Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The D Word (again!)

Well, Matt and I started doing Weight Watchers again yesterday. We aren't going to the meetings but we are following the plan, counting points etc. We want to lose those few extra kilos before the wedding.

Why is it that when you're not on a diet, whenever you put something in your mouth people give you dirty looks and say things like "aren't you supposed to be on a diet?" (GRRR!) and as soon as you start a diet, people start telling you you don't really need to be on one?

I've decided I don't really need to be on a diet (cause, goddammit, I'm never gonna look like Jennifer Hawkins no matter how hard I try) but I WOULD like to lose just a little bit before the wedding - I want to be a beautiful bride.

In honor of starting a(nother) diet, I have updated the recipe of the week! (which shouldn't be called that anymore, but oh well). I have actually got two new recipes for you there!

LOW FAT FISH CAKES
- Made these for Jules & Dan on Saturday night and they were a hit - Matt even liked them and he's not a huge fan of fish.

SWEET POTATO & CHICKPEA CURRY - Which we had for dinner tonight - very yummy. I included this vegetarian dish just for you, Captain_Howdy_Girl!!

This was posted at 9:08 PM.

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Friday, March 24, 2006

Inspire Me Thursday March Challenge #4 - Monochromatic Art

I read about this challenge today and couldn't wait to get started! What a great excuse to do a whole painting using only my favourite colour (as well as black and white, anyway). Suffice to say I have to go and buy some more blue paint :P

Here is my finished painting. I must say I am pretty happy with it (although I don't think Matt liked it too much - when I asked him what he thought he said "It's blue").

I had to post 2 pics because I took them while the paint was still fresh and the flash kept reflecting.

This is the one I took without the flash. It doesn't have the reflection and shows the different shades better than the flash photo, but the colours don't look quite right:



This one is with flash. This is more like what the colours actually look like, but it is hard to see one of the flowers because of the flash reflection and the shading doesn't look as dark as it does in real life:



I suppose I could scan it but I am too impatient to wait for the paint to dry!

I enjoyed this challenge so much I would like to do another one (in a different colour!). But I don't think that's allowed.

Bring on next Thursday! :)

This was posted at 10:08 PM.

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Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Inspire Me Thursday March Challenge #3 - Think BIG!


Last week Matt and I were cleaning out our study, and when doing so we came across some blank canvasses I didn't know I had (yeah our study had a lot of junk in it!). One of them was quite large (around 45cm x 75cm) and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it...

Then came this week's Inspire Me Thursday challenge, and it was like it was meant to be! It was like I had an excuse to use the big canvas without feeling pressure about 'saving' it for something else (considering the bigger the canvas the more it costs). So when I finally got some time (and recovered from the weekend), I got stuck into painting. This painting is based on a small sketch I did a long time ago.

Hope you like it!

This was posted at 8:48 PM.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

You Know It's True Love When...

he cleans up your vomit.

So we went out last night to my friend from work Denise's place. We brought a couple of bottles of wine. She brought out the tequila shots.

I drank several (I can't remember exactly how many but it was at least 5 and I get drunk easily!)

After I we got home my body decided to let me know that drinking lots of tequila is not good for it.

Lucky I have Matt to look after me! He has been so good, bringing me water etc and cleaning up the mess I made while I sat in the shower. You know it's true love when someone can do something like that and *still* love you.

I'm pretty ashamed of myself for getting so drunk, so considered not writing this to broadcast my indiscretions, but I thought Matt would probably write about it anyway so I might as well write it myself and publicly thank him for looking after me.

Thanks babe, I love you lots! Thanks for putting up with me :P

This was posted at 1:43 PM.

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Sunday, March 12, 2006

Inspire Me Thursday March Challenge #2 - Sense-less Art

This week's Inspire Me Thursday challenge is to create a piece of art WITHOUT using your senses! Pretty tricky, huh?

Here's what I came up with:


It is a mixed-media painting inspired by the jungle.

How is this 'senseless' you ask?

Sight - I closed my eyes while I drew the background of this piece with water colour pencils. I chose out all the green pencils as well as black and white, and kept my eyes closed while choosing colours as well as while drawing.

Touch (Feel-ings) - I followed the advice of the Inspire Me Thursday website: I let go of the expectations and feelings associated with creating and what I wanted from the outcome.

Hear - Again, I followed the website's advice. I didn't listen to my inner critic (which normally talks pretty loudly) which left me free to create something I hadn't done before. I have never made a mixed-media piece before and 'tuning out' to my inner critic helped me to try something new. I also didn't listen to any music while I was creating which is unusual.

Taste - I decided to 'let go of my tastes'. So I chose a colour I usually don't like - green.

Smell - The reason I chose to use watercolour pencils instead of paints is that I love the smell of my paints (especially acrylics) and by chosing pencils I was diminishing the 'smell' part of my work.

So that's it! I'm looking forward to next week's challenge!

This was posted at 9:24 AM.

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Saturday, March 11, 2006

Wedding Jewellery

Today I went and tried on my wedding dress again :) It was great because I was able to try it with my shoes, and to pick out a veil. It was also great because Paula was able to come along this time. It felt SO great to wear my dress and I didn't want to take it off! It was prettier than I had remembered.

We also went shopping for wedding jewellery. It was a lot easier once we had a clearer picture of what the dress looked like (in particular the colour) and I ended up buying a necklace and tiara, and Mum bought me a pair of earrings and a bracelet to match.

I have got pictures but I haven't put them on here because I thought I would leave it as a surprise - but if you REALLY want to see them, email and I'll send them to you! :)

This was posted at 9:57 PM.

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Thursday, March 09, 2006

Science is Cool!

Had an interesting week at work this week.

Monday was fairly normal.

Tuesday I went to a seminar about hearing impairment (which was really interesting and informative - I'm glad I went)

Yesterday I got a DISGUSTING letter from a parent telling me how incompetent I am (which I don't really want to get into cause it makes me angry)

And Today - well, it was a pretty normal Thursday but it reminded me why I love my job.

Thursday is Science day for my kids. We do a science experiment in the afternoon (we do this when the other class in the room is at German lessons so we don't disturb them - it can get noisy).

Mostly we do a lot of exploration - my main goal is to give them a grounding on 'working scientifically' (see there's some departmental jargon for you) and bascially teach them that SCIENCE IS FUN. The main reason a lot of people are turned off by it is they didn't learn how fun it is early on.

So today we did an exploration of a 'stir-thickening liquid'. What's that, you ask? Well, basically, it is a liquid that is very runny and thin when it is still or moving slowly, and very thick to almost solid when it is stirred. A very easy to make one is cornflour and water. You need to play around a bit to get the proportions right, but once you do, it is great to play with (I think it is around 3:1 cornflour to water. Stir slowly or it won't work!).

The part the kids liked the best was when I showed them that they could actually punch a bowl of liquid and not get their hands wet! If you slowly put your fist into the bowl of cornflour mix, you will get a sticky, messy hand. If you punch the mixture very quickly, your fist will bounce off like you have punched a piece of rubber. The kids found this fascinating and asked me if it was "magic" - I told them it isn't magic, it's science :)

Try it at home if you have never done it before - I think the teacher was having as much fun in this lesson as the kids were!

This was posted at 10:42 PM.

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Sunday, March 05, 2006

Book Thing

Saw this on another blog and thought it was a great idea!

A book that made you cry: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I can't tell you how much I LOVE this book!

A book that scared you
: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, and Sphere by Michael Crichton.

A book that made you laugh: Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding

A book in high school that you loved: This is really embarrasing but I loved Flowers in the Attic and My Sweet Audrina by Virginia Andrews. Grew out of that phase. A book we had to read for class in about grade 8 I loved was called The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier.

A book in high school that you hated
: My maths textbook. Sorry I couldn't think of anything else I enjoyed the novels we had to read for high school mostly.

A book series that you love: The Harry Potter series

Your favourite science fiction/fantasy novel: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Your favourite romance novel: The Time Traveler's Wife again. I don't know whether you would classify it as a romance novel but it is definately romantic.

Favourite book of poems: Reflections on the River by Stephen Cassettari.

Favourite book not listed previously: There are so many that didn't really fit into these categories. I LOVE First Light by Richard Preston, which is about the building of the Hale Telescope. I love The Eight by Katherine Neville. Love most of Michael Crichton and Matthew Reilly's books. Also have a long list of non-fiction I love too.

I was supposed to write about books that challenged my imagination, my morals and my identity. But I couldn't think of any. Or maybe I am misunderstanding what they want me to write. At any rate I didn't include them.

This was posted at 9:46 PM.

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Inspire Me Thursday March Challenge # 1: Five Senses

This week's challenge from Inspire Me Thursday involves some sensory exploration: Can you use all five of your senses in your creative process?

Well, I thought the self-portrait was hard!

Really, this one wasn't hard to do but planning what to do took some thought.

Here's what I came up with:



I made a hanging star out of salt dough to hang in the study. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out even though it wasn't exactly what I had imagined.

Here's how it fits into the 5 senses thing:

See: Well, this was kinda boring I must admit. I did see it as I was making it but I can't really say I looked at it in a different way like we were supposed to. I did sit on the floor of the kitchen and watch it baking through the oven door. Does that count?

Touch: Kneading the dough

Taste: The dough is edible (at least before I added paint and stuff!), although not very appetising. I didn't actually taste it but I'm sure it would taste, well, salty!

Smell: Before baking the dough, I mixed in a few drops of essential oil. That way when I hang up the star in my study it will smell pretty as well as look pretty!

Hear: In the dough I put some pieces of broken cup as a mosaic. The sound part of this creation was me breaking the cup!

So there you go. Five senses!

This was posted at 6:36 PM.

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Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Inspire Me Thursday 1: Self Portrait

I came across a really cool website today called Inspire Me Thursday. Basically the idea is each week they post a topic or idea that is supposed to inspire you to create something. I needed something like this to encourage me to do some more art (instead of my mind being totally on the wedding all the time) so I think it's a great idea.

This week's theme is "Self Portrait". They couldn't have picked a scarier topic for me! I am not good at drawing or painting people at the best of times and painting myself is even worse. But I stepped out of my comfort zone anyway and had a go. I copied from one of my favourite photos instead of looking in the mirror, and least the subject stays still that way!

Here is what I came up with:



I know the mouth isn't right but I did it over and over and just couldn't get it. People are not really my thing. Maybe I should have gone for something more abstract but oh well. I'm glad I had a go at it anyway!

Before I go, here is another self portrait of me! I painted this one when I was about 11 or 12. Might give you a bit of a laugh!!



By the way I know it isn't Thursday yet but it will be by the time most people read this, so there.

This was posted at 9:25 PM.

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One of Those Days...

It's been one of those days today.

I woke up at about 4 in the morning unable to breathe through my nose. I was all stuffed up and started sneezing uncontrollably. Poor Matt! He didn't get any sleep after that either because I kept sneezing and blowing my nose. I ended up getting up and having a hot shower so hopefully the steam would make me feel better. It worked enough for me to be able to get back to sleep until around 7.

Whatever it was that made me so sneezy must have gone away by then because I could breathe when I got up. I didn't have another shower when I got up, so my wake up routine was all out of whack. Thought I was doing pretty good to get myself up and dressed and out of the house.

Got to school, and the stress started from the beginning - one of the kids in my class started her bullying early today picking on other kids before school. So I had to deal with that.

After that I thought the day was going well, until I realised that my shirt was on back-to-front. OK so my morning routine could have gone a little better. I hid in the storeroom to change it around to the right way.

In the afternoon my delightful little cherub decided to hit another child in the head with a cricket bat (good thing it was a plastic one). I am at my wit's end with her, I just don't know what to do with her. Everytime I think my techniques of getting her to pick up paper/write lines etc when she does the wrong thing (about the only punishments we are allowed to give) and giving excessive praise when she does the right thing are working, she goes and does something like this. It's keeping me up nights thinking how I am going to help her and I don't really know the answer. *Sigh*.

Anyway, it wasn't the worst day in the world - there was no wet lunch today for the first time this week (hallelujah!) and I had some non-contact time while the kids were at German lessons, so it wasn't all bad.

I'll try to wear my clothes around the right way tomorrow. And hopefully the little cherubs will be having a good (read: well-behaved) day. They better because it is swimming day tomorrow. Joy.

This was posted at 5:19 PM.

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