Food, fashion and fixing up!

Wow, i feel like I have to blow the cobwebs off my blog as it's been so  neglected of late!

We've had a couple of great social weekends. One of the weekends we had friends and one of my sisters come up from Adelaide for a couple of nights, It was time spent talking, laughing, sharing, shopping, eating, drinking and catching up with others as well at our place.
Last weekend Paul and I spent in Adelaide as we had a reunion dinner on the Saturday night with the group of friends we mixed with when we lived down there over 21 years ago.Some we hadn't seen in many years and had lost contact with.
I had such a good time that taking photos didn't hit my radar!! I did find this photo of the place where we dined last Saturday night. It was the Red Ochre Grill on the Torrens in Adelaide. A lovely dining experience with good company.

This is not my photo - I copied it from a Restaurant review website

In one of my previous posts I featured how we took out a glass door frame from our kitchen. By doing this we were left with unstained floorboards where the panel was taken out.

We had to decide what to do. The floor people could have tried to stain it to match, but we had a feeling it would always look lighter as the polished floor had darkened with age. They suggested they put a 'header' on it, which is what we went ahead with. They cut the floorboards the whole way across and laid wood going in the opposite direction and stained it as close as possible to the existing floor colour. We were happy with the outcome as it looks like it was meant to be there.

 

For the fashion conscious one of our local fashion boutiques, LamiSaru has developed a website for their clearance items. There are some quite good brand name items at very discounted prices. Take a look at www.electriccharlie.com.au 

Over the past weeks I've also been adjusting to a new computer and operating system, which hasn't come without it's frustrations!  I think I'm nearly on top of it now and have my settings and programs all installed and inplace. 

On the cold winter nights, we've been enjoying kicking back in our recliners and watching The Block and The Renovators.  One thing I detest though is the previews...I HATE them, so I close my eyes and my hubby mutes the sound while that's viewing.....that's love!!!

A mixed bag

A couple of weekends ago we went to Melbourne with friends. We left early Friday morning, arriving mid afternoon. We settled into our motel rooms before heading out for a bite to eat, then onto the footy at Ethiad. After the disappointing result, we walked back to our motel, got changed and headed up the road to the Crown Casino, for a relaxing wine.

Saturday was a lovely day of discovering the shops in the city. Bourke Street Mall was alive with people. We stood for around 10 minutes watching these human statues.

They were amazing, they just didn't move, not even a blink!!. At one stage one of them did start to slowly walk to shake someone's hand when they put money in the hat.I don't think I would last a few minutes, let alone however many hours they were there for.

While meandering up the mall we came across a huge line up of people and discovered that the 'Zara' store was having it's opening. You would have to be keen to wait in line for that long. We passed on that!!

Saturday night, the guys went off to the MCG to take in another AFL game, while Wendy and I had some tea and took in a movie...Water for Elephants. We enjoyed being transported into a different world of the circus for and 1½ hours.

Last year one of my sister's gave me an old hard covered Walt Disney book that had my name 'Annette' in the title. Well, my birthday has just passed again and you guessed it, I received another Walt Disney Book from her with my name in the title...classic!!  I look forward to reading it as the first one was actually very exciting!

One of my other sisters asked if I could email her through some of my favourite tea cup photos I had taken.  And what do you know...my present from her was greeting and gift cards with the images of my photos on them. What a lovely gift idea...I won't be short of cards to give now. She is a very good photographer and turns some of her photos into cards which you can purchase at www.postcardsalive.com

 

As you would agree there's nothing quite like a home baked cake, the shop ones just don't cut it as far as I'm concerned. My favourite one for baking at the moment is a Buttery Vanilla Cake, it goes great with a coffee. It's one of those recipes where you just put everything in the bowl and mix it. 

The recipe is:

250g butter, 2 teaspoons vanilla essence, 2 cups castor sugar, 4 eggs, 2 cups self-raising flour, 1/3 cup custard powder, 1 cup milk.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer until well combined. Spread into prepared cake tins. Bake in a moderately slow oven for 1 1/4hr. When cold dust with sifted icing sugar.

While I'm on favourites...my favourite drink at the moment is Malted Milk...yum. A couple of heaped teaspoons into a glass. Mix with a little milk first and then pour the rest of the milk in. It's a bit like milo in that you get the nice crunchy bits on the top.