those ones in a building/wharehouse where u pay for your kids to play in) only it was massive and you wore these soft safety suits that if u hurt yourself and the impact lasted 3secs a saftey team would come out and see if your ok. They had random simpson characters (workers in costume) that would come out at random times and it was a stacks on, sort of thing.. i later discovered that the parents were being turned into hay. somehow???
5) i was on a mini-bus going somewhere with a group of people who sang annoying camp/bus songs.
and thats the ones i can remember..

Big Mummy tummy 37weeks pregnant

2008-06-24T12:21:00.002+10:00

Girl names

2008-06-23T16:13:00.006+10:00

Since its going to be a complete surprise to whether its girl/boy...
So its bout time we look at some girl names, (since its a 50/50 chance lol)

Adora (aka princess Adora who turns into She-ra, sister to He-man)
(yes the short version is dora.. which i dont like so much)Its a latin origin meaning gift or beloved.

Aurora (aka sleeping beauty)
From a Latin expression meaning "dawn," (short version is rory.. which i dont like)
Yuna pronounced 'You-nah'
(just a few origins and meanings 0.o) (aka Yuna from Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2 games)
African- Good looks, Japanese- Superiority apple, Breton-Desire

Sophitia pronounced 'soo-feet-tee-ah'
One james keeps bringing up. (aka Sophitia from Soulcalibur game series)
Greek- Wise goddess
other names i like: Autumn (even tho its a winter baby), Aiyana, Coco... thoughts on any others?

My cynical view

2008-06-20T15:02:00.002+10:00

is pretty much summed up in that ad! Ugh, as long as we are all dependant on oil all around the world we will all have to pay the price! No bargains, just desperate pleas to the arab oil kings to GIVE US MORE OIL!!!!
WHich i did hear recently that they would release more oil... any savings from that would be gone the moment:
1) another 'analyst' cries oil shortage.. or the repetition of $2 a lt by christmas (i heard that last night!!!)
2) school hoildays (comming soon!!!!!)
3) Iran mentions anything nasty to Israel or vice versa
4) any new 'terror attack' that happens by muslim extremist groups on oil pipelines or oil producing countries..

nevermind bout those bio-fuels (which ethanol is partly to blame for food shortages?)
or those H2O cars... or the cars that run on batteries..

Maccas Chocolate dessert gold medal pudding

2008-06-19T09:59:00.002+10:00

at $3.75... dont know if its worth it.. it tasted alright, quite chocolately.. make that dark chocolate. It was the size of a muffin case and about 2cm in height.
Its served in a interesting plastic container, i didnt see how these were warmed but my guess is microwaved or steamed? the plastic container was quite puffy due to the heat.. Tia had hers with soft serve, i had mine without... but it did need something to take the intensity down a bit.. that and make it a bit more interesting..
I would have liked glace cherries in it or some nuts? that would have been really nice.

Updates....

2008-06-17T14:18:00.004+10:00

Ok first off Nori is mellowing... as opposed to a extremely stressed *in heat* teenager (who eats kitten food) there is peace in the house... she showed signs of going back to normal on sunday(as in she could walk without her tail kinked to the side and quiet) Then she had a day of full on, I NEED CUDDLES! I WILL NOT LET U PUT ME DOWN, GIVE ME LOOOOVEEEEEE!!!!
*just great when im trying to get her not to jump up me, or up on me(the difference is in the claws) as with the bub coming, i cant have her jumping up on me if im holding or feeding the baby*

Onto the baby stuff.... The cot and change table from toys r us got delivered on monday at 9am! wow! It cost $20 per item for delivery, the delivery guy drove a ute?! Not only that but he carried a 31kg (says on the box) box that was the cot by himself! Not only that but he was 50+years old easy! WOW!! Finally done what ive wanted to do for ages now!!! Wash the baby clothes, blankets and sheets! Just 4 weeks to go (if it decides on appearing on the 'due date')
Only now ive realised the baby doesnt have its own furniture for clothes.. so they will have to stay in a basket somewhere out of the reach of Nori and Tia!!!

Onto Tia stuff, well..... she is loving it when i read her a book... i watched a bit of the new *hit* with the kids since teletubbies was taken over by boo-bah which is now replaced with 'in the night garden' the character names are as usual over the top, names that can only be repeated by kids.. altho the girl is called upsy daisy.. Tia also discovered where the band-aids were in the bathroom and quietly played with them, sticking them on toys and more recently today she put one on her forehead and one across her nose... a new fashion trend perhaps? err...

Ive been out in the garden attacking some weeds, especially the ones flowering! eep!!! So dont need any more weeds! I cleaned the place up alot today! Considering i attempted to put the change table together by myself and that just didnt work.. the change table came with packaging stuff including thin sheets of polystrene to which Tia turned into 'snow' in the lounge room.. Ive found the overnight bags and started to put together my bags for the hospital. I found my last stay in public hospital with the food interesting. The food was mostly good, i remember missing out on breakfast one morning as Tia bub and I had been up mostly thru the early morning.. that sucked! (it was delivered and not eaten by the time they came back) This time im taking along chuppa chups and museli bars for those times i feel like im starving!!! Not that im planning on staying for very long. When i say very long to people they say, 'yeah 3 days is good'... LMAO. To me 3 days is a very long time!!!

Nori... the loud.. sook..

2008-06-13T08:43:00.003+10:00

Nori has been so affectionate lately, the biggest sook!!!! (hint 1)
Nori has been so freaking loud!!!! Normally she would meow/cry if she lost a bead (her fave toys), got stuck inside a cupboard (curiosity to blame) or if someone is outside (and she isnt).. but lately its been almost constant.. constantly making a noise (less so if she is in with Tia, being snuggled against her will) (hint 2)

Last night Nori was going nuts, neither hubby or i wanted to hold her so we put her in her part of the house (the laundry, back door area.. lots of room) and closed the door. This morning she heard i was up and went nuts, the door was opened and she still went nuts.. she was rubbing everything (hint 3), rolling on the floor (hint 4) and hubby came out and all of a sudden she is walking on her low on her back paws (hint 5) with her tail over in a weird way (hint 6) and crying/calling (hint 7)

and i said... OMG SHE IS IN HEAT!!!!!!!!!! (*scores for the never-lived-with-a-cat person in the family*)

(she is still going nuts atm, must have escaped the tia room)

sure enough i googled it, and oh joy! *sarcasm*

she is...

and this will happen every 2-3 weeks?!!!!! oh joy *sarcasm*

ugh!!!

Wishing i had the $$ to get her desexed... hubby meanwhile says let her out and she will come back...

yeah.. she will come back.. possibly with cat aids, fleas, worms and pregnant at 5-6months old?! When she is still eating kitten food herself???!!!! (even if she is a 'teenager')

If she did, she would be giving birth 2-3 weeks after my baby is due... (im aware of how good cat mums are but still...I'd be somewhat enforcing that my baby is a higher rank than Nori AND making sure kittens arent being snuck into Tia's room, snuggled with her under blankets or put in socks!!!!!)

I dont want her to have kittens, Hubby wants her to have kittens. If she isnt desexed or isnt pregnant in her life she will possibly get some cancer.. ugh!!!!!!

Tia turns 5

2008-06-10T17:08:00.002+10:00

I found the time to also put together a tia vid of her birthday and things related to her birthday. I uploaded and altho it said live it wouldnt load and said the video was no longer available? wth? i looked it up and did what they suggested, editing the video info and stuff... but nope, must have corrupted or something as i did upload it when our speed was a crappy 7kb thanks to exceeding the download limit.
But now its back to the normal fast speed, uploaded and its working! YAY!!!!!!

House pictures

2008-06-09T08:12:00.003+10:00

Found batteries and then found the usb cable. Now ive found the time to do something with all the pictures... (yes i did have tia follow me around the house insisting on being in every photo!)

Chilli burn

2008-06-08T08:17:00.005+10:00

i bought a bag of bell shaped chillis (dont know which kinda they were, but i do know that the bell shaped round ones are just as hot if not hotter than their skinny looking cousins) at woolies for $1, reduced. By the time i got around to opening the bag up and thinking about cutting them up to freeze.. they were a bit moudly up top near the stem so i decided that fo $1 it was still a bargain for.. what for it.... chilli seeds! (can u see my problem now?)
All along i was thinking, just wait till i tell the world i de-seeded 14 chillis and that i wont be able to pick my nose for a week!!!! ROFL... oh yeah funny... real funny (ok pretty lame)
and why would that be do u think?
was half my brain trying to tell myself, STOP RIGHT NOW!!!!??
anyways, i got the zillions of chilli seeds, scraping them off...
i washed my hands and didnt think more of it.. just 14 chillis, after all...
i put dinner on and within a hour my fingers were starting to prickle, feel really hot and it was pain!! I washed my hands with dish washing concentrate detergent, relief... then pain. I looked up chili burn on google and found this blog post on chili burn
it was somewhat amusing to read all the additions, other remedies.. etc..

So the testing began.. i bathed/soaked my hands in lemon juice which was fine until it got warm and my fingertips burned again.
I tried rubbing my hands with table salt, the exfoliation was great, the rubbing i daresay distracted me from the pain i was getting from the burn for awhile.. and rinsing off in cold water.. ahhhh.
I tried a first aid cream the one with added pain relief stuff.. but it did crap all.
I tried soaking my hands in vegetable oil but that did diddly squat and then hubby tells me the difference between fats and oil.. oh well, no doubt after the salt the oil would be nice for the skin..
i tried soaking my hands in vinegar at dinner time, that was interesting juggling soaking time with eating time. Relief with the vinegar until it warmed (seeing a pattern here?)
I then held the bag of frozen peas and corn in my hands which was heavenly until i couldnt figure what was better, sore hands from extreme cold or sore hands/fingers from chili burn.
I repeated the salt rubbing.

This has me big preggy woman up and down all afternoon, getting pretty tired of it all.. then i soaked my hands in chardonnay.... and then gave up... it had been 3hrs of on/off pain due to 14 chillis... the best thing that worked had been cold. anything cold.. never mind the dissolve acid in fat, remove acid with alcohol, remove acid with exfoliation, go acid for acid or try to neutralize the acid...

I gave up, hubby said it shouldnt have gone on for so long in the first place.. something about it burning itself out... said it could be all in my head... PFFT!!!!! So with the pain now much less intense i let it burn, didnt do anything to stop it.. my fingers felt sooo hot, a few places were bright red on my fingers.. and after about a hour. It just stopped!

My hands today show no signs of what happened...

makes it to the winners poduim late

2008-06-05T08:57:00.003+10:00

better late than never. Thanks maria for passing this on to me :)
I'll pass it on to Jon hoh
(im yet 2 see your vid it just got to 9am and now my internet is just a bit better than dial-up until 4am comes around..) youve always got something japanese thats interesting... and until your trip to japan had something interesting to say about Adelaide (u never hear bout adelaide in nsw... and u get to victoria and all of a sudden its like victoria/melbourne has game on with sydney and adelaide.. ) Congrats :)

Cadbury Chocolate Desserts range

2008-06-04T16:20:00.005+10:00

Been eating into the new blocks of cadbury chocolate Desserts range.. whether its the stress of shopping with tia, the huge want/cravings of chocolate or the fact of the blocks of chocolate being on 'special' for the past 2 weeks or new chocolate.. who knows. (i also read that if u eat chocolate while pregnant that you will have a happy baby.. lol..)
Anyways ive eaten (with some help) 2 blocks of it already.. and only got the 3rd new block today!
Just trying to find pictures of them now. the cadbury website has no mention of the 'desserts' range.. and it looks like some of the range has been around for awhile (as in last year) but its still got 'new' on all the blocks here in victoria! And theres a few other flavours around that we dont have like boysenberry, banoffie pie, lemon cheesecake(um ew?)

The Fudge brownie block was disappointing.. (much like the other reviews ive read) It tastes like your average piece of chocolate with a grainy, sugar-ish textured filling... it should be labeled 'fudge brownie uncooked' i would have preferred the filling not to be gluggy.. a turn off really.

The Creme Brulee was amazing. It had tiny bits of caramel-ish toffee, in a somewhat icing-ish textured filling. It was milky, caramel, sweet and toffee tasting. This one i had to share alot.. as it was liked ALOT!!!!! however eating to much of it over 2 days i have ruined it and now feel ill thinking about eating it again.

The Tiramisu is quite nice.. not amazing, not bad either... however like the description says 'coffee creme filling' its exactly that.. it may as well be called coffee chocolate. Tiramisu kinda gives the thoughts of espresso coffee, a touch of liquer, harsh cocoa and a wee bit of cream and sweetness..(and of course LAYERS?!!!!) however its just a sweet coffee cream. same texture as creme brulee(but without the toffee of course)

I just saw the add for these 3 last night and they are still saying they are 'new'. I did notice that the packaging to the brownie fudge block is different and makes more sense than a chocolate looking tart on the old wrappers ive seen on the net.

My apologies

2008-06-02T08:43:00.002+10:00

Been working on a new layout.. needs alot more work.. since i havent gotten around to fixing it and putting it in.. x.x a quick look at my code and found the problem of the default background colour.. so is fixed and wow u can see text now ^^

im squeezing as much stuff into 10mins as i can.. as in 20mins the speed will hit almost dial-up speed. x.x Downloaded waaaaaay to much stuff during our 'peak time' *groans*
Re-installed the sims 2, unfortunately i threw out all the boxes and pieces of paper b4 we moved down here... which is pretty darn stupid since i really needed those key codes.. So i own perfecftly legal copies i just have not-legit key codes... and can't be bothered looking up 2 see if i can get into my old sims 2 online profile or ringing EA... i mean i dont have any boxes.. just the cds..

Friday night we had guests over and it was great! Saturday we were going to shop for prams and cots but hubby got a headache.. did visit toys r us, but they had a crappy range of prams.. hugely understocked.. ah well..
hope you all had a good weekend... gosh mine went past sooo quick!

how cool is weezer

2008-05-29T13:07:00.002+10:00

Ive liked alot of weezer songs. This is another great one with lots of youtube celebs!!
ah memories.. this is their new song Pork and beans
Hope u enjoy it! (go the coke n mentos! rofl)

Night sweats?!

2008-05-28T17:20:00.004+10:00

The third chapter.. the third trimester.. the last leg in the race..
and im not sleeping that well.. For example. I noticed i was awake at 1am, 2am, 3am, 6am(thanks to tia getting up) and 7am (alarm goes off)
Im awake due to one or a few: Have to turn over, hot, need2pee...
I have been kicking the blankets off yet in the house during the night its like 10-14degrees cel... not warm, not hot.. (note we were 1 blanket less than usual last night and i still woke up with sweat?!!)

the weird thing is that its only in this one spot up high on my chest.. which has me thinking maybe im just leaking thru the night? but leaking alot! Oh the joys of breastfeeding! *sarcasm* its all coming back to me.. the weird feelings.. the pressure that builds up when; the bub is late for a feed or trying to get the bub to sleep thru the night(with no feed obviously) and yet the body takes a few good days to figure it out!

Im not looking forward to tonight.. I hope i sleep thru the night..

*edit* Its just sweat! Horray!!!!!!!!! Last night was pretty cold, all the blankets on the bed with small amount of sweat.. yuk below my neck. woke up once thru the night and then around 5.40am

whats ur opinion?

2008-05-24T16:18:00.004+10:00

A few things have happened this week..

A ZIMBABWEAN man has been jailed for two years after he sold urine to residents in a mining town claiming it was cooking oil, according to state media reports.

i would have been pee-ed off (no pun intended) too if that bottle cost me a my precious half billion dollar note too.. (not that i know how much was paid for it) a gross way to make money... beats my entrepreneurship young years of selling bad perfume mixed with swamp water as perfume as a kid... not that i ever got to the door knocking. And not knowing about the legal age of working, insurance, taxes or anything i did try to start a kids-gardening service for weeding gardens at 20c a bucket (full of weeds) (we only advertised bout 4 houses on our street)

Taser guns are being sold in the same way tupperware parties are held in the us. So i guess the next crime wave will be tasering each other.

"Women are asking for it, and there is a lot of interest," Ms Shafman said of the stylish C2 Taser models that retail at $US350 ($364), plus a $US10 registration fee.

"The biggest hit seems to be fashion pink at the parties."

Sure, perhaps id buy one.. but then whats me stopping from going nutters and tasering some guy who looked shonky who walked past? is it really so much safer than a gun, what if something did go wrong? and if i was attacked would i be able to get it out of my handbag in time to save myself? whats stopping it from going off in my handbag? and could i legally taser a dog who wanted a piece of me? they could make a real small model for that for kids for that reason.. but then can u really trust the kiddie tasers not to come out during a petty fight over the remote control? the whole thing is scary if u ask me!!!!
Look at how good our dollar is at the moment! US$350= A $364 whoot!!! How good is the aussie dollar going!!! Hubby is wanting a special 3D mouse... and found while he could order it in from a aussie company for $120 he could order the same mouse in from the usa for us$40 even with the conversion, postage it works out much cheaper?! *linkie for page about 3d mouse with youtube video demo*Then theres the artist Bill Henson in deep-deep-do-do over his nude photos of a young girl and boy. Is it art? Yes it is art. BUT! In this age, alot of effort has been poured into protecting our kids, their innoncence, their vulnerabilities and its not like we need anymore kids or teens in the nude in photos... any child who had been abused in that way would be rightfully offended that someone could do the same and call it art, hang it in a gallery and get away with it!.. If it had been a painting perhaps he may have gotten away with it.. and for sure many nudes painted back thru time sure they weren't accepted by society at the time.. Those saying its art and portraying innocence and exposing their vulnerabilities, i dont believe it requires any talent to take a nude photo of a kid/teen to show that! I think its plain to see that in a photo of a teen fully dressed and under many layers of jackets, lol.. We are also in a time when sexualisation(sp?) of kids is banned in advertising material (and thats them being clothed!) and so u may as well say nude kids/teens are banned full-stop!

today we all went out bed and mattress shopping! whoot! we have 2 furniture places a walk away(not ikea) and then theres a 'bed specialist' place (likely to be more pricey) in the other direction. We found a good bed and mattress. The bed, tallboy and 2 bedside tables in a package was $699 (down from $999 apparently) Hubby also found a new, nothing special, but practical desk to replace the old one we have for $99 (that and he needs a desk to fit 2 monitors on so he can do his graphics stuff better) they are both huge whopping 22inch+ screens ones a old sony one the other is our nice flatscreen one that came with the pc.

Ironman movie review

2008-05-23T15:54:00.003+10:00

I hadnt seen any previews of this movie before seeing it.. and was expecting some sort of obnoxious, arrogant super hero movie (i had read that it suited robert downey jr to the T).. with the normal moral dilemmas, family getting hurt, love interests getting into trouble, the usual public outcry of 'freak!' to 'our hero' media spin... that happy, light hearted.. go lucky kinda feel you get from superhero movies..

(hubby however already knew the story and was going in pretty prepared.. and wondering if they would stick to the original story.. he mentioned something about pretty close, then something about a chest/breast plate and mark 3?! and having to start over again.. hmm)

The movie, was more violent than the transformers.. it kinda had the same feel...
It was a cant take my eyes away from the screen kind of movie.. and a Oh $%#@!!!! how much can he take??!! kind of movie... the superhero gets some major thrashing towards the end.. also you dont know how much armour he is.. so with each thing (weapons, explosions, bullets, rockets.. then getting slammed around), your cringing in your seat thinking, 'will he make it thru this?'!

Whatever the main story.. this one has thrown in the Afghanistan thing. So alot of the action is in Malibu or Afghanistan. 'Iron man' (robert downey jr) has no family, he has his uber robots and his lovely personal assistant pepper pots (gwyneth paltrow)and everything else that a billionaire would have. Gwyneth is awesome in this movie, unlike previous superhero love interests or the woman around them, she is not some blatant sex goddess like cat woman.. she is quiet, reserved and sweet.

The moral dilemma in this movie is that Tony starks creates weapons and sells weapons. He thinks that he is doing the right thing, that he is aiding the 'good guys' until he is captured and sees for himself that the enemy have his weapons and are using them against the americans and Afghanistan civilians. After his escape from the terrorists and being saved by the usa air force and bestie 'james rhodes'.. Tony stark/Iron man decides to stop creating weapons! Unfortunately the 'board' of the company files a injunction against this so Tony stark wants to find out who is selling weapons to the terrorists.

This movie will be enjoyed by those who love to 'create' things, those who love electronics/robotics/engineering.. or a sexy looking red and gold armored body suit!(with the ability to fly of course) or to see what a-ton-of-freaking money can buy!

Iron mans big battle of the movie happens right at the end.. thru the movie Iron man/tony stark is battling terrorists.. and all is revealed towards the end of the movie..

from the wiki page! whoot! "The film's stars have signed on for two sequels, the first of them scheduled for release on April 30, 2010, and Downey also cameos as Stark in the upcoming The Incredible Hulk." and

"There was much improvisation in dialogue scenes, because the script was not done when filming began (the filmmakers had focused on the story making sense and planning the action). Favreau acknowledged this would make the film feel more natural though. Some scenes were shot with two cameras to capture lines said on the spot. Multiple takes were done as Downey wanted to try something new.[22] It was Downey's idea to have Stark hold a news conference on the floor,[9] and he created the speech Stark makes when demonstrating the "Jericho".[5]"~wikipedia
and according to wikipedia it is the highest-grossing movie so far for 2008 (altho prince caspian, batman and wall-e are still to come)

Very late. Superhero movie review

2008-05-21T18:03:00.007+10:00

(Seeing marias movie review, reminded me...) I had better do a review before i forget to much about the movie!

First off, i feel kinda stupid for seeing this movie... its definitely a 'teen' movie... a movie that hubby would say (and did when i explained some of the funny scenes) that he had lost I.Q points! Its a movie i would not openly say that i went to see.. but i did.. with Tia! (there was 1 other person in the cinema.. so i did actually laugh out loud a few times.. but with the jokes, they were funny and then for the next 2 minutes your sitting back thinking, ugh enough already the farting isnt funny anymore!!!!)
"With great responsibilities comes bitches!"

The movie contains many many rip offs.. and that bit was great. We see alot of spiderman scenes, e.g missing the buss, being biten (this time by a dragonfly), assisting in someone stealing money only to have his uncle shot by that same person, the batman scene of his parents dying (however it was his fault for trying to be a 'hero' that he kills his own parents), the spiderman and love interest kiss on the ladder, theres the not-funny take off (i think i gasped at the time) about the x-men and the mutant college altho the sign says for non-asians.. im guessing thats making fun (at the studio of x-men/marvel etc) of the fact that there are NO asians in the movie x-men?

The hero is 'dragonfly', the villian is 'hourglass'. The most ripped off character is Stephen hawkings!!! Alot of bad stuff happens to steven hawkings and he swears the most as well... 0.o

Fake superheros that make 'cameos', Storm, wolverine, the human torch, the invisible woman(pamela anderson) and a take off of the two combined; professor X (but is african american) and the incredibles.. seeing as they (his family) are all dressed (in a suit n tie) like professor X (down to the little baby, they are ALL bald and all african american) oh and its a whole family each with their own super powers, he has a wife, a son, daughter and the baby. (who all live/attend the college.. follow him around etc)
they also rip off the tom cruise you tube videos...

The humor is below the table kind.. if u think farting, peeing and dumb arses are funny then this is a great movie.. however if you consider yourself a stable, intellectual, conservative, mature person well then youd be happy to know its no longer at the movies and not to buy it on dvd unless you cant think of any other better christmas present for a male 14+

tall jan is malicious cereal

2008-05-21T11:06:00.004+10:00

I think the fact that i bought the new BRAN flakes cereal! proves that im a sucker for advertising and for trying something new.. a big sucker... i mean bran flakes?!

i really really did believe they would be 'delicious'.. i must have thought finally a high fibre cereal thats coated in sugar! Theyve finally figured that cereal can have high fibre and high sugar ROFL!
However its as delicious as eating corrugated carboard with an occasional gem of silvered almond.. what was i thinking? (ok so it might be nicer than just plain old bran flakes... and great for a bran flake fan)
When broken down in your mouth it feels gritty, no doubt because of the bran.. it sticks to the top of your molars worse than dry wheat bix.

From wikipedia article:

Varieties

All-Bran comes in different varieties, although not all of them are available in all countries:

All-Bran Original (Available in Australia, USA, Canada, UK, Colombia)
All-Bran Bran Flakes/All-Bran Flakes/Petales (Available in Canada, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, France, UK)
All-Bran Bran Buds (Available in USA, Canada)
All-Bran Strawberry Buds (Available in Canada)
All-Bran Strawberry Medley (Available in Canada, USA)
All-Bran Extra Fiber/All-Bran Plus (Available in USA, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, France)
All-Bran Flakes Chocolate (Available in Spain)
All-Bran Guardian (Available in Canada)
All-Bran Honey Nut Flavor (Available in Canada)
All-Bran Cereal Bars (Available in Canada, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, UK)
All-Bran Choco/Chocolat (Available in Spain, Belgium, France)
All-Bran Splitz (Available in Spain)
All-Bran Plus Yogur/Iogurte (Available in Spain, Portugal)
All-Bran Plus Fruit 'n Fibre/Fruta & Fibra (Available in Belgium, Portugal, France)
All-Bran Figue & Pomme (Available in France)
All-Bran Fruit 'n Oats (Available in Australia)
All-Bran Tropical (Available in Australia)
All-Bran Snack Bites (Available in Canada, USA)
All-Bran Yogurt Bites (Available in USA)

is there a emergency exit?

2008-05-16T08:35:00.005+10:00

(what a clever comic eh!)

Ugh, for awhile now it ive been feeling verrrrry uncomfortable in the preggy belly. Its as if the little one is trying to swim north or west, east.. as if it was looking for a emergency exit or something.. it can get like that.. a extreme tight feeling. I swear i felt like a foot once pushing out in one of thoose extreme stretching feelings...

Ive figured out what the hiccups feel like. When the bub has hiccups this far along at 31 weeks it feels like i have a extra heart beat down near my hips. It has the hiccups alot lately. I can feel the hiccups are quite south and then i get prodded up north of the belly, so im hoping that it is upside down.. ready to go already. im in and out of the looop this time around... trying to remember it all..

In other news;
Tia's lip is all healed up! She really needed the pain relief after it was split, it really did look painful. It got the swelling right down, calmed her somewhat... For some reason they only had 7 ages + kids panadol which the doseage is worked out in weight anyways which suited her and then we halved the doseage still.. and then she only had a few sips of it after that anyways.. she ended up with a bad cold, which has gone back to a snotty nose.. which i prefer over coughing..
She went on a walk with her daddy and he told her they were going to a rocket ship shop (jaycar) she (being space captain tia at the time) was pretty disapointed and asked him where the rocket ships were?! lol..

Nori had some 'playing' time out the back, altho we did loose track of her and then she was found still in our yard.. thank God! She was driving hubby nuts as i was outside prunning all the dead stuff and Nori was constantly crying, wanting to get out! (and a few times she did runners out the door when I, hubby or Tia tried to get outside!) So need to get her a collar.. seeing as she can climb the fence?! She is a killer cat.. that i wish was more fat and lazy... theres still hope that perhaps when she reaches adult age around christmas she will get over alot of stuff.. like tackling playfully the backs of legs, playing with beads on the floor boards at 3am.. I dont like the idea of her going out, not unless she is on a leash??.. keeping her inside away from other cats was a great saving on vaccinations, worming, de-fleaing (to a degree) she gets wormed all the time since im paranoid about worms!!!!! That and our council has rules on cats being inside 24hrs or something like that.. Also unless a tick got really big, it would be hard to see on a black cat... eeewwww ticks.. or is it too cold down in vic for ticks?

Hubby wants to have a bbq in 2 weeks time, inviting everyone from work over.. first off it was going to be held outside. (until i brought up how cold it is outside come 5pm and later!) Then i bought up chairs, tables... stuff we dont have like say... A BBQ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! rofl.. to which he said could all be supplied... but im still anxious, nervous bout the whole thing.. (tho ive been told i dont have to be.. and theres no reason) oh and the entertainment for the night is ddr????!!!! yes, im afraid every function we have had, video games is the entertainment.. one time it was the playstation eyetoy, which went well.. everyone had a laugh at everyone standing up and looking silly. For some reason im just worried about the house tour.. the general emptiness of the house.. the lack of decorating, furniture etc... which i will have to get over b4 i drive myself nuts!!!!!

theres no one living on either side of us at the moment. The one on the otherside of a bit of green park comes with a homeless man.. who sleeps under the pine trees on the back fence, with all his rubbish, wine bottles etc.. the otherside is a pretty nice place, bit more expensive than here, a extra room.. So its been extra quiet lately!!!

im still around-ish

2008-05-13T09:46:00.003+10:00

We have moved into our new place. Had 2? freezing nights without electricity but did have hot water (gas). But now we have all settled in, the central heating is lovely!! (but at what price?) We had the fire going on those cold nights, which was lovely.. it was soft wood, so it did have to be constantly fed and wasnt great for lasting heat.. or heating much more than a metre from the fireplace. We had chinese takeaway for dinner those nights, it was great!!!
Glow sticks and candles were awesome in lighting the place up.
Our new place is big, lovely and comfy!

Been very busy running around getting forms, informing places of our new address. Took awhile to clean up the old place. Lots to do here (as nesting instinct is going crazy!) Have a great back and front yard, with the only grass being out on the nature strip! (great since we dont have a mower) I can feel happy watching gardening programs again, and get my pruning fix (when we get the tools) The kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms are great.. my laundry has purple walls and the toilet near it has bright orange walls.. the other walls in the house are ordinary house green, yellow, pink and white.

Tia is settling in. She loves all the mirrors, she loves the deep bath, she loves her pink walls in her bedroom, she loves that she can play outside!!!!!! She has had a few accidents, but that should go once she settles in and figures out where the toilet is each time.. and all that.

Nori is settling in. She has escaped outside a few times. (her bed and litter are in the laundry which is near the back door) she even escaped before we went out shopping on saturday and i didnt realise she was missing for about a 1 or 2 once we got home. so she spent 3-5hours out the backyard (under the deck no doubt) she came when i called her and ran inside (afraid she would get into trouble? or afraid of being outside?) And since that time, Nori has been wanting to go out again.. and protesting, crying so loudly for that to happen! to the point we started to think at 5-6months she might be in heat... It wont be happening, not as long as i can help it (the escaping outside bit.) Last night she spent the night in the laundry, cut off from the rest of the house, which is the first time here. She usually roams all the house (minus our room, in prep for the baby arrival) at night. But hubby didnt want nori waking Tia up last night..

Last night was pretty alright.. up until i was thinking of sending tia to bed. When i noticed she had her new bed socks on and she danced for a second on the wooden floorbeds and fell flat on her face! And started to cry. the fall looked heaps bad, both hubby and i were up in a instant. Hubby carried her to her room and sat her on the bed. I was terrified she had 1) smashed teeth 2)put her teeth thru her lip 3) broken her nose.

There was alot of blood in her mouth, she was crying. I then noticed a cut in her lip. When i stopped that cut bleeding, i saw that her teeth were all ok. Her lip however was swelling up. Hubby ran off to get some kids panadol from the shops. She was shaking, in a bit of a shock, tired and in pain. I rugged her up in her blankets. Her nose was bleeding a little bit, i wasnt sure if the nose had got a knocking or if the blood from her mouth had gone up into and out of her nose. (anything is possible when a kid is crying!) Tia fell asleep a few times, settled well and we waited for the panadol to arrive. The cut is on her bottom lip. It looked deep, but with the swelling now the envy of actors and those paying for botox injections it was hard to tell. Tia i noticed would look at the tissues i was using to clean her up/stop the bleeding and getting upset at that. So i made a effort to show her when it had really stopped bleeding (nose and lip) and kept the other tissues out of sight.
She had some childrens panadol and fell asleep as soon as i turned out the light. She woke up a few times thru the night. Hubby stayed up till 3-4am.

This morning, the swelling on her lip had gone down and its healing up nicely. And now there is swelling at the top of the bridge on her nose, with a faint pink mark. Im wondering if its bruised. Wont be able to tell if its broken or not 100% till the swelling goes down.. (and not worth taking her to the doctor till then) I can't say i noticed her nose swollen last night? or this pink line.. surely a broken nose would swell up instantly just like her lip did?

i'd think that 1) she would be in alot of pain with a broken nose? 2)i've seen more mysterious nose bleeds, bleed more than her nose did last night.

Oh and tia turned 5 on mothers day. She got a few nice presents (mainly lollies and clothes) money is a bit tight.. so her bike and helmet will have to wait for a bit.. just like any big present for mothers day for me. (i got bedsocks ^^ )

Still waiting for broadband. Decided to go with TPG. Never heard of them before.. but apparently our new speed will be 3 times as fast as our previous broadband connection. It was a offpeak and onpeak download limit (but both beyond our usual limits we would reach) But until that gets switched on we are on dial-up.. rofl. Im looking forward to this new speed!!! And wont complain about dial-up... just that they charge by the hour.. ugh x.x so stone age!

Hope everyone had a great weekend and all the mums had a great mothers day!

happy dance Moving House

2008-04-24T14:37:00.004+10:00

ooohhh i just noticed bloggers new add another image thingy! horray!! How long has it been there i wonder????

This happy dance is due to MOVING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!We will be moving out of this shoebox flat (that i seem sooo ungrateful for, it has done its job e.g being a home/roof over our heads) into a... wait for it... A HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!! You know one of those big things, with extra walls.. space.. privacy.. Now our flat did its job, aside from not having a laundry, any yard.. we got accomodation when we badly needed it when moving into victoria..
But im going to dream about my inside laundry with purple walls, thats actually bigger than the bathroom... purple walls??? i can get a washing machine *happy dance* ooohhh how i missed u!!!! And i can save on $$ and pollution with a wait for it.. a clothes line.. its a rope.. im sure i can put something better in.. even still i would actually have room now for one of those indoor portable clotheslines..
An absolute miracle! Thank you God!!
After the ferals had their visit from some angry person they know (drug dealer, friend or family? i dunno) hubby and his boss went into action to get us moving ASAP. Thru another lovely unexpected miracle hubby also got a payrise this week! W-o-W!!!!!! Hubby and i found the same place (without talking to each other, him being at work.. me at home) and he rang up.. they were about to process someone else application and stopped that(he told em bout the ferrals and his preggy wifey), gave us a private inspection 9am the next morning (today) faxed over applications (so we could fill them out and hand them over at the inspection) So we inspected it, applied and waited back for a answer today.. so glad we didnt have like the usual wait!!!! And success!!!!!! o.0 W-o-W!!!!!!!!!!!

And yeah.. wow.. the place is great.. (apart from the usual repetitive pink, yellow, green paint thats in 99% of houses) *not that im complaining* its got yard that needs some attention *woohoo says the greenie in me* lots of lavender, conifers.. it has a gas stove top *woohoo says the wok lover/iron chef in me* and a aerial! *woohoo says me who hates digital tv thru rabbit ear antennas and the temperamental choice of channels that work*

and its BIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*woohoo says me who gets grumpy with being able to hear Tia thru the thin walls, singing, talking, constantly in her room.. that and when she tries to run around this small place*

We get the keys on monday. Have the long weekend to pack! Need to look up a few things like gas rates etc.. This means i have to decide between 2 schools for Tia, that we can walk too. Which i need to enrol her into for next year!

youtube vid- "we gotta get out of this place" by the animals 1965?(warning the YT vid contains star wars footage).. something i grew up listening too, thanks to my dads music taste..

Stressed... again.. not feeling safe

2008-04-23T08:48:00.003+10:00

It hasnt even been a year since the sex worker who lived next door, had people around, yelling, bashing, talking about getting guns, trashing her flat, breaking her window and taking all her valuables (she had a debt to her dealer) It was a scary time..

I may or may not have mentioned the 'undesirable' people living on the other side of us, in the newly done up flat. I miss the old dude that used to live there, but i dont blame him for getting out!! Its almost sad.. people make their own choices in life, and these people have yet to make a good one.

The mum has a voice of a druggy, one of those type of voices (she looks like a older version of the sex worker actually) she is nice to talk to (like the sex worker) but yeah..

Her teen kid doesnt go to school, shes a tart (james had overheard her talking to the boys she hangs with and taking off her clothes etc..) and shes also the neighbourhood smokie bully as in she will harass people into giving her 'a spare smoke', she doesnt take 'no' for a answer at all. .. she wouldnt be older than 15 years old and has really bad hair.. (not nice, but so true.. i admit lame to talk about bad hair.. but the hair with terrible roots, terrible colour, terrible cut and all the time is just a big bed hair mess) *sigh*

Then theres the boys that hang around and don't seem to go to school either, i dont know what relation they are to them..
Theres new graffiti all the time, which isn't helping the old lady who is trying to sell her flat even with dropping 20k off the asking price. Her for sale sign gets attacked, altho someone cleaned it on the weekend (real estate no doubt) but now the kids have written all over the back of the sign.. she might want to cancel any further inspections also.. especially after last night!

yesterday i was watching tv or something, it was in the afternoon. And there was this banging and the sound of broken glass and the mum yelling the name of the person. I knew it was close, and it was.. the neighbors bedroom windows were smashed. The person who did it had thrown a metal bar of what must have been a metal stick for a broom. As there was the broom end also on the road... the police came and went..

At night, we had a group of people around the broken window, friend or foe.. i dont know..
Then i woke up later at night to the sound of more banging, kicking, lots of yelling.. then i guessed hubby had been spotted checking out what the hell was going on thru the window as the guy told him off but using other words...so hubby came into our room to look at what was happening.. i was stressed, i had the shakes soooo bad.. hubby told me that the guy had ripped off their security door with the frame on it (next door) and that their car windows had been smashed. The car with all its flat tyres has been off the road for some time, it was bought here via a tow truck when they moved in. (which is why canceling the rest of the inspections for the old ladies house or dropping off 100k the asking price) The mum yelled after the person and walked off... it was quiet and 4 police turned up... as usual too late to do anything but take notes etc..

anyways off to see what places we can look at this weekend, see if theres any new rentals... The last saturday inspections have been nothing bigger (yet they are houses!) than here.. and this place is small. we did go see some apartments for sale (11o of them) ranging from 89k-168k. cheap for a studio apartment.. and the 168k ones were like a formula 1 room space x2. they did come with a reasonable sized bathroom, spa bath.. they also have access to a pool, tennis court etc.. awesome, yet so small.. (oh and no storage except for kitchen cupboards)

Im praying today is calm, hubby said if anything happens again to call him and he will come home.. Not to leave the house (on my usual shopping day) boo-hoo!!!!
I already know what some of the people who live in these flats think of the family... and after a night similar to the sex worker they will be keen to see them gone.

high pressure sale bullies

2008-04-19T11:04:00.004+10:00

Last night, there was a knock at the door.
I opened the door and looked at the person on the other side of the screen door. it was a guy with one of those lanyard badges *which they show u quickly and is tough to read* and a clipboard.. which translates instantly to me as yet another door knocker wanting to change us over to yet another electricity companies. (we dont get avon ladies, foxtel... or anything but electricity companies.. name the company and theyve come and gone..) they also seem to come around the same time of night too, its after 6pm.

The guy instantly confused me by saying he was from victorian electicity, which had me thinking.. ok so perhaps this is some state government thing.. and he asked if i had received a letter informing us of a 7% price hike in our electricity bills? say what? of course i said 'no' (but still dubious, as a rule i never buy anything over the phone or the front door.. i also never decide on anything without hubby okaying it also, which some sales people just dont seem to understand why?) he said 'ok, i'll have to make a note of that'. he then asks to see my last energy bill (yup 100% he is trying to sign me over and talk me into it.. they all ask if they can see our energy bills to show us they have a better rate.. but course he isnt saying that) I say 'no'..

He then rattled off some savings, and cards we would get saving on caltex and woolworth fuel (we dont have a car, not that im going to tell him) i said i wasn't interested. he would reply 'sorry what?' and keep going on.. he understood english perfectly.. and kept talking
i then tried the usual tactics to get rid of him (not waiting for him to finish), "you have a green energy policy" (i have learnt now that every energy company does) darn, they did and he prattled that off too.. i tried the "but we will be moving soon anyways, so no thanks" to which he prattled off the $50 connection fee we would have paid and transfer fees that his company would or wouldnt charge us.. he then says ok, so if u can go get your drivers license *i don't of course go to get it.. i have a nsw 18+ card*, we can send you out a welcome pack... a welcome pack to what? To when have i said 'yes' to anything? I did actually say ' what welcome pack?'
ugh, this has gone on for long enough.. i say again 'sorry, no' giving him to much politeness than he deserves and close the main door.. altho somewhat slowly.. i see his face twist in a way and he laughs as if i've done something wrong? it was the weirdest laugh..

i looked up instantly to see if i could ring up and complain to the company.
hubby came home bout 10mins later and i was pretty upset. *my hormones have not been the same since becoming pregnant* I told him about the guy and he said i did the right thing, and he was a bully sales guy and that he probably laughed oddly because i was too smart for him.. he was trying to get me to sign over, without actually saying that flat out... i had to take hint for hint... or be signed over to a new company possibly without knowing it *especially if i had not asked about green power*
they always claim they are not trying to sell you anything, but thats a straight out lie. They are trying to sell their electricity company to us for our $$...

Kengo Zero Xbox 360 Review

2008-04-18T14:48:00.004+10:00

Watched hubby play, not afraid to say he is one great gamer. he played this on the normal difficulty and even then it was a bit hard to play. Then on easy difficulty he had some issues.. he said something about the game requiring more skills than most gamers actually had.
I thought it was interesting, if not repetitive .. how many games is musashi in anyways *yawn* Not that you expect to come up against him so early in the game?!!! err.. anyways each stage is like the last, beat up a bunch of ronin or thugs while walking thru a level and get to the stage boss guy *and repeat* the sound effects at the end of level when collecting experience points to spend on skills was awful!!!!! The skill map/tree was interesting.. the skills not too bad.. however counter attack and timing was a bit crazy, impossible for any novice. And thats all the game seems to offer. If you want a good samurai game, stick to the best one so far being Sword of the samurai on ps2.
End story: We returned the game and spent $69 on a different game.

27 weeks..

2008-04-18T14:06:00.003+10:00

i had no idea of how many stripes i had.. isn't it a lovely picture, pasty white skin & what can happen to ur skin via pregnancies. After having tia those stripes turned into unlovely (shrinked) bits of crinkly wrinkly skin.. heaps weird. now they have stretched all the way out again.. so none of these stripes are new. New stripes come up as bright red on my pasty white belly...
I now have to wake up thru the night to roll over! And can't sleep on my back, as im not meant too and it feels uncomfortable anyways.. 13 weeks to go..

Im also starting to feel a bit unbalanced.. which will get worse as the weeks go on. I can still put on my socks and shoes.. however that wont be for long.. the bright side is, not much longer to go.. oh and ive been shopping. ^^ More wraps, blankets, towels, suits.

Also noticed that, Tia's birthday falls on mothers day this year! So that will be interesting being just like the day she was born without all the pain etc.. sharing the same day again!

p.s do u think schools could use my belly picture in sex education. "Now if u get pregnant.. and your genetically unlucky, your belly will look like this!!!!!!"

*~Dust~*