Blast from the past

Ha ha - I was just chatting to Kat on Google Talk and she sent me the following weblink that was a real blast from the past.
http://nzgirl.co.nz/articles/1542
It was from when Kat and I were flatting together and she had her first fashion show in Cuba mall. Somehow she managed to rope us all into modelling for her. And can you believe I let her put me in pigtails (note: I had no choice - my refusal was ignored). Although when they initially put my hair into the pigtails everyone agreed that I did in fact look about 10 years old. So we compromised and I had "messy" pigtails instead which lifted my age up to about 16. I guess that was before the wrinkles hit me aye ;-) te he he.

Funny - that article put a smile on my face for the day :-) Yay for great memories! Miss you Kat!

You know winter is on the way ....

You know autumn is here and winter is on the way when you wake up in the morning and it's a real struggle to get your body out of bed because of the cold. Brrrr! When Paul was finally brave enough to get up, the thermometer in the lounge said it was only 13 degrees. Argh! I think that our house is going to be freezing in winter!

However I have decided that instead of playing soccer, injuring myself again and spending approx $400 in the process for boots and subs, that instead I will buy a sewing machine! Yes that's right - I'm converting to the domestic side! There are so many things I want to make so having a sewing machine just makes sense. Especially since I no longer have Kat to hem my trousers for me ;-) te he he. But I think first on the list will be sausage rolls to cover the bottom on the doors as there are giant gaps on both the front and back door and also from our bedroom into the hallway. You can definitely tell that the house used to be carpeted when you look at the gaps between the bottom on the doors and the floor. I guess the second thing on my "To Do" list is to make some curtains for the kitchen. We have lovely big windows that currently have no curtains or blinds to keep the heat in come winter.

Well better do some work!

The winning way

Well a while ago Paul entered this competition in the newspaper to win "The ultimate camping pack". Well unfortunately he didn't win that - however he did win one of the runners up prizes. So we are now the lucky recipients of a $200 KMart voucher. Wahoo!! Now I just need to plan how we're going to spend it :-)

Have a good weekend folks.

Off to Noosa

Yay - In 5 minutes Paul and I are leaving to go up to Noosa for a couple of nights. Very exciting! We're travelling light so only have my backpack and his little carry on suit case. Will be heaps of fun as I've only been there once before for a couple of hours with Paul, Ben & Megan when Paul and I came over in 2006.
See you when I get back on Sunday!
HAPPY EASTER!!!

planning ahead

Well Paul and I are starting to plan our vege garden. Last night we even went out to Bunnings and bought ourselves a compost bin. So this weekend we'll find somewhere to set it up out the back of the property and then we're away laughing. I'm very excited as I haven't had a compost bin since I left home. Although our vege scraps went into the bin also known as our dog JAS :-) Dogs are great for that aye. Anyway so we have a little bin in the kitchen for food scraps and now a big one to make compost - yay! We also bought some spray paint so that Ange can make sure that we dig the vege garden exactly the right shape. Te he - I'm very particular :-)

Well Paul and I have also decided to go away this weekend. Queensland transport have just brought out this GO card system to use on the buses, trains and ferries. It pretty much just replaces the old paper 10 trip tickets so is more designed for occasional users than every day users (I'm still better off with a monthly ticket). But obviously the uptake hasn't been as good as they had hoped so they're giving free travel all over the network for all of Easter. Sweet! So we're off to Noosa for Friday and Saturday nights. We're going to go to the Umandi markets on Saturday which are meant to be really good. Yay! I'm very excited!

Well better do some work as I'm pretty busy at the moment.

Our water tank

Yay - on Thursday last week we finally got our water tank installed :-) So exciting!! Now we just need it to rain and fill it up :-) But at least we can get started planning our vege patch and getting the soil in the area ready :-)

So here are a few pics of the tank. It is a 9000 litre tank so is pretty big. But this way when it doesn't rain for months over winter we should still be able to water our vege garden. Plus we can do things like wash Paul's bike, wash the car any time :-)

The view of the water tank from the gate. It nicely matches the colour of the house & carport roof and the battens covering under the house.
Also as a side note - don't you love the purple flowers on our neighbours tree! So nice! The pink one on our side is just finishing flowering and now we have the purple flowers to enjoy out our kitchen window! I love it!!

The view of the water tank from the back yard. It's dug slightly into the ground and has a base of crusher dust mixed with a bit of concrete dust to keep it stable :-)
Our vege patch will be on this side of the water tank probably in line with the right side of the tank and go right to the fence. Then I'm going to put a really nice paved path running down the side of the tank and vege garden. Yay for plans!! I can't wait to do it all! Although we do need to figure out how to get rid of that tree stump - it's very strong and Paul has had no luck so far! Lance has offered to chain saw it out so that'll be our next step I think!
It was about the point Paul took this photo that those snotty nosed kids from down the road walked past the front of the gate. Good timing aye - just when Paul has the camera out again!

The view of the tank with the car in the car port. In the last few days before the tank got installed the picture of the tank in my head grew to massive proportions and I was so worried it was going to look crazy. So I was very glad to come home from work and have this be my first view of it!! Very reasonable! So it should be for $3000!!!!!! Yay for council/govt rebate schemes though as we get $1000 of that back.

When the cops came calling

You won't believe the story I have to tell you this morning. Last night at about 9pm there was a knock at the door. Funnily since we don't really know anyone in Brisbane we were wondering who on earth would be knocking on our door. So Paul opens it up to find not 1, not 2 but 3 police officers standing there. They introduced themselves and asked if they could come in - obviously we said yes. The last time a cop knocked on my door at that time of the night was to deliver some pretty awful news, so that's what I thought was about to happen! Well that or tell us about some convict in the area, or talk about a break in etc. But no! Apparently there had been a report by someone in our street of someone taking suspicious photographs of their kids - and apparently we were the culprits. Right - because that picture fits!!

So ... the background to how this started. We discovered since moving in that people use our street as a shortcut to avoid the main roads. Despite being a "quiet" suburban street, with no footpaths, people barrel down our street really fast - obviously deciding that the cops aren't going to be out there with speed cameras so they can cut off some time from their trip! Last Friday morning I almost got bowled over by a woman going too fast while cutting a corner at the end of the road. Plus the neighbours kids play in the middle of the road all the time and it's only a matter of time till one of them gets bowled over.

So Paul and I have decided we're going to write a letter to the council in the next few months (after local body elections this month). To support out letter and differentiate it from every other letter that crossed their desk we thought we'd provide some photographic evidence of the problem. Yesterday when Paul got home from work he took some photos of the front of the property and driveway area. We're getting our water tank installed tomorrow (we think - the guy isn't the best communicator in the world) and we want some before and after shots. So when Paul noticed the kids playing on the street with traffic about he decided the take a couple of snaps. Now these were a good 50-60m away from the kids and with my crappy instant digital camera. Because it was dusk the photos were a bit blurry anyway and you can barely tell that the kids are kids and not trees or big dogs in one of the snaps. The main focus was the fact that at the end of the street there is a car coming towards us and the kids are in the middle of the road. And anyway Paul then turned around and took a pic of the road in the other direction as we currently don't have any and thought they might be interesting to show people the street where we live.

And apart from this fact, we're entitled to take pictures of anything we blimn well like. I have similar photos (the street, front of house etc) of almost every house I've lived in - including when I stayed at Ben & Megan's before I moved to Aussie last year. It's just interesting to have a record of the area so that you can look back when you're older and remember.

So I think it's a little disturbing that, when seeing someone taking a generic picture of a street, that woman jumped to the conclusion that we were taking picture of her kids so that we could then go home and do dirty things with them. Hello - what kind of a sick human being thinks like that! Why on earth would that be the first thing that pops into your mind! And even if you were a sicko and thought like that, the least you could do is knock on the door and ask us about it. We've tried to be good neighbours and are on speaking terms with the neighbours either side and directly across the road. There is no need to call the cops and have 3 of them turn up on our doorstep at 9pm at night (I think 2 of them had guns too - that's pretty scary as I hate guns!). Stupid woman!

At least the cops figured out she was being paranoid fool. They asked to see the pics and then didn't even ask for a copy or even tell us to delete them which they would have if the pics were dodgy. The stink thing is that they still took our details - so now we'll be on file somewhere with that sort of a complaint against our names. Good thing Paul has a blue card already (required in Aussie when you do anything to do with children - involves a police check etc to make sure you're not a weirdo). Hopefully when it comes up for renewal this doesn't surface and become a problem for him!

Anyway there's my rant about the whole thing (have I mentioned yet that she was a stupid paranoid women). It's actually really upsetting when you think about it. I'm shocked that someone would think of us like that. Especially Paul - I mean he's a good person - anyone who knows him would say that. He volunteers his time for this, that and the other thing. So to have someone turn around and accuse you of this sort of disgusting thing when you were just trying to be a "good citizen", and were in fact worried for their kids. Well up yours to them I say (not very pc I know). What goes around comes around! If it wasn't for the fact that I can't be bothered having a neighbourhood scrap with them then I'd ring up the council and complain about their annoying dog that barks all the time!

I hope you all have a good day and that cops don't turn up on your doorstep at 9pm at night!

You've Got Mail!

Part of my Christmas present from Paul last year was a 1 year subscription to the Better Homes & Gardens magazine. Yay! the really cool thing about this magazine is that not only is it a very cool magazine but every Friday night at 7:30pm on channel 7, they have an hour long tv program where they show you how to do everything. Cooking, gardening, renovating, decorating, looking after pets etc etc etc. I know I know - I'm getting old and doddery ;-)

So now at the start of every month, just before the next magazine goes on sale in the shops, I get a little parcel in the post. It always gives me this little thrill because yes, my magazine has arrived!

So obviously I got a little present in the post yesterday. And I can't wait to read it and get lots more cool ideas :-)

Up close & personal

Until recently I used to catch the 6:43 train into the city. This was great as I always got a window seat and could just sit and read my book all the way to work. However I got sick of trying to get up and leave the house in 30 minutes - especially since I spent the first 30 mins at work checking emails etc so wasn't on the clock anyway. So a couple of weeks ago I started catching the 7:11 train. This still allowed me to get into town, get my coffee and get into work by 8am without having to rush rush rush! The only downside was that I never got a window seat - however I did always get an aisle seat.

Until this morning that is anyway. I know exactly where to stand on the platform so that I'm one of the first on the train when the doors open (essential to getting one of the last seats). However this morning when the train rolled to a stop, there were "locked" stickers all over the door - argh!!! So I had to go to the next carriage and join the back of the queue. So by the time I got on the train there were definitely no seats left - not even any of those ones where 2 seats face each other (they're always the last to fill up). So instead I stood in the doorway in a nice little cubbyhole so I could lean against the wall. Good thing I found that because although I was able to read my book for the first couple of stops, by the time we left Newmarket, 5 stops to Central where most people get off and 7 stops to my stop, I was getting to know the guy in front of me far too well. And of course at every stop down the line more and more people got on that train. How they fitted in I have no idea but with every sway of the train I had people pressing into my body. GROSS!! My personal space is way too big for rush hour on the train. Although to be fair it isn't normally that bad - today was way worse than normal. But gross still! It's almost enough for me to consider catching the 6:43am train again! We'll see. The bad part is that even though I'm catching the later train Paul still makes my lunch for me most days. Isn't he a sweetie - I'll hang on to him aye ;-)

Well better do some work. I was off sick yesterday so have heaps to catch up on!