before & after #22
Monday, 28 March 2011
 I recon I've been riding my scooter most days from the car to work for almost three years now. Whilst I recon I'm pretty great at getting from a to b in the fastest time possible on it, I must admit that I'm not great at scooter maintenance and lately I've had a couple of complaints from casual riders that the brakes are a little soft. By 'soft', they mean, 'don't work at all' - so the other day I finally replaced the front brakes. Have a look at what the old one looked like compared to the new one behind it! Gross and amazing!
|
before & after #21
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Recently we've been going out to Kellevie where Jon races his aging mountain bike (and aging body) on a set of purpose built mountain bike tracks. As there is often a gaggle of kids hanging around, the organisers have put on an impromptu kids race at the end of the day. Each one has been just a few laps around a 300m flat dirt course. The before shot is before the starter noticed that Zali was a girl. The after shot is where she actually got to start from! Take note of the happy expression on her face. Of course by just looking at her rig, you can imagine what happened about 15 seconds after the start! Still she did well to hold onto 2nd last place, and Jett did even better not to be completely outraged that his big sister got a head start when he was the youngest in the field by almost 2 years! All's well that ended well though, as every competitor got a can of fizzy drink for finishing.
|
before & after #20
Friday, 12 November 2010
The bit of cake decorating that I like the most is the 2nd last bit, where all the bits come together to make the final product. It normally takes way less time than the rest of the process and the result is generally really satisfying. The very last bit is delivery and normally that is just a pain! Anyway - this is my 2nd cake destined for the Huon Show. It's called 'Kiss Me'.
|
before & after #19
Thursday, 11 November 2010
This is my Christmas Cake entry for the Huon Show on the weekend. It's called 'Two Turtle Doves' just in case you were wondering what the ducks were for. Last year it looked like the cooking section could do with a few more entries so I'm entering a couple and hopefully Jon will get a chance to put a cake in the 'Chocolate Cake Made By A Male' section tomorrow. Anyway I'm really happy with this design and how it progressed from the paper design to the final cake. Jon will be happy with it too as it's got about an inch of marzipan on it to give it the height I wanted!
|
before & after #17
Monday, 19 January 2009
Jett's living conditions have improved a lot since his laundry days. Of course it does mean he doesn't have flowing water and washing facilities in his room anymore, but I think he appreciates the extra space! His current room looked similar to Zali's before photo at 11am on Saturday, yet just 24 hours later he had a room of extreme coolness. Well that's what Clare and I recon anyway. The coloured dots are spray-painted (clare's brilliant idea) rounds of wood that he can re-arrange how he likes. We're also pretty proud of the striped transition to the feature wall during which Clare mastered the art of the perfect edge - in fact Clare was indispensible and doing this room with Clare was even more fun than doing Zali's as we could consult on important design decisions and generally split all the work - it was great! Jett seems happy too.
|
before & after #16
Monday, 19 January 2009
A few weekends ago I made-over Zali's room. The photo on the left was how it was when she got up on Saturday (you can just extrapolate the mess to the rest of the room), the photos on the right are how it was when she went to bed on Sunday. I could be accused of overindulging indulging Zali's pink preferences but I really really enjoyed doing it! The letters on the wall are made from craftwood and scrapbooking paper, and the butterflies are made from more scrapbooking paper, laminated and stuck onto the walls with blue tack so she can move them around. I had made the curtains a few weeks before. Putting it all together was very satisfying and fun. It's really nice to finally be able to do this stuff to our very own house!
|
before and after #15
Thursday, 31 July 2008
As any current or past parents of new-born babies will know, there isn't a limit to what you will do in order to 'settle' them so that you can clock up a few hours sleep youself - If the baby falls asleep faster when you dress up in a penguin suit and cartwheel across the floor to the sounds of Lionel Richie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling', then you'll be ringing the costume hire places to get the best long term hire deal. Luckily though, most babies settle for some lighter style soothing such bassinet rocking, jiggling or pushing. This sounds relatively do-able but after 4 hours and the equivalent of 4000 kms you might be wishing you'd gone the penguin suit option. This is Robin's solution: Turning on the drill generates the desired bassinet wobble and also provides some much craved for 'white noise' which saves having to leave the vacuum cleaner on nearby (although for Ms Vacuum Cleaner 2008 that normally isn't a problem but I guess there's only so much vacuuming the carpet will stand). Anyway - we won't be seeing it on The New Inventors for a while but It seems to work for Jamie.
|
before and after #14
Thursday, 31 July 2008
In the past few weeks Jon and I have had more conversations about window furnishings & pelmets than any human beings should have to have in a lifetime. The majority of our discussions have been related to the big windows on the other side of the games room but as we're still firmly at the before stage with them, here are the ones on the water side - featuring the curtains I made as well as the pelmets - I can't count woodwork as one of my skills, so the fact that they were roughly the right size and are still attached to the wall is a big achievement for me - I wouldn't be standing too close to them during an earthquake though!
|
before and after #13
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Unfortunately this is a before and before photo. I think it's now about five weeks since our builder said he'd have the deck extension finished the first time and two weeks since he said he'd have it done the second time. As you can see all we have are a set of holes where the posts will go - I put in a close-up of one of them since I've calculated them to be worth about $1000 each and I thought you might like to see what a 1k hole-in-the-ground looked like- there doesn't seem to be any gold plating, surprisingly
|
before and after #12
Thursday, 31 July 2008
This is how dad used to have breakfast. It used to be a nice quiet relaxing time during which he could peacefully contemplate the day ahead whilst admiring the spectacular views of the river on his right. On weekdays though, things have now changed... Admittedly Jett isn't normally there but I took him along for the drop-off trip just for a change so he wanted to be part of the double breakfast routine too. They've all had their regular breakfast at home but as Granny and Grandad have nutrigrain the first thing they do when they get there is rush about getting bowls, spoons, milk etc and carrying them out to the breakfast table (there isn't this sort of self-help energy going on at home I might add)! Luckily for dad, after what appears to be a short and intense inhalation of nutrigrain he is left with peace and quiet with just a few extra bowls, spoons and milk splatters to clean up afterwards.
|
before and after #11
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Today Zali and the other kids from Sandy Bay Infants School had their annual cross country race. These photos are from the Kindergarten Girls division and that's Zali fourth from the right. She finished comfortably in the same position about 30 seconds later. Later on back in class they were asked to draw their favourite thing about the race and Zali drew the multi coloured bunting they had at the finish. I noticed that the girls took it all a lot more easy than the boys so although I'm sure they can run as fast if they had all been in the one division the boys would have mostly finished in front. Interesting. Miley finished a commendable 4th in the Prep boys event which was at least twice as long.
|
before and after #10
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Long time readers will know that we've been running a comparison between the growth of Zali and the growth of a grass-tree we planted at Hardy's Bay on the central coast of NSW (Shirl and Tim's place). I've finally downloaded some photos from our Easter visit which include some new comparisons. A number of things are immediately obvious from these- Firstly - Zali's tummy is still very cute and her clothes are still slightly too small, secondly, whilst the tree (and the garden generally) has certainly grown, it still can't talk, read or write so Zali is way ahead there. . thirdly, my mobile phone takes adequate photos but struggles with the harsh NSW light. We planted a tree for Jett as well while we were there (the one in the middle) and I guess while it will never be taller than Zali, Jett probably will. Luckily Zali can't read so well that she could read this or she would be devastated to find out that she won't be a big sister forever (physically anyway).
|
before and after #9
Saturday, 26 July 2008
 The problem with documenting your life (at least visually) with only before and after photos is that it requires a fair bit of foresight. Unfortunately I've not always got the wherewithall to realise that I need to take a photo before anything has happened. My struggles to keep us all entertained aside here's a recent craft project - if you are wondering what is actually going on here - I used a toy catalog, some glass beads, magnets and glue to make some cool fridge magnets for the kids. In the last few days I've gotten to do a few projects actually - from covering our noticeboard with retro-ish fabric, to hack-sawing a metal strip between two doors, to re-organising the pantry, to woodshopping some pelmets (one down, one to go) to doing a little bit of concreteing. This last activity was quite exciting - as a result of the recent roller-door removal and window-sliding door installation, we were left with a strip (approx 3cm x 3cm x 4metres) in the concrete floor which needed to be filled before we could tile over it. I went out and bought a 20kg bag of concrete powder. The instructions said to use 5 litres of water per 20kg of powder and I had guessed that my gap to be filled was the equivalent of about 5 litres in volume). Therefore by my calculations I needed to mix the whole bag. Of course what I needed to mix up was about three kilos of powder and what I did mix up would have filled a small swimming pool - and it's not like I could pour the excess down the sink. If there had been any candidates for cement boots around I could have just asked them to step into my (very large) bucket - but instead I had to pour the leftover mix into supermarket bags - which of course have holes in them... you can imagine the rest. Still - the floor looks great now - the next exciting thing to happen in the garage come games-room will be the carpet in a few weeks time.
So if you're wondering how I found the time to mix up enough concrete to pour a multi-level carpark - it's because there's been a halt to production of Pixel Pinkie Series Two due to some contract wrangling in the State Government. As a result all us staff were given an unpaid holiday until further notice. Some people had only been back at work for 3 days before this happened. I'm lucky as I have another income (jon's) that I can spend on my days off so I'm not too fussed as long as we do get to go back to work soon. I'm sure it's a lot harder for most of the other crew.
|
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!
|
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.
|