NY Eve – Oz Style December 31, 2009
Posted by graciek in Going Out, Life in General, Sydney.add a comment
Last year was all a bit of a blur with the whole moving and being jetlagged. This year we’ve had a busy but enjoyable NYE. Went for a spin in the cars to Bundeena and down to Austinmer for a sedate lunch. Had a quick nap in the afternoon and then went to Ramsgate Beach to watch the fireworks. It was a little bit overcast so the fireworks weren’t as clear but we caught the Brighton-le-Sands ones in all their glory with the Sydney CBD ones completing the backdrop. It’s a brilliant spot to catch the whole vista and it had a family orientated feel. Lots of young families with picnics. Busy, but not packed. I made some sushi for our picnic and a chocolate cake for afters. Mmmm who would have thought that one day our NYE would be in Summer, we’d be at the beach and we’d be sat enjoying sushi and fireworks. Life doesn’t get much better 
Onwards to 2010 now.
Bye Bye Noughties… hello ummmm?? December 30, 2009
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I was just wondering if this decade was the “noughties” then what is the next decade going to be called. I’m guessing 20 10s is not very catchy and we’ll end up in the teenage years… I guess the “teenies”??? I can’t believe a whole decade has gone by. This time in 1999 I was in Loughborough and having a lovely houseparty with, if I recall correctly, a Christmas pudding with sparklers in that was christened the “Millenium Dome Pudding” (it also tried to set fire to the house). I hadn’t even met my husband yet and would never have thought that I would have a baby and be living in Sydney now. I think the late 90s and early 2000s were some of the best years of my life in terms of socialising. Parties all the time with the stamina to match. These days I can’t cope with more than 2 parties in a month … boo hoo how sad I’ve gone all middle-aged at the ripe old vintage of 30.
Catch Ya Later December 29, 2009
Posted by graciek in Evie, Life in General.add a comment
My parents have been visiting and staying with us since beginning of November. It took a while to adjust to them pretty much living here but now we’ve got used to it. It seems a bit sad and strange that they are leaving. Ah well, they’ll be back in 1 month for another 2 month stay so they’re not really off – just going on holiday. Evie will notice the most I think as she’s been spoilt rotten the last couple of months. Everytime she wants picking up she needs only bat an eyelid. She’s in for a shock in January when there’s only Mummy and Daddy around – I think she’ll have to learn to use her legs again
Merry Christmas December 25, 2009
Posted by graciek in Family, Life in General.add a comment
Merry Christmas everyone. Have a wonderous and joyous day. First Christmas at our house and I was cooking. I cooked from 5am till 1.30pm (exc 1hr for church in the morning) – mega cooking sesh! In total I cooked 4kg of turkey, 3kg of ham, 1kg of stuffing balls, 3 trays of roasted potatoes/sweet potato/pumpkin. We also had another 2kg of salmon. Such excess you might think, but we did have almost 20 people eating. Ended up with quite a lot of leftovers which we’ll happily nibble away at over January (no doubt turkey curry will be on the list).
Evie had a whale of a time. Last Christmas she was mostly inanimate and sleepy. This time she’s so excited. As soon as she came downstairs in the morning she spotted her new trike (from her Mah Mah & Kong Kong). Lots of jumping up and down and excited squeals whilst ripping open pressies. Thank you everyone who gave Evie pressies. She had such a huge bounty.
This year we’ve totally been blessed and although it was stressful at times we’ve been looked after well by Him above and we’re thankful for all the blessings and thankful also that we’ve been able to settle so well in our new country!
Urgh the Lurgy! December 13, 2009
Posted by graciek in Life in General, Under the Weather.add a comment
Its seems like ages since I had a cold/flu. In fact mostly I’ve been far healthier since moving to Oz (much better than the October – Mar continual cold/flu). Yesterday Evie was quite snotty and grumpy as she has contracted a mild cold from somewhere (I suspect it was the very sneezy child at the playground). Now she’s kindly given it to me. Felt like death warmed up all day – especially so because I had a rubbish night’s sleep due to an “inconvenient-waking-up-early” baby. It’s one of those colds where you just want to stay in bed and sleep all day. But everytime I wanted to sleep I just lay there and it was so noisy. One of our palm trees just started flowering and suddenly we have a cacophonous symphony of parakeet song 10m from the window. Finally managed to drift off around lunchtime only to be woken up abruptly 30 mins later by the hubby who has decided to start wielding the petrol hedgecutter under the window!!! Grr. Bear with sore head = grumpy and snappy.
# of hours sleep in last 24 hrs = 4
# of boxes of tissues used to mop up snotty escaping brain cells = 2 (200 sheets per box)
# of times woken up = too many
# of ways woken up = birdsong/dog shouting/baby crying/hedgecutter/lawnmower/neighbour’s children in pool/father slamming toilet seat up/mother slamming toilet seat down
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR – sneeze – dribble – GRRRRRRRRRRR – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Kurnell Again December 12, 2009
Posted by graciek in Australia, Life in General.add a comment
Off to Kurnell for a day trip again. This time with my parents. In the many times my parents have been to Oz to visit my brother they’ve never been to Kurnell once (considering he lives in the Shire that is pretty poor going). So took the family all out for a drive down and walkabout. Perfect weather – blue skies and lovely sea breeze. The historical stuff at Kurnell is interesting. It’s celebrated as the birthplace of “modern” Australia yet at the same time the beginning of when the Aboriginals were dispossessed. Seems pretty unbelievable that you could just sail up to some bit of land and claim it even though there are people already living there. Near Woronora there is a reserve called the Burnum Burnum Sanctuary. It’s named after a local Aboriginal who went to England and claimed it for the Aboriginal people with the Burnum Burnum Declaration.
2 Weeks till Christmas December 11, 2009
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Wow – this year has gone by so fast. It’s only 2 weeks to Christmas. Thankfully the bulk of the Christmas shopping is done and there is an adequate smattering of wrapped pressies under the tree. My parents have got hubby and Esky for Christmas. I’ve not bothered to wrap it as the paper would just tear and seeing as hubby carried it back to the car he already knows it’s for him. All I did was stick a bow ribbon on it. It’s actually quite useful though as all the edible presents have been put inside the esky. Extremely good when you have a dog and a 16 month old baby wondering about trying to get at the presents.
Tree put up and decorated (tick)
Presents bought, wrapped and placed underneath (tick)
Turkey bought (tick)
Stocking hanging on mantelpiece (tick)
Comedy reindeer antler headband bought to put on dog (tick)
Still to do: Buy a ham, get the last few pressies, finish off the last few pressies I’m yet to make, go food shopping for 2 parties, decorate rest of the house, borrow extra table and chairs, write and send Christmas cards (for Oz), write and email Christmas cards (back to UK), order UK based pressies online
D’oh – there I was thinking I was pretty organised, when actually I still have piles of stuff to do!!
Hubby Hols December 8, 2009
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Today is the first day of hubby’s hols. As he is a teacher he gets long hols each Summer. He works at a private school so he breaks up even earlier (in fact the kids finished before December even). He had to do a few extra inset days at school with the other teachers and yesterday was presenting a teacher training course. So today is his first proper day of hols. He has something like 8 weeks off. I expect he’ll probably be on the Wii playing Guitar Hero “School’s Out for Summer”. This year we have visitors for most of December, but come January we’ll have a few weeks just as a family again. He’ll either be doing DIY, hobbies or we may try and getaway for a few days driving holiday in NSW somewhere with the dog.
Klippan Cover on Loft 2.5 Seater December 3, 2009
Posted by graciek in Life in General.Tags: fantastic furniture, ikea, klippan cover, loft 2.5 seater
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We moved into our house back in May and as we needed to suddenly furnish a 4 bed house from scratch we decided to go for a massive package from Fantastic Furniture. We got a Loft 2.5 Seater for our rumpus room. As it’s used extremely frequently (currently under my derriere as I type ha ha) it was beginning to look a bit grubby, that and the dog and baby rubbing various unsightly stains all over it, we’ve been using throw blankets just to protect it a bit and so I can simply just wash the blanket when something gets on it. At the time we bought it we had also considered the Klippan 2 seater sofa from Ikea, but with the difficulties delivering we decided against it – I did however notice it had nifty loose covers. On closer inspection the dimensions are very similar. We went to Ikea today and decided to throw caution to the wind and bought a Klippan cover. I’ve just fitted it onto the Loft sofa and IT FITS!!! Thought that I would blog about it as I couldn’t find anyone else on the net who could confirm whether it would. The differences as far as I can tell are:
- Fixing : well, there’s nowt to fix the Klippan cover to the Loft 2.5 Seater however it is a snug fit and so far is not moving about anyway. The Klippan has velcro edges and some elastics that wrap around a pole (to keep the material pushed in where the seat meets the back). As far as I can tell it would be easy enough to stick some velcro to the Loft 2.5 seater and use an offcut broomstick or pole down the back if you so desired
- Dimensions : the Klippan cover appears to be larger in most dimensions on paper, however it is more or less a perfect fit on the length and depth. The height is not quite right though as the loft is a bit taller (I guess because the seat cushion is separate not part of the upholstered section). This is not really a problem though as it just about reaches the bottom of the sofa (meaning that if you wanted to affix velcro strips to the Loft you’d have to stick them on the bottom facing edge, rather than the underside.
So this is Christmas… December 1, 2009
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This year it’s very strange as the run-up to Christmas just does not feel right. After November being so unseasonably warm (think 40s a few days) it’s gone back to a slightly more pleasant temperature, one might even say “cold”. As it’s now December we’re allowed to put the Christmas tree up. We bought one from Go-Lo for $49 (reduced from $79). It’s actually far better quality than we thought it would be for the price. It’s 7ft tall and has 1300+ tips (very very bushy), although once we had assembled it it had 1300-4 tips as 4 seemed to be unattached. We’ve always gone with red and gold (baubles, beads and bows) as it’s a lovely traditional and warming colourscheme. This year to combat the heat we’re trying a purple and silver scheme. Personally I think it looks a little chavtastic, but it’s growing on me. We bought one of the 50 packs of ornaments from Aldi a couple of weeks ago. Surprisingly this was almost enough to decorate the whole tree (and the mantelpiece too), but we also bought 12 larger baubles too for the lower 1/2 of the tree.
Whilst decorating the tree we were hoping to watch QI on ABC – but shock horreur it’s not in the scheduling today – biiiig boo. Ended up putting Christmas CDs on (ah Fairytale of New York etc) and then watched Ocean’s 13 on the big screen. It’s one of those films that neither of us have watched all the way through (I think it must have been on on a flight somewhere).
We bought Evie a stocking to hang on the mantelpiece and that’s already in place ready for Santa’s bounty (shame we haven’t worked out what Santa’s bringing yet). Well she has one thing already and that are some little reindeer antlers headband thinggy.
We’ve had to rearrange the furniture a bit (now the dining table is perpendicular to before and it’s a little more cramped) but it looks good and the tree now fits. It’s 7ft tall, and appears to be almost as wide… OK it’s prob only 4.5 ft wide but that’s still a lot of floor space to clear. Now it finally feels like Christmas is coming!
