Eye spy... something red!

Introducing... my new gumboots! I bought these at the mid-year sales, and I think they were supposed to be some fashion item? Gumboots as fashion isn't something I don't understand. Gumboots are practical for walking in mud and are great for being hosed down after walking in the mud, but aren't practical for walking through shopping malls or even simply walking in a co-ordinated way. I think most other people had the same idea as me, which is why they were so heavily discounted. However, they're cute and keep my feet clean and dry while weeding and planting out the garden. And there has been plenty of time spent in the garden recently!

Thank you to Ellieboo for this week's theme! (I've been wanting to show off my new gumboots for a while!). And also to Cindy, the lovely host of Eye Spy...!

Eye spy... a favourite children's party game

(Still catching up on Eye Spy's here...)

Growing up, my parents always threw amazing dress up parties for my brother and I at home. We'd go all out and decorate the house, have appropriately themed foods and mum would always make an awesome birthday cake. One year, Dad even dressed up as an astronaut, decked out in a bike helmet wrapped in silver foil and aluminum foil ducting pipes for his arms and legs. Even now, I still love dress up parties, birthday cakes and games. Can I be a child forever, please?

I think my favourite game was The Mummy Game, followed very closely by The Fish Game.

The Mummy Game is where children (or adults) pair up, and they decide which one of them will be "the mummy" and who will do the wrapping. Give the team two rolls of toilet paper.
Then the mummifier has to wrap the other child up in toilet paper, creating a mummy. We always used to play it so that a song or timer was on, and they had to wrap as quickly but accurately as possible, and the person with the most complete/best looking mummy at the end of the song/timer wins.

Photo from here

The Fish Game is where each child cuts a few fish out of newspaper, about 30 cm long. They are then given a rolled up newspaper and asked to stand at a starting line, with their fish placed on the starting line. At the "go" signal, they have to whack their newspaper roll just behind the fish, which creates a gust of air which propels the fish forward. They keep whack-whack-whaking and the first to get their fish over the finish line wins!

Head over Cindy's to see what other games people are playing!

Eye spy... a sign

I'm doing some catching up on some Eye Spy's. Better late than never, as they say! I spotted this on Brunswick St last night, at Aboh Shoes. Hehehe. I've lost my voice so writing blog posts a month after they were "due" is helping me cope. I don't do well if I can't talk. Hope you had a good weekend!

Eye spy... my perfect invention

Before going on to list my perfect invention, I should mention that I was so excited when I read this week's topic. My dad is a bit of an inventor, and many of my favourite childhood memories are of helping dad with his wacky inventions. The word "invention" conjures up so many hilarious family memories for me. My dad would always make a grand announcement over dinner that he had just come up with a new, amazing invention... and then a few weeks after that we'd always discover that his inventions had already been invented... and usually 10x less elaborate than his. But that never stopped him. My dad was, I think, the only person who was completely in his element during the 1998 Esso Longford gas explosion: he spent the entire two weeks coming up with new ways to heat water for our showers (like buying 50 m of black piping and leaving it on the roof filled with water, for some real "solar hot water"). I was always the guinea pig for his new shower inventions... and it resulted in me having many cold showers!

My dad loves to modify things too and he loves a good bargain. Recently he was after a paper shredder, but didn't want to spend $45 on an electric paper shredder when he could spend just $15 on a manual, hand crank one. Within 15 minutes of him manually shredding paper he was tired of turning the handle and was coming up ways to make it go faster. He made an elaborate attachment so he could fit his power drill (set to ~200 RPM) onto the handle pulled the trigger. It worked great... for about 20 seconds. And then the shredder cracked. And he ended up having to buy the $45 electric shredder.

So... anyway... being my father's daughter, I do like a bit of inventing too. I guess that's how I ended up in science. I have no trouble coming up with hundreds of new, cool and exciting medical inventions. However today as I sit here, just having come back from a weekend long karate training event with a big full of stinky clothes and no motivation, the idea that comes to mind for my perfect invention is a bit closer to home. It involves a device where I could put all of my clothes:

• It would automatically sorts between clean/'worn once but still ok' and dirty clothes (perhaps via some sort of chemical detection for armpit odours?)
• It would sort between white/coloured/dark coloured clothes (colour detection)
  
• It would puts them in the washing machine and selects the appropriate setting (cold for those clothes that shrink, like my karate uniform)
• It would then dry them appropriately (again, cooler settings for shrink-prone clothes)
  
• It would fold my clothes and place them neatly in a basket. Ultimately it would sort between the folded clothes into three piles: pants, tops and underwear.

This Whirlpool Ultimate Care washing machine is not ultimate enough!


Go visit Cindy to see who else is playing!

Eye spy...

This week's theme is a challenge, even despite there being a choice of two! There's not much blooming in our garden, or nearby. Lots of green but no bloom. And while I could show you my new, recent scars, even I think they're totally gross and you wouldn't really like to see them either. I had my wisdom teeth out last Monday and the wounds are healing nicely. I am not a huge fan of lots of sweet things, so I was onto solids within a day or so. However there are still some aches and pains in my jaw, but the swelling has gone right down. I can't wait for them to finish with their healing though. Back at work tomorrow.

The only other scars I have are from when I had my tonsils out. Again, these are not photos you want to see. It's funny, but despite all my outdoor adventures and contact sports, I don't have any scars. All of my injuries have been internal ones (like when I fell off a trampoline and tore the muscles in my lower back), with no blood and gore (dislocated thumbs generally don't result in blood), or have healed so neatly I have nothing to show (like the times I've sliced my finger to the bone).

No more trampolines for me, please!

Go check out who else is playing over at Cindy's place!

Eye spy... a morning ritual

I am a big fan of routine. It keeps me sane when there's so much going on in and so many things to fit in, and my mornings are particularly sacred. I have both a pre-work and work routine that goes something like this...

7:30am: wake up. I seem to wake up at 7:30am regardless of how early/late I went to bed or whether it's a weekday or weekend. Boot my computer.
7:35am: shower. I have now perfected the 4 minute shower. Check the weather on the bureau of meteorology. Get changed.
7:45am: breakfast. Porridge, or weetbix with a sprinkling of muesli with soy milk. Check whether the rats require breakfast as well, or if their water needs to be changed. Ignore the cat despite his pathetic pleas, because he is likely to have conned other members of the household into feeding him two breakfasts already.
7:50am: out the door for work!
8:00am: Arrive at work. Make a coffee. Spend the next 20-30 mins catching up on news, a few blogs and anything else that is exciting and non-work related.

Thankfully Yarra Valley Water gave us one of these cute electronic shower timers, and not one of the dodgy hour glass ones (I have often wondered how much water went into the manufacture of those dodgy ones!)

And then on the weekend...

7:30am: wake up. Laze in bed, looking out the window.
7:45am: shower. I have now perfected the 4 minute shower. Get changed
7:55am: breakfast. Porridge, or weetbix with a sprinkling of muesli with soy milk.
8:00am: Dawdle. Make a to-do list for the weekend (there's always something on the go). Read the news, a few blogs and anything else that is exciting and non-work related. Start some baking, or work on a sewing project, put on a load of washing, do general cleaning and tidying until Gib gets up. It's always easier to clean when he's not around.
10:00am: Coffee! at one of the local coffee shops.

Thanks Angie for this week's theme, and Cindy for hosting Eye Spy!

Eye spy... a work in progress

My current work in progress is my work-life-everything balance. It's been knocked askew. Exciting things are happening but they're also causing considerable stress.

Gib and I do lots of stuff together. We have many overlapping hobbies, but enjoy different aspects of the same interest, but we can still function independently, do our own thing. Since going back to karate a few weeks ago and with my PhD workload shifting for preparation for recruitment of participants and running experiments, and also Gib starting an awesome new role at his work with ridiculously early starts and some long hours (I'm a morning person, but 5:30am is a rude time to be awake) it's been a struggle to keep up. Gib and I used to head to karate together, but with his new work hours it's just not possible, as he needs to be in bed at the time I'm getting home from training. Our house cleaning routine and cooking routine, where we cook meals together and thus have time to catch up on each other's news and discuss cool things, is out of kilter too (although strangely, the house is tidier and more organised than it's ever been).

The multiple changes to our routine and more time apart than usual is making our little abode a mad house. We're tired, stressed and cranky. But on the plus side, neither of us have any struggles discussing anything, so despite our crankiness we've been nutting out battle plans to overcome and work around these new and exciting times. I honestly don't know how people do it all with kids too. How do you people do it?!

Yes, sometimes it does feel like I'm balanced precariously and I really have to keep my s*** together or I'll be falling down that sheer drop below. Photo from here.

Thanks Michelle for this week's theme! I love seeing what everyone else is up to. And to our host, Cindy, for organising Eye spy!

Eye Spy... a magic elixir

When your nose is blocked and you can't taste a damn thing, Vegemite on toast is where it's at. I swear it cures colds (or at least makes them more tolerable)

Courtesy of bababooie

For a general all purpose item though, my favourite is toothpaste! (the non-gel, non-whitening kind)

• Clean CDs/DVDs
• Cleaning pencil marks and crayon off walls
• As an antacid - only use a small amount! (the peppermint, calcite and sodium bicarbonate help neutralise acid late at night when you've had too many nachos and your local supermarket has closed)
• Cleaning silver
• Cleaning grime off your sneakers
• Removing water stains from wood

Thanks Amy for this week's theme, and to Cindy, our lovely Eye Spy host!

Eye spy... a surprise

Hmm, it's now Friday, and this was supposed to be posted Sunday! To make up for it I'll kick this post off with a Lolcat, one of mah faves...

I thought I'd include that because, well, I'm going to discuss some not-so-girly things now... hold tight or click on past!

Surprise #1:
Two weekends ago while doing the final preparations before we spray the engine bay of my car (literally, we'd even ordered the paint) when we discovered *surprise!* a large weld in the chassis rail! This car was just giving no love back at all! While some people might think that a weld in the chassis rail is OK and are willing to keep forging on, given the other dodgy mechanical and repairs found on this car, I wasn't prepared to trust the quality of their welding work. Especially given that it was on the driver's side. Death or paraplegia isn't the price I ultimately want to pay for trying to save time and money now. Thankfully the guy at the paint shop hadn't started making up our paint yet so now the car is being stripped, parted out and the pieces sold. Bye bye car.

Surprise #2:
As a result of Surprise #1, I spent a large part of last week trawling car sale sites, car forums etc. Most of the cars we inspected were crap, but we did find one little gem. (I have to say, if you're looking to buy cars 2nd hand cars right now, it's definitely the time to buy! So cheap!). Gib and I looked over it, we sent my dad down to look over it, took our friend who's a mechanical engineer to look over it. Brilliant. So we snapped it up and took it home Wednesday. Definitely weren't expecting to pick anything up so fast. So, Hello new car!

An artist (my brother)'s rendition of the rear end of a similar model to my car: Nissan Skyline R34 (mine is a 32).
You can even buy this as a tshirt!

Surprise #3:
I started at a new karate dojo last night. It was a surprise - I wasn't expecting to find a dojo so soon. It felt good to be back in my "white pyjamas". Even though I have trained for a considerable period of time in a similar school, I was nervous about all sorts of things: How I'd fit in, my technique, my attitude, their expectations, my expectations (and trying to remove my expectations a.ka. emptying my cup), how I'd fit in the new knowledge around old knowledge. I think the movie, Karate Kid, has some good reminders on matters like that though:

Miyagi, from Karate Kid:

In Okinawa, belt mean no need rope to hold up pants.
Daniel-san...
[taps his head] Karate here.
[taps his heart] Karate here.
[points to his belt] Karate never here. Understand?

First day back after no proper class for 6 months. I think I need a massage.


Thanks Miss Muggins for this week's surprising theme! And to Cindy for being a fantabulous host of Eye spy!

Eye spy... something that makes me happy

Exercise. It doesn't matter what: Karate, jogging, weights, skipping... but if I don't get my daily dose, things get nasty. I get surly and I don't really like being like that. In fact, just the other day Gib said to me, in a very serious and concerned tone "Beth, you're sounding quite negative today. I think you need to go to the gym". But with a daily work out, I feel happy, positive and often like a super hero. I feel totally invincible.

Easily pleased: exercise - anything, anywhere, anytime - makes me happy!
These are a slightly cleaner version of my shoes. I love orange (my orange runners make me happy too!)

Thank you Iris + Lily: I love happy themes! And Cindy, our wonderful host of Eye Spy!

Eye spy... love

When I saw this week's theme I just had to share this. It's one of my all time favourite songs, by PJ Harvey.





Thank you to Cindy for hosting another wonderful Eye spy!

How to make a Giant Squid cake

Yesterday was the hottest day in Melbourne on record: 46.4°C. We have massive bushfires raging throughout the state. Needless to say things have been a little stressful* in these parts. It also means it's not the best weather for making a birthday cake. However, I headed to my parents' place where they have air conditioning in the kitchen and a spare fridge out the back. I started nice and early in the morning, so it was all done before the worst of the heat kicked in.

The specifications:

• Make a giant squid cake. I couldn't do a 1:1 scale giant squid, and I wasn't sure how people would know it's a giant squid if it was cake-sized, because it would just look like a regular squid then. So I went with some sort of giant squid reference point: a boat.
  
• The cake should be a white chocolate cake. That didn't happen. I ran out of time, and the day that I was able to make the cake was way too hot and it was going to be really nasty for the oven to be on for that long (1.5+ hours cooking time). So a vanilla cake it was (only 40 min cooking time). Sorry Sarah!
• Must be iced with butter icing (my friend dislikes the sugary soft, mouldable icing). Butter icing, in 46.4°C weather, was going to be far too unstable. So I went with white chocolate ganache, in the hope that that would be more stable and would make up for the lack of white chocolate cake.

How to make a giant squid cake

You will need:

• Double quantity of vanilla butter cake batter (I doubled the vanilla so it was more vanillary)
  
• 1 large loaf pan (23 x 13 x 8 cm)
• 1 slab pan (25 x 25 x 4 cm)
• 750 g white chocolate
• 250 ml cream
• Plastic ice cream container lid, cut into 2 triangles for fins
  
• Red & blue food dye
• Candy necklaces (I got a massive bag for $2 at the Reject shop)
• Toy boat
• Toothpicks

Baking the cakes:

A few days before you need the cake is a good time to bake them.

• Transfer ¾ of the double quantity of cake mixture to the loaf pan, and ¼ to the slab pan. Make sure your pans are well greased and have a layer of greaseproof paper on the bottom. Bake the slab for 30 mins, and the loaf for 40-45 mins.
• Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely. Freeze the cakes. (I do this even when it isn't hot weather, so it makes the cake easier to cut, and it crumbs far less).

Shaping the cake:

• Allow the cakes to thaw slightly before carving.
• Using a sharp knife, shape the loaf cake into the shape of a squid's mantle. I used this squid anatomy site as a reference. I wont feature the pictures here because they're kind of gross. Because it's a cake and we need to maximise the amount of cake to be consumed, mine is somewhat more squat than an actual squid. Refer to the shape below. I also made a slight ridge (0.5cm) where the mantle finishes and the eye section begins.
  

• From the slab cake, cut the arms and tentacles by making wiggly strips from the cake. Cut 8 arms and two tentacles. Each arm is about 3 cm wide and 18 cm long (although I then later cut some shorter to fit on the cake board). Each tentacle is 25 cm long and 3 cm wide. I cut the two tentacles from the bottom 6 cm of the slab. The tentacles have a little diamond shaped bit at the bottom. Be careful with your arms and tentacles. If you break on don't fret. Use some icing and toothpicks to glue them back together.
  

My wiggly squid arms and tentacles. You can see that some of the legs have been cut shorter to fit on the cake board.

Make the ganache:

Melt together 700 g white chocolate and 250 ml cream over a double boiler. Set aside the spare 50 g white chocolate (don't eat it!). Stir through 5 ml red food dye and 1 drop of blue food dye. Beat together until blended, allow to cool to room temperature.

Assemble the cake:

• Prepare the cake board. I used a wooden chopping board covered in a couple of layers of blue plastic.
• Place the mantle in a back corner of the cake.
• Arrange the bottom legs around the cake, below the ridge of the mantle, and use toothpicks to hold them in place. I had 7 legs/tentacles below, and 3 on top. Don't bother with the top ones until later.
  
• Ice the cake with the ganache.

The toothpicks poking out there are just place holders for the top legs

• Add the plastic fins. Ice them too. I saved the fins until a bit later so I could ice the sides of the cake better.
  

• I used two white chocolate buttons and placed them in the centre of the bottom end of the mantle/head area, for a beak.
• Place the boat at the end of the cake board. Drape the top legs over the top of the boat, and use toothpicks to insert the legs into the body, and carefully ice them too.
  

Beak and positioning of legs against the body. You can see it was getting a little messy in there! It's ok, ganache cleans up really well.

• Put the squid in the fridge for a bit to set the ganache. Once firm, take it out and wtih a spatular or knife dipped in hot water (be sure to wipe off the water) smooth over the icing.
  
• Add your candy necklace suckers along the sides of the arms and tentacles.

The eye:

This was a bit of serendipity. I didn't have any Orchard icing to mould into an eye and refused to go out into the heat. My mum had these small glass spice bowls. Originally I was going to use them as a chocolate mould (with the leftover 50 g white chocolate): fill the bottom with a centre of white chocolate dyed black, let it set, then fill in white chocolate over the top, then tip it out once its all set together. However, they didn't tip out. So I then decided to just keep the chocolate eyes in the spice bowl, and use the whole think as the eye. It really got that freaky eye lens thing going that squids have. I just pushed the eye/glass spice bowl into the side of the head.

The clean up and presentation:

Using a damp paper towel and some ear buds, carfully clean up around the cake board and tidy up any icing that has oozed into weird corners. And here it is...

Happy birthday, Sarah!

And, because I am lazy, this is also going to come under this week's Eye Spy something delicious theme, because, you know, white chocolate ganache is freaking delicious. This week's theme was suggested by the super crafty Handmaiden and hosted by the wonderful Cindy!

* My aunt lives in Whittlesea, one of the townships south of Kinglake where the worst has been that is assisting with feeding people and providing temporary shelter. We have friends who lives in Wallan and they managed to rescue their horses, fire came to within 3 metres of their house, but their house was been saved.

Eye spy a bit of bling

OK, actually, that's a lot of bling. A whole entire shop of bling. This photo was taken earlier this year outside a shop in Shinjuku Station, Tokyo. Yes, everything in that shop window is literally covered in diamantes. We stuck our heads into the shop but it was just way too much bling for us, it was overwhelming.

Bling overload

Between all of the silver diamantes there is a a line from the Queen song, Bicycle Race written down the side: "Bicycle races are coming your way so forget all your duties, oh yeah". Crazy.

Thanks to Miss HB for choosing this week's theme and allowing me to reminisce about Tokyo weirdness, and to Cindy for hosting Eye Spy!

Eye spy a burst of colour

Oopsies, a little late again. I guess it's just that time of year. Introducing my little robot tissue holder that my Japanese friend, Erika, and her family gave me. (Please excuse the dodgy, late at night, not-quite-adequate lighting in the photo, heehee). I love this little guy! He is one of my most favourite posessions. Unfortunately my robot tissue holder has been getting a bit of a work out lately as I have managed to catch a cold. But he definitely brightens up my drab computer area.


Thanks to Flossy-P for this week's theme, and to the lovely Cindy for organising Eye Spy... wanna join in?

Eye spy something in my garden

Yes folks, I'm back from my brief blogging hiatus. My diary is full with Christmas catch ups and parties and shopping and sewing for Christmas... oh, and there's a PhD in amongst that too. I'm a little late on my Eye Spy post (I loved this week's topic, picked by the wonderful Ms Curly Pops), but Gib found this gorgeous beetle our front garden this afternoon. Just amazing to see one of these beetles in action. It's a shame my little point-and-shoot couldn't quite capture the brilliance of the green on his elytra.

Eye spy... what I want for Christmas

I’m excited by Cindy’s new Eye Spy meme! This Christmas I am looking forward to having all of my wonderful family around (my awesome big bro is home for Christmas for the first time in 3 years!), reflect on the good health I’ve been enjoying and give thanks that I have a very comfortable, happy life. But this is what I’ve got my eye on...

This is my dear, bucket of $%@# car.
I really want it back on the road for Christmas.

The whole topic of my car is a bit of a sore spot for me. I bought it second hand from a friend of a friend for cheaps. When I went to re-roadworthy it, every time it was about to be booked it in to VicRoads something would go wrong, like a burst water hose, or dead turbo. About 6 months after it was finally roadworthied, the alternator died, but Mr Fix-it Gib was busy finishing his degree so there was some... delay... in fixing it. A few months after the alternator was repaired there was a problem with the oil pump (we didn't know it was that at the time), which quickly lead to the engine and turbo (again) dying. Since then, the car has been off the road for about 6 months while we've been getting the parts to replace it. It's not so much a cost thing as a time thing, because we and our super cool friend who loves rebuilding cars in his spare time can repair it so that keeps costs low. He just happened to be working on a spare CA engine, you know, for kicks in his spare time, and was happy to finish it off and plonk it in my car. Our crazy friend reckons it will be on the road by Christmas.

Gib and our crazy friend, fixing the car. Again.

I've thought about selling it (but who on earth would buy it in its current state?!), but when it's on the road it's such a beautiful car. I love my car to bits and we've been through so much together. And it's a matter of pride now. To be honest, I think this is going to be one of those times when in about 30 years I'll look back and laugh and say "Haha! Wasn't buying that heap of crap Silvia a poor decision? But wasn't it fun!". And I wont ever be able to give crap to my children for their odd car purchases. It is a freaking cool car though. When it's running.

I should mention that I don't actually use my car all of that often, as I walk to work or carpool with the family, and I'm fortunate enough to live within close proximity to shopping centres, good places to eat and a good train line. Its intention was to always be a weekend car.

But I still want my car back.