Sold a bike today

After trying to sell the unregistered bike for awhile, Warren decided to put up both bikes for sale and he would kept which ever bike didnt sell.

He had listed it on Gum tree and had lots of interest and even phone calls and arrangements to come and see but they never turned up. Gum tree ads run for a month.

Last week he put them on a Bike sale web site and still nothing until yesterday. Some-one contacted him and offered a thousand (it was listed at $1450) I said tell him no lower than $1250 and we would make up the difference. (No longer his bike but he was selling it) Arrangement to view was for Friday. last night the phone goes again, some-one else wants to look at it and could come on Saturday. Warren told him that some-one was coming on Friday and it may be sold.

Today while Warren was at tennis, a guy rang him from the same town, he wanted the reg bike, came over and looked at it put down a deposit. We need to get a road worthy done on it.

Warren then had to text the other two guys to tell them that the unreg bike has been withdrawn from sale. I guess they were a bit miffed but he did put up that he wanted to sell one of them.

Gardening

I am not a great gardener or even a good one but I do like fresh produce and have dabbled in things in the garden for some time.

That's all about to change (fingers crossed)

Last year when we came home from China our house sitters had ginger and parsley growing up the side of the house as well as tomatoes. We have grown a few more tomatoes in the same spot and that is where my egg plant is doing well. Have had beans got a few of them and we did have a couple of lots of corn but I think it is out of sight out of mind and the plants around there probably didn't get enough water.

My recent buy, garden beds even delivered free. This morning we set the small one up in place, the one on the left will end up there and the other three probably along the fence line further to the left.

Bunnings was very busy this morning , We had to queue toi get into the place! Seemed that everybody was doing some work in the garden. Cardboard in the bottom to keep the weeds at bay.

Headed straight to the garden area and picked up four bags of potting mix, another four bags of soil and then a special one with growth hormones etc and finally some cane mulch. Then the plants, what to select? Went with another tomato we have four already doing well, capsicum green and some small red ones, spinach and silver beet, and climbing beans. Added the soil etc and watered it in and retired to the lounge as it was to be 33 degrees, plants would go in later.

Didn't fill it but allowing for good growth?? They even got a good drink so off to a good start.

5 pm and there is movement!

Its been a hot day and since about 10am, the TV has been in use. car racing and a movie and a travel doco was taken in as well as a Nanna nap.

It all changes around 5pm, TV no longer holds our attention and we emerge from the cave (house in this case) and venture outside to soak up the cooler air and give the plants a drink.

The orange tree has many many buds of new little oranges and alongside, two lemons were ready to be picked. Also lots of egg plants and herbs.

Now I just need to decide what on earth am I going to make with them. We had steak sandwiches for lunch so I was planning to have potato rosti for dinner, (no meat). Not sure how to spell that, it is a Jamie Olicer recipe with potato and carrot grated and then baked with poached eggs and peas in a creamy sauce on top. I love his way of cooking although don't use all the oil and chili that he does. I guess I take his recipes and put my own slant on them.

Hummm, think I will go and get two more egg plants (will need a knife to pick them) and add to grated potato (found that we are out of carrots).

A warm night

A couple of nights during the week, we had decided that TV held no interest for us. That seems to be happening more and more of recent time, is that a sign of the times or are we being more choosy? Not sure but it was too early to go to bed so our patio got some use.

I was gifted a bottle of port a few weeks ago.

 A glass of port a few crackers and the candles lit makes for a nice cool off before bed and of course we solve all the problems of the world and closer to home as well.

Warren bought some candles holders  few months ago and drilled them into the wall,they have coloured glass panels and give off just enough light to see to pick up a biscuit or the crystal glass (they are crystal too, probably the only crystal that we own). While flickering candles sound so romantic, the aim is to keep the mossies at bay which does work.

Tumeric

While we were in Kingaroy and chatting to someone in the visitors centre about soreness in Warren's thumbs. I think its a form of arthritis, anyway, one of the guys there said "Use Tumeric for aches and pains".

We have googled it and apparently it is a mild anti imflammitry, works better with black pepper.
We bought some and sprinkle on food, very little taste so it doesnt change anything, looks good as it is a yellow/orange colour. Warren says that his thumbs re not as painful as they were, so a win/win.

An early morning walk

I haven't been walking for some months, not just for the sake on walking. Too busy, too hot,too tired, I have been known to come up with any and varied excuses over time. Funny thing is that I enjoy it once I am out there, so figure! The complexity of human nature.

Anyway after two dinners out in a row, warren decided that he wanted to go for a walk and asked if I wanted to come. I was quite snuggerly in bed but thought I should go especially when he said that I could choose where we went and for how long. Bonus! Often he wants to go for 5 to 8 kms first up and as I wrote before, I haven't been walking for ages

Although it was 9am before we got going, (I had to have breakfast first) it was very pleasant, the sun was shining not much traffic on the road and not too hot. We did a short trip around back in just over 30 minutes which i thought was a decent time to start. I have great intentions of walking three or four times a week and building up to an hour a day, which is what I was doing 3 or 4 years ago and I was 6 or 7 kilos lighter. Onwards and upwards!

Dressing gowns, does anyone wear them anymore?

Just putting away my clothes from the last washing day and while hanging up my pants and shirts, I noticed a lump on the floor of the walk in robe. It was a bright pink dressing gown!

Last year I bought a winter set of PJs and included in the set was this dressing gown. Its big, its fluffy and I have never worn it. It ad been on a hanger at the end of the row and I guess had fallen off the rack sometime or other.

These days I like to wear pjs, (detest nighties)and as they look more like a comfy pair of loose pants and a T shirt, I don't need or want to wear anything over the top. I head down to the shower block at caravan parks wearing these in the mornings.

Very rarely do I step out of the bedroom, without showering and dressing so never use a dressing gown in the mornings.

Yep I think this one will be heading to the salvos at the next available time. I do have one silk light dressing gown if say I found myself in hospital which is the only time I could see myself wearing/needing one. The silk one was made and given to me by friends in China so I wouldn't give that away.

Challenges

After my success with my holiday challenge, I am continuing on, in my four days off from work I have made three pairs of pants and four tops for a three/four year old, using up three pieces from my stash. I have emptied one plastic storage box and I am filling that to take to the Salvos.

I also set a challenge to get the car/house loan under a certain amount by the end of October and that is done now with two pay days to go, maybe I should have made it lower. Will elect a new number for the end of the year.

In my Simple savers forum, many people talk about $21 for a weeks worth of food and I have thought for a long while that its not possible but  have trimmed off my food bill so this month I am trying to shop for only $21 each week. Three shopping days into October and my amounts are $19.40, $20.20 and $20.10 and we haven't starved yet!

I am starting to see a few spaces in the pantry but not much in the freezer as I made a meat loaf on the weekend mainly for my lunches and that filled it again.

Last nights dinner was meatloaf and salad, tonight we are having marinated pork chops with veges including an egg plant from the garden, so we are eating well.

Next month being November will be the big challenge again of a novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days.

Its funny (or maybe its just me) ut I seem to work better of there is a plan in place such as my own challenges.

Christmas Decorations

Last month I went to Costco and was surprised to see Chrissy decs for sale, the shop wasn't decorated yet but plenty around to buy.

Shops and everything seems to be earlier every year so just wondering when they will be about. I did buy one present while we were away last week, it was a request and I did wonder where on earth I was going to get something to fit the bill and was going to put my trust in Mr Google when we saw it and a plus it was under budget, needless to say we bought it there and then.

This year we are only buying for grandkids and adults dont need anything and it seems just buying for the sake of it. We toyed with the idea of Kris Kringle for adults then went one step further and decided no presents.

Now just need to decide where and when to celebrate Christmas and food to have, I'm pumping for the beach a couple of week ends before, have to see what the rest of the family think.

Blasted mobile phones

Very rarely do I get a phone call on my mobile, not that i am complaining about that and I don't like to be without it, (usually I don't quite know where it exactly is anyway.)

This morning I went to get my hair cut and then across to the libary, I could have walked but 800m carrying heavy books doesn't do my shoulders any good so I drove. As I am driving and the radio is on, there seemed to be two songs playing, thought to self "Some-one has stuffed up". I like to listen to a local station thats a further up the coast and I think it is a community station. As we both worked on community radio, its easier to tell now when there is or has been a stuff up. I parked and turned off the car, music still playing oh, sh.....its my phone! Now to find it in my bag, I now have a handbag insert with lots of pockets, brilliant except when one doesn't know which pocket the phone is in. Got it just as the music stopped.

It was a message from Telstra telling me that if I use 10 minutes of text time in the next week, i can get 150 minutes free, yep like I need that! Seeing I send about one text every month and my phone is paid up for the year, well $70 worth for up to a year, doubt if I will use that.

Got my next fix of books and did the groceries for the week, finally on the way home and blow me down my phone rings again, at least this time I did know what it was but I was driving and figured tat it was probably another deal. As i arrived home, Warren is out the front with a back pack on, he is heading to the bus stop to end up at a hospital, he had tried to ring me to say he was going. A friend had been admitted on the weekend so he was going visiting.

Mobile phones are good and handy and Murphy's law says that they will ring when doing something else. Very hefty fine if phone is picked up while driving but it is a big temptation to do it.

Nicknames are funny things

Its Bathurst day and we had breakfast in front of the TV for the prelim stuff. Warren will probably only move from the TV today to go to the loo.

They are interviewing drivers and talking about past races etc etc. The winner from last year was Mark Winterbottom or Frosty is his nickname, at least its not "Chillybum"

Nicknames dont seem to be used as much now as they were years ago. During the week, year eights were reading a novel and all the boys had nicknames in the story and one of the students asked why did they have other names and I realized that the kids (students) only use their given names, no nicknames.

My dad used nicknames quite a bit, growing up he often called me Agatha or Brigette and I dont know why, I know that I loved Agatha Christie books from quite a young age, maybe from that. It never bothered me so he couldnt have done it to annoy me, maybe he wanted one of those names but Mum won out on my name.

Growing up, dad used to talk with my grandfather and I would often hear "tin shed" mentioned, it puzzled me as we didn't have a tin shed, we had a wooden one and a garage attached to the house. Curiosity got the better of me so one day I took dad to task over our wooden shed rather than tin.

It turned out, he explained after they stopped laughing that they were talking about a state politician  whose name was Steele Hall, people referred to him as Tin Shed. The opposition leader at the time was Don Dunstan and some people referred to him as Donny Dunny.

Dad sold some land to a guy called Woodcock and of course to Dad he became known as Splinter dick. There was some hassles with the sale or money or something and it seemed to take a long time to settle with lots of correspondence back and forth. dad would announce when he spied a letter, "Splinter dick wants something else now!" I think it was inclusions or exclusions to the land sale, I know dad was rather relieved when he finally had a cheque for the property

Jacandras

This time of the year, many of these are in bloom. On my drive to work this week, I have seen several and it always makes me realize that it is October. So big and pretty, not sure that I would like one in my yard though as I would imagine a lot of mess when the flowers die and fall. Just one of the things that I really enjoy about living in Queensland.

The photo is a bit blurry, not mine as I am driving and cant stop when I see them.

Cook up

I had already planned to make a pizza for lunch and while I was refilling our cereal container I read a recipe on the back for biscuits which sounded interesting plus I had everything that was needed. I could make them while the oven was on.

One thing lead to another and now I have the crock pot on with dinner cooking, a recipe from a blog that I follow call My Abundant life, a woman who feeds her family of four, Mum,dad and two teenage daughters, on less than $100 a week. As I don't really follow recipes, it will only loosely resemble hers. Should get dinner and a couple of lunches for the freezer.

I made the biscuits first, cut down on sugar and the cereal other than that, the recipe is the same! supposed to make 14 or 15, I got 21 and would make them smaller next time. I like  biscuit with my coffee but two to three bites would be enough, so I imagine that I could get about 30 by going smaller.

I had used half a tin of tomatoes earlier in the week and wanted to use the rest too much for the pizza so I made a made loaf again loosely based on a recipe from My Abundant Life, I made one of these to take away last week in the caravan and it was good, can heat it or have it cold with salad.

I made the pizza base with half SR flour and half gluten free, the GF had "bits" in it which we like. I make our pizzas in a quiche tray and then its finished in one meal rather than the pizza tray which is too much but not enough for another meal. I had some seafood mix which I added and corn topped cheese, basil and parsley and tomato slices.

So biscuits are made and put away some in the freezer, pizza made and eaten, bonus was time to clean up kitchen and pack the dishwasher while it was cooking, meat loaves are using the last of the heat in the oven and dinner is on the way. I am about to head to the sewing room and see what else I can make in there. This weekend is Bathurst!!!! so there will be the sounds of cars for most of the weekend and the TV stuck on one channel, not that I mind really its only one weekend in the year.

My holiday challenge

I set myself a challenge for the holidays and as my work week starts to tomorrow, I guess it is the finish of the challenge.

I wanted to make one item per day out of my stash of materials, I did go and buy some patterns, I wanted one but as they were on sale for $5 I bought several.

There are three pop over jumper, two had been made/knitted but not sewn up and there was a pair of pants waiting for hems, I have included those.

Tally is seven pairs of long pants, three silk pjs, four pairs of shorts, five dresses and one jacket (this was an UFO) and the three knitted pop overs, one I knitted at night and it not in the picture so I think that is 23 items. Another dress is half done but will not be finishing it until the weekend. 

A good challenge and one that I enjoyed and I have emptied one of my boxes of fabric, only six more to go.

Kingaroy Kitchen

This is a factory that makes biscuits and is open five days a week and they run tours free three times a day. We arrived just before the second tour of the day and it seemed that it was morning tea for the workers, We were invited to help ourselves to tea or coffee and a biscuit until the tour started n about ten minutes.

The supervisor took us around, we did have to don attractive looking hair nets, we went into the kitchen were the workers were making choc chip biscuits. That was their four batch of biscuits for the day at only 10.30am.

Its run by Endeavour and was set up by a lady in the 80's to employ some of the disadvantaged people in the area, now there are 28 workers and it was great to see that they all had their own work to do. One guy likes to work on his own and he was stamping the mounds of biscuits ready to go into the ovens. He proudly showed us that he has fifteen on each tray.

The trays then went into an upright oven, wheeled in and out, ten minutes and then wheeled into another unit to cool them, from there they are placed in boxes ready for packing.

The kitchen supplies biscuits to major hotel and motel chains, they also have a contract to supply lunches to the mines around the area, that was done in a separate area and they also have another kitchen which wasn't operating just then which is a gluten free kitchen.

We bought a few packets of biscuits on the way out, one pack that they do is six different biscuits and there is six to eight of each in a large pack. We had to wait for one to be prepared for us as they had sold the ones that were on the shelf when we went in. I think that pack was about $8.

Joh's Place

After the lavender farm, we had booked a tour in the afternoon at Joh's Place. $12.50 for a tour  and the famous pumpkin scones. It was the only tourist thing that we paid for over the four da

ys we were there, we figured that scones and coffee would take up most of the fee.

The place is called Bethany and it is where the most famous Queensland politician and Premier lived. His son John and his wife now run the farm and it was John who conducted the tour. Joh (pron Joe) was in Parliament for 40 years and Premier for almost 20. He ruffled a few feathers while he was in office but he also got a lot of things happening for Queensland.

Lady Flo (Joh's wife) became a senator by default really so John told us, she was nominated to go against another woman to counteract and because she was well known as Joh's wife, she won the poll and stayed in office herself for bout ten years. She made the pumpkin scones famous as they would be served at every meeting that she ran or preceded at.
The family have lived on this farm for just over a hundred years. Sir Joh died in 2005 and Lady Flo is is now 94. The name of Bjenke-Petterson (not sure of spelling) came from Holland apparently Petterson is a very common name and the family was known as the Pettersons who lived on Bjenke street and then was reduced to Bjenke-Petteron. I had always wondered how it was a double barrelled name as this was long before double names were popular.

We were taken up onto the ridge and a wedding was to take place later in the afternoon, the scenery was fantastic. John was very interesting to listen to and with the afternoon tea, it lasted about two hours, he talked about his fathers early life as well as the district and what things they were doing on the farm to survive.

The tours are run from March til Nov, twice and week and it is by bookings only. Warren and I both agreed that it was the most interesting. The name Bettany means Peace or resting at peace.

Lavender Farm Kingaroy

We saw this farm on the way into Kingaroy and as I like Lavender I was keen to pay the place a visit. It was disappointing, I'm not sure what I expected but it was really only two shops and the saving grace was a coffee shop. Could buy lavender plants there but they were very expensive.

The gardens were okay

This was taken from our table outside we were had gourmet sandwiches? I had a pot of lavender tea and Warren had a milk shake, the gourmet sangos were turkey, cranberry sauce and cheese on pretty ordinary white bread. An hour later we were looking for something more to eat!

I guess not everything is a success, I'm sure that some people would love it but I just found it over priced and disappointing.

A missing key

Last month when we went away in the caravan Warren on our first toilet stop handed me a small key on a boot lace, It was the key to the van. He had put a new lock on it. As I was about to walk to the litte girls room, I dropped it into the console in the Jeep, it has a cover on it so couldn't be seen.

A couple of days into our rip he asked me where it was, I hadn't used it, damn damn and blast, I couldnt find it and thn remembered where I had put it, I hung it on the hook inside the van after that and thought no more about it. He used his key that was on his key ring if we needed to lock the van.

Going away last week, Warren asked me if I had found the key, oh no the bloody thing was lost again. Not in the console, not hanging up, not in the glove box or in my handbag. My key ring is already too heavy to add it on there. Nope, its lost either again or still!

Finally he remembered taking my key off the hook and taking it to the showers (didn't want to take his whole set of keys) but he couldnt remember what happened to it after that. I feel sure that he left it there, he decided not to lock the van anyway as I was asleep inside.

His punishment was to go to Bunnings and get two more keys cut, one for me and a spare in the car, mine is back on the hook inside the van. Men! I spent a lot of time looking for that key!

A sewing storm

I set myself a task for the holidays to make an item for each day to donate to charity at the end. First day and I completed four, these didn't need much to finish but they did need finishing. A button to sew on, a couple of op over vest that I had knitted but not sewn up. I always seem to want to get on with the next thing hence some are left with just a little to do.

Many of my patterns are old and bits missing so really unusable. I knew that I had some brushed cotton that I had bought to make myself a skirt and jacket,it was a while ago and I really don't wear skirts these days plus the colour and pattern! what was I thinking at the time!

I did a trip to Spotlight last week to buy a pattern for kids pants as that was what it was suitable for and there was heaps of it. Well, my $20 trip to Spotlight ended up costing me around a hundred bt for that I got seven patterns, they were on sale for $5 and as always there was some nice materials. see why I try to avoid going there.

I had been making my one item a day using the dress pattern that  had and then the weekend came and I thought that I had better do some housework, then we had people drop by and some for dinner so no sewing.

I had cut out one of the patterns and yesterday I ended up making three pairs of PJ pants, the silky type with teddy bears on them. I had probably bought the material to do something with it but it hadnt happened. Then I finished a dress, I put fancy stiching around the neckline just for something different and then I attacked the brushed cotton and make three pairs of long pants from that, in sizes 4,6 and 8.

I think I am up to twelve items made so far I will take knitting away and have almost finished another pop over vest. I hate sewing up knitted pieces so I knit it in one piece then only need to sew up two side seams and its done.

I am trying to get my sewing and knitting down to one tub each instead of six, have a ways to go but can see gaps.