Archives for May 2009

Dib dib dob dob – it’s official

May 15, 2009 by Jen

JJ has been going along to Cub Scout meetings for quite a few weeks now. I’ve bought him the uniform and because he’s been going long enough it was time for him to be invested into the Scouts the other night, along with ten others.

He nearly didn’t get to go because there was a major meltdown here between him and I and he wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t for this investment thing. He is on less Playstation and TV privileges this weekend, especially after being a bit naughty at school today but that’s another story.

We turned up to Scouts minus his Scout hat – oops – and the ceremony began. To be honest I can’t remember the whole order but I do know I have a bundle of badges to sew on his shirt.

His smile in the photo below says it all about how proud he is of himself at this point.

That’s it now. He’s got the badges and the certificate and there may as well been a ceremony for the new parents too to pledge allegiance to help out on bottle drives, scout camps and goodness knows what else. Guess what we’re doing Sunday? Driving around the neighbourhood getting the 10c recyclable bottles off whoever wants to give them to the Scouts. I hope it’s not raining.

He actually posed for me in this photo. That’s not always easy these days.

At least by the end of the night our argument was pretty much forgotten and we’d both moved on and the next day was a whole lot better. Thank goodness for nights and sleeping on things.

Crockpot (slow cooker)

May 14, 2009 by Jen

Margaret Fulton's Crockpot cookbook

When I was growing up in the 70s many of my meals were done in the crockpot (done by mum that is). Now, about 30 years later slow cookers (as they are called now) are making a comeback here and I’m a convert.

A few people I know have bought slow cookers and swear by them. I sort of listened to them and wondered what all the fuss was about and gradually all the talk started sinking in. It sank in so much that I finally went and bought one with a voucher I had from Christmas.

I have certainly got my money’s worth out of it by using it at least once a week and I love it. The main thing I love about it is that once all the ingredients are in the cooker you don’t have to do anything. When I’ve cooked large meals in a saucepan, for instance, I’ve had trouble with some of it sticking to the bottom of the pan but with the slow cooker this doesn’t happen. It’s an absolute breeze to clean.

The other thing I love about it is that I have enough food in it to feed us a few meals so my freezer always has leftovers.

I love it so much I must have told nearly anyone who’ll listen about it. I now have evidence that my talking about my slow cooker has sunk into at least one person because she presented me with Margaret Fulton’s Crockpot cookbook this week. She knows I’m into op-shopping and she also knows I’m into my slow cooker and this book was from the op-shop. For the non-Australian readers, Margaret Fulton is fairly well known here for her recipe books and in fact I have another of hers I found second hand that’s an encyclopedia of food and cookery and has lots of those basic recipes that most recipe books don’t have.

It’s got some fascinating recipes in there. One these recipes I wouldn’t eat if I was desperate the Pressed ox tongue. No thanks.

The great thing about the book is that it talks about adapting your favourite recipes for the crockpot or slow cooker, and did you know that you can cook cakes in a crockpot? Neither did I. I’ve got some experimenting to do thanks to Margaret Fulton and my colleague.

It’s time to throw out

May 13, 2009 by Jen

I had to do a bit of a cleanup in my kitchen over the weekend. You see I had an uninvited guest. This guest had overstayed its welcome and wouldn’t take any of my hints to leave. It was eating my food and leaving a mess behind that was dirty.

Until Friday this guest had been invisible to me. One of my hints for it to leave was to block up a little hole I thought it might have been using and this is why I think I saw it. I was sitting at my kitchen table and out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement. I looked over and saw a little mouse start to run across the floor because his little escape route had gone, he then saw me watching him. He sat down momentarily and licked his paw and then ran across the floor and behind the stove.

I dug out a mousetrap and set it. I was around when the mouse had a couple of goes at it but managed to escape. I changed the bait to cheese.

Monty the dog had a go at getting the cheese. I could tell it was her and not the mouse because she immediately ran into the lounge looking very sheepish. When I looked at the mousetrap it was upside down and had moved fairly considerably from where I’d placed it so there was no way it was the mouse.

On Mother’s Day morning I was greeted with a dead mouse which in a weird kind of way was a good present because then I knew that my uninvited guest would bother me no longer.

The mouse had left his little signs all over the place so the pantry cupboard had a good cleanout.

He’d also managed to get into my bottom kitchen drawer so I had to clean that out also. I knew I had some bibs in there but the photo below shows only the ones that I kept which was about half of what was in there.

The photo below is pre good, long, hot wash.

Bibs

In a way the mouse did me a favour. The bibs that can be reused will go to someone who will actually use them and not linger in my drawer any more.

My Mother’s Day

May 11, 2009 by Jen

We got up early on Mother’s Day so we could participate in the Mother’s Day Classic – a walk or run to raise money for breast cancer research.

So while I would have liked to sleep in and be lady muck for just a little while it didn’t happen.

Instead we dressed in pink t-shirts (much to my son’s disgust) and met the others for the walk (the 7.2km walk). It was hard to try and get this photo. See the look of resignation on his face.

One kilometre into the walk he decided that it was all just too much and he couldn’t carry on. Yes you can I said and pulled out the pack of biscuits to divert his attention for a bit. It seemed to work and on we went.

Near the Adelaide Zoo there was a bit of a holdup and this little fella was the reason why. We couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t fast asleep somewhere as he’s a night boy and JJ spent quite a while telling me how strange this possum was.

As we’d crossed the halfway mark he was quite willing to pose for photos now thank you.

And here he is at the finish line. I was really proud of him for finishing the walk and not complaining too much at all. I’d been quite prepared to cut it short if need be. In fact he did quite a bit more because he’d run on ahead and then come back to me.

On the way home he informed me he’d conquered a fear that morning. When I asked him what it was he said he’d conquered his fear of wearing pink and he stayed in his pink t-shirt all day.

We bought fish and chips on the way home for lunch and had a fairly relaxing afternoon pottering around doing some jobs and watching a Marilyn Monroe movie (not a great one).

Luckily we didn’t decide to go to the Zoo because an orangutan escaped her area and they had to evacuate the whole place.

Oh, and I’d got my mother’s day card and little pressie on Friday after school. He obviously couldn’t wait and I couldn’t make him wait.

If you’re a mum I hope you had a great day.

Procrastination

May 8, 2009 by Jen

I got my camera out before and had a play outside with it (subtext – I’m procrastinating from cleaning chores). I played with some settings and tried to get some interesting photos out of something I find pretty ordinary. I’ve mentioned before I’m a fan of the aperture setting so that’s what I used.

These photos were shot in RAW format and I played with them in the Photoshop CS3 RAW editor. Don’t know the exact name of it but the file extension out of the camera is CR2 and these open in Photoshop. I don’t know heaps about RAW but I do know that you can do a heck of a lot more when they’re in this format than you can when they’re in JPG format.

It’s enabled me to bring out a lot more detail in this photo than there was in the original and make it a bit more interesting than it was.

I included Monty below. She knows I was taking a photo of her. Again RAW helped me out here because it helped me to pick up more detail with her too. Because she has mainly black fur (although a steadily increasing amount of gray is appearing) most photos don’t pick up that much detail.

Now I’ve wasted just enough time that it’s nearly time to go do the school pickup. Procrastination is a wonderful thing.

The football game

May 7, 2009 by Jen

Last week we got up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday to be at a football oval at 8am. JJ and his team had their first game and he did pretty well – although I am biased!

His team has way too many kids but luckily only a few kids from the other team turned up so the extras got to have a game anyway. Because there are so many of them on the team they’ve setup a roster system for games off. Even though JJ won’t be playing this Saturday he still wants to go and watch. At least it’s a local match this time and I may have risen from bed by 8.30.

But last Saturday he enjoyed it and he even got to have a kick.

You can see his head, one head above everyone else below.

While he wasn’t gasbagging with one of his mates he did actually remember to try and get the ball.

I think this game has brought him a new found confidence and a bit of attitude to go with it. He was doing a bit too much chatting and when I told him to watch out the ball was coming he informed me that I know nothing about the game and he knows what he’s doing.

We were lucky that it was quite a good day, the sun was out and it got a bit warm. I know it won’t stay that way and I’ll have to dig my thermos cup out the cupboard so I can take a cup of warm tea to these games.

For posterity, a team shot. I had the zoom lens on so it was hard to get a decent shot of them all without people being in the way.

A winner, a poser, my favourite things

May 3, 2009 by Jen

I started this thing called ‘my Blogging quest’ a little while ago and five people have written their blogging stories. I’d said once I had five people, I’d choose one of them to win an Envirosax reusable shopping bag. I bought these shopping bags out of my own money because I have one and I love it. JJ is my pull the number out of a hat person and he chose entrant number 2 – which is Writer Mom at Home. Margo, please email me your address and I’ll post it to you. This is the first of a few of these giveaways so please keep on writing your stories. Details of ‘my Blogging quest’ are here.

I think I may have finally found a way of photos of me turning out ok. Go read about the Perfect Pose here. It involves a self-portrait which I’m really thingy about. Apart from the photo I took of myself, I took even more photos and while I could see them on the camera initially, when it came time to transfer them to my computer they’d gone so I can’t share those. I hope to do more however.

Back to Writer Mom at Home – she tagged me to write about six unimportant things that make me happy. Here goes:

In winter, lighting the fire in the slow combustion heater, getting my pajamas on and watching a movie.
Beautiful weather – not too hot, not too cold, blue sky, sun out. It just makes me feel really good.
The house being clean and tidy. When the house is clean and tidy I feel happy because a clean and tidy environment is less stressful than the opposite of this.
Playing music and singing makes me happy. When I get together with others to play music I might be feeling a bit down and a bit tired, but afterwards I always feel uplifted and happy.
Finding clothes I like in the op shop, especially clothes that would be quite expensive (for my budget) to buy new like the Colorado skirt I found the other day. Let’s face it, I like a bargain.
My son playing his first football game yesterday made me happy overall, even with a bit of attitude. More to come about that one, with photos.

I’d argue that these six things are important because they make me happy, even if they are a bit trivial. I’m going to be a spoil sport because I’m not going to tag anyone else to do this meme. Although if you want to write about the trivial or unimportant things that make you happy I’d love to hear about them.

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