A long time between posts

Well it's been a very long time since I've posted on this blog. It's not because I haven't been up to anything interesting, quite the opposite, I just am useless sometimes. Sorry :-(

I will try to add in some posts with what I have been up to recently. But this is just a shorter one for now to (a) break the bad habit and (b) let you know I'm still alive :-)

So Paul and I are currently printing out our thank you cards for the wedding. Being that it's almost 6 months since the wedding these are long overdue. Unfortunately me losing my job didn't help on that front at all as money was very tight for a while. But a couple of weeks ago Paul and I finally were able to afford a new printer - yay :-) It is an HP Photosmart C5380 All-in-One, so it is a printer, scanner, copier. So far we are pretty happy with it. I scanned in a few of the wedding photos that aren't in the wedding album and reprinted them on 6x4 photo paper and the quality was really good. Phew :-) Now I just need to order some reprints of all the photos in the wedding album from the photographer, and then I can scan in all those photos too.

Anyway so here is a photo of our new printer :-)

The Buffalo Theory

I got this in a email today - it amused me so I thought I'd share it with you all.

The Buffalo Theory

'Well ya see, it's like this ... a herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.'

Soil arrives for the vege garden

Today we had the soil for our vege garden delivered. We have really awful soil in Brisbane and half our section has clay for soil - not the best for growing awesome veges! So we bought 4 cubic metres of premium garden soil for .... $68 a cubic metre plus $30 delivery. Expensive it may be but totally worth it! So I've included some photos of the days efforts! And what an effort it was!!

Paul getting started on moving the soil to into the garden beds on the other side of the water tank

The empty garden beds ready for soil

And we finally made a dent in the pile. Paul was digging and I was spreading it in the beds. We shared moving the wheel barrow loads from one location to the other.

Whoops - the tree got stuck in the truck as he lowered the back. So as he drove out he took part of the tree with him. But it was ok after Paul gave all the ripped branches a trim.

Paul finishing off the final 2 boards for the garden beds

Another one of Paul's master pieces. We finally realised that gravity wasn't going to be enough to get water out of our tank. So we bought an automatic water pump for $150 from Bunnings (yay for Bunnings). Then he bought a bunch of boy toys (tools, piping, "elbows" etc etc) and set up a tap linked to the tank via the pump (the pump is situated just under the house). Very clever!!

The first two beds are filled - now we need to clear the junk out of the 3rd bed.

All the dirt has been moved to the garden beds - now it's clean up time. Stink! And guess who got to clean up! Good husband!! Well trained!!
Since we're still in a drought we still have fairly tight water restrictions. So Paul was using the tank water to clean the drive way.

Almost done! Just cleaning the wheel barrow.

All done!
We need to wait for the soil to settle in the first 2 beds for a few weeks. So the extra soil is stored in the 3rd bed. Eventually we will clear the grass out of the paths between the garden beds and put in some stone paths :-) But that's for another day.

We had a little extra soil so we put some around our citrus trees as they have pretty bad soil around them - the guy who planted them had NO idea! He planted 2 of the trees straight into clay! We also gave 2 wheel barrow loads to Maureen across the road. She's really lovely :-) She popped her head across while we were moving the dirt and offered us some of her tools. So we borrowed her wheel barrow so both of us could move the soil and got it done much quicker. She also gave us some of her old garden tools to keep - nice aye! Her husband died a couple of months ago which was really sad, so her heavy garden work is done by others who have their own tools.

By the end of the day I was so knackered! It has been a long time since I didn't something so hard! I put in my fair share of digging etc - I even went solo for a while when Paul's mum rang up for a chat :-) I am not looking forward to waking up tomorrow and feeling some new muscles that haven't been used for a while - ha ha!

The next task is the best one! Now we get to plan what we're going to plant :-) Since it's heading towards winter we are a little restricted - but there is still lots we can plant. I can't wait!! I just need to get a job now so we can afford to continue our projects.

Banana Loaf

This might also be called the return of the housewife :-)
Towards the end of last week, over the weekend and on Monday, I was flat out writing job applications for a couple of jobs that were due on Monday night. Fingers crossed I get some bites on those :-) Because I was so busy I didn't really have time to do any baking or even much cooking. Fortunately Paul and I bought a slow cooker on Thursday with some of our wedding vouchers, so Paul used that to cook an awesome mince stew thing on Sunday (also did for Paul's lunch on Monday and dinner again last night - mmmmm). The recipe came from a slow cooker cook book we got for the wedding as well.

Anyway, so now that I'm not madly busy for a few days (unless some more great jobs come up), I've decided to do some more baking :-) On last night's list was a banana loaf. It turned out way better than the last one I did and is very yummy. I used proper self raising flour instead of guessing the combination of standard flour + baking power (put in too much baking powder last time). Plus I dropped the cooking time back by 5 mins as our oven cooks at the lesser end of the time scale (edmonds book says 45-55 mins - ours takes 45 mins :-) ).

Below are a couple of pics of the left overs of my creation. I started putting on some butter and then thought I'd take a pic for my blog :-) Actually the photos of the loaf don't look very appetising. But it's very yummy - you'll have to take my word for it. I modified the recipe a little bit by adding lots of cinnamon and a bit of vanilla essence to the banana when I was mashing it. Makes the taste a bit more interesting.



If you're thinking that I make a lot of banana somethings it's because my naughty husband has been forgetting to take bananas for lunch, so I end up using them for baking instead :-) Mmmmmm, what a shame ;-) ha ha

Random Purchases

Well in the spirit of updating my blog more often I thought I'd show you some random purchases Paul and I have made recently. [side note: recently is a pretty broad time frame and may consist of many months ;-) ]

BBQ cover:
This was a very well spent $12 or whatever it cost us. It gets very dusty out on the deck and the possums like climbing all over it at night. So now we don't have to clean the bbq before and after we use it - just after now :-)

New Fridge:
I love our new fridge! It has made life so much easier! This was bought with our wedding present money just before I lost my job, phew! Thanks guys! Our old one had a total volume of something like 220 litres - including the freezer. Our new one has about 520 litres - it's AWESOME! And can you believe that we have managed to fill it up. At least we have room for storing the top layer of the wedding cake. Ha ha! If you want some then you'll have to visit us around Dec 6th this year as we are going to cut it for out 1st anniversary.

Stovetop Espresso:
This is one of the best purchases we have ever made in my opinion! It was bought some David Jones vouchers we got for the wedding. Thanks guys! I'm sure mum will be much happier next she comes to visit as well because she can have some "real" coffee. With me currently at home it is getting a daily workout so is very well used :-) Thanks Janell and Alex for the idea!!

Cutlery Set:
Another item we bought with wedding money before I lost my job :-) We got it on sale too!!
We haven't broken it out yet as the cutlery needs to be hand washed. Well it says you can put it in the dishwasher, just not with aluminum etc. So we may as well hand wash them!

Knife Block:
Yet another item bought with wedding money, and on sale. I have waited a very long time to have decent knives. Paul and I only had one knife for cooking with before we got the block - very frustrating. The block is cool as it swivels around :-)

Photo Box:
This is a new purchase :-) We bought it on Thursday night with some vouchers Paul and I got from work. Paul got a $100 voucher for Christmas and I got the same when work got rid of me. The photo box contains all the "extra" official wedding photos.

I added a photo into the front of the box and took another pic of it :-)
Can you believe it only cost us $12.95 on special! Cheap aye! Now I just need to get a job so we rearrange our lounge and get a nice coffee table to put it on.

This is what the inside of the box looks like :-)
Now we just need to turn the photos into decent sized digital versions so we can do our own reprints and play around with the photos :-)

Photo Frame:
We also bought this on Thursday with out vouchers. I'm going to put some wedding photos in this once I get some reprints :-)

Making progess on the vege garden

Well after a long hot and busy summer, Paul has gotten back to work getting our vege garden into working order. Unfortunately as we left it so long, the weeds and grass grew back in the "beds". So Paul bought a garden hoe (I think that's what its called) a couple of weekends ago and is digging them out. Last weekend he cleared the first garden bed, and today he has been clearing the second.

Next we have the decide what type of soil we buy and when we get it delivered. The "good quality" soil suitable for planting veges etc costs about $68 a cubic metre plus delivery ($30 - $50). And we will probably need at least 4 cubic metres for the first 2 garden beds. Ouch - expensive!! But I can't wait till we can grown our own veges :-) That's when I can start contributing to the process again as I'm a little fragile to be doing heavy digging work. Very annoying really as I feel bad leaving it all to Paul.

Anyway here are a few pics I have taken of Paul's good work :-)

The dreaded semicolon

This entry will remind some people of another entry I wrote a while ago about the use of the apostrophe.

I am puzzled at the moment as MS Word keeps wanting to add semicolons into my sentences. I'm writing selection criteria statements as part of my job applications and I really don't see why Word needs to add semicolons. What purpose do they serve?! It made me think about it a bit more and I suddenly realised something - I have no idea when to use a semicolon! Shocking aye!!

Anyway, I should get back to my selection criteria statements as I have 2 due on Monday *sigh*