Where does the time go?

I'm not sure what happened to the last week and a half! I was busy moving stuff over to oztion (and have made my first sales over there - yay!!!), busy with work and not sleeping very well so haven't had a lot of motivation.

Pete made a cupboard to go into Billy's wardrobe for his toys - it really tidies the space up! It looks great - it was a bit of a tight fit, in fact we wondered if it would fit a couple of times, but we got it in!



Billy had a concert at preschool on Friday - just a couple of songs and dances, and then afternoon tea but it was cute! He was the victim of a little altercation on Wednesday at preschool - another kid pushed him into the wall and he got a fair bump and carpet burn on his forehead. I happened to be standing next to the kid's grandfather after the concert, and he said "x didn't do that did he??!" Ummm, well actually, now you mention it!!

The business opportunity is looking like it might go ahead - still have to work out licensing etc, so it will be a little while before anything happens. I'm busy getting the tax done so we can afford to go ahead with it!

Mum & Dad are back from their trip away, so we went up to see them yesterday. I don't think they're that keen on being back in the cold!!

Pete's away for a course this week as well so it might be a LONG week!!

A pox on ebay

eBay today shot itself in the foot and caused a mass exodus of sellers. They announced a massive increase in store fees and decreased the amount of store listings showing up in searches - how's that for getting shafted - we'll make you pay more AND give you less for it! There are MANY HUNDREDS of irate sellers (including yours truly) who have either closed their stores or will close them before the fee increases kick in. I'm moving my stock over to oztion.com.au - no listing fees, reasonable final value fees. It doesn't have the same amout of buyers, but at this stage it won't cost me money to list there and any I make is a bonus. I'll possibly still list auctions on ebay for stuff I think will sell in auction format, but I am extremely negative towards them atm. So much for my plans to increase the business, buy wholesale etc - luckily I'd procrastinated enough to save me some money there :)

Final costings went in tonight for Pete's business opportunity. Fingers crossed that they're competitive and that it works out...

On the table tonight: steak sandwiches

Food, glorious food

Grocery shopping today - the highlight of Billy's fortnight!!!  It was one of those weeks where we were out of bizarre things like garbage bags and metho - don't know why they always all seem to run out at once!

 

We made some sausage rolls up for lunch today - the recipe made 12 full size sausage rolls and worked out about $3.50.  < 30c each sausage roll - not bad value!!!  We had some for lunch and then Pete demolished another couple when he got home from work, so they must've gone down ok :)

 

On the table tonight: stir friend ginger chicken with bok choy (from the garden), snow peas (from the garden), zucchini and carrot.  Served with rice...

 

A potential business opportunity opened up today, so Pete has been frantically doing some numbers and figuring tonight.  I don't want to say too much and jinx it, but it could be very exciting if it works out. 

 

On that climactic note... time for bed!

 

 

Great weekend

What a lovely and relaxing weekend we had!

The drive down to Sydney was fairly disgusting - rain, and several fender-benders along the way. We got down there and checked in; Pete has been working away a lot this year and had enough points for a free night at the Old Sydney Holiday Inn in the middle of the Rocks. It was still raining, so we had a brisk walk across to the Opera House to collect our tickets for the matinee of Bell Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". I hadn't seen or read the play before (although obviously I knew the storyline!!), and was pretty underwhelmed. I don't think it was so much Bell's interpretation as the original play. It was about an hour too long (just over 3 hours with a 20 min interval), and the speeches were way too flowery and long-winded for me. You know you're not really into the play when you keep thinking through the various death speeches "Oh, just get on with it!!". I thought the strongest characters were Matthew Moore as Mercutio and Philip Dodd as Friar Lawrence. Anyway I enjoyed the experience of watching Shakespeare again, even if the play didn't do a lot for me. Looking forward to the Tempest in October!

After the play we walked over to Clarence St to go to the Redoak Boutique Beer Cafe (http://www.redoak.com.au/) - Pete had tried the beers at a beer tasting night he went to. I can't rave enough about the place - the food was delicious, the service was excellent, and by Pete's report, the beer was sensational! I had Stout Braised Wagyu Beef Cheeks on pappardelle pasta, caramelised root vegetables and slow roasted cherry tomatoes which was melt in the mouth, Pete had the Gourmet Sausages of the Day (chicken & lemon) on parmesan and caramelised onion mash and crisp onion rings. For dessert I had the apple pudding which came with cinnamon ice-cream and apple fritters, and Pete had the tasting dessert board which matched 4 small desserts with 4 small beers.



White chocolate and Blackberry Hefeweizen ripple ice cream with Honey Ale
Soft centred chocolate pudding with Brown Porter
Redoak beer filled chocolate truffle with Special Strong Ale
Bitter flourless chocolate cake with Irish Stout

We sat there for 3 hours eating and talking - unheard of for us! It was getting very crowded when we left - there was a 21st party on as well as a screening of the rugby.

And then a really cool thing - we were walking back to the hotel and walked past Rockpool. We looked in at the chef's working in the front kitchen - and Neil Perry was at work! It was very cool watching him work! OK, so small things amuse me... :) We ate at Rockpool a couple of years ago - it was the most fabulous dining experience I have ever had (also the most expensive lol).

Checkout wasn't until 11am so we got to laze around in the morning and sleep in - without getting woken up by a small child :) He stayed at his Ma & Pops and had a great time by the sounds of it. Unfortunately last night was a shocker - I was up several times to him with a dreadful croupy type cough and not being able to catch his breath. So tired!!! Oh well, at least we had the weekend!

Bargain of the day!

At the Steggles shop today I scored 6 kg of chicken stirfry meat for $30 - $5/kg – bargain!! So chicken stirfry, chicken enchiladas, apricot chicken, I can mince some for chicken patties, mmmm… what else??! I’m sure I’ll think of something!!

We had friends over for tea tonight – I made a couple of pizzas (ham & pineapple, and BBQ chicken with capsicum, mushroom, tomato) & garlic bread which seemed to go over well. I was struggling to be overly sociable though – I’m just really exhausted; not sleeping overly well and I think it’s an adrenaline let-down after the last couple of weeks of stress. Plus Billy was a bit of a horror today – or I wasn’t overly patient with him – one or the other, but the same end result.

We’re off to Sydney to watch Bell Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet tomorrow, and staying the night down there. Billy is staying with his Ma & Pop for the weekend which he is very excited about.

Full moon

“The moon is full because it drank too much glasses of milk” - Billy

New laptop!

I'm writing this on my new laptop!! I finally took the time to get it set up enough to start using it - however now I'm at that really annoying stage when every time I go to do something I realise I can't because I haven't got x on my machine yet. I do have email and internet access though so the important things are covered :)

I'm not sure where this week has gone - Thursday is just about over already! Monday we stayed home. Tuesday we met my sister and nieces in the park for a play and lunch while the car was in for a wheel alignment. Then we went down to watch Pete play indoor cricket that night. Yesterday I was teaching (Intermediate Word & Excel) so that was all day gone. Today I didn't get any programming done but got a lot of little loose ends tidied up - ebay posted, letters & emails written, laptop setup, phone calls made & received etc.

I sold some stuff on eBay so have renewed my Simple Savings membership! Yay! I've got more stuff on auction at the moment.

On the table tonight - fish, mashed potato and veges. It was the last lot of fish in the freezer - we were very "fished out" after the CSIRO diet and having it twice a week, so aren't in a hurry to get some more (even though we know how good it is for us).

Currently reading: Marion Keyes 'The Other side of the story'. It's a very light chick-lit book but just the type of thing I can pick up, read a couple of pages and put back down again.

Creative play

Made some playdough for the munchkin this morning, so now I have multi-coloured hands from the food colouring!  (Yeah I know I should wear gloves!).  So he's a happy boy..

 

I also made some eggless Choc-chip muffins (we were out of eggs) and tried to make some savoury biscuits like Jatz, but they failed in a big way :(  Back to the drawing board on those.  Yesterday I made an Italian bread in the breadmaker - standard bread recipe + tomato paste & basil.  Very yummy for lunch with tomato & cheese.  I've frozen the rest - I think it will go great with the vege soup for lunch later in the week.

 

Billy insisted on helping me do the ironing & folding this afternoon.  What was supposed to be a 5 minute job turned into a marathon!  Not sure how well the clothes came up after all that, but most of them are his so it doesn't really matter :)

 

I haven't done a thing with the business this weekend - after the last couple of weeks of pushing to meet deadlines I was pretty burnt out.  I got heaps listed on eBay though which has been long overdue.  I may do a bit tonight if I feel like it, otherwise will have to get stuck into it again tomorrow.

 

Tonight's menu:

 

roast chicken (a la Jamie Oliver), baked potatos & veges.  And probably a choc-chip muffin for dessert!

 

Busy day

A very busy day yesterday - I had to go to the Chiro in the morning, and then see 2 clients in the afternoon. I did get to spend some time doing some clothes shopping - I used the money I got from Emailcash to buy 2 lovely polar fleece jackets. I can't remember the last time I went clothes shopping so it was long overdue.

I installed the system at the clients yesterday for them to test - they wanted a few minor changes initially plus some extra features that I've persuaded them to leave for the next round of changes. We could keep making changes to this forever, but I want to get it in and installed so they can actually start using it!

I ended up with a migraine though which still hasn't really gone away today :(

Website launch! and imaginary friends

One down - the All Things Hunter website went live yesterday. I was up until midnight finishing off some behind the scenes admin stuff so the owner can edit the product information, but it's done! Well actually 1 more bit to test to do with uploading photos & permissions but that can wait until I teach her how to resize photos. Now today I need to concentrate on the system I'm installing tomorrow for the client to test.

So the last thing I needed this morning was to be woken at 6:30am by a little voice saying "Mummy, I can't find my black trackpants. I need to get ready for preschool"! At least we got to have a good snuggle in bed before we had to get started for the day - me, Billy, puppy, and the imaginary friends - Atyl, Merna and Zoo. (don't ask me!)

My Simple Savings membership is due, so I'm trying to come up with the money to pay it without dipping into the normal money. I've put some stuff up on eBay - hopefully some of that will sell and help out.

Now to work..

Saw the triplets!

We went up to SIL's to see the triplets today - it was the 1st time we've seen them since they got out of hospital since we've been sick. They've grown so much!! I got to have a cuddle of them all, but no, I'm not clucky! I'm quite happy being a good Aunty :)

Not sure if the late nights have caught up with me and my body is saying 'enough' or if I've got a migraine starting (which wouldn't be a surprise after the choc-chip cookies!), but I am absolutely exhausted tonight. I'm about to have a very early night. I have heaps of work, but it will have to wait..

'Chocolat'

Not a bad film - not nearly as good as the book, although it does have the advantage of Johnny Depp :) I was quite disappointed in the plot change - having the mayor as the bad guy rather than the priest - I guess a mad priest isn't politically correct these days!

Last day of teaching for 3 weeks - yay!!!

Off to see the triplets tomorrow - we haven't seen them since they got home from hospital. We had plans to, but then we all got sick, so we haven't made it up there. Taking advantage of school holidays to make some time.

Roast beef for tea (marinated by our fantastic butcher in yellow-box honey & rosemary - mmmm!) with baked potatos, carrot & zucchini. An apple & pear crumble and icecream for dessert - life is good!!

In the garden

Garden gnome?!


Grevillea

First snow peas from the garden today - yummm! I cleaned the pond out and got the pumps working again plus did running repairs on the vege garden sprinklers.

Light at the end of the tunnel

There is finally light at the end of the tunnel with some of my projects - 3 of them should wrap up (barring any extra changes they want) in the next couple of weeks. Boy I'll be glad about that! The last couple of weeks have been a real blur, I've just been flat out with working and trying to keep the house in some sort of order, cook decent meals etc. 1 more day of teaching this term though and then a couple of weeks off - yay! I had to even turn down some work - I was approached to do a couple of months of Access work onsite, full-time, which doesn't fit in with my life atm. He still wants to get together and discuss future work though which could work out well.

Helen & I have started challenging each other to do 1 extra thing around the house each day - just a small task like wipe cupboard fronts over etc. It's really making a difference in keeping the house presentable - we get to feel smug if the other person misses a day :) I'm planning on cleaning the freezer out as today's task - there are lots of UFOs (unidentified frozen objects) in there!!

Pete's off to watch the Aussie Rules again tonight - go Swannies! I'll dig through the DVDs and find a chick flick to watch - maybe Chocolat. I watched "How to make an American quilt" last Sat night - maybe I was just in the wrong mood, but I wasn't overly impressed. Very slow to start and then glossed over the stories of the other women too lightly imo.

I've been having a real baking week this week - I made a quiche and a chocolate cake for lunch on Wednesday, Billy & I made banana muffins last night, and I bought some choc-chips today to make some "cookies" - mmmmm, cookies!

Boy it's been cold here - we had a couple of nights at -1 and -2. Brrrr!!! Mum & Dad are up at the Atherton Tablelands on holidays - much warmer up there I'm sure!