Mind dump Tuesday

Hola chicas and maybe some chicos(?)! My mind needs a clearing, some of this could be put into the Awesome part of Thursday but too funny not to share with y'all.

* Overheard from the kitchen:
The A: (burp) oh sorry George (said really quietly)

PAUSE

God George that's disgusting!

You can't fool me A!

* Overheard last night:

The A (sleep talking): Karate Kid chicken tee hehehe!

Then he fell asleep again.

* Why should the Australian tax payers hand over the money to help these guys out? They are adults, who knew what they were doing and decided to climb aboard another boat. Suck it up and deal with the consequences! They want the Japanese to deal with the consequences of whaling (ie having the Steve Irwin and Sea Shepherd always nearby) but aren't willing to take what comes their way when they do something illegal. Pah!

* I never like the fact that I have dishes to do, but once I get started it's actually a little bit fun. (I'm strange)

* We have yet to go to the beach near us. First time that this has happened in a summer. Usually we are dying to get in the water.

* i-cords are a lot of fun to knit

* I wish there was a Costco in Perth. Then we could buy things in bulk and not run out halfway through the week.

* I made frozen yougurt! In shot glasses :p

End of year travels

This year for Christmas we decided to take a mini road trip to the south of this big state. In total we (The A) drove 3000 km, from Perth to Albany and Esperance and back again. Phew!

We camped in National Parks most of the time but at New Years in Albany we had to go for a caravan park as all the surrounding National Parks were full.

If you are going to go that way here are some tips:

We thought Albany looked better in grey weather.

You should get to Denmark and take a drive, lots of wineries and crafty places.

Esperance has a wonderful bakery full of fresh sandwich rolls, pies and yummy sweet things. I tried to take a picture inside but every time we were there it was packed!

Esperance also has the biggest junk filled museum we have ever seen. They must accept everything that gets donated cause in the Anzac 'area' there was a collection of little china frogs from the 80's.

Take bug spray. Lots of mosquitos and march flies. And if you stop and camp in the Fitzgerald National Park (which is a 'Biosphere') expect LOTS of spiders and to get dirty as the dirt is black there.

The Amity Brig reconstruction in Albany is worth looking at and isn't expensive.

Make sure it's hot, cause the Southern Ocean is flippin' cold! But definitely go to the beaches as they are voted the best in Australia and the sand is so fine it squeaks when you walk on it!

What do you do when your husband is in the rainforest of PNG, for a whole week with no communication?

1) Eat chocolate cake at stupid times

2) Go to your knitting group and watch someone with their new spinning wheel

3) Buy very adult books

4) Drink a glass of wine at night because it's cold without another person in the house and it's the only thing that warms you up

5) Get a job (woohoo!!)

6) Finish all the paperwork of the second stage of your visa (how do you describe your commitment to one another without sounding like a total sap?)

7) Go to homeware sales and buy new pillows and sheets that aren't beige (god I'm sick of beige!!)

8) Get in your cats face

9) Knit

10) Do loads of laundry but ignore the dishes

Fingers crossed

This is the remains of my breakfast:

Yes, I had chocolate mudcake for breakfast. I'm currently overexcited about an opportunity that *fingers crossed* turns out well. But I can't say what it is as I don't want to jinx it.

It's still early, as we had to get up at 4am for The A to get to the airport in time. Thankfully he's only away until Friday. And that's it, all my news in three small paragraphs!

The budget and saving

This January, The A changed jobs. He had previously been paid monthly, but with this new one he is now paid weekly. This threw me through a loop as in Europe and with all my jobs I had been paid monthly. Trying to wrap my head around the whole weekly thing has been hard, and as a result we have had to change the way we budget, especially as I am still out of work!

Talking about money is hard and in the past used to stress me out. But we sat down and honestly went through what we thought we spent on different things for the year. We then tried out an accruement style of budget. For example we put $60 for buying books every month, on a 31 day month we accrued $1.93 a day to go towards books, only buying something once we had accrued the amount we wanted to spend. It seemed like a great system (originally from That Wife Blog) but it just didn't work for us.

We want to save money every month so we ended up streamlining our budget to the bare essentials.

We reduced the amount spent on groceries only by a little, with the added lifestyle change of eating out less and cooking more at home, as well as reducing our meat intake. Added to that we decided to buy our meat from a butcher (just up the road... convenient!), and not shopping at Woolworths but at the local Veg shop and IGA. Changing venue has actually made our shopping cheaper! Toiletries and house cleaning supplies are included in this.

This system has actually made me think more about what we have for dinner, making me plan and look through all the cookbooks that The A and everyone else has given me over the years. Our vow not to eat out as much as before has made it necessary to make dinners and other meals that bit more exciting. It also means we are BOTH less likely to put stuff into the trolley that we don't need or are not on the list!

Our 'other' sections have been smooshed into a 'weekend' section. We each get $50 to get whatever we want, including anything I eat or drink at knitting, books, make-up and clothing etc. We also have included a $20 that we can spend with each other, usually a bottle of wine!

So far it's worked but it took a while to find something that does. Do you have a budget, and how sis you decide upon it?

Skin in the land of eternal sun

Having moved to a country that has almost constant and harsher sun, I had to change the products I used on my skin. More spf and in the winter, being better about moisturising as it gets quite dry.

I suffered from acne for most of my teenage years and after going on Accutane and possibly buying enough Proactive to entitle me to shares, it's finally under control. I now end up having to use various types of face wash and face creams to keep my face balanced and though I do get spots still, they aren't as bad as they used to be.

So I thought I would share the products I use and why! (not all are pictured)

1. St Ives Moisturising Olive Cleanser: This is great, I use this about 3 times a week in the morning. It can dry out my skin though so it's actually better in the summer months as it's so hot that I need a little dryness!

2. St Ives Apricot scrub: I think this is a staple for most people. It's a great replacement for the Proactive scrub (The A also uses it. But I didn't tell you that, it would be too metrosexual)

2. Cetaphil: I use this every night. Fantastic for when I run out of make-up remover wipes as it gets EVERYTHING off. Doesn't dry out my skin. And it's cheap!

3. Olay Complete All Day SPF 15: My everyday moisturiser. Light and effective, you can't really ask for more than that can you?

4. Burt's Bees Naturally ageless night cream: Why wrinkle cream? Well I definitely hadn't thought that I would be using it already before 30, but since moving to Australia I figured why not? Constant sun and almost no humidity means that prevention is best way to fight it off. This stuff smells awesome too. The A says that I smell like a berry crumble, which is a good thing I think!

5. Proactive: I still have some in the cupboard for emergencies. The face wash, toner and cream. Last time I used it was last week for a breakout on my chin. So if you are an acne sufferer I would never get rid of whatever works for you, keep some hidden, it may come in use.

Missing

To catch you up here's a summary:

1. We've acquired a cat. His name is George it used to be something really crap so we changed it, but he also goes by Pookie, Pooks, Pookie bum, Pookie face and Pig.

2) We've bought a car. It's old and beat up but totally blends in with all the other beat up cars in Fremantle. I'm learning to drive in it (automatic) and it's actually really fun which I wasn't expecting at all! We took a trip down to Augusta one weekend with it and it did well. Augusta was fun but not much there that can cover more than 1 weekend.

I found my dream house and Ross took millions of pictures of the above as 'practice' with his camera.

3) Really in the TMI sector but the Landlady replaced our water heater to a gas one and OMG it's amazing. I just stand in the shower groaning, it's so good. Plus the dishes get EXTRA clean, and I need to wear gloves otherwise I can't put my hands in the water.

4) Related to the above but in the AWESOME section is that the Body Shop have brought back their banana shampoo and conditioner, so I'm stockpiling it.

5) Started another design related blog, I have lots of drafts and free downloads to put in it but haven't published much. I'll post the link when it's more substantial.

6) My laptop died its final death so we got a new house computer...

TADAA!!!

7) I finished school and currently looking for work. It's not fun and sometimes it's downright depressing but you've got to keep smiling.

8) I lost my knitting mojo but it has recently reappeared but I've decided not pot post any WIPs to avoid disappointment from certain areas. So they will be photographed only after completion.

9) After more than 6 months of endless HOT summer it has finally cooled down. My regular rotation of t-shirts is thankful for the break.

AND most importantly.....

10) The A and I celebrated our 1st anniversary at a wonderful restaurant called Star Anise. We had the degustation meal with the wines. We ended up staying there for 4 hours and it was the best meal and company ever. I wanted to take pictures of the food but it was quite dark so you wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway.

Update in Pictures: Tasmania 2 (food and wine)

No explanation necessary.

Update in Pictures: Tasmania 1

      

1. Hobart 2. Bumblebee (we don’t have them here) 3. The Spindle Tree 4. Hehehe 5. Giant bouncy at our campsite in Hobart 6. Ohhh Geology! 7. Port Arthur 8. Our home for 2 weeks, we called her Martha (The A) 9. The view from Martha one night 10. Priscilla the Beer drinking pig 11. Kookaburra 12. Wallaby 13.  Convict made bricks at the restaurant we went to on Christmas day 14. 1kg of cherries 15. Cradle Mountain 16. A tired Tassie Devil 17. Taste Festival in Hobart

Mundaring Truffle Festival

Every year the town (or Shire as they like to call themselves) of Mundaring hold a Truffle festival.  As someone at The A’s work lent us his car we decided to drive into the hills behind Perth and have a look around the festival.

Even though we didn’t have anything with truffles in it we managed to eat till we burst! Turkish bread with fresh Tapenade and Hummus, REAL Pork Rilletes with French bread, a dessert tray and on the way home a Devonshire tea with mutant giant scones.

It's so hard

They have an ice cream here called Golden Gaytime... yes I know! It's actually really good and something of an icon. They apparently had a debate wether to change the name but the vote was unanimously 'NO'

The advert they have was made in the early 80's and they still show it, and when you watch it you can see why they wouldn't bother updating it:

Everyday birds

The first thing I noticed when we got to Perth was how different the crows sound here. They make a throaty gargle that sounds like a cat in trouble. I also think that they are bigger, but I got shot down on that one. Everyday we have differnt birds that fly over in groups or in twos and I always ask The A what they are, he doesn't always have the answer so I have fun looking them up online.

The most common ones I see here are:

Willy Wagtail (they 'wag' their tails)



Pee Wee

Crows

Galah

Lorikeets