Happy Australia Day!

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!

Wrestling with time management.. etc

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!!..

Kengo Zero Xbox 360 Review

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.

more yawns

so very tired. What a day!
First off, i got sucked into a interesting video game..
then we were off to get Tia and her hearing check done... that went well, until the end and Tia was more interested in playing with toys than listening for sounds. Turns out they are pretty sure she is very normal with her hearing.. but we can re-book if we want to attempt to finish the test again. No charge, so that was cool. Then we did some shopping out that weird way.. i was getting cold so i bought myself a jumper for $7.50 good thing one clothing shop was still selling winter-ish stuff!

Since i was walking past the doctors, thought i'd go in and make an appointment. When i got there, it was empty and the doctor was catching up on paper work.. hahahaha i thought wow! i bet i will get straight in! And yes i did! woohoo!

Did some more shopping afterwards, got some pre-school learn to write books.. i have looked at Tia's recent drawings (on the kitchen bench!!! grr!) and she has drawn/written the letters: p,b,y,m ??!!

Waited around for 90mins for hubby to leave & lock up work. had a coffee to wake myself up.. then tried out the new chicken range at macdonalds.

The new chicken deluxe burger, has a mix of iceberg & spinach leaves?, like a cesaer sauce and a interesting more breasty chicken patty that is crumbed, 1 slice of tomato and a slice of natural looking cheese. The chicken dippers are pretty tasteless, breasty.. the end result. If you want a chicken burger or chicken pieces go to kfc! 1 small chicken deluxe burger meal, a chicken deluxe burger with bacon & 3 chicken dippers will put you back $17!!!!!!!!!! Its expensive and if ur cravin kfc it is not even comparable!

We then got a new xbox 360 game, Assassin's creed. went and bought sake, checked the arcade but for some reason it had shut 1 hour early, so no ddr. Maybe thats a good thing, since im so tired lately.

DH 30th Birthday

it went well yesterday. I got a call early in the morning from DH telling me how his office was decorated with metallic big paper cut-outs of 30's everywhere, a cluster of balloons with the number 30.

Tia and i? well we were off to the beach, but we had to go to go-lo or reject shop to find a cheap bucket n spade for the beach!

Tia was sooo very happy and excited she was going to the beach! So i used a few times to remind her to behave.. or maybe i used it as a threat! hahaha!

We had to get home to order pizza online to arrive for DH lunch. DH asked me later how the pizza person knew it was his birthday and i said i had the name for the order as 'birthday boy' hahaha!

He had cake at his work that the boss's wife had made! (he bought home 2 pieces for Tia and i) I havent tried it yet, but its a orange and poppyseed with a strawberry and chocolate on top of the icing.


When we got home, i played some video games, cleaned the house, put tia in the bath. Then told her to get ready for DH birthday party and helped her into a cute dress. ;)

I put the bought yum-cha in the oven, started on a beef stirfry. I made sure we had some nice sauces for the yum cha, sweet chilli and plum sauce! I love my plum sauce. Unfortunately only the spring rolls did not contain fish or shrimp! Tia loved it, DH loved it. All good! ;)

I decided i'd do something light for DH birthday dessert/cake, i knew he was having cake thru the day, i knew i didnt want to be stressed or in the kitchen all day and i knew i didnt want anything 'heavy'. So i decided on a pav/meringue thing, i did have egg whites in the fridge BUT i dont have a electric beater, so i decided to be lazy and buy some nests all done! After dinner i decided to keep with the birthday cake tradition and so i put this interesting thing together with toothpicks, however they did crack it did hold altogether for as long as it needed to! I decided on caramel top n fill, since hubby isnt into berries that much.. he is a BIG caramel fan tho.
So i was surprised with Nestle top n fill caramel!(hadn't tried it before) i could pipe it! woohoo! And it tasted exactly 100% like the caramel filling from a bakers for caramel tarts or caramel eclairs etc. It was gorgeous! Its so deadly! I could so live on it! lol! only its not very kind calorie/fat wise! He blew out his candles, dished it out and put some double cream on top! yum!
DH got for his birthday: slippers with mario (a Nintendo character) on them(which he then told me he doesnt like slippers), A bottle of Galliano Amaretto & The godfather blackhand edition game for the wii. (he bought himself the game tenchu z for the xbox 360) and thats about it.

Transformers XBOX 360

Havent finished it yet. a almost free-roam play(like grand theft auto but more restrictions and the only time you get to beat up deceptacons are in the missions.), with options to re-do the prev missions and stages.











You play the transformers (no choice as to who, bumblebee, optimus prime, ironhide,jazz so far).

The game has the same overall plot as the movie.(but with some changes, obviously to shorten the game. correct me if im wrong but the voices dont sound the same and 'mikela' in the game looks a bit odd, sam however, looks fine. The amvs in the game aren't from the movie and dont have a lesser graphic quality than the movie. But the upside is they didnt cheat and gave us some more extra transformer footage and not jus cut and paste)

I found the game-play a bit frustrating, i wanted more hp, more grunt.. true i didnt want to kill every autobot the same way over and over with one attack.. but so far alot of the deceptacons cant bit hit by melee or you have to stun them by throwing a bus, lamp-post, giant hamburger, bus etc.. you can pick up just about everything, my fave is police! who the hell do they think they are picking on a autobot? im trying to save the world here, give me a break! (oh pick up and throw btw.)

so yeah you have to stun them before you can hit them melee or you can only kill them by throwing things at them over and over.

The missions have little room for error, never fear there are no lives.. no gameover just 'mission failed' and that means you have to re-start it and try that mission again.

You can unlock special features, movies, gallery, transformer character information, play mini games. You can transform! whoot! Will please any transformer fan!