Trimming an Easter Hat.

It's a little early for Easter but my Red Hats group have our meeting/gathering/get together on the first Tuesday of the month and April being Easter, we are having an Easter hat next week. Usually I leave things to the last minute but surprise surprise, I am ready and it is completely done, who says that you can;t teach an old dog new tricks. A friend gave me a hat, she had picked up three or four cheaply, so I didn't feel at all guilty about adding to it.

This what I started with, first I pulled off the character. I got all my supplies together, had to rummage in my sewing room but eventually found the bits and pieces that I wanted.

crafty stuff.

With trusty glue gun, I added some red material, this was to help hold the "nest" and the eggs, pegs come in handy to keep it in place while the glue dries.

This is the end result, so I have a trimmed hat for Easter and best of all, it didn't cost me a cent (although, yes, I had spent money on the craft things originally. 

Teeth, false teeth or dentures

Call them what you like but for the more mature of us, they can be part of our lives. I was eighteen when I got my first set, although it wasn't a set only the top ones. Living in a small country area we did not have a dentist and my teeth were terrible, probably due a lot to me not looking after them but genes and other things also came into play I think (or it that just me not wanting to take the whole blame.) Had to travel over an hour to dentist visits.

Anyway at eighteen not long before my wedding I had false top teeth, wedding photos showed me with actual teeth! I had spent many years smiling with my lips closed as I didn't want to show my teeth. At age twenty three, my bottom teeth were crumbling and shattering as it was a trip to hospital to get the remaining ones out and false teeth put in, now I had a full set.

Never had much problem with my false teeth until about seven or eight years ago, while chatting with a friend and having a few wines, I needed to go to the little girls room, did what I needed to do and flushed and was found on the floor asleep. Hummm, bottom teeth were nowhere around.

A quick trip to the dentist to plead my case as we were going back to China in ten days time for another five months. Luckily for me, they came thru, two weeks without a bottom set of teeth was not fun.

Move forward to last year and I noticed that it was a bit hard to chew on one side, a close inspection of my teeth revealed that they were terribly worn on one side, so I decided that when we got home, I needed to replace them. I worked out that they were over thirty (30) years old!

I knew that it was going to be expensive so I still put it off and off and off, eight months in fact until I realized that I could see some of the pink gum thru the teeth. The month of March has seen me at the dentists, for consultations, quotes, fixings and adjustments. The bill wasn't as bad as I had imagined, $850 for the top ones or $1650 for both. (I had been thinking two or three thousand!) Dentist agreed with me that the bottom ones were fine although he did tell me several times that it would be better to get them to fit perfectly if I did get both done at once. The frugal part of me decided that I didn't need to spend the extra money as there was nothing wrong with the bottom set.

Wednesday, I walked out with my new teeth, which seems a little strange, therebeing more there than there used to be and my voice sounds different but so far no sore spots, the cost includes three visits for adjustments if required.

New teeth! I chose only a lighter shade than the old ones, didn't want to go white white! Advised not to eat crusty beard or grilled steak for a few days to allow the new teeth to "seat in" but so far so good.

An easy meatless dinner

I like to have a meatless meal every now and then, it fits in with the budget and I do think that we (humans)eat too much meat. Coming home the other day after camping, I was catching up with emails, blogs I read and a couple of forum,s I usually spend the first hour after breakfast doing this but four days worth takes awhile.

Anyway on one of the forums, a recipe had been posted for Honey dipped Pumpkin, I read the recipe in full and thought that sounds good and even better, I had not taken any meat out of the freezer, had most of the ingredients needed and a neighbour had given us some pumpkin a few days before so what else could I make for dinner?

The recipe called for 300 gms of penne pasta, wow that sounded a lot so I cooked the same as I would normally cook for us. I didnt weigh the pumpkin but just cut up the piece I had into bite sized pieces. Some oil, honey (oops I forgot, used the last not to worry there was Maple syrup) garlic, humm must have used that too, sweet chilli sauce and a bit of ginger sauce will do. Mixed together and over the pumpkin and roast. I went to the garden and picked parsley, basil and spring onion and chopped finely (they were in the recipe!)

Drained the pasta added the pumpkin with the rest of the sauce, added some grated cheese, recipe had called for 100gms of ricotta but I thought grated cheese would do just as well. folded thru the chopped herbs, bit more cheese on top and that was dinner done.

Out of ten, I would have given it about a 6, pumpkin should have been cooked/roasted a few minutes longer, forgot to add the pine nuts, I did have some in the cupboard and yes the ricotta would have been better than grated cheese. Would I make it again, yes with the ricotta and pine nuts, it was tasty, different and filling. Oh by the way, I checked the recipe later and it was for six people, thank goodness I cut down on the pasta and oil. I rarely make a recipe strictly to the letter, I add a bit or delete something, I use recipe as an idea and then go from there. Next time I would probably add some greens as well, either beans or peas, to beef up the vege and add to the colour.

Electric jugs!

Last Saturday while we were at Lake Boondoonma, Warren had boiled the jug and made me a coffee for breakfast as per usual. A couple were visiting the camp site and wanted some info so they had wandered over and were chatting to us, I continued to drink my coffee and I thought hat Warren must have put sugar in it, I drink it weak and black. The taste got the better of me and the last half was too bad to drink. After the people left, I asked him if he had put sugar in it, he said that as he wasn't having sugar any more, (a recent change)so we hadn't packed any, I had forgotten that. I suggested that he try my coffee to see what was wrong with it. He agreed that it tasted a bit funny and told me to make another one, which I did and still the taste was there.

Talking about it and checking the cupboard where we keep the jug, we discovered the packet of softly that we had put in there to keep it smelling nicely. Yep the inside of the jug smelt just the same. As our camper is a fold down one and therefore shut up when not in use, I worry that it is going to smell musty. There is only a couple of cupboards in it. One holds plates and cups and cooking stuff the other has jug, toaster, gas stoves and lights, plus a kettle for when we go without power.

We used the kettle on the gas for the rest of the trip and binned the jug.

Arriving home, I boiled the jug in between unpacking the car, a sit down with a cup of coffee was welcome after packing up and then driving four hours home and unpacking again.

The next morning, Warren who is always up before me, tells me that he had lifted the lid of the jug to fill it, very unusual, and he had found a cockroach inside it. He did say that it was dead! He had washed it out,

boiled and rinsed several times and said that his coffee tasted alright. I made mine in the microwave, as soon as the shops were open, I headed out to buy new ones, one for home and one for the camper. Last time I bought one they were priced at $9 on special, yesterday they were $7.50 each, I didn't care, I wasn't going to use a jug that had had a cockroach in it, dead or alive.

Lake Boondoonma

A few weeks ago I reminded Warren that we promised ourselves that when we retired we would take off for a few days every six weeks or so. The last time we went somewhere was in November and it has been hot so we decided on the last weekend in March. We got out the mapand camping books and chose a spot, I thought only a couple of hours from home but Warren saw a place which he thought would be nice. AFL tickets came up and we bought three day games in Brisbane, the first being on yep,you guessed it 30 March, when we were going to go away. easy fixed we just brought our camping trip forward a week.

As we do have commitments through the week, even though they are social, we tried to fit around them so we went from Friday to Tuesday, Warren would miss one session of tennis. I packed all our food for the four days as well as lunch and coffee to have on the way.

Our Navman keep wanting us to take small goat track roads which we didn't so we continued on the road, unfortunately we had only packed the Camping book not a map book. Following the bitumen road, we ended up on top of a mountain and then the road went into dirt, we retracedour tracks. Finally we got there, determined to change the settings on the GPS.

Although we had rang and booked a spot, the park put us into the old park or over flow which was about 4kms away on a cliff looking over the lake. Hummmm, about twenty other vans there and all the facilities were three toilets and two showers, no kiosk, no picnic tables, no playground (that didn't concern us)no boat ramp, no camp kitchen, and no access to the water and no discount for having to drive four kms to these. Oh I forgot, as mentioned on the web site there was a tennis court in our part, we had packed the racquets and ventured over. The painted lines were pretty worn, the net was a cobbled together with cables ties and there was holes in the asphalt plus a few/lot of weeds growing through it, in other words unusable.

The next morning we made our way to the kiosk to buy a fishing license and bait and bread if they had some, cost us $22 for those three things. Sunday we went into the nearest big town but as it was Sunday most things were closed. We did manage to get fuel thank goodness and found Joe's dam, not going to try to spell his name! Premier of Qld, we sat and watched skiers while we ate our packed lunch.

It was quite hot and the camper is not the coolest thing around so we decided to return home a day early, even though we had paid for four nights. I said to Warren that we need to research our places better and next time it would be my choice. We did get the chance to relax and do very little with no phones or computer so it wasn't all lost. Many people were there but they were mad fisher people who had boats and were going out to net red claw. Didn't

even take any photos. This is our camper taken elsewhere but the set up is the same.

Home made ice cream

Warren is gluten intolerant and most commercial ice creams are out for him plus before we knew what was causing his migraines, we had cut out a lot of prepared foods,ice cream being one of those.

I stumbled across a recipe for ice cream the other day, so easy but as usual I adapted it to suit me.

Recipe called for 600 mls of whipping cream and 2/3 cup of condensed milk, whip together with vanilla pod and essence. vanilla is not something that I have in my pantry so I used fresh passion fruit instead.

Yum, is all I can say, I didn't know what I would do with the rest of the tin of condensed milk so I used it all.

Only one whipping, Don't want to think about the calories but really only need a small spoonful on top of something for a sweet treat. I will be making it again for sure.

Yearly calendar

i wanted to buy one but def wasnt going to pay $74 for one. As we have a few things planned for the year, it makes sense to have a calendar that shows where and when our activities are to take place.

So, how to get around this, i thought of drawing one on a large piece of card which would have taken a long time. Its already march so calendar were marked down in price so we bought a small one which had a month per page and we cut it down and stuck each month onto a large sheet of cardboard, not a lot of room to write in each day but enough and there is a little bit of space around if more comments are required. $6.88 and a bit of time is much better than $74.

Officeworks did have a large yearly one for $74, we bought a cheap calendar for $5 and the cardboard was $1.88, a win/win situation!

Calendar Girls

I went with a group of friends all women to see this play last weekend.   It was delightful, funny and tastefully done. Pretty close to the movie. apparently it is a touring show and they are performing in many smaller places. at $27 a head it was well worth it.

Ginger factory

I love the ginger sauces and if we dont have visitors to take there, we go up there about every six months or so. It was a good excuse to go and kill two birds with one stone as it were. A morning out, yummy scones and top up the pantry with some ginger sauce.

I use it quite a bit in cooking, either sweet and sour meals or one scones even in hot drinks, nothing like a spoonful of ginger sauce topped up with boiling water for a great hot drink when I dont feel like a coffee.

Highway was busy as usual, I sometimes wonder where all these people are going and why, it was mid week for goodness sake, surely they werent all going the same place, although the Ginger factory was a bit busy.

First point of call was the cafe, they have ginger scones with ginger jam and cream with a coffee for $7, bargain! after we visited a couple of shops, didnt go into the fudge place as I know that I definately didnt need any fudge, chocolate or sweets of any kind. did buy some soaps and essentails oils for the next time I make soap.

Walked thru the gardens, always pleasant no matter what the weather is like, nice and shady with a couple of water spouts.

On to the main shop where i bought 6 bottles of sauce and a couple of jams, all up it cost us $65 for the day and the scones were so big and tasty that we passed on lunch , did have an earlier dinner though.

Morning tea with a difference!

Found ourselves at a loose end this morning, had planned to go to the ginger factory but it had rained on Wednesday, therefore no tennis and so we went there (ginger factory) on wednesday.

Warren suggests going to Waruman for morning tea, yep i agree, then he follows that by saying on the bike.

Although its a two up bike and registered for the road, I had not been  on it but what the hell, did plenty of two up riding in China so no difference really.

Yeah, no difference at all, except there is no "boot" at the back and the seat run out before my bum did, so my bum was hanging in freah air for a couple of inches and there was no buffer to stop me sliding off!

A few hills were I was hanging on to Warren for grim death just in case i slipped, the gear changes arent as smooth as in a car either, bike in China had no gears. This bike is higher and goes faster as well.

we went the back road thank goodness so little traffic just bends and hills. In no time we arrived had a nice coffee and shared a danish, then it was time to come back.

I enjoyed the trip back much better but I'm sure warren still has the inprint of my boobs in his back, very cosy!