before and after #8
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
 I think that I need to occasionally remind myself that some magazines are really better read on a casual basis, rather than through a regular subscription. A lesson in point is my Delicious Magazine subscription I asked for and recieved for a birthday present last year. Ever since then I've discovered that reading it month by month is a lot less exciting that browsing though someone else's stack of 10 at a time. I'm practically a vegetarian so I don't know what I could have been possibly thinking when I thought it would be a good idea - as an example, in the most recent edition, out of the 30 main course recipes a whopping 3 were vegetarian, and one of those featured mushrooms. Of the remaining two, both contained either rediculously expensive (ie 2 jars of marinated artichokes & 1 kg of ricotta) or just plain rediculous ingredients i.e. a salad containing amongst other things, fior di latte, creme fraiche, 1 rubarb stalk, 1 fennel bulb, 1 cup lambs lettuce and 1/2 a pomegranate. I mean come on! Who are they kidding - and who am I kidding thinking I might actually use a recipe from these magazines. So if anyone wants a stack of Delicious Magazines, in excellent condition (well except for this one I put in the bin for the photo and which now smells just a tad garlicy) - you are welcome to them. Pick up only though!
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before and after #7
Monday, 21 July 2008
 Here are some pirate cupcakes amassing for Will Wittingtons birthday tomorrow. In other news it snowed on me as I drove home today! My journey from Hobart to Kingston takes me up and over a hill generously named Mount Nelson. When I was only about halfway up the rain that was pelting onto the windscreen suddenly went quiet and the front window view looked like zillions of white shooting stars zooming towards me. I really wanted to take a photo but I didn't think climbing into the back seat to get my bag, then returning just one hand to the wheel while I rummaged through it looking for my camera was the appropriate way to handle the driving conditions.
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before and after #6
Sunday, 20 July 2008
 This is Jett before Jon finally relents and goes to BigW to buy the gloves we've been meaning to get him for a month.
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before and after #5
Sunday, 20 July 2008
 Today we went orienteering. Jon raced but my ankle is still injured so I minced around the assembly area with the children. Zali and her good orienteering buddy Pheobe trotted around the string course together and came back with armloads of 'dinosaur bones' and no amount of persuasion could convince them otherwise. If their claims are true I'm sure there'd be a lot of very excited genetisists as quite a few of the bones appeared to still have dinosaur flesh attatched. yUck.
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before and afters
Sunday, 20 July 2008
As I am currently so infatuated in "before and after" photos both on my own website and in magazines and other media, I've decided only blog in the "before and after" format for the rest of the month. The above photos are from last weekend - Jon asked the neighbours if he could give their gum tree a trim and they were very happy to let him as the branch which obscured our view also shaded their washing line. If we had really wanted to we probably could have taken the whole tree down (as the neighbours suggested a few times) but we didn't follow up on their offer as it is a nice tree. In fact it's all the nicer for not being right in front of the window. Now I can sit on the couch and see the water - it's lovely.
Astute observers will notice that I took liberties with the 'before' photo - I am taking my lead from a recent edition of Vogue Living that I read recently which promised on the cover: "56 pages of kitchens and bathrooms including before and afters". Well, it turned out that whilst there were 56 pages of kitchens and bathrooms, there were only 2 pages of 'before' and they were both staged photos with rolls of wall paper and painting trays artfully arranged around what was clearly a studio setup.
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During
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
 How clever is this - a before and after in the one photo! As you can see the new wire balustrading looks great but the new deck extension is clearly missing. Oh well - what you can also see is that it's raining so we aren't too fussed anymore. In other news I think I'm going to have to flick back through my blog archive to see what I used to blog about before we got a house.
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From Garage to Games Room
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Today we reached another exciting milestone in our garage-to-games-room conversion. It was out with the double garage door, and in with the new tinted sliding doors. (Admittedly it still looks a lot like a garage but hey there's not much we can do about that one!). After waiting approximately 6 weeks longer than the estimated time for delivery, the installation crew arrived exactly on time and were obviously adhering the same crew structure guidelines that removalist teams tend to follow - that being: one older guy who knows what is going on, two younger guys at least one of which must look like they are could be serving a community service order and at least one must chainsmoke in a manner which makes the other two guys' smoking habits look positively social. I think I'll be reporting them to the union though cos they didn't play Hits106fm and their communication didn't reach the minimum allowable percentage of swearwords (70%) in general conversation. Appearances and smokey odours aside, they did a great job and were friendly and nice to each other.
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Happy birthday to me!
Monday, 14 July 2008
 And here is my cake! All the more yummy for having been decorated by Zali, Jett and Jon. And thank you for all my birthday well wishes! Apart from the cake and a delicious dinner that Jon made, it's been a fairly normal birthday day as I've been at work. I think I'm saving myself for Friday when I'll go out and get smashed and sleep in a park before sneaking in my bedroom window at 6am. Oh no hang on, that was my 18th. (only joking mum!). It's my twenty eighth um thirty eighth birthday so I recon I'll be happy with pizza or indian from our local takeaway and maybe a dvd before a bit of Le Tour. And speaking of Le Tour, try as I might I just can't bring myself to like Cadel. I hope he wins though cos although I think he's a whinger, he's probably a clean whinger.
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Going to the gardens
Sunday, 13 July 2008
During the non-curtain-making parts of today we went to a sprint
orienteering race at Cambridge - Jon raced around his course while I walked around a shorter course with the children.. On the way home we stopped in at the botanical gardens. We only planned short visit (in fact we didn't plan it at all until we were practically there) so like the salmon ponds of a few weeks ago, it was a really unexpected nice little trip. We visited Pete's vege patch and the children raced around exploring the japanese gardens while we relaxed on the seats in the sun. Very nice.
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Great ideas which weren't
Sunday, 13 July 2008
 This is photo of the carpet in Zali's room. As Zali is not normally a draw-on-the-walls type of person it would be interesting to know the thought processes which led to this floor illustration - maybe she decided to draw the lightbulb that went off in her head which told her that it would be a fantastic idea to do some carpet graffitti.
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drained
Sunday, 13 July 2008
 Today I fell asleep on our couch in the afternoon. This is unusual for about a billion reasons but I'll restrict myself to mentioning just three - firstly - I'm not a great napper - I can rarely nap during the day even in the most sleep deprived of times. Secondly, due to a soccer injury it's not like I've been doing very much physical in the last week so I can't claim to be physically tired - obviously the tour has meant some late nights but nothing completely unusual and anyway the sounds of the Phil Liggett and the peleton (hey that's a good name for a band!) generally send me to sleep rather than keep me awake. And thirdly, not only did I fall asleep, but I fell asleep with Zali and Jett playing around and on me, and Jon ironing shirts about half a metre away. weird. The only possible explanation are the curtains... Let me explain - On Wednesday our double width garage door is being replaced with windows, thus creating a north facing sunny 2nd lounge room (once we've got the lounging type furniture in there). This means we need very wide curtains for the new windows and something for the other two windows in the garage as well. I'm blaming the curtains because even just shopping for the curtain stuff ; curtain rails, lining, curtain tape, cotton and fabric made me feel so drained I wanted to lie down in the store. It's not just the volume of stuff required, it's the price as well. How could curtains cost 1/4 of the value of the windows we've been waiting 2 months for? Anyway - once I regained my strength I decided to get vertical blinds (if it was going to cost the earth anyway) for the large windows and make the ones for the other windows. Which is what I've been doing during the last 24 hours. I chose fabric which didn't really need to be hung in a particular direction only to find that not only did it need to be hung in a particular direction, it wasn't really wide enough to do that in one go so I had to join it together and do some tricky sums and really think about how it was going to work. I'm not done yet but I'm past half way. If I can stay out of a coma for long enough the complete the lining I think the result will be good. Actually I obviously haven't done much sewing lately as both Zali and Jett were captivated by the magic of the sewing machine and insisted on observing the process from centimetres away from my shoulders which makes things quite tricky when you are working with such volumes of fabric. Anyway- this photo is of Jett about thirty seconds after he volunteered to 'tidy' up my sewing kit. He's holding a bobbin in his hand.
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little changes, big differences
Monday, 7 July 2008
I love a before and after photo - and here is our most recent.. 
Nice huh. The glass splashback replaced the 80's tiles which were a bit um.. blah. Once again there was nothing really 'faulty' about them so I had to justify the change with the fact that a smooth splashback is required in commercial grade kitchens (i.e. no grout) - and the less risk I can carry food-safety wise, the better - otherwise I could have just replaced the tiles with new ones. You'll also notice I used a few clever strategies to enhance the before and after photos such as actually tidying up so that the benchtops were visible and cheating a bit by removing boring stuff like draining racks. clever huh. Oh also if you think the wall colour looks slightly different it's because it does - before I went to Canberra I repainted the lounge/dining/kitchen with a warmer sort of white which is a bit more suited to Tassie. Oh I forgot I also replaced the dodgy old rangehood with a new one - this was a bit of an installation job for me but ultimately satisfying!
In other news, we've had four days of slave labour in the form of Jon's sister Shirl and her partner Tim visiting from Sydney. This has been fantastic! The ingenious plan was for them to arrive a week after the deck extension was finished and to then help us do the wire cabling around the extended balcony (as they are experienced in the gentle art of balustrading). The reality was that the deck extension is still merely a divot in our bank account as opposed to a tangible item. Not to worry - they demonstrated and photographed the process for Jon, then busied themselves installing insulation and undertaking the marathon painting challenge of the garage room. I'd have before and after photos but it's still a bit messy - the walls look great though and they've saved me months of toiling on my own in there. yay!
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Sydney
Monday, 30 June 2008
The shortest and final part of my holiday was a whirlwind day in Sydney. After a dawn drive to Lane Cove from the mountains I went for a run with Andy, witnessed Lyra walking and talking (which was very impressive but unfortunately I must have still been too asleep to take a photo) and then Andy and Alexa very kindly braved the crappy traffic to take me and Stix and Tracy's lovely car back to Fairlight (thank you Paul and Tracy!) Then Andy and Alexa who were by now late for a posh luncheon dropped me off at Wynyard and I got a train out to see Julie and her 15month old Jake. After a toasted sandwhich on their fantastic new deck we went for a play at the park with Jake then Julie kindly dropped me off at the airport. The last leg of my journey began as the sun set over Sydney. - What a trip! And tomorrow I'm back at work for a year. gosh! Today I'm catching my breath.
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Blue Mountains
Monday, 30 June 2008
The next part of my holiday was with my frisbee friends; Jackie,
Bruce and their son Ben in the Blue Mountains. It was Jackie's 40th birthday party so we spent a lot of time in party preparation mode (including the last minute cake decoration but between Jackie and I we have a bit of experience in that area!). The party was good fun and I got to catch up with lots of team mates and friends I haven't seen for years many of whom have since had kids - so it was great. I have to say that my highlight of this part of the trip though was getting out for 2 long walks/runs in the mountains - one with Jackie and one by myself. The weather was fantastic and of course the scenery was awesome.
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Mustard in all forms
Monday, 30 June 2008
As I've mentioned, part 1 of my holiday was spent with Belinda, Jase and the newish babies; Zoe (on left with Belinda and in the pink suit having what could only be described as a rather relaxed form of 'playtime') and Abby (in red with Belinda and looking decidedly sulky - no doubt related to being forced to wear the bulldogs beanie when she's obviously a swans supporter). We pretty much divided our time (just daytime hours for me luckily) between working with the girls and working on transforming the mustard and deep red walls to something more livable. I think it was all a great success and for me it was a bit of a treat getting an insight into life with twins - as it's not something most people will get to experience.
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