Okay... I know I'm behind and I'm supposed to post about moving house/our Adelaide trip, but I have been *super busy*! On Thursday afternoon, I realised it's a bit over a month until little B's 2nd birthday and then I had this brilliant brainwave to give her a "handmade" birthday this year... well at least partially handmade... I want to make her presents this year, to give it that little something special... I actually wanted to make her presents last year, but what with the whole moving house stuff and other busy-ness, it just never eventuated. So I'm determined to make it a handmade birthday for her this year and I'm starting early and trying to be organised... The first part of her present is a personalized ABC book... with photos and pictures of things she knows and loves... sounds easy... the concept was simple and add to that my Artscow account (who I use to print my 8x8 scrapbooking photobooks) had free credit for three 8x8 books, so I could get it made up for the cost of shipping only... However, the only catch was the credits expired at 10pm on Monday night! So I had 3 days to throw that all together! I actually designed and took photographs for half the pages yesterday. In addition to that, while I was at it and since I still had 2 free 8x8 books left, I figured I should take advantage of the extra books (and cheaper combined shipping) and pulled together 30 pages to make another scrapbooking photobook (one for me and one for Em, since she missed out on the last round I made for everyone)... I also had to design some more extra pages... but that's a bit of secret squirrel project... :p... (to all the family, I say - stay tuned for Christmas folks... :))
So I spent most of the weekend scrapping/organising stuff to try and make my Monday 10pm deadline... nothing like a deadline to get you moving... and I am happy to say I made it... :) It is crap that the AU dollar is so weak though, because it has cost me a lot more to ship than it has previously, but it's still cheaper than anything I could get done here in Australia.
I have also been busy keeping up with the CT commitments... I have had the chance to play with some totally super digital scrapbooking kits... I'm really enjoying my CT work at the moment... check out my digi-scrapping blog if you want to see what I've been up to...
So anyways... those are my excuses for not blogging ... I will try and finish that other post soon, before I get thrown into my next project which is part 2 of Beth's handmade birthday present... I'm really excited about it, it's going to be sooo cool... I will post some pics of that part as I make it... :)
And for now I leave you with this photo of Beth...
Still trying to catch up...
It's hot...
Seriously, it's only October and it was almost 30 degrees today and I feel like I've been melting all day... (it was still 29 degrees at 6:30pm!) I'm really feeling the lack of aircon in the house! Summer in this house without aircon must be like living in a furnace!
This morning, I took Beth to her first swimming lesson. She looooooved it. A little too much... We got there 10 minutes early, and they were the longest 10 minutes of Beth's life... She just wanted to jump in the pool right away, but there were other kids in the pool having their swimming lessons, so we had to wait... and Beth does not like waiting! She whinged, she cried and she got really upset when I wouldn't let her in the water... seriously, the minute out lesson was about to start, I had to let her put her feet in the water, she just couldn't wait!
The lesson was great... lots of singing of nursery rhymes, lots of "kick and paddle", fetching of toys... Beth took to it all like a duck to water. The only thing she didn't like was lying on her back (which is weird, 'cos she does it in the bathtub all the time!) and we had to do this "monkeying" along motion which involved moving along the side of the pool while holding onto the edge... Beth really didn't get the hang of that... mostly because she kept pushing herself off the wall because she wanted to be free in the water! A measure of how much she loves the water, is that she let the swimming instructor hold her to demonstrate some manouevres and also let the instructor catch her when I got her to "swim" to the instructor. She is such a water baby! After our lesson (and half an hour goes *way* too quick for Beth's liking), Beth wasn't ready to leave, so we went and paddled in the toddler pool for another half an hour and even then I had a lot of trouble convincing Beth to get out (even though her lips had turned blue from being cold!), so I just had to pick her up and take her to the changerooms while she whined!
After that, we went home and Beth ate lunch (she was starving!) and she had a huge 2 hour nap... swimming obviously wears her out... it wore me out too! So I'm off to bed to recover!
It's been busy around here...
Well... I'm halfway through a huge retrospective update about things, but I'm no where near finished, but I just thought I'd give an interim update about what's been happening this week.
Well, Monday we got our new Asko dishwasher installed... very happy about that, because I really don't like doing dishes. It's a perfect fit for the kitchen and it's soooo quiet and it does a fantastic job of drying them... the last 2 dishwashers we've had to use have been old, noisy and crappy at drying... so I'm feeling quite spoilt getting this fancy, schmancy dishwasher (which we got on sale for a pretty amazing price! Bonus!)
In the afternoon, Beth and I popped out to run some errands and to get a few groceries and when we came home it was hot, so I let Beth sit outside with a bowl of water, a cup and spoon and Beth spent a good hour playing with the water and pottering around in the backyard... it's amazing how simple things amuse her. She really loves the outdoors... she was pushing her toy lawnmower around and laughing and just generally being silly!
Here's a photo of my girl having a good time with a bowl of water - 
Notice how that long strand of hair in the middle of her forehead is plastered down with water while the rest of her hair is dry? That's because she decided to dip her face in the bowl of water! She's a funny one, my Beth.
Tuesday, I had a guy come out give us an air conditioning quote... I should mention now, that it was hot on Monday, but I didn't realise how hot... the forecast had been for 30 degrees and it ended up being 35 degrees... I was wondering why I felt sooo hot... so Beth and I managed to survive a typical queensland summer day in our house without airconditioning... pretty impressive. Having said that, I'm not keen on sweltering regularly, so getting airconditioning installed can't come quick enough! It gets pretty hot in our house when it gets above 25 degrees! Still sorting out some things (like getting insulation installed before the ducted aircon gets put in)... but with any luck we'll have aircon by the end of the month.
Our heavy 69kg flat pack desk from Officeworks also got delivered on Tuseday... more on that later.
Tuesday afternoon, we went to Chermside... Target had a 20% sale on swimwear, and I needed new swimwear for the swimming classes that we're about to start... Now, I thought shopping for swimwear was pretty stressful... but shopping for swimwear with a toddler in tow... that's stressful! Beth decided to be whingy, whiny, noisy and a general pain the whole time I was looking at swimwear... I found it impossible to find stuff
(a) in a decent colour
(b) which covered up all the lumps and bumps I needed to cover up
(c) in my size (doesn't help that I'm a different size up top to the bottom...
I finally found a few different things to try on and then had to try them on with annoying child in the change room with me... In the end, I opted for a brown halter neck top with blue flowers (sounds hideous, but trust me actually looks quite good... I know Em is thinking "OMG, you chose brown?!?!"), with matching brown board shorts with a small similar motif. And a blue rashie (need the sun protection in this Queensland sun!) After all that whinging, I let Beth sit in a helicopter ride thing for 20 minutes! She needed the break and so did I!
Wednesday, had another aircon guy come to give us a quote in the morning... and then had to go and pick up my new Baumatic cooktop from Clive Peeters in the afternoon. Boy, did that turn out to be a headache... I had called them in the morning to confirm the cooktop was there (it was being ordered in apparently) and talked to someone who said they would get my salesman to call me back. After 2 hours, he hadn't so I called them again and after being put on hold for a bit, spoke to the salesman and he said yes it was there for me to pick up. So I went to go pick it up and discover that he's had the display/showroom cooktop wrapped up in bubblewrap for me to take and didn't even have the courtesy to tell me. Not a happy camper, but they knocked another $100 off the price and I was ok to take it. Got it home and had a look through the manual and discovered the last 3 pages of the manual were missing... and they were the important pages with the installation, electrical and guarantee information! Called up CP again who told me to called the after sales support... was on hold for ages getting through to after sales support, but finally got through and managed to get a copy of the entire manual emailed through to me. Thank goodness I checked the manual, because we would have had a lot of dramas when installation time came if they didn't have the installation and electrical specifications!
Wednesday night, Phan and I tackled putting together our flat packed desk... Now we've done our fair share of putting together flat packed furniture in the past (and we've had a couple of mishaps), so we've learnt some lessons... such as using a level is generally a good idea! It took us 2 nights to put together the desk... The instructions were a bit wrong and difficult to understand and it didn't help that some of the pieces of wood were labelled and others weren't... and then we discovered that some of the pieces that were labelled were labelled incorrectly! What the? Are the desk engineers purposely trying to do our heads in? But we figured it out and did most of it on Wednesday night and then just the drawers on Thursday night. We're pretty happy with how it all worked out... Phan and I make a pretty good team when we do this kind of stuff... Phan does most of the putting together, but I'm there to hold stuff together, label things and double check the instructions and re-read the diagrams to make sure we're doing it right... They should have a subject in highschool called "assembling flat packed furniture"... I think it's a pretty good skill to have... and practical too :)
Thursday, my new cooktop got installed at 7:45am in the morning! After all the drama I had with it yesterday, I just wanted the damn thing to be put in... and I was relieved when it was installed, although not without a couple of close calls. Firstly, I needed a wooden insert put into the cutout for the stove... (the cooktop is a couple of centimetres too small) and the guy thought he had no wood to put in an insert, but managed to find a piece in his truck, thank goodness. Secondly, the circuit breaker needed to upgraded from 25V-30V to handle the induction hobs... they thought they would also have to upgrade the cabling to handle it, (which would have taken 1.5 hours!), but thank goodness the cabling was adequate to handle the upgrade. So after those minor hiccups, it was all installed by 8:30am. After having some breakfast and getting ready, I headed out to get some new cookware to use on the induction part of my cooktop.
I spent a good half hour browsing DJs for my new cookware... I had $270 worth of vouchers (from my credit card reward points), so in the end I got a Jamie Oliver Pot Roast Pan (like the saute pan that Phan's mum has, which I loved using while we were staying with them during our holidays) and an Essteele 7 litre Pasta/Stockpot with pasta insert... both were on sale ($289 down to $190 for Jamie, and $189 down to $95 for my stockpot), so I only ended up having to pay $10 once the vouchers were used... what a bargain! :) I'm very particular when it comes to buying cookware... It's worth paying good money for good quality stuff that will last.
After that, Beth had been so good whilst I had been shopping, I treated her to some sushi for lunch (gee, she loves it!) and then I did a spot of grocery shopping and discovered that Beth had fallen asleep in her stroller once I'd finished. So I quickly browsed Big W for a couple of things and let her sleep for 40 minutes and then tried to transfer Beth to the car without waking her... which wasn't very successful... she woke up whilst I was moving her.
We got home and I gave Beth a bowl of water to play with outside whilst I cleaned up the kitchen and tried to learn how to use my cooktop... I made bolognaise in my Le Crueset cast iron pot using the induction hob and man, I have to say I'm impressed... it heats quickly and the heat is so even... I've always had hot spots where food sticks using the le crueset (even on low heat and whether it be on gas or the crappy electric hobs I've used at the townhouse), but induction gives such an even heat, it's amazing... no food sticking here... and the temp control is amazing, goes from boiling to a simmer in less than 10 seconds... Can you tell I'm totally loving induction cooking? If you want to read more about induction cooking try reading this. (Yes, this is for your benefit Em! :p). Now to figure out how many more induction approved pots I need, so I can use it more often... :)... Perhaps I'll ask for a chip-in towards pots for Christmas... :) (Yeah, I'm sure a few of my family members out there are rolling their eyes at the thought of giving me cookware for Christmas! LOL!)
Now today (Friday) has been a totally cruisy, tradesman free day. This morning, Beth and I did some craft... We've actually done drawing and craft every day this week... I'm setting up a wall in our open plan dining area with all her artwork blu-tacked on display... :) It's nice to have that bit of space to display her creations... Then I tied some streamers to our portable clothes line and Beth spent *ages* walking through them... it's hilarious, cheap fun! I got some (dodgy) photos of her playing in the streamers, which I may post later.
In the afternoon, popped out to do our grocery shopping and spent the afternoon in the backyard playing and chasing Beth and trying to take photos of her. There is a great big tree in our backyard which casts a big shadow, so it's nice and cool to play outside there. Oh, we also had our first "drawing on the wall" incident. I knew it was going to happen so time and she decided to decorate the wall with purple texta... lucky it was one of those Crayola washables and it wiped right off without a trace!
Phan's working this weekend and I've got a roller door guy coming to install an automatic garage door opener at 7:30am tomorrow morning (nice and early!)... and then a fence guy giving me a quote at 10am.... Then we're planning to go to Ikea to check out some stuff in the afernoon and pop into Trangs on the way home for dinner. Sunday is supposed to be 32 degrees! So we're just going to try and stay cool... maybe we'll go scope out the local pool and see what that's like. Either that or sit in the backyard with a big bowl of water! :)
I'll leave you with a photo I took this afternoon that I quite like - 
Quick photo...
I'm in the middle of 2 big blog posts, neither of which are finished, but I thought I'd quickly share this photo I took of Beth today... I decided to get back into my photography groove today, so I got out the camera this afternoon... Beth was too busy running around and not listening to me and was a lot of hard work, so I only got a couple of good shots, but here's one of my faves... I was tickling her at the time...
Enjoying our new backyard...
This afternoon Beth got her first proper chance to play around in our backyard... Prior to today, the grass was really long (about 10 cm!)... and there were some scarily tall flowering weeds which were attracting a lot of bees, so I had been reluctant to let Beth outside. However, Phan mowed the lawn today.... not without event, I might add... it took him 20 minutes to attach the catcher... the instructions were stupid and we didn't realise we had to remove te mulcher insert-y thing to be able to attach the catcher! Then he set it to cut too short, turned off the mower and then had trouble restarting it 'cos he flooded the engine... but after that it all went smoothly... he was knackered afterwards! But the end result was a lovely neat backyard which Beth could run around in!
So here's a little snippet of our little monkey imitating her Daddy...
Please excuse the shaky, running footage at the edge... Beth was heading towards the "dangerous" end of the backyard where this like a 1.5 metre drop at the edge, which is only has a 50cm barrier around it, so I was running after her to stop her from going over there!
I'm baaaaack! :)
I'm back online! :) Our Naked ADSL2+ connection was provisioned on Friday, just in time for us to come back from our holiday in Adelaide!
It's been a busy 2 weeks... so much has happened, so I will reserve the details for a humungous blog entry update later...
But I thought I'd quickly jump on here to say "Hi!"... I have a gazillion things to do and catchup on and plan... Right now I'm taking a break after a morning of doing more unpacking, cleaning (whilst listening/watching John Mayer's Where The Light Is concert on blu-ray... amazing concert!) and then having some hilarious moments sitting with Beth and watching Phan mow the lawn... I'll have to write a blog post sometime about how Phan is *so* not the handyman type... although I have to give him 10/10 for trying... but all I can say is thank goodness he's not a tradie or he would get nothing done!
Next week is going to be a busy week... dishwasher being installed tomorrow (yippee!), getting a couple of quotes for air conditioning, hopefully getting quotes for an automatic garage door opener... new desk being delivered on Tuesday, oh I bought a new cooktop yesterday (a Baumatic 1/2 magnet induction and 1/2 electric cooktop... it's got hyperspeed elements on it, so it's going to be FAST... going to be awesome!) and it's being installed on Thursday... somewhere in between all that, I have to go looking for a new swimsuit for me 'cos Beth starts swimming lessons next Monday and I really need a new swimsuit that hides my belly!
I'll be back later with a bigger update!
Why Do I Blog?
My scrapping buddy Donna has the asked the question on her blog... "Why do you blog?" Well, I have many reasons for blogging...
My day-to-day blog is my online diary... an insight into what Beth and I get up to during any given week... Even thought we talk regularly to our family who are interstate on skype or via email, blogging is my little way of keeping our family up-to-date with what we're doing. I often forget to tell them the many odd weird, random stories about what Beth is doing ... plus, when you have uber cute photos accompanying an anecdote on the blog, it paints the picture so much better. The other purpose for me blogging, is for myself, so *I* don't forget these cute things that Beth gets up to... I have trouble enough remembering what I had for breakfast yesterday, so it's pretty easy to forget all the funny things that happen in the journey of "growing-up"... I often look back just to read and remember what we did last month or 6 months ago... I go back and read my old msn blog which I started when Beth was 3 months old and I have trouble remember the foggy haze of sleepless nights and continuous breastfeeding... I remember it happening (and that it was hard work!), but I don't remember the details, which is what the blog is all about... it's nice to read back on it and recall the smallest details... things like how excited I was when Beth first smiled at me (my blog post made it seem very exciting!)... or the terrible sleep patterns we endured for a few months... Or what we did on those big events like birthdays and Christmas...
My scrapping blog is my separate little world of creativity where I can share my work with people with the same interest. I know some of my family pop in and have a look now and then, but mostly they don't, which is kind of good so that they get surprised when they receive scrapbooked photobooks as presents... :p But I love my little creative space there... I just like to share my work with whoever cares to look...
Lastly, my recipe blog is my little dedication to my mother whose passion was cooking... that blog is mostly neglected (there are just not enough hours in the day!), but it's just nice to have that little space to jot down little recipes and menu plans now and then... I really must get around to doing something more for that blog...
Okay and now I must really stop procrastinating and get to bed... another busy day for us tomorrow as we head to playgroup in the morning and then more packing in the afternoon. Less than 48 hours to go...
And just in case I don't get in here tomorrow, we're more than likely going to be losing our phone line and internet connection from Friday, so if you don't hear from me for a few days, we'll just be sans internet and probably busy moving and unpacking stuff and getting ready for our trip home to Adelaide.
So until my next blog post, take care and I'll be back soon to update on all our happenings...
Oh and let me also ask you the question - Why do *you* blog?
