Archives for 2017

Tag. You’re it!

December 21, 2017 by Jen

There’s been a thing happen across Facebook recently where you shoot a black and white photo with no people in it and post it to your feed with no explanation. You do this daily for 7 days and tag a different friend each day to follow suit.

By the time it eventually made its way to me I was starting to get sick of it, probably because I’m not a fan of these tag and you’re it Facebook posts. And the ones that start with a passive aggressive stance along the lines of ‘I bet I know which of you will repost this,’ or something similar really get up my nose.

But this one involved photography and I’ve done photo a day challenges before and enjoyed them.

I didn’t quite follow the rules of the black and white photo thing, mainly because it was doing the rounds of my friends and it has to end somewhere.

I did, however, post every day for 7 days. Here they are. The 7 black and white photos with no people. Tag, you’re it!

Must be doing something right

September 8, 2017 by Jen

Sometimes you wonder how you’re going as a parent. After all there aren’t annual performance reviews to keep you on track ( I actually think performance reviews necessarily do this). But parenting is hard as any parent will attest if they’re not completely deluded.

My biggest fear has always been making a big mess of it and having him spend his adult life in therapy trying to get back on track.

There’s the little day-to-day annoyances with parenting a teen and you wonder how they will ever cope as an adult. I got a phone call the other afternoon after he got home from school. I was having a quick meeting with a colleague while I apologised and took the call, and my son asked me what he was going to eat as there was no cereal left. Of course there was no other food in the house that he could eat! Well none that was convenient as taking a box of weetbix, a bowl and the milk to his bedroom so he could eat a few bowls worth while ~~doing homework~~ gaming on his computer.

I told him to eat porridge and then had to remind him where the oats were and how to cook it.

Or there was the day I got home from work and he’d tidied his room because he’d found a couple of mice in the rubbish bin having a fine old time eating crumbs from the empty food packets. Luckily our dog is a good mouser so they were taken care of and then removed from the house. It’s not the ideal way to get him to tidy his room!

Yesterday’s after school phone call was a bit different. He was walking home from the bus and saw an elderly woman struggling to get her rubbish bins back to her yard. He said he ummed and aaahed about whether to offer help, but he did offer his help. It was gratefully received and he said it made him feel really good.

I must admit hearing this story made me feel really good as well. And these moments are what get you through the other more annoying moments and let you know that maybe he won’t be in continuous therapy as an adult.

What’s going on?

September 2, 2017 by Jen

I’ve been writing here since April 2004 and if there’s anyone still left here you’ve probably noticed I don’t really add that much here any more.

What started out mostly as a parenting blog moved away from that once my son started getting older. He’s now 16 and – believe me – it’s not like there’s still not plenty of material to draw from as a parent but I don’t feel it’s my story to tell any more. Although I’d really like to lay it all bare here when it comes to parenting a teen I’m not going to. Although I was interviewed about being a sole parent of a teen by Nicole at Planning with Kids late last year and I do share some snippets there.

Said teen now has his learner’s permit and I’m doing a minor freak out about being on the road with him as a driver but even more so that he will be on the road by himself at some stage and that’s scary. Scary because of things that can happen but scary because in under 2 years he’ll be a legal adult!

So, I haven’t been writing here that much but felt I was lacking a creative aspect to my life. I’d been sitting on an idea for a while about a creative project and after a bit of a push by someone I’ve finally started it.

At the very least it will give me skills that I can bring to my paid employment and I’m interested to see where it can take me outside of that.

It’s not a money making venture at the moment, and it may never be.

The idea came about is because of my love for finding bargains in op-shops. I started op-shopping in the late 1980s and have been collecting clothing since then – when you could be a 1970s item of clothing for a couple of dollars or less. An example. I bought a purple knee-length leather coat from a school fete for $2.50. You’d be lucky to get something like it now for under $50. I’ve still got, and wear, the leather coat.

Now it’s 30 years later (bloody hell), buying vintage is expensive so I don’t really buy those items any more. I tend to stick to everyday clothing and much of my work wardrobe is second hand. I think some items in op-shops are over-priced. When you see a really gaudy 80s frock that you would only ever wear as a dress up on sale for $30 you’ve got to wonder. I remember picking up a safari suit for $4 with an ex-boyfriend some years ago. Now you hardly ever see them second hand and if you do they’re upwards of $40.

Anyway, the new website is thriftyclifty.com. Please head over and have a visit, and if you like op-shops and live in Adelaide, check out my map of op shops in Adelaide.

Fragrance – soy candles

March 19, 2017 by Jen

Sydney Fragrance soy candle

I have a confession to make, I probably spend too much money on making the house smell nice, whether it’s fragrant candles or incense. There’s something about the smell they provide that transports me away from the house momentarily or something. I don’t know exactly what it is but it’s something I do for me.

I’ve bought the candles in the small and large glass jars, and I’ve bought the little soy melt cakes you put in a holder use the little tea light candles to melt them. And I burn them pretty regularly

Unfortunately some soy candles don’t live up to their hype. That is their fragrance is either pretty much non-existent or it goes to the other extreme and is too sweet and overpowering. So it can turn into an expensive exercise but as it’s one of the luxuries I allow myself in addition to my op-shop habit, I persist.

I was recently approached by Sydney Fragrance and given one of their candles to try – Heartland (inspired by Outback Australia, with finger lime, flannel flower and eucalyptus).

After having burned it for a few hours over 3 nights or so it passes my test of just enough smell where you want to breath more in and it just smells good.

Even the next morning and the evening after when I’ve come home from work I can still smell it a bit.

So, it passes my test of smelling pretty damn good and having that bit of extra staying power.

Would I buy from them? Yes, I would.

The large candle I received as shown above is $39 and burns for around 80 hours.

Sydney Fragrance – shop online or check out their stockists.

Note: Sydney Fragrance gifted me the candle pictured above.

This can be what it’s like living with a teen

March 3, 2017 by Jen

You’re at work and you get a phone call at about the time he gets home from school. That’s good. You like to know that he’s home safely. He’s quite excited and breathlessly tells me that when he got home he didn’t have his keys and he couldn’t find the spare keys, ‘because you keep moving them’. Side note, when you’ve got a teen it’s ALWAYS your fault. Never mind that I moved the keys once – which I told him about – and I moved them back to their original spot – which I also told him about, and showed him as well. And never mind that he’d used these keys a couple of weeks ago and promised me he’d put them back after he used them.

He climbed over the gate. I’m not sure why as we have 2 side gates that can be opened fairly easily.

He found a window around the back that wasn’t locked and managed to crawl through it and get inside. He was glad that on this particularly hot day he didn’t have to catch the bus to my work to get my keys.

Now, this window that was left open? We’d opened it 2 months ago when I had a party so an extension cord could fit through it to power some lights I set up out the back. I’d been asking him for the 2 months to make sure he’d locked it properly. But lucky he hadn’t hey?

When I got home from work, we looked in the spare key vicinity to try and find them. They definitely weren’t there.

He decided to look in his room because they might be there. Note to self. Steal keys occasionally and make him look for them in his room so it gets tidied! I can live with clothes on the floor until he can’t find something. I don’t like empty or nearly empty food packets, or dirty plates and glasses because I want to keep the mice and cockroaches away.

I had a look in the key bowl by the front door. Lo and behold there they were. However, he still couldn’t find his own keys.

But his keys turned up in his pencil case as he discovered the next day at school.

All’s well that ends well. All house keys are accounted for. The teen’s room is relatively tidy. All windows are locked and secured.

Until the next time.

The most amazing sunset pattern

February 17, 2017 by Jen

We’d been on another boat cruise along the Kinabatangan River and were going back upstream to our accommodation. The pygmy elephant sighting we’d just witnessed was apparently quite rare and we thought that was it for the day.

Everyone had put their cameras away and were enjoying the scenery and the wind whipping in our faces.

We turned a corner and saw the sunset and clouds doing this. I’ve never seen anything like it and immediately got my camera back out to take photos of it. The other passengers did the same.

I have no idea what caused these stripes in the sky but it was pretty amazing.

Majestic

February 14, 2017 by Jen

My neighbourhood was built up in around the 1960s and 1970s so it’s relatively new. Luckily, so far, it’s escaped the knockdown the old house on the big block and sub-divide into two or more houses like many other suburbs around the place are undergoing.

When I was house-hunting I’d look at those cookie cutter houses on the small block with virtually no greenery around them and didn’t even look at one. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to move into a house like that where I don’t have to do much maintenance but when that’s becoming the norm in suburbs nearby I’m not super keen.

I remember driving past housing developments when I was a kid and mum would say the same thing. Although those places are probably very established now with various plants to attract some wildlife.

The tree in the photo above was probably here before the houses were. It’s near an oval and not near any houses so it didn’t need to be cut down I guess. When I drive past it I have to slow down because one of its roots grows underneath the asphalt making a big bump giving me a chance to check it out its majesty. I’m sure it’s seen lots of changes over the years and will probably see more over years to come. It will hopefully be here as this suburb moves onto its next phase.