Product Review - Gelli Baff
Monday, 8 February 2010
 The kids have recently seen an advertisements for a product called Gelli-Baff - which claims to turn your bath water into jelly, then back again when you add a sachet of jelly dissolver. They'd been wanting to try it for a while (who wouldn't!) so when they recently completed a string of good deeds we went up to the supermarket to get some.
It actually took us a while to find it as it was in the kids toys aisle (as opposed to bath products) - I recon this is because it's well and truly priced as a gift, not an every day item (like bubble bath). I kid you not but a pack of Gelli-Baff costs $12.56! Of course divided over all the jelly baths you have per pack it brings the cost down per bath considerably. All the way down to 12.56 per bath in fact. Yep - only one bath per pack! And not only that but the product says it will turn 40 litres of water into jelly - which is a regular bath filled up to about 6cm deep. Pretty shallow really - and reeking slightly of false advertising as there's a picture on the cover of the pack of a bath filled with considerably more than 6cm of water. So how did it perform I hear you ask. Well it was ok - the water went jelly-ish and the kids thought it was pretty fun. It was kind of more like consistancy of that glue you do paper mache with than jelly. When we put the stuff in which was supposed to turn the jelly back to water it only really did it a bit. So the kids had to have showers after the bath anyway.
Overall it was ok - probably a good present for a birthday party or something like that. My major question though is why the heck did they spell it like that?
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Success!
Monday, 8 February 2010
 We've had a few dissapointments in the garden this year. The basil, brocolli, chillis, raspberries and eggplants have all been less than successful. Other stuff however has been great - and today we harvested more than a bucketfull of potatoes from just 2/3 of our potato patch. We've also had luck with our strawberries, zuchini, lettuce and it looks like we'll be able to fill a trailer full of pumpkins once they have finished growing.
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Cupcakes anyone?
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Or perhaps you'd prefer a more formal arrangement.. 
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Craft Corner
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Today - with a little bit of help from Jon - I finished my first mosaic pot. I've been working on it bit by bit for the last six months but I really really wanted it to be finished by today so it took a lot of late nights this week to get it finished off. I'm happy with the result. The next pot I work on will be smaller I think!
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Stripey Cake
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
 I was sick over the weekend so apart from reading a few books and consuming panadol, I didn't do too much. I did make this little cake as I started to recover on Sunday evening though. It was one where I basically got to do what I liked - so I came up with this (for a gentleman's 55th birthday)
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Holiday Part 2 : Hastings Caves & Thermal Pool..
Thursday, 28 January 2010
 The last time Jett visited the Thermal Pools he wouldn't have even dared to look at the water, let alone swim in it. This time all the non-toddlers swam, raced around the walking tracks by themselves and enjoyed the tour through Newdegate Cave - Toby even dared to ask the tour guide a question (Were were any waterslides in the cave?). Actually Zali did too - she wanted to know if anyone had ever died in the cave - I think the kids interest in death was heightened by a stop at the graveyard on the Ida Bay railway the day before. Anyway I've included a picture of Duck Hole Lake (top right) which Tracy and I ran to on one of the mornings, and the Southport Tavern so Miley can remember his self declared Best Day of His Life when he (and all the other kids) were served up huge chocolate icecream sundays after the main course of chips.
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Australia Day 2010
Thursday, 28 January 2010
For the first time since it started a few years ago we went down to Kingston's Australia Day celebration at the local beach. The weather was ok and the beach was nice and all but after Cronulla I think we all felt a bit uncomfortable seeing people (particular big groups of youfs) all decked out in Australian F lag stuff. Also the beach was missing a certain something (ferry boat races? something anyway) that might have kept us there longer. After an hour or two we caught the free double decker bus back to the car (the highlight of the experience for the kids!). In the afternoon we had good fun up at Ferntree where Tracy and I went for a run while Jon, Paul and the kids walked to Silver Falls. Afterwards we all played hide and seek in the playground until it was time to go to Denny's house for a BBQ which was really pleasant (yay Denny's deck!).
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Holiday Part 3 : Cockle Creek
Thursday, 28 January 2010
 After checking out of the not-very-salubrious Southport Tavern (Southern most tavern in Australia) we drove south for another 35 or so kms and ended up at the southern most point that you can drive to in Australia. The day was beautiful and the ki ds all got involved in industriously building some sort of city in the sand. Zali found a creepy shell with what looked like a hand coming out of it, and the grown-ups all walked to the whale monument at the end of the beach. It was beautiful. In fact if you didn't know it, you might think you had landed in North Queensland..
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Holiday Part 1 : Ida Bay Railway..
Thursday, 28 January 2010
  We're pretty much just back from a 2 night adventure down south with the Bluett-Marsh family (inc. Tiia, Big Jamie and Baby Kari) and the Flemings (inc. Miley, Toby, Little Jamie). Day one included a trip on the Ida Bay Railway which I last did about 25 years ago I recon. I'm generally not a fan of the touristy railway but seeing the kids all have a great time was excellent. It was a surprisingly blustery and chilly compared to the previous few days but we found enough wam clothes to keep everyone snug.
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beware innocent looking babies..
Thursday, 28 January 2010
 Item 1 - Cute, innocent looking baby Item 2 - Frangipani soap with bite marks. Draw your own conclusions. Actually the interesting part is that there appears to be TWO bites taken from the soap - you'd think one would have been enough! Babies, not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
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Summer Holidays
Friday, 22 January 2010
 This week we've gotten into a really nice routine of getting up around 8am. Doing swimming lessons at 9:30 (I get to swim in a lane while Zali and Jett do their lessons), stopping by at the German Bakery for a Brezel and Croissant (yep I know - that's not very german!) then hanging out at Nutgrove Park where we do a combination of scootering, swimming at the beach, playing on the playing stuff and reading our books on the grass (ok I'm the only one doing that last one). It's been beautiful weather and I've really enjoyed it. I'll miss it when the kids go back to school - actually maybe I'll just keep doing it without them.
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Local Flowers
Thursday, 21 January 2010
 We had some lovely guests from the Mainland join us for dinner during the week. It was very pleasant. So were the flowers that I picked from the garden to decorate the table.
In other business I'd like to suggest that mens tennis is much more exciting when it's just best of 3 sets. Also I really thinK Andy Roddick is just rude and I hope he gets knocked out soon. And then fined for being obnoxious - just for good measure.
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Zali's Party
Sunday, 17 January 2010
As I mentioned we hosted Zali's 'Beadalicious' birthday party today. It all went very well and the kids enjoyed themselves. Interestingly both Jon and I observed a distinct difference between this party and other parties she has held or attended in the past. It seems that when the party has more than a couple of boys there's a different sort of feel compared to when there's just the odd little brother or cousin hanging around. The boys seem to form a gang and just get straight into running around and creating their own fun (in the process drawing the girls into their activities) whereas the girls on their own prefer to wait for structured activities such as party games and things to get them started up. As you can see from the photographs they all got into everything in the end and the playground got a big workout from everyone. I made Zali a Pinata cake which was just a regular cake with a chocolate dome on top that the birthday kid smashes with a hammer to get to the cake (covered in gold coins) beneath. Easy huh! Wrong! It took me six (6) tries to make the chocolate dome - I tried 4 different types of chocolate over 2 days and I recon I spent at least $20 in the process. I am obviously more of a cake person than a chocolate person as I've had other chocolate failures before despite attempting to follow instructions to the T. Now if you are wondering what's been going on with my walks it's that we're all on holidays so it's hard to get away for a long time. I've mostly been running the walks I've already documented - I've found with careful management I can nurse my ankle through 3 or so runs a week which is good. I did have an opportunity to do a good walk on Thursday but the weather wasn't great so I had to turn around and spend the rest of the day watching tennis on tv. Shame.
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Not quite the Australian Open
Sunday, 17 January 2010
 This year I had grand plans to go to the Australian Open. Unfortunately Virgin Blue failed to comply by not having any available frequent flyer seats. So I had to console myself by going to watch the Moorilla International in Hobart instead. I've never been before but my first happy surprise was that I could get tickets to 3 sessions for $75 including the two semis and the grand final. Cool! The second cool thing was that all the tickets were general admission but given the smallness of the venue it wouldn't have been possible to have a bad seat unless you fell under the grandstand. The third cool thing was that I'd just played outdoor tennis for the first time in years, the day before the tournament so I felt properly warmed up for the experience. The Moorilla International attracts a few big names but unfortunately they had already been eliminated by the semifinal stage - the players left in looked pretty good to me though so I got to watch some good tennis and I took home some pretty good sunburn - perfect.
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Love that floor
Sunday, 17 January 2010
 On most days I'm indifferent at best about our cork floors. On days like today when we hosted Zali's birthday party - I LOVE them.
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