Archives for October 2014

Frock on – weeks 2 and 3

October 22, 2014 by Exporter Jen

I’m getting used to this photo a day of myself. I’ve never been that comfortable with photos of myself and I hoped that documenting Frocktober would alleviate some of that. I think it has. I’m learning which poses I like better as a photograph of me.

You’ll note there’s more than 14 photos below. That’s because on some days I wore more than one frock. So far I’ve managed not to wear one twice.

Thanks to my son for taking most of the photos. He’s mostly doing it now without complaining.

And I’ve nearly reached my target of $700 to raise money for ovarian cancer research. See my Frocktober donation page if you would like the stories behind the dresses and/or to donate.

I’ve been doing a count of where the frocks come from – new or op-shop. Op-shop is so far a clear winner.

See my frocks in week 1.

Seeing as it’s Wednesday I’ll join in on Trish’s Wordless Wednesday.

Frocktober day 8

Frocktober Day 9

Frocktober Day 10

Frocktober Day 11

Frocktober Day 11 (evening)

Frocktober Day 12

Frocktober Day 13

Frocktober Day 14 (my birthday). Am posing with a couple of colleagues who frocked up.

Frocktober Day 15

Frocktober Day 16

Frocktober Day 17

Frocktober Day 18

Frocktober Day 18 (evening). Posing with some friends holding signs in support of Pacific Islanders.

Frocktober Day 18 (evening frock 2). Why not?

Frocktober Day 19

Frocktober Day 20

Frocktober Day 21

Skylanders Trap Team review

skylanders-trapteam-package

We were recently given the new Skylanders Trap Team game to play. This is the fourth year there’s been a Skylanders game, and our third review of it. Here’s the first Skylanders game review and Skylander Giants.

Trap Team brings a whole new element to the game, and a new portal. That’s three different portals we’ve got now. The first two games used the same portal. We have a separate box just for all the Skylander bits and pieces.

This new one’s a bit different in that you can capture villains and trap them using the correct elemental crystal. If you don’t have the correct crystal the villain’s put into the vault until you do. Once you’ve trapped your villain you are able to swap your Skylander character for the captured villain and use it in the battle for good. You do this by using a button on your controller, so long as the trapped villain is in its place in the portal. These villains have their own speaker in the portal so they talk to you and make some suggestions along the way. When you’re playing as the trapped villain you only get a certain amount of time before you’re swapped back to your Skylander character. This is handy when you’re battling a boss and you don’t want your Skylander to ‘go to sleep’ when it runs out of health.

The other toys you use on the portal consist of the Skylanders and the Trap Masters. And of course you can use your old Skylanders from previous games. The only gotchya is that it’s only the new Trap Masters who can open the elemental gates in this game so you can’t use your previously purchased Skylanders to open the gates.

You only get one Trap Master in the starter pack so if you want to see what’s behind the elemental gates you’ll need more of these Trap Masters. And that’s the downside of the game for me. After four years of buying extra figures I’m a bit over spending more money for more of these characters. However, there’s still lots of aspects to the game that you can play without forking over more money.

Once you get used to the crystals, the Trap Masters and the Skylanders, the rest of the game is pretty familiar if you’ve played before and I like the sense of humour injected into the game from Flynn and the villains. Oh, and the villains have a chance to redeem themselves in side challenges. It’s certainly come a long way from playing Spyro in the earlier days of when my son first got a Playstation 2 (there is a Spyro Skylander). We saw JJ’s friend (nearly nine years old) the other evening and he was very excited to find out we have the new Skylanders and can’t wait to come around and play it. And out of all the games my son has, this suits me far better than some other games he plays on the Xbox. It’s something we can do together.

We played this on the Xbox 360 but it’s also available on the other gaming consoles as well.

Frock on! Week 1

October 9, 2014 by Exporter Jen

I have a bit of a frockin’ addiction. I thought I would put this addiction to good use and take part in Frocktober. Frocktober is a fundraising thing where you wear frocks throughout October and ask people nicely to donate for your efforts. Money raised goes to researching ovarian cancer.

Here’s my Frocktober donation page if you feel so inclined.

Here’s the frocks I wore for the first week.

Another challenge for me is having my photo taken and being okay with using them.

Day 1

frocktoberday1

Dress bought from op shop earlier in the year for around $15. It’s a homemade (they’re usually the best) woollen jersey type fabric.

Day 2

frocktoberday2

Phoenix trying to get in on the frockin’ action!

Today’s dress is a Veronika Maine bought about four years ago for around $50-70 on a good special. It was my lucky interview dress once. Now it’s a winter wardrobe work staple.

Day 3

froctoberday3

Today’s frock is a Target one I bought from an op-shop at Port Elliott about three years ago for around $10-12. Am wearing it with a belt I bought in Bali.

Op-shop – 2
New – 1

Day 4

frocktoberday4

Day 4 and it’s great to get out some summer frocks with this warmer weather. This one’s an impulse buy (around $40) when I was in Melbourne three years ago and felt that I needed to come back with something I’d purchased.

Op-shop – 2
New – 2

Note to self – remind photographer to not get washing in the photo. Although getting said photographer (13 year old son) to take a photo is an achievement.

Day 5

frocktoberday5

Dog training on #Frocktober day 5. Phoenix was ‘this close’ to passing his basic obedience. Today’s dress is a Jay Jay’s one I bought a few years ago for the princely sum of $5. I like the colour and it’s comfortable.

Op-shop – 3
New – 2

Day 6

frocktoberday6

Day 6 and all is well for #frocktober. This dress is a great summer cotton number from an op shop. Paid under $10 I think.

Op-shop – 3
New – 3

Day 7

frocktoberday7

Back to more of a winter frock today. Brought to you by Cue In The City. Acquired at Savers I think for around $12.

Op-shop -4
New – 3

Those dreaded words. Kitchen renovations.

October 7, 2014 by Jen

I’ve lived in my house for 15 years, no nearly 16 years, and I’ve done bits and pieces to the house, but have steered away from doing the expensive updates like kitchen and bathroom.

However, I finally bit the bullet and planned and implemented a kitchen renovation.

There were aspects of my old kitchen I hated apart from it’s very dated look. I always battled with the kitchen taps no matter how often the washers were replaced and I even replaced the taps themselves a couple of years ago. Whoever tiled didn’t grout half of them. And some tiles were broken around the kitchen taps. I’d also perfected a closing technique for some cupboards that didn’t sit flush.

I didn’t really have much bench space. See how much space the old double kitchen sink takes up?

The old oven took twice as long to cook something as it should. There used to be a cupboard next to it which I removed prior to these photos.

The pantry cupboards were never straight so never closed properly. The post it notes are for the demo guys.

In typical me fashion, I went from thinking I’d get the kitchen done in July, to getting the kitchen and bathroom done in September, back to just doing the kitchen in September. The reason for it happening recently was that I house-sat for friends so I didn’t have to be at home to live through the reno. I pulled out of the bathroom reno because of the cost and logistics. I don’t have the luxury of a second bathroom to use so it would have been a real hassle. And the vague promise of one place saying they could do it in two weeks morphed into the more likely reality of it taking around four or more weeks. So I’ll have to build up to that one financially and emotionally.

But the kitchen went ahead. I called a local company and the person who was going to come around to have a look cancelled on me that morning and never called me back.

I went with organising and managing the trades myself and I think I did a pretty good job as I haven’t come out the other end with a horror story of renovations.

I didn’t really change the footprint of the kitchen and even managed to keep some of the cupboards. The old oven was happily thrown out (well it went the way of scrap metal collection along with the kitchen sink and other bits and pieces) and new oven and a dishwasher ordered. Yes, a dishwasher.

The image below is after the demo. It took a day to remove the cupboards and the tiles. See all the gaps at the bottom of the walls?

If you ever do a kitchen this is roughly what will happen.

You will umm and ahh over making any decisions but you will eventually make decisions about what you want.

As I used pretty much the same configuration as it was in, I didn’t use a kitchen designer or come up with a design myself as I was trying to save some money.

I found an excellent cabinet maker to do the cupboards. He was great. He was happy to reuse what I could which wasn’t all that much in the end really. I recommend an excellent cabinet maker.

I’ve got drawers – soft closing drawers at that. Who knew one could be so easily pleased by soft closing drawers. Get soft closing drawers.

I’ve got cupboards that close easily. I now don’t have to lift up the door handle to adjust the cupboard door so that it will close.

I packed up everything in the kitchen and moved it out. Luckily I’ve got a back room. This seemed to take forever and made me realise how long packing up the whole house would take.

Two friends came in and removed everything that was being replaced, and removed tiles. I paid them for this and it took a full day.

I got a 3m skip for them to use for rubbish and got them to keep the sink and oven aside so they can be collected for scrap metal. There was a bit of room left in the skip so I filled it up with other rubbish lying around. What a great feeling!

After the demolition, an electrician and plumber came in to get things ready for the dishwasher and new powerpoints and lights. If whoever is doing your demo isn’t comfortable with electrical and power you’ll need the plumber and electrician before demo starts, but mine were. An electric cable going to a powerpoint went pop scaring the hell out of them so luckily nobody was electrocuted. I knew the previous house owner was a DIY fella so I’m not surprised about the dodgy wiring.

When you’re figuring out what you want electrically, you realise that a powerpoint on that side of the kitchen is a brilliant idea and let’s add more lighting so you can see what you’re cooking (the oven is in an old chimney alcove). I’ll be going from two usable power outlets in the kitchen to about six and that’s not counting the ones that are used by the fridge, the kettle/toaster, and oven. I’ve got LED lights under my cupboards and under the chimney/stove area. Wow. I love it.

After electrical/plumbing prep is done get your cabinets put in. Your soft closing drawers and lined up cupboards. He had his work cut out for him in my old house with non straight floors and walls so I don’t think a flat pack kitchen would have worked for me.

Next is tiling.

Then the plumber and electrican come back to do their second fix and you get the plumber to do a couple of other jobs around the place that you’ve been putting off. After all, what’s a few extra bucks on top of a kitchen reno?

Last but not least my mates who did the demo came back to do the painting.

Then I was left with putting stuff away and trying to decide what goes where. I’ve lost a bit of cupboard space because of the dishwasher.

All up it took two weeks.

Friday/Saturday – pack up and move out
Monday – demolition
Tuesday/Wednesday – electrical and plumbing first fix
Wednesday/Thursday – cabinet installation
Sunday – tiling preparation (this was because of my old wobbly walls (house is not brick and built pre-plasterboard) so board was put up as a good base for the tiles)
Monday/Tuesday – tiling
Wednesday – electrical second fix
Thursday – painting
Friday – plumbing second fix, cleaning up and starting to move back in.

Below are the after photos.

You can see the LED strip lighting underneath one of the cupboards and a new powerpoint in a place I never had one before. The dishwasher should be sitting flush with the cupboards. One should read the instructions before installation.

See the gap underneath the oven below? I’m getting the cabinet maker back to make a box to sit underneath it. One because the oven’s legs are wobbly (nothing to do with installation), two because it will look neater.

This is the decluttered benchtop. It WILL stay that way!

I still love being able to use a tap that I don’t have to battle with.

What you can’t see in the photo below is the roman blind I installed myself. I’m a little bit handy, and not afraid to use a drill.