Kook Central

My Baby

2010-10-13T09:26:00.008+01:00

Well today was a lovely day where I am - I hope it was where you all are :-)

My walking is going well another walk done - 12.4km of the 80km now. I won't be going out walking tonight though as I'm going visiting with J! Poor J gets dragged around madly between 5 and 6 since I can't take him visiting during the day. At least I've started being stricter on myself and have been getting him home by 6 (or 6.15 at the latest) to begin his tea and bedtime routine.

So here's what's new(ish) with my gorgeous wee man:

- We now have a total of 4 teeth and maybe some more on the way judging by recent grizzliness and wakefulness.
- Up up up! All he wants to do is stand up holding things (like the coffee table) and once up bounce up and down giving his Nana a heart attack as she thinks he's going to hit his head mid bounce.
- Pointing apparently is the new in thing - not at things in the distance but at really close things - like Mummy's nose, a crumb on the floor. Clapping is sadly out - he doesn't do that so much anymore that was super cute!

I want you!

- We're practising reading books - at the moment I get maybe 1 maybe 2 pages done before Joshua grabs the book and tries to eat it. As I think we should be starting to think about limits I try not to let him do this but instead hold the book further away which sometimes works.
- We have recently rediscovered the joy of baby-wearing so often now for quick mall trips J will go on my back instead of the buggy - much easier for manoeuvrings.
- Hehe I've figured out if you comb his hair in a certain way after washing it then that style will hold till the next time it's washed. He therefore often ends up with a Tintin-esque front flip.

I love every second I get with my wee guy - finally when he hit about 8 months I had the baby I thought I was going to get when he was born. He started sleeping better at night, he started lying still in our arms for cuddles, started falling asleep in the car instead of screaming every trip. I think I get to appreciate it all the more now though for having 8 months of the other!

Blah weekend

2010-10-10T09:00:00.007+01:00

Ok so this weekend has been totally blah! I mean the highlight was making tamborines with Clairey and then going to the mall to buy lunch. Oh actually wait - I did visit the lovely Kirsty :-)

J and I tried to visit my Gran - his Great Gran - well we did visit but he cried and cried when we got there. I think he must have been scared - this was common for him a couple of months ago but this was clingy to the extreme. We ended up putting him in the car where he was instantly fine again and Gran and I had our catch up sitting parked up at the beach looking at the rain and waves while J dozed. Also eating an absolutely divine friand and brownie which we split - thanks Gran!

Mum and I have a regular Sunday morning bike ride and run date. It's actually becoming something I really look forward to now. As soon as J wakes we hop in the car and go round to Mum and Dad's. Mum and I will hop on our bikes and do half an hour or so, then another 20 minutes running - this is prep for this summer's triathlons. J gets to hang out with his Grandad which I think is really cool. I know those two are going to be best buddies! I was really happy for my Dad when J turned out to be a boy as Dad is such an amazing Dad to all three of us girls but he never got to do all that much "boy stuff" with us . Anyway they normally go for a walk in the park to feed the ducks and have a swing. We get back and J and I raid Mum and Dad's cupboards for breakfast (tee hee).

Ok well reading this back it doesn't seem like as bad a weekend as all that. I think it's the weather that has made me feel blah - it's been so cold and we've been spoilt lately with all the lovely warm weather!

80km challenge update - now up to - 11.1km! Not too late to join in.... :-D

80km in 80 Days!

2010-10-08T03:20:00.003+01:00

Man! I really need to do something about my lack of writing posts! So much has been happening here that I should be writing updates about. Must do something about that...

Today though is about walking! I'm taking part in a challenge from over at Me In A Snap to walk 80km in 80 days. And YOU SHOULD ALL DO IT TOO! It's a brilliant concept. Find something that's good for you that someone else is doing, tell them you're doing it too then you have to (otherwise you'll be letting them down)! So go on - tell me you're doing it and do it! I promise to cheer you on! But do it now, don't wait till tomorrow tell me today!

So far I've gotten off to a great start going for a walk everyday I've been doing it - 3 days - 3 walks - a total of 7.8km.

This challenge in particular is great as it's very achievable for most people. Even if you're really busy already walking 1km take about 15 mins and most people can find 15 mins in their day. When you sit down to watch Shortland Street (or The Family Guy or whatever else you watch) just head out the door instead and you'll still be back for the second half of the program and you'll get the jist of what you missed!

Here's my favourite mapping site if you do want to get your walk on this will handily tell you how far you've been: mapometer

The Aftermath

2010-09-13T09:01:00.002+01:00

To be honest some of what happened last Saturday after the quake is a blur - I don't remember it all. For example I don't remember any aftershocks that morning - but there must have been - other people remember them.

Some things I do remember. So here's what you can expect if this ever happens to you...

Sirens. Sirens have become commonplace background noise around here. It's only in the last couple of days that they have eased up. Sirens make me sad at the best of time especially ambulance ones.

Aftershocks. Aftershocks aftershocks aftershocks. There have been A LOT. Apparently they may keep going for months. Personally I don't mind them, some people do. I really feel for those people but at least they are getting less and further apart. They will stop one day :-)

Water. Water is a good thing to have. Even if you don't have a survival kit get some water. You may just need it - who would have thought in Christchurch with the best tasting water in the whole damn world we wouldn't be able to drink our tap water. Having some bottled water would have been very handy.

The internet. Man I missed the internet while our power was out. Thank goodness for cell phones!

Phones. It's also a good idea to have a phone that doesn't need to be plugged into a power source. You know, because the power went out! Those old style phones that just need a phone jack. Dig yours out so you know where it is - we did - it was handy!

Comradery. No longer will you have awkward "how's your day" conversations with the supermarket checkout operator. An earthquake is a guaranteed conversation starter. It is suddenly acceptable to talk to total stranger - New Zealanders can be very standoffish and Canterbury got a break from that. We all went through something big. We all have that in common. We have a reason to talk.

Love. I was overwhelmed by the concern the people in my life had for me. Within the first few hours I had friends from over New Zealand and the world enquiring as to how we'd got on and in the following week even more emails and facebook messages. It was amazing and humbling to know how many people care about us. Thank you.

New Zealand. I am so grateful that this happened to me in New Zealand. New Zealand with its not too shabby at all building standards. Sure brick chimneys are a pretty dumb idea here and every second house used to have them - but really for most people the loss of a chimney was the worst that happened and that is pretty awesome. For those who weren't so lucky my thoughts are with you and if there is anything I can do at all to help please let me know :-)

Earthquake Post

2010-09-08T08:48:00.003+01:00

Well I thought I should do an earthquake post.

So if you missed it - there was a BIG earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand on September 4th 2010 - 7.1 magnitude followed by a few hundred aftershocks (literally). So here's how it went down at my house.

Well I woke up to shaking (doh). I sat bolt upright and woke instantly (I'm one of those sleep -> alert people in a second) though my brain wasn't thinking earthquake. I've been in earthquakes before - quite a few - earthquakes in my past experience didn't feel like this this felt like someone had picked up my house and was shaking it! I actually thought someone was bulldozing our house! That thought only lasted for a second then next thought was "Joshua!". Darren was by now sitting too but he was still waking up.

I jumped out of bed and made it to Joshua's room. It wasn't easy going but I will admit it is all a bit blurry. Going round my head were horrible thoughts - we have a framed picture above Joshua's bed and I was so worried it would have fallen and hit him on the head. He was fine - I don't even know if he was awake I ripped him from his bed so quickly. Darren caught up and we sort of had a "where to now?" moment before I decided to stay under Joshua's doorway. I think we all hugged each other.

A minute later the quake stopped. I actually have no memory of how long it lasted - I know it lasted just under a minute from reports I've since read. I said to Darren get the pictures off Joshua's wall - so he took all the pictures down. Then we went back into our bedroom and Darren realised the power was off. What to do now. It was cold. Joshua and I got back into bed. Darren produced a torch from somewhere and hung it from the light fixture. I told him to turn it off to save the batteries. I can't remember what else we said to each other. Interestingly we didn't go and check out the rest of the house.

I thought about putting Joshua back in bed - for about half a second. I remember being concerned that he'd be scared because his night light wasn't going. Then I realised without his heater on he'd be too cold. BINGO justification for keeping him right next to me snuggled in bed. So then we lay there in bed together, snuggled under than blanket. I had the bright idea to turn my cellphone ringer on and my parents called and a few texts were exchanged with Darren's family too. I kept feeding Joshua to try and keep him happy and hopefully get him back to sleep - in the darkness he had bad aim so I got lots of bruises.

Eventually Darren went to sleep, and Joshua went to sleep. I didn't. I'm not sure if it was the Earthquake or my fear of squashing him in our sleep or just because I wanted to watch him sleep. He looks so perfect when he's asleep, so peaceful. So I lay there watching him sleep. He woke crying around 6.30. Our whole house was cold and Joshua wasn't interested in lying still in bed. So up and dressed for us, then we decided to go round the corner to my parents with their log burner.

First we inspected the damage. An ornament we'd bought in Rome had broken (drat), a glass in the sink had broken, spring flowers out of the vase and on the floor, cans out of our cupboards, TV toppled over. Lots of things had fallen but not broken which was great - Darren was convinced our TV would be broken but due to lack of power we couldn't test (it turned out to be fine).

Outside on the street it was now light and neighbours had started gathering. I felt a bit bad driving away past them but gave them a quick wave as we went past. The car radio was our first contact with the outside world. 7.4 they were saying at that time. Don't drive unless you have to (whoops). At Mum and Dads things started to feel more normal again. They had the gas cooker out and were making toast mmmm. Hehe I remember remarking to Claire that it would be hilarious for all the people who had hooked up on the Friday night and were now stuck at their one night stand's house! (I still think this is funny). I was obviously feeling ok again!

That's all for now :-)

Yours Sincerely, A Jogger

2010-08-31T08:40:00.002+01:00

Dear Walker-Who-Avoids-Eye-Contact,

Don't be embarrassed to look at me - I know my face is red and sweaty, my hair all fuzzy and I have sweat stains and look horrible but I'd still appreciate a "hello" and I'll give one back to you!

Dear Walker-Who-Gives-Me-Some-Encouraging-Words,

Thanks so much! I wish there were more people like you in NZ - there were more in the UK - but you are a very rare breed here! Your kind words give me a little boost and make me push that little bit harder!

Dear Overweight-Middle-Age-Lady-Beginner-Jogger,

You are doing so awesome. I hope you are really proud of your efforts you are amazing and I hope I'm out there jogging when I'm your age! I know it's really tough to start with but keep it up and you'll be improving in no time!

Dear Much-Faster-and-Fitter-Than-Me-Runner,

Thanks for smiling at me! It can get lonely out running and it's always nice to make contact with another runner. Seeing you with your nice big strides and good technique reminds me to check my own.

Dear Dog-Owner-Who-Doesn't-Pick-Up-Their-Doggy-Doo,

Yuck. Just yuck.

Dear Dog-Owner-Who-Does-Pick-Up-Their-Doggy-Do,

You rock, thanks!

Dear Guy-Wolf-Whistling-From-a-Car,

I know I should take offense. Your whistles are degrading - in fact your whistles may actually be ironic, you may be thinking "haha lets embarrass that fatty" but secretly I choose to be flattered. I choose to assume you're actually thinking "woah nice legs" because that's what I think when I see my legs in my shorts!

Yours Sincerely,

A Jogger

Big Trip

2010-08-31T02:31:00.007+01:00

Partly to try out Mindy's special logo for Amy posts and partly to give some context to any future rushed posts that may appear from internet cafes (depending on how much fun I'm having of course!) I thought I might as well tell Mindy's devoted blog readers who don't know about my big trip. Tom and I are off to Europe for six weeks in only three sleeps and I'm super excited!! Just so any potential robbers (who read Mindy's blog) know though my little sis is kindly staying in our house (plus we have nothing to steal anyway!)

The trip has been a long time coming, I keep leaving jobs resulting in my leave balance dropping to zero. I can't believe it's finally (almost) here! We start off in Paris then it's off to the Swiss Alps, Provence, Barcelona, Nice, Florence, Rome, then a cruise round the Eastern Med, Athens, Venice, Salzburg (hehe poor tom although I've decided not to do a sound of music tour as I'm afraid his moaning will ruin the trip), Bavaria then the Black Forest. I'm so excited about the cathedrals, ancient ruins, cheese, but probably most of all the Castles!!! (spot the difference anyone? Well it doesn't really matter since I'm going to both! (again, poor tom :) ))

Anyway, I hope you all have a lovely spring and enjoy the daffodils!

Apple Oat and Bran Muffins

2010-08-26T08:40:00.004+01:00

Well I didn't intend to post this recipe on my blog. They're not pretty and they're not glamorous, and, well, I'm all about pretty and glamour. But I just keep making these babies and they are just that gooooood that I can't help myself. Also they're really healthy (very little sugar, LOTS of fibre, low GI) and if you make with soy milk like me they're diary free! I make 24 out of one batch of pretty small muffins (not quite mini but close) and I think the little size really works as they are quite dense. It's also a super easy recipe and you can substitute almost anything out or in. For example they'd probably be awesome with some spices like cinamon thrown in but I didn't think of it at the time.

200°C

1 C Milk (I used skim soy milk)
1 Tbsp Honey
2 Tbsp Molasses (could substitute raw sugar or brown sugar or white sugar if you really want)
1/4 C Oil (I used Rice Bran Oil)
2 eggs
1 1/2 C Bran
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 C Flour
1 C Oats (any kind I used normal porridge oats)
1/2 C Raisins
2 Large apples diced (I leave the skins on, added vitamins!)

1. Mix milk, honey, molasses, oil, eggs and bran until well combined.
2. Sift in baking powder, baking soda, flour and salt and stir until just combined (try to keep it under 25 stirs).
3. Stir in the oats, raisin and apple.
4. Spoon into muffin trays and bake for about 15 minutes.

Note 2 apples is quite a lot, you end up basically spooning apple with a small amount of mixture - if you like your muffins more muffiny then just use one apple.

Enjoy!

Me & Food - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!

2010-08-24T07:12:00.004+01:00

The Good (i.e. things that I've learned that work for me!)

- Eating small and often, seriously I need to eat all the time like every 3 hours - if I don't I start feeling a bit faint and grouchy it's all about choosing the right things in the right amount
- Eating and being full and feeling full doesn't mean you have to be fat
- Porridge is a super food (low GI, high fibre, cheap, easy, TASTY what more could you ask for?)
- Being aware of the caloric value of food and reading the back of packs is valuable (counting calories isn't). For example 2 packets of instant noodles can appear identical but one brand has twice the calories of the other on account of being pre-fried... little things like that are good to know!

The Bad

- Eating out of habit. Hehe I do this all the time - especially at work. I play games with myself. "You are allowed a chocolate biscuit but only if you guess the type of biscuit is open today", "you are allowed a shrewsbury if the one with the heart is on top"
- Eating because things are there. I also do this a lot especially with raspberry licorice. I buy a two pack intending to eat one piece but the other one always disappears as well! Magic! Stupid licorice people who don't sell single packs!
- Eating in the car. This is a new bad habit of mine - I thought I'd try being one of those people with a packet of munchies in the glove box for emergencies - not such a good idea Mindy. Soon I found myself stopping in at the petrol station/supermarket just to buy something to munch on every time I got behind the wheel.
- Counting Calories. Not only is this boring, but it can start a slippery slope towards being obsessive about food, and in the worst cases anorexia :-( Lets face it, it takes a hell of a lot of time and food weighing to do it properly and it does basically take over your life. The amount of time I spent calculating what I could afford to eat, and what would get me the most full with my allowance I would dearly love to have back to put to better use. Lets not go there everyone, lets just be sensible and not pig out.
- Eating at night. Ah so tempting after dinner to sit down in front a movie with a great big snack of some kind. But not so kind on our bodies. You don't need to fuel up to sleep - in fact your metabolism slows down overnight so most of what you eat in the few hours leading up to bed just sits there in your stomach not being digested till morning. Gross! Waking up feeling slightly hungry is much better.

The Ugly

- Eating spoonfuls of jam. I've been there, I've done that. It starts off when I feel like something sweet. Not being a household that stocks biscuits jam on toast comes to mind, but then do I really want toast? It takes so long to cook and I'm not really hungry, ah! I know! I'll just have a wee spoonful of jam. Yup I've eaten jam straight out of the jar!

Flu!

2010-08-23T09:48:00.003+01:00

Hello World!

Well I'd intended to start back on the blogging wagon with a bit more momentum than I've mustered so far. I've still got hopes it'll pick up there's just been a few hiccups.

Firstly I've been doing late shifts at work so life has been FULL ON! We decided to use the opportunity for Darren to start building our deck so he has been working on that during the day. Basically from 7.45am - 2.45pm each day I got to play stay at home Mum (which is not a relaxing game, it is HARD WORK as all the stay at home Mums know!). To top it off I was also playing builder's apprentice, and also being errand doer for Darren fetching things like bolts, cement for various shops around town. Then at 2.45pm it was time to leave for work and I'd get home again at 11.15pm into bed where it took a good hour or so before my brain wound down enough after working to go to sleep.

Saturday night was the first time in the whole week Darren and I got to sit down together. We celebrated by watching Cop Out a Kevin Smith movie which was pretty good.

Anyway I think the late nights ran me down a bit much and on Saturday morning I started feeling a bit sniffly, by Saturday night I had full on flu symptoms and so Sunday was pretty miserable as was today. Thankfully Joshua isn't sick and I'm not sure whether there's even any point in me hoping he doesn't get sick or whether it's just inevitable. I hate to think how horrible this would be for him when I feel so rotten and I have the ability to at least understand why I am feeling the way I do.

I do actually I know a lot of wee babies who are sick so I feel bad for even feeling sorry for myself. Furthermore I really wonderful Due Dec lady I know is going through a really tough time at the moment, so much worse than just the flu and I hope she knows how much people care about her and love her!

Stay warm and healthy everyone!

:-)
Mindy

New Format

2010-08-18T07:54:00.004+01:00

Ok so this isn't a real post yet either sorry... but aren't my icons cool?

Recipes

Random Ramblings

Exercise

Health

Baby

Posts by Amy

Sorrryyyyy!

2010-08-17T11:38:00.004+01:00

Hi all,

Have been thinking a lot about blogging and not doing much of it! This is mostly because I'm working 3pm - 11pm this week and super busy at work and looking after Joshua during the day.

However I have a plan. I thought from now on I'd categorise and label each post with a subject that way if it's something that you're not interested in you can skip the post (aint that nice of me?). I'm in the process of building some icons for each subject I plan to talk about. These are:

Health (diet etc)
Exercise (some of this will be in health but I've got a few triathlons coming up so they for example would be covered here)
Recipes
Baby related stuff
Random ramblings

Sound good? I think so and I'm the boss of this blog. So there!

Back soon!

Mindy

Having a baby - Part 2

2010-08-12T09:15:00.005+01:00

Sorry if you tuned into read some more about health/diet(yuck)/weight loss stuff. Saving that one for tomorrow. Today instead I thought I'd write part 2 of having a baby. I recently read what I wrote in February when my wee monkey was just a tiny tot and had a wee chuckle at how much things have changed!

Having a Baby - Part 2 - 7 months on

Wo ho ho. Here we go. First an update on February's 7:

The being a better housekeeper thing has definitely passed - my toilet needs cleaning - there is a bucket of reusable nappies that need washing in the laundry - I'm pretty sure we haven't vacuumed this week.

Breastfeeding does get easier and can be pleasant but just when you think you've got it down bubby might start doing any of the following to make it not so pleasant again:
- Biting
- Pulling
- Yanking
- Poking
- Laughing at your exposed breast (it happens!)

Coffee consumption is back to a reasonable level in my house again.

I never forget to eat now :o)

I still hide in the shower... everyone needs a nice noisey shower with a bathroom door you can close!

No longer hear crying all the time two reasons:
- Baby can't be heard through three closed doors
- More importantly baby cries less now

Unfortunately bubs is only slightly less dumb about sleeping.

You start finding some things enjoyable that everyone else thinks are totally grotty. For example when bubs grabs a fist full or hair in each hand and yanks their face towards yours then with dribble flowing from their mouth they start sucking your chin. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "Gross!". What me as a mother thinks "Aw baby kisses!" (I know I'm just delusional).

Poo can be exciting. It can be a nightmare too. But the exciting poo is the poo you get to while it's all contained in the nappy and hasn't leaked out onto clothes/beddings/carpet - there is a sense of relief - "well we survived today's poo and don't need to worry about it again for hopefully at least 24 hours!". As bubs gets older thankfully more poo falls into that category.

Thunder thighs aren't necessarily a bad thing - they can be downright gorgeous!

No matter how much you promise yourself you will never be "one of those mums" you will. There is nothing you can do about it. You will find yourself grabbing the phone to ring everyone to tell them about your baby's great new trick - oh by the way did I mention how clever Joshua is (teehee) he can click his tongue - I'm pretty sure he's trying to speak Xhosa

Sorry to keep up with the toilet theme but farts are funny. Baby farts are just cute, they are, they still stink but they're also hilarious so it makes up for it.

Sleep isn't that important really. (Actually that's a big fat lie - unfortunately no matter how often I tell myself that it's still not true).

Lastly - one just doesn't feel like enough...

Diet (yuck) - Weight Loss - Health Stuff

2010-08-11T23:08:00.003+01:00

Ok well I was going to be slack and just forget about blogging again after my proclaimed blogging rebirth but yay 2 people out there in the big old internet caught wind of things and so I'd feel bad just abandoning them again.

Anyway I have decided today (and possibly many days) I am going to talk about health. I wanted to say weight loss, but I have to be careful as I don't think that's exactly what I want to talk about. Confused? So am I! But I'm going to tackle this dieting/weight loss/health problem once and for all!

Firstly some background.

I thought I came from a family who just had big bones. My parents were both not skinny. Their siblings also weren't skinny. And my siblings weren't skinny. My Mum dieted like a yo yo like so many women do and in our family we have a bit of an obsessive streak so there was one time I remember she was addicted to exercise and did actually get really skinny but other than that time we were all largish (but short). Anyway now I have a skinny Mum and a skinny sister and I've been skinny myself so the "big bones" argument doesn't really fly. In fact I have quite petite bones (skinny wrists) but I do still claim to have a big frame with broad shoulders and big ribs.

Anyway I grew up being probably slightly heavier than my peers and the gap grew as I got older. Looking back to my intermediate school photos now I looked completely normal but at the time I felt big. When I was 13 I decided not to weigh myself again. Ever. And I didn't for maybe 12 years. I think that was actually a great decision - one of the few good ones I made in my adolescent years. Go me! (Actually I did make other good decisions just not weight related ones).

Ok so... gulp... lets take a look at the photographic evidence.

Phase 1: Growing up (and out)

4th Form - 13 years old well my shape isn't too bad just looks like I had more boobs than others.

7th Form - 16 years old this is typically how I saw myself, not really really fat but heavy.

Uni - Around 21 years old here I'd started running, so wasn't stick skinny but a size 12-14 I think.

Phase 2: Shrinking

Then... I lost weight. By not eating very much. And running. But mostly the not eating much part - running helped but it didn't shift the weight like not eating did. It worked. But it wasn't fun. Who goes to Paris on a work trip and sits in their hotel room eating a mini pottle of baked beans and an apple for dinner instead of going out and buying a pain au chocolat? Me. That's who. Anyway more on that later.

Malta - 26 years old (You'll notice my skinny is no where near a Kate Moss skinny but skinny for me)

Greece - 26 years old

Phase 3: Ballooning

Ah I got pregnant. Remember how I didn't eat anything much in phase 2. Well you can't do that when you're pregnant. Not fair on bubby. So I started eating again. I didn't go nuts, but close to - suddenly I had an excuse to indulge myself in all those things I'd been denying myself for years, and not surprisingly I piled on the weight. I'd put on the same amount of weight in the first trimester that was recommended I gain the entire pregnancy.

Around 8 months - 27 years old

Around 8 months - 27 years old (this shows the first photo is just a pretty bad photo - but still it was a photo of me and the camera don't lie!).

Phase 4: ???

What do I looked like now I hear you ask? Ah well I conveniently don't have any photos ready today but I'll get onto that. Where to from here? That's what I plan to write about.

My goal: is to be able to eat whatever I want and be happy with the way I look.

I know I can do this and I'm going to concentrate on two areas:

1) Changing my attitude towards food so that what I WANT to eat is a healthy balanced diet
2) Changing my body image perception issues so I'm happier with a broader range of shapes and sizes for myself

Stay tuned!

I'm back... again!

2010-08-02T03:54:00.004+01:00

Hello World!

I've decided that I'm going to blog again. It's going to be cathartic. I'm mostly just doing it because I like the word cathartic and wanted to use it.

Here are some other words I like:

snorkel
sludge
millipede
vamoose (ok I'm not sure that's a real word but we'll let it slide)
prognosticate

Actually - wait - I've decided this blog is now going to be have a bit of a health and exercise and baking focus. Ok not the most natural mix but hopefully it'll all make sense shortly! It'll probably still have other stupid and funny stuff too.

I think I'll start all that tomorrow though. Today is just for saying... stay tuned for more!

Having a baby

2010-02-01T20:21:00.002Z

Ok so having a baby is very different to what I thought it'd be like... which I guess shouldn't surprise me. But it did. I thought I'd share some of the things that did surprise me - while not spoiling the really good surprises for those still to have bubbies!

I am actually a better housekeeper now. No, I'm not kidding, really! I am doing stuff which I never used to do before - like making the bed hehe! I think I've figured out why. It's because before there would be a chore to be done and in your head you could think "oh I'll do it later". Now there is no later. If the baby is asleep you'd better get every single thing you need done, done, because there's no guarantee that baby will ever sleep again ;)
Breastfeeding hurts. Especially to start with. Bah to the books that say it will feel pleasant for the Mum. 'Nuf said.
I had no idea how much coffee we would go through. We buy it almost every week now - before once every couple of months. No I'm not drinking extra coffee (I don't even drink coffee) this is on account of all the visitors we're having - thirsty visitors it would seem.
It is actually possible for me to forget to eat. They tell you this in antenatal - I didn't believe it, not me, I eat all the time I'd never forget. But I do! Not so much now I'm into a routine but in the beginning definitely did, you'd look at the clock it'd be 4pm and you'd start thinking about what to have for dinner then realise "hey, I didn't actually even have lunch yet!". It is hard to eat when you've got a baby who is awake in your arms, you're limited to things that can be grabbed and shoved in your mouth. Pretty much just fruit and museli bars. Even toast is out because that requires buttering and that's a two hand job!
My shower length has changed considerably. Either I have super quick showers if I'm home alone with Joshua (mostly because I swear I can hear him crying, see 6, below), or super long showers if Darren's home and he's watching him while I'm in the shower. Hehe sorry Darren but I am going to steal an extra 5 or 10 minutes to myself!
I hear crying ALL the time. Especially if there's a bit of background noise that could potentially be hiding some crying I can hear crying. I'm constantly asking people "can you hear that?". Although my super sensitive Mum hearing now I am always the first one to hear him when he does make a noise.
Babies are dumb when it comes to sleeping. They are in their bed, they are yawning, they are even starting to cry a bit because they're so tired. SO JUST GO TO SLEEP! It doesn't seem to occur to them. Dumbasses ;)

Ok that's about it for now. Notice I didn't say anything about sleeping through the night - that's because Kirsty had me very well prepared for that. her daughter Eloise used to have her up every 2 hours or so, so I'm just glad I get 3 or 4 hours out of Joshua!

:)
Mindy

Finished!

2010-02-01T01:28:00.004Z

Yay! I finished making the quilt, the paintings and the baby ;) in December. Here's how they turned out:

Here's the quilt - was pretty happy with it and very happy to get it finished! My favourite bit and the bit that turned out the best was the bees - so cute. I'm pretty happy with how I went about doing it - I ended up thinking things through a bit more than I normally do and therefore didn't end up spending much time undoing mistakes!

To go on the walls of the nursery I painted 4 friends for Pooh! Sorry about the pictures I took them in bright sunlight so they are a bit shiny.

Tigger

Kanga and Roo

Piglet

Eeyore - my favourite!
And baby Joshua Douglas Scott was born 23/12/2009 - 2 days after I finished the pictures I think! That was good timing. Everything went very well and we've had an interesting 6 weeks getting to know each other - he gets a bit frustrated with me sometimes and has a wee (big) moan but generally we're doing great! Darren is a great Dad too which helps.

Not sure when I'll next be up for projects but I might try and blog a little more regardless!

:)
Mindy

Quilt Progress

2009-11-18T06:50:00.004Z

Ok so I haven't been very good at "fully photo documenting" this project like I was planning to. BUT I did find one old photo I took and I just took another photo tonight.

So here is the quilt with Winnie half tacked on.

Once he was tacked on I did blanket stitch around the edges each piece of material - including all those leaves!

Then I added the red border and the patchwork border.

Next step is embroidering Winnie's face on, and some bees. Then I'll start the quilting.

4 and a half weeks till bubs arrives... wonder if I'll get it done!

:)

Getting Organised... sort of!

2009-11-18T06:40:00.004Z

Look I'm sort of starting to get organised! These are all our newborn baby clothes all washed and drying!

Oh if you've given us some clothes and you don't see them here then don't worry - it's probably just that they're too big for bubs to wear straight away.

:)

Apron

2009-11-17T08:56:00.001Z

Found some more photos of a project I did awhile ago. It's a cupcake apron!
Sorry I couldn't model it, it didn't really fit my pregnant stomach :)

Random Photos of things I've been doing this year

2009-11-15T07:53:00.005Z

Well this is just a cool photo I found on the camera that Darren took.
I went up to Nelson for a day and hung out with Bridget :)

Darren and I went to Hamner for the weekend with my parents which was awesome.

Darren did some sanding :D

Just this weekend Claire and I made this cake for her friend Hayley's 21st - I think we did awesome. Especially Claire to put up with my bossiness.

Yesterday was Phill and Terry's wedding - she looked gorgeous. (This is her Dad not Terry though!)

We all scrubbed up pretty well!

Ok that's all! Have a nice day.

A roundup of cakes

2009-10-07T09:15:00.013+01:00

Hello People!

We are finally able to transfer photos to my computer and I found a whole lot of photos of old them with you lovely people so here goes.

I can't remember what this first cake was made for but I think it looks pretty ;-)

This cake had me saying "Cheeky Monkey" over and over again, much to the great annoyance of Tom, but it sure tasted good! Banana cake with butter not oil from the Magnolia cookbook with white chocolate icing- yum!

And this one was for Rose. I like daisies :)

A midwinter Christmas penguin cake which was (thankfully) promptly followed by some "welcome to Spring" cupcakes for my workmates.

And a hummingbird birthday cake for my workmates with pineapple flowers.

And finally my tea cup cake from my mad tea party on Saturday- I was so worried it would topple over!

New Project!!!!

2009-08-10T07:07:00.004+01:00

Hello,

Ok well here is my new project. I'm planning on fully photo documenting it - it's a biggie - should take quite some time.

Anyway a couple of weeks ago I decided to start thinking about what colours/theme we'd put in the baby's room. I had a few ideas: Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, and Jungle Animals. I went round a few baby shops and quickly decided on Winnie the Pooh just because there's so much stuff out there - would be easy to tell other people that's our theme and if they wanted to buy a gift they could match in.

So I've always had intentions to paint a few pictures for the baby's walls - so I started looking for Winnie the Pooh pictures. It was when Beth lent me a Winnie the Pooh picture book that I got inspiration for this project - a quilt for baby! I thought about it lying awake in bed all that night (I haven't been sleeping very well lately) and woke up the next morning ready to race to Spotlight and get some materials!

Without further ado here's the first lot of photos:

On the right is the picture I am using as inspiration - Pooh is trying to get honey out of the "hunny tree" I'm going to have fun with the bumble bees! Also I'm going to add a little honey dripping out of the hole to make it a bit more obvious what Pooh is up to!

Ok this is the most boring photo - sorry I'm documenting for myself not just for entertaining lol. This is the layout I decided on plus a few calculations down the bottom.

Now putting pen to paper! The left is my first attempt, right is the second refinement and what I'm using for the final design (bees will be added later).

Then I had to make the pattern. That meant making the picture really BIG! I spent a long time making this piece of paper but cellotaping together 10 pieces of smaller paper. The idea is I cut out these pieces and use them for the pattern.

Here are the cottons I've got - mostly donated by Amy - thanks Amy!

And here are the gorgeous fabrics - the blue will be the main background colour, the stripes are for the back and for the border, the border will also be made up of the other colour bar brown (because brown isn't pretty).

Love,
Mindy

I don't mean to brag but....

2009-08-07T02:50:00.000+01:00

Look at our weather forecast for the next few days!!!

One Project Complete

2009-08-04T09:15:00.005+01:00

I was going to write about my new exciting project... but then I realised I hadn't written about my last project. What I've been working on for quite some time (far too long really because I've been a bit slack) is a cardigan for our friends Jeremy and Charlotte's new baby boy Tim. I've been taking so long infact that this cardigan was started before we knew the gender and was eventually given to him around his 9 week birthday!

Anyway here it is....

It was quite fun to knit but pretty hard work to do those stitches, just hard on your fingers, lots of knitting three stitches together.

Here I've tried to show the stitch detail - it's a bit hard to see with this wool.

Anyway tomorrow I'll tell you about my new project... it's so exciting!

xxx
Mindy

Pregnancy Musings...

2009-07-29T01:57:00.003+01:00

Ok now it's pretty much all out in the open I can share with you some of the joys I've gone through in the last 19 months. Nah not really I don't want to whine :) But this blog probably will become more pregnancy oriented unsurprisingly.

One non-pregnancy issue I have is randomly placed condom wrappers (hehe this is like an anti-pregnancy musing). I went for a run yesterday and there was a condom wrapper on the footpath. Did someone desperately feel the need to get wild and go for it in the quiet suburb of Russley right in public view on the side of the road? A need so desperate it was indulged but the lucky couple very conscienciously used a condom? Baffling! I've been trying to think of less humourous but more realistic explanations but haven't got much... someone chucked it out the window, it fell out of someone's rubbish, a bird dropped it there!?

Ok so while I was running I was thinking how weird it is to be pregnant. How weird is it to be growing another whole person inside you. Although I don't forget I'm pregnant ever I do forget the reality of the situation that there is another person inside me. When we had the scan and there were measurements like 15cm, 10cm, etc coming up on screen it freaked me out. I can something that is 10cm, I could hold it in my hand etc Surely there isn't something that large inside me, this is all just fat from the chocolate biscuit supply at work that I've been frequently of late? Pregnancy was easier to comprehend at the embyro level now I can't get my head around if the baby wasn't inside me I would be able to see it and sit it on my desk and things (obviously I wouldn't do that but you know).

Strange stuff can happen when you're pregnant too. It's bizarre, like today I got my pregnancy exercise DVD in the mail so I decided instead of running to go home and lunchtime and try it out. The darndest thing happened though - I ended up driving to the mall and buying our baby not one but two full swimming outfits. I have decided to spend most of my maternity leave in Mum and Dad's pool and since I should probably be looking after the baby it will have to be in there with me :) It's going to get so cute and wrinkly from all the water!!

xx
Mindy

p.s. Still haven't looked at the pregnancy exercise dvd!

Don't tell my Mum

2009-07-28T22:09:00.001+01:00

That we're having a boy. She doesn't want to know! I bet she will find out somehow accidentally but if we all try not to be the one that lets it slip then she'll go longer without knowing.

Ta! xx

It's a BOY!!!

2009-07-28T05:33:00.004+01:00

Yay! Everyone was right, we all thought it would be a boy! And it is! Here he is... sorry I know scan pictures are so boring but you just wait until you are almost parents then you'll all change your minds!

The first picture looks very much just like one of the last scan 7 weeks ago!
Awwww how cute baby's foot!

And here's the kind of gross one - we are so proud of ourselves that he doesn't look like too much of an alien (there is another image where he does though). Also I'm not sure if it's posisble to tell yet but I'm pretty sure he has his Dad's eyelashes.

xxx
Mindy

Expanding Family

2009-07-17T02:22:00.003+01:00

Hi Everyone!

Well most people have probably heard by now but Darren and I are expecting our first baby! Bebe as I like to call it, is due to arrive December 21st this year :) I'm keeping my fingers crossed for earlier than that - get it out before Christmas, or 2 days late so it's on my Grandad's b'day but I'm not fooling myself in thinking I've got any choice in the matter! The wee fella (girl?) is already surprising us, Darren and I started trying expecting it to take at least a few months, but no, straight away! That's how we're ending up with a Christmas baby!

Pregnancy has been a mixed bag so far. I didn't have too bad morning sickness so that was a bonus. Anyway here's the first couple of pics.

Yesterday I felt baby kick for the first time that I was sure that was what it was. So that was exciting. And yes we will be finding out the flavour, and we will be sharing with everyone!

Love,
Mindy

Skydive

2009-07-07T11:01:00.007+01:00

Well since I posted about Darren's birthday cake yesterday today I'll post about his birthday present (his birthday was AGES ago by the way - May 24th - I'm just running a bit behind). So anyway for his 30th birthday I got him a skydive! He loved it, and apparently I will love it too and I'm getting one for my 30th too - got three years to figure out how to get out of it.

Anyway it was out at Methven and it was just an amazing day. It was all foggy and cloudy in the city then as we got about half an hour out of Christchurch we sort of drove through the fog and the mountains looks amazing... I am so lucky to live here!

So onto some photos:
Darren in his sexy jumpsuit - he looks aprehensive but he wasn't really.

There he is up in the sky! You can't really tell but I promise it's him (at the time though I had no idea as I didn't know what colour his chute was I had to take photos of all the jumpers and it was only when he got close that we figured out which one he was).

Just about to land!

Safe and sound back on ground - although he wanted to go straight back up again! Beautiful mountains in the background too!

I have no idea what I'll post about tomorrow but I'm going to try and keep posting more regularly so check back! I did make up an awesome new cake I like to call a banaramel cake but I have no photos of that so that won't be very interesting. Oh I did find an awesome brownie recipe so I could post that - brownies don't need photos they just look like brown squares.

xx
Mindy

Stargate Cake

2009-07-06T08:31:00.003+01:00

Hi All,

It's been ages!

Anyway I made Darren a stargate cake for his birthday :) It was shiny... see:

Here is the event horizon, if case you are wondering I hand painted a sheet of fondant with blue food colouring to get the graduated blue. Then I covered the bottom of a dish with playdoh, covered that in gladwrap and then made a lot of indentations for the texture of the event horizon, then I set jelly in it - put the jelly and the fondant together to get my event horizon.

I covered the cake in black fondant which I spent ages making by dying brown fondant black and then made a ring of chocolate cake and covered that in gray fondant for the actual gate.

I then painted the whole thing with silver paint mixed with a little black, then I scratched in the stargate symbols and put the message for Darren round the outside. The gap down the bottom was where the candles went :)

Lesson learned: the jelly started to disintergrate the fondant (you can see if looks a bit messy round the edges) in the future I would assemble the cake as late as possible, in this cake I assembled it a day or so before it was being eaten.

Ok bye!
Mindy

p.s. Lots of other stuff has happened like I got married etc but I decided just to focus on the cake for this post :)

Elmo!

2009-03-23T07:46:00.003Z

Hello!

I made an Elmo cake in the weekend for my very good friend Beth's nephew Jamie's first birthday. It was a lot of fun although I managed to cut my finger badly and also my thumb - how do you cut yourself decorating a cake? Well I'm just that damn clumsy. I was pretty happy with how the cake turned out - but also learnt some good lessons about trying to make icing red!

Hope you all had a nice weekend - less than 4 weeks till our wedding now! Argh!

Love,
Mindy

2009!

2009-03-20T02:11:00.007Z

Well, it's 2009 and despite the impression this blog may give, I have been doing stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Unfortunately blogging has not been one of those things - until now. So to kick off I'll give you a very brief photo overview of what I've been doing in 2009!

Well I sat around in the sun with Darren, Claire and Dad and we read Tintin!

And Amy and I made a whole wedding cake! All by ourselves!

It tasted great and looked very beautiful! Not as beautiful as the bride though...

And the bride was Kirsty and I was one of her bridesmaids!

Also for some reason Claire, Ame, Mum and I all dressed up in matching T-shirts and went for a run.

I went to a great welcome home party for Nick, Natalie and Adam, at this party Adam ate pies.

I made some pretty cupcakes.

That had pretty blue flowers on the top.

These were for another beautiful bride - it was Charlotte and Jeremy's wedding!

Oh somewhere in that time Darren and I got our first house.

And also I shared my cupcake making skills with Anca who was a very cool person who I got to meet, spend a few weeks working with and then say goodbye :( As she went to the UK to replace me.

I went to the Watchmen movie, loved it, and showed my appreciation the best way I know how - a cupcake homage.

I also went to a really fun cocktail party at Beth's and got dressed up all nice then pulled a strange face in this photo.

And most recently I made St Patrick's day cupcakes - yes the actual cupcakes are green!

Unfortunately you get to miss out on my 6 year old's birthday party cupcakes, and my Christmas cupcakes (which weren't in 2009 anyway) as I seem to have lost those photos.

Photos of the Elmo cake I'm doing this weekend will come soon though!

xxx
Mindy

Coconut Pyramids

2008-12-12T21:26:00.006Z

Hi!

I'll be cutting my cake soon so you can all see the very interesting creation that was. I've actually eaten a fair bit of it. It's a bit crumbly - and interesting as all the raisins sunk to the bottom - so there's a layer of mostly just cake, then the nuts are below that, then the raisins at the bottom. Anyway you'll be able to see when I cut it and take photos. It is very delicious anyway despite being crumbly.

But yes I managed to do one more lot of baking today. You wouldn't have thought it was possible but it was not enough for me to use up 85% of my baking cupboard when I still had 125g of coconut and sugar in there. (I don't have a hope of using up all the baking powder and baking soda). So I found a recipe that has coconut, sugar and egg whites in it. Perfect! It's from a book I bought the other day "The Great Big Cookie Book" by Hilaire Walden. The recipe is for coconut pyramids which was eaten during passover - they don't have any yeast in them, and the pyramid shapes are a reminder of when the Jews were slaves in Egypt.

Anyway unfortunately I burned these while writing the first two paragraphs of this blog! But regardless they are delicious and simple and I will make them again and again. Infact even burnt I still ate about 6 as soon as I took them out of the oven. The mixture tastes like like Bounty Bars (which if you think about it makes sense sugar + coconut). Infact I have plans to make these and dip them in chocolate - Darren has requested them with caramel in the middle but we shall see.

Coconut Pyramids (I halved these quantities to match how much coconut I had)

225g coconut
115g caster sugar
2 egg whites

Mix the coconut and sugar. Lightly whisk the egg whites. Mix enough egg whites into the coconut sugar to make a firm mixtures (you might not need all the egg whites). Shape teaspoons into balls then press onto oiled baking sheet and shape into pyramids. Bake for 12-15 minutes at 190 celcius until tops are brown (in my case this happened after 9 minutes!)

Here's a quiz thing I grabbed from a blog I like Baking with Dynamite I actually wrote the answers for this in yesterday they are a day old.

You have to answer with one word answer - damned near impossible - how do you say where someone is in one word!

1. Where is your cell phone? Near
2. Where is your significant other? Computer
3. Your hair color? Brown
4. Your mother? Enthusiastic
5. Your father? Kind
6. Your favorite thing? Hugs
7. Your dream last night? Unpleasant
8. Your dream/goal? Family
9. The room you’re in? Lounge
11. Your fear? Worms
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Happy
13. Where were you last night? Here
14. What you’re not? Ugly (haha I got Darren to answer this one for me I couldn't think of anything - isn't he sweet)
15. One of your wish-list items? Cake-mixer
16. Where you grew up? Christchurch
17. The last thing you did? Pub
18. What are you wearing? Dressy
19. Your TV? Ghostbusters
20. Your pet? Soon
21. Your computer? Reliable
22. Your mood? Lethargic
23. Missing someone? Yup
24. Your car? Sold!
25. Something you’re not wearing? Shoes
26. Favorite store? ASDA (haha)
27. Your summer? Soon
28. Love someone? Lots
29. Your favorite color? Red
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Yesterday

:)
Mindy

Snowmen

2008-12-11T10:01:00.003Z

I made some snowmen last night. They look ok - they really needed to be made over a series of days so that they could harden properly in between but I was in a rush. I'm always in a rush. Well just because I get excited about things and want them to be finished. This time I had an excuse as I needed to give them to Marie today for her kids. Anyway the photo isn't great (damn) oh well you get the idea.

:)
Mindy

I'm going home!

2008-12-10T18:55:00.004Z

At 3.45pm on Saturday the 20th of December... that's very soon. We arrive at 10.20am on NZ509 on the 22nd of December. For those not familar with the UK to NZ trip - that does make it seem like almost 48 hours or travelling and while it feels like this it's not quite that bad, part of the difference is because of the time difference between the UK and New Zealand. It's a long enough trip though. But I'm really looking forward to it! I can't wait to see what movies we're going to get and what food we're going to get. Hehe most of all I'm looking forward to arriving home. It's funny though as to get excited about something I have to picture it and I can't quite picture arriving home because I can't yet decide what I'm going to wear. But once I've decided what I'm going to wear I'll be able to picture and will be able to sleep again.

I haven't been sleeping very well. I think I'm excited. I might sleep tonight though as I'm really tired. Surprisingly though I'm not stressed just excited, I think almost everything is under control moving and packing wise.

So since getting back from Egypt I haven't been up to much exciting but got a couple of work parties coming up which will be fun! Also I have been doing some creative baking using up baking ingredients. First I made a delicious cake I can't remember what it was called and I didn't take any pictures so I'll make it again and document it better. My proudest achievement is making a Christmas cake without any flour. Oooh! That reminds me I need to go and "feed" it.

Ok back so basically my goal was to use up a bag of raisins I had, I also managed to use up my ground almonds, two bags of chopped mixed nuts, all my butter, mixed spice, rum essence, an my cherry brandy and a good portion of my cornflour. I'll also take some photos of it when I cut it and put the recipe. I don't think I'll ever make it again as it really was just an exercise in using up ingredients.

Tomorrow you can see my icing snowmen which is using up the rest of my ready to roll white icing.

:)
Mindy

Day 8 - Egypt

2008-12-08T07:35:00.000Z

We arrived back in Cairo not too far off schedule and went straight to a yummy breakfast at the hotel - omeletes made to order, crepes and chocolate. Yum! Hehe then it was "nap" time. We grabbed a quick sleep before the group headed to the Egyptian museum. Here again I noticed sometime that was common throughout out trip - even though half the people who were friendly to us were trying to get money out of us the other half were just genuinely really friendly - waving to us through the window of the tour bus, yelling out and smiling even when they weren't in a situation where we could have given them money. Darren was sitting on a bench in Cairo next to an elderly man and his three daughters and two sons and he started dealing out mandarins to his children and because Darren was sitting there he offered Darren one too! Their genuine unreserved friendliness was so incredibly touching and eye openin gand it really has inspired me to be as friendly and as kind to people as I possibly can be from now on.

Me sitting by the pond outside the museum with some lotus flowers in it.

Anyway back to the Egyptian museum - it was gorgeous, so old school and charming. It was stuffed full of artifacts - more than you could imagine. Everything was displayed in old fashioned wooden cabinets with glass fronts - old fashioned not because they were styled like that but simply because they were actually old. The labels were scarce and when they did have them they done on a typewriter and often in only one language, not always English. The most memorable things there were Tutankhamen's burial mask (it looked exactly as it did in all the pictures), his solid gold coffin, a huge mummified alligator (or was it a crocodile - a crocodile I think), and a great mummified Nile Perch.

Darren outside the museum.

The next stop was surprisingly one of my favourites. We went to a flower essence shop where the elderly Egyptian owner was an incredibly gracious host providing drinks and country bread for us while we ate our koshari and listened to the process of making flower essence (the same process they used thousands of years ago). The shop was absolutely beautiful filled with thousands of perfume bottles and big carafes of flower essence. Then it was time for the smelling to begin. This shop provides the essence for the big perfume companies and the pure essence (without the alcohol added diluting it) smelt exactly like the perfume from the shops - I know this because my perfume j'adore was the second woman's fragrance we smelt. The flower essense wasn't cheap around $100NZ a bottle but the size of the bottle would make tons of bottles of perfume if you did dilute it (which you don't need to). You only needed two drops and it would apparently last all day - however as I write this it's now day two after our visit and Darren still smells beautiful. It was absolutely amazking the whole experience of being in this shop so enchanting - we ended up buying two bottles, lotus flower for me (which was the essence the pharoahs used to offer to the gods), and the scent for Darren called Ramses II.

Perfume bottles at the flower essence shop.

The last stop was the markets. Everyone who knows me know I love markets and during this trip I've also come to enjoy haggling. I got some great deals which I won't go into as some of them may become Christmas presents! The markets were gorgeous and lively and things I wanted to write that I've noticed about Egypt and now would be a good time to say is how great it smells! That might be surprising but it does smell really nice - lots of different smells, my favourite being the smell of people smoking the apple tobacco in sheeshah pipes - I had two puffs myself but enjoed the smell of it more than actually smoking it.

A main street outside the markets.

Sob sob, and that is all, it was back to the hotel and sad goodbyes to Sam and Sam and Surasha and Teagan. I really hope we manage to keep in touch with some of great friends we've made during this holiday.

As a little girl I was fascinated with Ancient Egypt, I can remember pouring over books about it from the Burnside Primary School library. Reading about Pharoahs and temples and perfume cones and eye makeup. My interest in Egypt has continued to adulthood and so it was extremely special for me to actually get to go there. This is so corny but this really was the best experience of my whole life - it was such an amazing place with great people a fascinating history and I don't want to forget a moment of it. The only negative part of the trip was Darren getting sick but despite that I know it was a special trip for him too.

Now it's back to reality - it will be sad not to be woken by the call to prayer tomorrow morning.

:)
Mindy

Day 7 - Egypt

2008-12-07T11:48:00.001Z

I would just like to start today's record by saying that it is so incredibly hard to describe how amazing this whole experience has been - this record must read like our itinery somewhere "today was temple blah followed by temple blah" however each place was very special in its own way and there was not a single thing we did that I was not incredibly grateful for having seen it. Not the least of which was the sunrise hot air balloon ride over Thebe's Necropolis on the West Bank, across the Nile from Luxor. We woke at 4.15 to assemble in the hotel's reception and be given our breakfast boxes. I am such a kid and get overly excited discovering what is in each one. This was a goodun and had an apple, guava (which I was excited to try but unfortunately didn't like), a tiny cucumber, a tomato, 2 bread rools, 2 sweet pastries, honey, jam, butter, a boiled egg, and a yoghurt. A lot! I reserved half for lunch.

We were met by the air ballooing company and taken down to a beautiful little ferry all set out with tea cups and some delicious orange cake (which we'd also had on the felucca). We crossed the Nile on the ferry and a short minibus ride took us to where we were boarding the ballos. It was quite a sight seeing the hunreds (well tens) of balloons in the area all being inflated, glowing red in the darkness. The noise was quite qurprising too, those fire things made a big racket.

On the ferry crossing the Nile, before sunrise.

Balloons being inflated.

Our balloon carried 25 people and it was a long rectangular shape with little pods - 3 people per pod. Our friend Ingrid and Damien where next to us which was good as we could all take photos for each other. Being a tour was great - Darren and I were able to get so many more pictures of the two of us together than normal. Anyway back to the balloons, it was quite an exciting feeling, the balloon rising off the ground, and also seeing the other balloons ascending. We could see all the sites and the excavations still going on - just as interesting for me though was looking at the landscape - the neatly laid out irrigated fields, then the abrupt change to desert and sand. What a differece the little channels of water make. Being nosey I loved looking down into the courtyards of houses where people lived right next to their donkeys and chickens. It was also interesting to see men working their fields - digging a new channel, a task that would take a matter of minutes with a tracter, and these guys were out doing it by hand before 6am in the morning! One thing I've noticed here is hard some of the people work - even the hasslers touting their goods at the tourist sites are up so early in the morning and working so hard - seemingly non-stop!

Up on the balloon.

The sunrise of course was amazing, a sight I will remember for the rest of my life.

How quickly the green land becomes desert!

The balloon captain skillfully landed the balloon where the ground crew and our vans were waiting. We were instantly swarmed by young kids - around 4-10 years old, demanding "baksheesh" or a tip for doing absolutely nothing! One cheeky young boy offered to help Surasha disembark, she declined then he claimed he'd hurt her hand and deminaded a pound! Darren gave one boy the fruit for his breakfast box out the window of the mini van and almost caused a riot.

We then got dropped off to board our tour bus and travel to the nearby valley of the Kings where the New Kingdom kings all built their tombs at the end of tunnels snaking into the mountin. This complex construction was to try and thwart tomb robbers. Only 2 of the King (including Tutankhamen) were actually successful (although the tombs are empty now at the hand of Western explorers) byt the tombs themselves were beautiful to look at, highly decorated in many colours. Darren and I just went into two of the tombs as the queues for the others were too long and not all were open as they they rotate which ones are currently open anyway. By the way the environment here was harsh! Already very hot before 9am and so dry - the air hurt my nose because it was so dry but wrapping my linen scarf around my face made a huge difference - I may have looked stupid byt was so much more comfortable.

Next stop was the mostly reconstructed monument Hatshepsut dedicated to the most successful female pharoah Queen Hatshepsut. It was pretty impressive and not being a temple was in a completely different layout and style, however, we were all pretty hot and tired by then and the best view was from the outside anyway. We did look around inside but only briefly.

Me outside the Hatshepsut Monument.

Darren doing the Mummy thing inside the Monument.

The last stop of the morning was the Valley of the Queens. We saw the beautiful King-style toom of Nefertari - wife for the great temple builder Ramses II (I think) and we also saw the tomb of a Prince, Amunherkhepshep son of Ramses III. His tomb was interesting and Sam told us that when he had died his mother had been so upset that she miscarried the baby she was carrying and so to ease her pain the priests mummified the foetus and placed in the tomb as well. It is very important that there only be one person in Egyptian tomb, however the Egyptians (in ancient times) did not believe the foetus was a person yet so this was why this exception was made - and the practise of putting miscarried foetuses in otmbs actually continued.

After a very long hot morning it was time to go back to the hotel for a long hot shower and a bit of a TV break - watching Broken Arrow of all things! Darren also was feeling (and looking) quite a bit better now which I was so relieved about.

The afternoon was a trip to Karnak temple - the biggest and most important temple which had been added to by many pharoahs. It was really cool here as Sam taught us to read some hieroglyphics which I can still remember now. The temple was huge - hard to think of it as one thing as it was really a temple complex. It contained a big lake filled by underground pipes leading to the Nile which the priests used as Holy water and to bathe etc. The best part of it was the amazing Great Hypostyle Hall with 134 huge pillars and beautiful colours on the parts of the ceiling that remained.

Great Hypostyle Hall pillars.

Some sort of ram-looking sphinx there was an avenue of them.

It was back to the hotel for a yummy pasta dinner with Surasha and Sam and then onto the sleeper train which was 100 times better for me this time as I used my scarf to cover my eyes and used earplugs. It was a lot worse for Darren though as he was right next to a broken door that kept swinging and slaming open and shut all night long.

Sunset view of the Nile from our hotel.

:)
Mindy

Day 6 - Egypt

2008-12-06T17:21:00.000Z

Well this photo isn't very weather appropriate for Egypt. Nevermind. So today was another early morning for me. I woke several times in the night to sounds of partying from the other feluccas, but it wasn't too bad. I woke permanently befor 6 to the beautiful sounds from both sides of the river of the call to prayer. It was such a peaceful beautiful time with the haunting chants and the sun just rising over the perfectly still Nile. We also started moving the - the feluccas were gently guided to our disembarkation spot (this was all done while everyone was still asleep). After piling on the buswe headed first to Kom Ombo temple (Darren sat this one out though thankfully did find sitting in the bus pretty comfortable) this was a pretty cool temple with a Nileometer in it. It was quite disembled though, people had been taking blocks from the temple for years! It was also very hot already - it's amazing how hot it is during the day but how cold it gets at night here. You really do need several layers on.

Me at Kom Ombo temple.

Pretty columns at Kom Ombo - by the way the sky was that intensely blue everyday except our last when it was slightly overcast.

Colour still visible on ceiling at Kom Ombo.

It was time for a more driving, on the bus past donkeys, through villages with the amazing half built looking houses. We were also overtaken today by a ute carrying a load of camels! We were heading Edfu temple which in stark contrast to Kom Ombo is the best preserved most complete ancient temple in Egypt. It was really cool seeing all the chambers and priests secret passage ways in tact - and the condition of the wall reliefs was amazing. We also learnt how one month a year Horus' statue from the Holiest of Holys is taken on a boat and floated down the river to his wife Hathor's temple and put in with Hathor's statue and all there for a month to do whatever they pleased. Another month a of the year Hathor's statue was taken to Edfu to be with Horus there. This is the origin of the word Honeymoon - which came from Holy Month I think. Darren made it into this temple which was good though he doesn't look very smiley in the photos.

Statue of Horus outside his temple at Edfu.

Poor Darren too sick to smile at Edfu.

Once we got to Luxor in the bus I had an amazing show in the hotel - it was so nice to feel really clean again. Darren was very glad to get there as he'd had a terrible night the night before so he was able to just lie down and be comfortable for awhile. Gentleman that he is he didn't mind that I went off to see Luxor temple and have dinner with the group. S o after it does dark I headed off with Sam and Su for a goregous horse and carraige ride through the nighttime streets of Luxor to Luxor templ.e

The temple looked amazing all lit up. The reliefs, carvings, and statues really had a whole different element to them up lit with shadows deepening their patterns. I was really so glad to see a temple this time of the day, the whole atmosphere was also somewhat more magical (even though in general all the temples did have a magical quality about them). Also at Luxor temple was the avenue of sphinxes - these looked so magnificant and dominating even despite most of them missing a bit of face or legs. The last at Luxor temple which was really cool to see what the obelisk which is the other half of the pair to the one in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. It was a bit depressing to see the stump where it should have been, though would have looked great as a pair, however, at least it is very prominently and proudly displayed in Paris given the honour it deserves. my guide book says that in return for Mehemet Ali (the leader of Egypt) offering this to France as a gift France gave Egypt a clock which broke en route and has not yet been repaired (this was over 100 years ago) bugger.

Luxor temple statues.

A very delicious buffet dinner with Su and Sam then back to the hotel room to check on my darling Darren, and try and get some sleep before the 4.15am wake up call the next day!

As today was the last day on the felucca I just want to say how much I enjoyed the trip with my felucca mates - Ingrid, Damien, Mark, Janneke, Sam, Surasha, Sam (the pretty one), Claire and Jen - thanks for being such good company and making the trip such a pleasant one!

:)
Mindy

Day 5 - Egypt

2008-12-05T17:14:00.000Z

Well today we woke up on the Felucca. I woke up quite early and couldn't get back to sleep, mostly because I only had one thing on my mind - I'll give you a clue it starts with p and rhymes with the prounounciation of the letter. So to distract myself I looked over the side of the felucca and it was quite beautiful. Tiny little fishes swimming around, it was remarkably clear - I was surprised I couldn't see the torch I'd accidentally dropped over the side the night before.

Morning on the felucca.

Breakfast was delicious, all the food on the felucca was delicious - I think that may have also been because of where we were. Breakfast was similar to lunch, wholemeal pita, salty soft cheese, fig jam (yum!) boiled eggs. Lunch today was the same bread, cheese, cucumber, and yummy little sausages I think they were called kofta. Dinner again vegetable stew, rice, bread, and this time fried chicken which tastes so much like KFC but yummier.

Darren putting on a brave face.

The day today was spent cruising down the Nile, avoiding the sun, and sleeping a little bit too. In the evening we docked with a lot of other feluccas (just our group itself was 4 feluccas) and they thankfully erected a makeshift long drop. Then it was time to get the bonfire started and sing and dance around it accompanied by Nubian drumming.

Sunset on the Nile.

On a more serious note Darren began to get very sick, we're very worried it's his liver again and trying to decide whether to cut the trip short. We'll hopefully be able to make it to the end if he doesn't get any worse. My poor sick baby.

:)
Mindy

Day 4 - Egypt

2008-12-04T15:45:00.000Z

3.30am. Yes this is the time we got our wake up call today. 3.30am to catch a 5.00am flight to Abu Simbel. So we turn up at the airport and board a very civilised plane (not that Egypt is uncivilised but I was expecting the plane to be more like the sleeper train) and as soon as bum hit seat most of us tried to get some more sleep. We arrived at Abu Simbel airport and got the shortest bus ride ever to the terminal and onto another bus. When we arrived I wasn't quite sure at first what we'd arrived at. Then we went round a corner and wow! It was such an amazing temple - the four massive Ramses II - from young to old carved into the mountain. The third innermost chamber or "Holiest of Holies" had four statues in it - one of Ramses II who considered himself a living god, and on two days a year the sun would hit the statues but it would only ever reach the third statue and not go any further as the fourth was the god of the underworld I think, or the god of evil or something - anyway what amazing Maths must have been done to work that out!

The temple, just after sunrise.

Me and D outside the temple.

Also amazing was the temple was so well preserved - I think from being underneath sand, there was even still colourings in the interior statues and walls. So beautiful and so, well strange, to be seeing this sort of thing in person! There was also a beautiful much smaller Queen's temple - quite touching that Ramses II loved his queen enough to build her a temple. Both temples were cut straight into the mountain too, one can only imagine how well a project like that would have needed to be managed given the tools and equipment available. It was such a beautiful time to be there as well - just after sunrise, so peaceful not many other tourists, the temple overlooking beautiful still Lake Nasser. My last statement of awe about the temple is that in the twentieth century the whole thing - including the mountain - was actually moved to avoid the lake. Incredible!

Some pics of the great Ramses II.

The temple from a distance so you can see how it was carved into the mountain.

So then it was back for a very good breakfast at our hotel and a shower and a bit of free time around the pool before meeting up to go over the felucca briefing. It was around this time that Darren revealed his tummy wasn't feeling the best. Uh oh.

Around 2pm we boarded the felucca and had a nice simple lunch of whole wheat pita, some kind of soft feta like cheese stuff, cucumber, falaffel, (Darren and I are both in love with the food here), before we set sail tacking down the Nile. A very relaxed lazy afternoon ensued marred only very slightly by the tinge of needing to pee (which can only be done in the bushes after the captain has pulled over to the bank).

Our four feluccas.

Darren relaxing on board the felucca.

When we did pull over for the night everyone was nearly asleep and Darren was in considerably more pain. We had a beef stew and vegetable stew for dinner with rice and my favourite wholemeal pitas. Intriguing was the plate the captain put down calling it "salad" - it looked like a plate of little red potatoes. I picked one up and doing do revealed that it they were potatoes they weren't cooked. I tentatively took a bite and found that I was biting into something sweet, with a subtle flavour and the texture of an unripe pear. Our felucca-mate Claire figured out when she saw the stone that it was a fresh date! Anyway I was so excited to have tried it and seen where the dried dates I love so much started their life.

After dinner it was up to a small Nubian village to check out a family house (with a proper toilet) to see how they lived. They were very gracious and welcoming and we had sheesha pipes with them and tea and spent the evening hanging out there and talking to a lovely Australian couple off our felucca, Ingrid and Damien. Then back to the feluccas where sleep was quick coming.

:)
Mindy

Day 3 - Egypt

2008-12-03T15:20:00.000Z

Well the overnight train, what an ordeal. But before I get into that I forgot to say yesterday one of the most bizarre sights in Cairo was the herd of goats and other animals right in the middle of town. What they were doing there I don't really know but it was a funny sight all the same. Anyway so I woke up so many times in the night and then sort of woke up more permanently about 6am and the sun was just coming up so I got out the camera and took some photos.

This is Darren showing how it's done - sleeping on the sleeper train.

And here's a dawn pic I took.

So broken sleep - well that's not really a big deal, however, when the tour leader Sam came with our breakfast at 9 and informed us that the train was 4 hours late and we might miss out on seeing the sights, well I wasn't too excited about that.It was a long time to be on the train and when we finally arrived at 1pm or something we were all a bit worse for wear. And I'm not even going to say anything about the toilets on the train - will just say that our first stop after the train in Aswan was to the hotel for toilets! After the toilets we did head straight for the sites. We first went to the High Dam. It was interesting but I have seen a lot of big dams in my life and so it was really no more impressive than any of them. Plus I was really tired - but it was good to see - and the Aswan dam too. I guess most interesting was the amount of security around the dams. You were only allowed yto take normal photos, no big zoom lenses and no videos - armed soldiers enforced this. Also around Aswan and the dam there is 10% of Egypt's military - amazing.

Then it was back on the bus (we have been getting on and off buses a lot) and we drove to a see bay in Lake Nasser with tons of wee boats moored. We got onto one to go to the Island where the Temple of Philae was relocatedto. Now would be a good time to talk about the Nubians as this was when Sam told us about them. So we're now really in Nubian country and the Nubians all run the boat ferries and feluccas around Aswan, the women don't work but to contribute make beaded necklaces. On the boat the men were selling these necklaces and they were gorgeous. I bought one with big red discs that was 30 Egyptian pounds - nice! It was so exciting to see some Nubians as the book I'm reading that is set in Sudan has described them in great detail.

So the temple of Philas was beautiful, all the more because of the beautiful island setting. Very lush and green and very interesting rock formations too. So Philas Temple was built by one of the Ptolemys (Greek rulers in Egypt) so not nearly as old as some of the things but still very beautiful, and still very old. It was on this beautiful peaceful island we got to watch the sun set. Bliss.

Temple of Philae.

Sunset view from Philae.

Me on the way home on the boat looking back at the Island.

It was back to the hotel (very decent) for a shower then headed out for abrief trip to the markets during which we went to the most strange duty free shop ever. The tour was very well planned, for those who didn't want to go to the market (boys) they could all sit and have a coffee and sheeshah pipe (tobacco typically flavoured with apple and smoked through water). It found some girls to head into the market with and found a gorgeous pashmina. Aswan is famous for cotton so it was a must buy and I'm proud to say with the help of my new friends we got the price down from 400 to 70 Egyptian pounds which I was thrilled with. And it's so beautiful.

Then back onto a boat to go to dinner at a Nubian restaurant on an island. It was a really nice dinner apparently cooked in a special copper or stone pot. I had vegetarian and it was with rice and some grat spiced fried vegetables. Yummy! And there was this awesome Nubian dance show with really really loud drums. It was great fun, a couple of dances had big puppets and one a guy with tribal dress on. There was tons of audience participation - I even got up for a big group dance at the end. Then back to the hotel around 10.30om for sleep before a 3.30am wake for Abu Simbel!

Nubian dancing at the restaurant (I'm second on the left).

:)
Mindy

Day 2 - Egypt

2008-12-02T20:20:00.000Z

What an amazing day! We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and met a couple of people on the tour. Then we all got on the bus to meet our very jovial tour leader Sam - he's great always smiling and always joking. Then it was off to brave the traffic and make our way to the nearby pyramids. We got ferried between the pyrmaid sites on the tour bus and the first time we got out we got hassled out of 40 Egyptian pounts - not too bad really and now I've got a bee in my bonnet about it so I'm not letting that happen again - it's ggood though really, all part of the experience. As an example of how cheeky these guys are our tour leader has a code for when he gets asked to recommend things and he seriously thinks a good deal, as opposed to when he recommends them just to get rid of the guy. A guy came and asked if we wanted to buy a headscarf for 5 Egyptian pounds, later that day we got offered exactly the same headscarf for 100 Egyptian pounds!

Me at the pyramids!

So they pyramids - well what to say - it was amazing actually being there, actually seeing the sphinx - a very early memory of mine is watching Asterix and Cleopatra and seeing the sphinx in that.

Wow the sphinx in person.

Before seeing the sphinx went inside the second pyramid. That was amazing - you have to walk bent in half (literally) down steps, then you get to stand and walk upright for a bit, then hunch over again and walk up to get to the inner chamber, the king's chamber. The heat inside was amazing, really really dense heat and a real lack of air - we were totally puffing by the end and just from lack of oxygen, not from lack of fitness!

Cheesy pic (idea stolen from Andrew and Grace) of Darren holding the pyramid we went inside.

So going into the pyramid was a really cool experience. Next coolest was camel riding - we made a last minute decision to get a camel ride from one pyramid to another, and it was great but a little scary - our camel kept trying to bite one of the other camels and our camel guide almost got into a fist fight with one of the other guides!

On our camel.

Anyway next stop was the Papyrus museum where we splashed out (even though Darren did an amazing job haggling) on a beautiful papyrus with a wedding scene on it. It is beautiful. It was 620 Egyptian pounds and we got it down to 500 plus a 210 papyrus thrown in free! We compared the deal we got around the group and I think we managed to get the best deal. Also of note was they provided us with hybiscus juice and it may just be because I was really thirsty but I loved it!

Next we stopped in at supermarket on the way to Sakkara - this was the second necropolis of the day (Giza and the great pyramids being the first). Here is the step pyramid and a myriad of tombs. From here we could also see the best bent pyramid and the red pyramid (the first proper pyramid). There was also a beautiful columned building and coronation hall. The amazing this here was the peacefulness - it was possible to be all by yourself without seeing another tourist - and it was so serene and beautiful. Of course just round the corner there were tons of people!

Darren in front of the step pyramid.

Now's a good time to say we've met tons of really nice people - everyone on the tour seems lovely some we'll hopefully stay in contact with after the tour. A nice South African couple, and lots of Australians, two other kiwi couples. It's great!

Then after Sakkara we went to a resort to relax - the was a pool and a shower and I just changed my clothes and spent the rest of the time with Darren socialising. We had a fairly authentic tea, amazing bread (but I generally love bread anyway) salads, stews, rice, yum! Now we're at the train station waiting for our overnight train that may be up to two hours late. Fingers crossed it's not!

:)
Mindy

Day 1 - Egypt

2008-12-01T17:22:00.003Z

Ok well I'm blogging the journal I wrote while in Egypt - starting from day 1 - our arrival in Egypt. No pictures for that day but starting from day 2 there will be lots!

Well it was a very early wakeup this morning although I surprised myself by actually managing to sleep. Normally when I have to wake up early - especially forsomething nerve-wracking like international travel - I have a crappy sleep. Anywho out of bed by 3.20am dresses, did dishes, in the car and on our way 3.55am. The travelling went exceptionally well - very smooth. Although I can't believe it - the very first compliment in flight meal we've had in ages and Darren slept through it. I just don't have the same priorities as him!

We were met at the airport by a very friendly tour representative 'Shaggy' who spent the 45 minute car ride joking with us, explaining the tour to us, Egypt tipes and also testing us on what he's said! I failed the first test so Darren was subseqwuently deemed to be the brains of the operation.

The most memorable moment of the day was when Shappy said he had a 'present' for uscoming up we just have to look out the window to the right - and we got our first sifht of the pyramids! It was pretty suureal just seeing them poking their tips up between normal sky scrapers.

Other things that struck me today:

The residential squares of green land smack bang in the middle of sand (view from plane).
The HUGE houses and their pools.
The military base with all the tanks lined up.
The high rise buildings that look both half bulit and half demolished but had people living in them - there were thousands!

Our hotel is nice. Huge. Lots of foiuntains, a gym, basket ball court, tennis court, very pretty but the rooms just average inside. Really looking forward to seeing the Pyramids tomorrow!

:)
Mindy

ps Traffic was amazing. The number of people crammed in vehicles. The number of people riding atop utes packed sky with goods!

Egypt tomorrow!

2008-11-21T19:15:00.003Z

Hi!

Well I am more than a little excited about going to Egypt tomorrow. This feels like proper travel - this is a truly foreign country. I've been to lots of countries but this one has different toilets - if you have to squat to go to the toilet you're in a foreign country.

So anyway I've been checking the weather forecast for Cairo a bit over the past week. Well actually that's not true the forecast doesn't seem to vary much. Or at all. Just sunshine logo after sunshine logo.... ahhh.... bliss.... check it out:

So we've got 9 days, on a tour, filled with sun, sand, trains, planes, feluccas, maybe camels, hot air balloons, ancient temples... I will have one long post to write when I get back!

xxx

Mindy

Memories

2008-11-20T21:07:00.004Z

Ok here's my situation - which I'm guessing I'm not alone in - any songs or movies from my childhood I automatically love now, and am incapable of judging them in a non-biased way. You've probably all seen this phenomenom I'd guess every year or so you'll take in part in a conversation about good old 80s cartoons with all the other people a similar age to you. Well the difference here is while we all watched the same cartoons we didn't all get exposed to the same music or movies - this was something very much controlled by our parents. And for better or worse now I can't help but feel warm and fuzzy inside when listening to any of the following:

Queen (I'm not complaining about this one)
Deborah Harry
Tina Turner
The Carpenters (you should see me get excited when a Carpenters song comes on - Carpenters for me equals driving up to Marlborough for our family holidays).
Phill Collins
Paul Young

My Mum and Dad aren't huge music fans so it was mostly those on rotation - though they did have a few more records than that.

As for movies - well it was the ones we had on VCR that got played again and again - some I can't remember now but the whole inspiration for this post was a particular movie which I just happened to watch last night. It had been at least 14 years since I last watch this movie, probably more and I still knew almost every word. And all the dance moves. Yes when I was a kid I LOVED the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I watched it again and again, Ame and I listened to the CD and sang along - I don't think we ever went as far as acting it out thank god. But still. It is AWESOME.

I always wanted to be Magenta - I loved her hair. And I thought it was so funny how the men were wearing ladies underwear! And pearl necklaces! I of course had absolutely no idea what what really going on - but I'd still sing along with gusto "I'm a sweet tranvestive, from transsexual, transsylvania". And of course knowing the Time Warp came very handy at all those school discos, and then again many years later on a night out in the Bog or somewhere else that plays that damn good sing along at the top of your lungs dancing music.

So be warned if you live in Christchurch, and I like you a little bit, or even just vaguely know you, you may find an invitation coming your way for a Rocky Horror Picture Show themed birthday party next year!

xxx
Mindy

Egypt this week

2008-11-19T14:17:00.003Z

Howdy,

Well I was supposed to talk about slugs and barley. So I will. Even though I'm almost over the slug thing now. What happened was the other night I got home, and as I normally do I kicked off my shoes (I hate wearing shoes) and walked into the bedroom. Well attempted to. I was stopped by feeling my foot press down on something cold and squishy. So I quickly raised my foot again and looked down to see a slug! Ewww! I hate slugs (well actually slugs are fine I'm just a bit scared about them). So I ran away (as you do) and told Darren to move it - which he didn't. However when I went back in about 3 minutes - it was gone! Vanished! So now I have to live with the knowledge that there may or may not be a slug in my house.

The plot thickens however when I was telling Marie at work this and she told me in one of her rental houses her tenants had been complaining about a slug infestation. She's done some research at the time - so I did some research too and lo and behold it's a common problem in the UK it seems! There were numerous pages of advice about how to get rid of them. Worse though was the descriptions some people had of their problem. Some were reporting finding several 4 inch slugs in their house each night. One had found their cat's food bowl teaming with them. EW! There might be something wrong with me because I find this extrememly gross - actually sickening. I would die if I found a 4 inch slug. Well maybe I wouldn't. I'm not sure where this extreme aversion came from (I'm not good with catepillars or worms either) but maybe from Under the Mountain, a book I read when I was a kid by Maurice Gee I think.

Anyway as for barley. I love barley. Barley makes everything better.

And also we're going to Egypt on Saturday! I have just been out buying "non figure hugging" clothing - as apparently all my clothes are too skanky for Egypt. :( Hehe although I do welcome the chance to buy new clothes - I had to shop at granny shops though to find ones that were covered up enough.

xxx
Mindy

Nemos and An Experiment in scaling a recipe down

2008-11-18T08:36:00.005Z

Good day!

Well last night I was planning to do something but my plans were thwarted - and since I'm so busy at the moment it meant I had to do what was planned for tomorrow. Making cupcakes for Marie's kids. Unfortunately I was almost out of flour and of icing sugar but had just been to the supermarket and refused to go out again (which I actually did anyway but after the cupcakes were made). So I measured how much flour I had - found out I had 1/2 a cup and decided to try scaling down a recipe. I used the white velvet recipe from HowToEatACupcake and excluded the marshmellows.

Here's what my recipe looked like:

1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 teaspoon salt
30g butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/6 of a cup of milk (roughly - I just tried to fill my 1/3 cup measure halfway)
1 egg white

Method (same as original)
1) Mix flour, baking powder and salt
2) Cream butter and sugar (I didn't really do this properly it was too hard with such a small amount)
3) Alternatively add milk and flour mix to the creamed butter and sugar ending with milk
4) Now I added some red and yellow food colouring
5) Beat egg whites - supposed to do it till they form soft peaks but I just did it with the whisk until my arm for sore
6) Fold egg whites carefully into other mixture
7) Cook at 160 celsius for about 20 minutes

I also used this as an opportunite to try my silicone cases without paper linings, and they worked well! Anyway the original was supposed to make 12 and I got a perfect 3! So here's the pictures (I was playing around with my camera settings so the colouring isn't totally consistent:

Waiting to be cooked:

Mmm out of the oven - they had a nice (? well I thought it was nice but I'm a positive person) spongy sort of look to them, maybe from pockets of egg white - would be good for a spongebob cupcake - oooh I wanna do a spongebob cupcake!

I bought a new piping nozzle and now have pretty decent looking swirls! Yay!

And finally - on go the nemos! I made these specially as Marie's kids are going to Nemo on ice this week, also a good change to play with my edible pen. However I was soo excited and did it too quickly - I could have done a more polished job with the pen.

Tomorrow's post: slugs and barley (ew and yum!).

xxx
Mindy

Earring Holder

2008-11-15T11:13:00.004Z

Hi! Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. Um I've been lazy! We had a FANTASTIC weekend with Rach and Greg it was so nice to catch up and just talk etc. Plus we learnt how to play Canasta which was really fun - I've always been a bit reluctant about card games my whole life really, it's a hangover from being an incredibly shy child and being too self conscious to do anything that I could do badly in infront of other people (this includes ALL sports). But anyway now I'm older and not shy anymore well it was such a fun night playing with them. Darren and I are going to play today to make sure we don't forget the rules!

This week I haven't done any baking just some truffle making but I didn't photograph those as they were incredibly easy and tasty and well quite a boring process to make really. They were chocolate rum and raisin - delicious! I think I can remember the recipe:

Melt 50g butter with 100g chocolate
Stir in half cup of icing sugar
Add 1 tablespoon rum and 1 tsp cocoa power and 1/2 cup chopped raisins
Stir in another half a cup of icing sugar
Room into balls then roll in something nice like coconut

Oh the recipe was from the Edmonds cookbook, but I added the raisins to the recipe. I've made a LOT of truffles lately and these were just such a nice muxture to handle - didn't stick on your hands and rolled into balls very easily. Not messy at all. I have a feeling I will be making these a lot over the rest of my life.

Ok so onto something I do have a picture of. I've started packing to go home - yes that's right - BACK TO NZ YAY!!! Anyway part of this required some tidying and I decided once and for all to deal with my earring storage problem. So last night's project was making this:

I just LOVE being able to see all my earrings at once. I love earrings and would have more but often lose them (that might be a thing of the past given my new holder!

Here are some cute skulls Darren got me:

And these are my two favourite pairs of sparkly earrings, the tops danglies are from Mum and Dad and the bottom ones (which really need a clean) were a birthday present from Darren:

xxx
Mindy

Neapolitan Cupcakes

2008-11-05T20:30:00.011Z

Hello!

I hope you all remember my funky multi-coloured chocolate hearts? Well they were just the start of the story! Here's a picture to jog your memory:

Ok so these were destined to be more than just chocolate art, they were destined to adorn beautiful cupcakes. So on Wednesday night I helped them to achieve their destiny. I decided to make HowToEatACupcake's Neapolitan cupcakes because they were so damn pretty! Also I used to love Neapolitan icecream when I was kid. The recipe (off the site) was so good! It worked perfectly, I had no problem keeping the vanilla and chocolate batters separate - and it was such a delicious batter. Infact I should probably never make these again as I ate too much of it!

Anyway here you can see how the cooked cuppies looked - nice distinction between the vanilla and chocolate (you can see the front one has been stabbed with a knife - it must have been the one I used to test for doneness).

So I didn't use Swiss Meringue Buttercream though as I said I wasn't going to do it again without an electric beater so I just made normal butter cream: 113g butter (1/2 cup) 3 cups of icing sugar, 1/3 cup strawberry jam (with no bits), and 1/4 cup of milk.

Here is the finished batch:

And here's one close up:

I really need to get my icing whirls a bit neater! I guess practise makes perfect, I also need to try with adifferent icing tip too.

Have a nice weekend everyone and good luck to my Mum and Dad who are doing a huge (160km) bike race this weekend!

xxx
Mindy

Toffee!! Yay!!

2008-11-05T12:40:00.008Z

Some of you might remember my post about my big toffee/taffy failure where I ended up with fudge! Well I must admit not once, not twice, not even thrice, but four times now have I ended up with fudge when I wanted toffee! I was sure I just hadn't heated the sugar enough the first two times, so for the third attempt I bought a candy thermometer but had the same problem! Then I decided pulling taffy was too complicated so I went with simple poured nut toffee - but the process of stirring in the nuts once again resulted in fudge. I guess I just wasn't careful enough not to get any sugar crystals in the mix (one sugar crystal causes the whole batch to re crystalize and turn into fudge). So for my 5th attempt I decided I wasn't even going to stir at all - just boil then pour! And finally.... toffee! And it's good.... sooooo good! So after this success will I be trying again - most definitely! I'll work my way up to nut toffee but I'm going to take things slowly!

Here's the recipe:

1 1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup boiling water
Pinch baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
30g butter
1/2 cup cream (I used whipping cream)

1. Put first 4 ingredients in heavy based saucepan (which I don't have so just used a normal one) and put on stove over a low heat stirring constantly until sugar dissolves and mixture is boiling (for me it happened in that order).
2. When boiling put the lid on the pan for 3 minutes to let the sugar crystals dissolve on the side of the pan.
3. Now put your candy thermeter in, I turned the heat up a little but it was still pretty low, and let it boil till 236 F.
4. Gradually add cut up butter alternating with cream, don't let the temperature drop below 225 F.
5. Leave to boil till reach 256 F - took about 10 minutes again I turned it up a little but it was still only low - moderate heat.
6. When reaches 256 pour into buttered pan.
7. Let cool a bit then mark into squares.
8. When cold cut into squares.
9. I then dipped in icing sugar and wrapped in greaseproof paper.

Dissolving the sugar.

The boiling sugar syrup.

Cream and butter just been added - yum!

The poured toffee cooling.

Cutting into squares - a very tiring job!

After coating them in icing sugar I found a really good way off getting rid of the excess icing sugar was to put them all in the sieve.

I wrapped up around 90 little toffee! Then promptly upwrapped two and ate them... yum!

xxx
Mindy

Fun with Chocolate

2008-11-05T12:24:00.007Z

Ok so on Monday night I decided to try some things out with chocolate. Mostly because i nthe weekend I made the trek to the Cake Decorating shop in the Doncaster market and bought some proper food colouring paste so I could try colouring white chocolate (as some of you might know you can't use water based food colouring as water and chocolate don't mix!). Anyway I'm thinking about making some neopolitan cupcakes to take to Cambridge when we visit Rach and Greg so I decided to make neopolitan coloured chocolate hearts! I didn't really know what I was doing just mucked around but I was really happy with the result. So easy but a good effect!

Step 1:

I melted 4 square of dark choc - didn't need that many, ended up coating some cake balls with it and still had some left.

Anyway take some melted dark chocolate and sort of splatter and drip it on a piece of baking paper on a flat tray.

Step 2:

Melt some white chocolate and add red food colouring. Drip and splatter the melted pink chocolate over the dark chocolate doesn't matter too much if they mix.

Here's the result of Step 1 and 2:

Step 3:

Put the tray in the fridge so they chocolate goes hard.

Step 4:

Melt white chocolate and carefully spread over the pink and dark chocolate splatters. Even the white chocolate so it's smooth, then cover with another piece of baking paper and I put a book on it to make it flat. Then in the fridge again.

Step 5:

When the chocolate is hard take cookie cutters and cut out your chocolate shapes! Don't press them hard and quickly into the chocolate like you would making cookies as that will just crack the chocolate but slowly easy the cutter down.

Here's my cute wee heart cutters I got the other day:

And the finished result (Plus some random yellow hearts that I made out of left over yellow chocolate I was also playing with):

xxx
Mindy

Movember!

2008-11-01T21:36:00.008Z

Well I have just two things to say today as I'm very tired and want to watch Battlestar Galactica.

1. It's now Movember (if you just look to the right you'll see my little web badge that proves it). So if you can grow a mo do so! I am an avid facial hair fan (on males) and so Movember is my favourite month of the year.In Movember everybody wins - I get to see (at least through photos) some gorgeous moustaches, and the commendable New Zealand males who are growing them are also raising money for good causes. So once again everyone grow or sponsor a mo or do both! If you need someone to sponsor you can sponsor Adam here - even if you don't like Adam (in which case you're obviously a weirdo) rest assured he doesn't get any of the money it's all going to a good cause!

2. Cooking for almost 9 hours makes your hands very dry... it may be something to do with the number of dishes I had to do throughout the day.

3. (Sorry I thought of something else) I really like charity second hand shops... they are awesome!

:)
Mindy

Cake Balls

2008-10-30T19:09:00.007Z

Ok so this is a lovely story about some cupcakes that didn't quite cut it as cupcakes and decided to have a second life as cake balls. What are cake balls? Balls of cake, dipped in chocolate! Yum. I got the idea from Bakerella who has some really gorgeous things on her site I recommend you check it out.

Anyway so in the weekend I was trying to make up a recipe for white chocolate and kiwifruit cupcakes. I did manage to but the recipe had a bit too much butter I think and they were very buttery and a bit heavy, and some of them sunk. They still tasted great though! And I did ice them up and they looked ok (although I'm not going to bother with swiss meringue buttercream again till I've got an electric mixer, it's too much work by hand and came out a bit goopy).

Anyway these were just sitting around not being eaten, partly because the Un-death by Chocolate ones were just so delicious (make sure you check them out) and besides two batches of cupcakes is really too much for just me and Darren. You'll be glad to know that I did distribute a few around work yesterday and today so now we've officially got a cupcake count of zero in the house again.

So as I was saying the white chocolate kiwifruit cupcakes were not moving fast, so when I was reading Bakerella and saw that her gorgeous cake balls were basically made of cake and frosting and I realised that I had cake and frosting! So I bought a block of white chocolate and set to it.

Here's the cupcakes becoming crumbled cake and frosting:

Then the frosting and crumbs got mixed together rolled into balls and put in the freezer:

Then they got dipped in chocolate and left to set. I was going to write them off as a failure as my dipping really didn't go very well, but on second thoughts it wasn't a total disaster - redipped I think they'd be fine. I think I would have been better off using dark chocolate to dip them as I find white chocolate a little temperamental and I'm not too experienced, and also might have been better if I'd let the chocolate cool a little before dipping. What happened was my nice hard packed cold buttery balls turned a little bit mushy in the hot chocolate. Anyway I haven't been put off, I will be back for another go!

Here's the finished result anyway:

xxx
Mindy

Un-death by Chocolate Cupcakes

2008-10-27T19:45:00.020Z

Ok so this is it. Amy and my contribution to the Halloween Cupcake competition run by How To Eat a Cupcake and I Heart Cuppycakes. I would say it's my entry but I can't really enter as I'm not in America, but I still wanted to be part of the fun especially given the fact that these two sites were the very first cupcake sites I started looking at!

Ok so our concept was zombies coming out of their graves, Amy was the creative director here and I was the flavour director. The flavour is chocolate mud, with almonds and cherries, filled with cherry and cherry custard, and topped with a rich chocolate ganache laced with cherry liqueur.

Ok well I think we'll start with a picture of the finished product made to look even scarier with some photo manipulation. Hehe I love the hands in this photo.

Ok now I think I'll post the recipe then I'll put the piccies of them being created.

Cupcakes (makes about 15)

100g dark chocolate
100g butter
1/3 cup of water
1/2 cup chopped cherries (I used frozen as they were easy to chop)
2 Tbsps cherry liqueur
1 1/2 cup ground almonds
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsps cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1 Tbsp oil
1/4 cup milk

Preheat over to 160 degrees celsius.
In pot stir chocolate, butter, water, cherries, cherry liqueur over low heat until chocolate and butter melted and well mixed. Set aside to cool.
Add ground almonds and caster sugar to large bowl, sift in plain flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder. Stir well.
In a medium bowl whisk eggs, and milk.
Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until mixed.
Add the chocolate mixture to the other ingredients gradually stirring well after each addition.
Fill cupcake cases 1/2-3/4 fill.
Cook until skewer comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

Cherry Custard (for filling cupcakes)

2 egg yolks (at room temp)
1/2 cup cherries
2 Tbsp cherry liqueur
1 Tbsp cherry jam

Put cherries, liqueur and jam in a pot and cook until cherries are soft
Push as much mixture as you can through a sieve, discard the left over cherry skins and and cherry flesh
Whisk egg yolks until smooth
Add about half a tablespoon of the cherry liquid to the egg yolks and whisk well.
Add some more liquid to the egg yolks and whisk well (maybe a tablespoon this time.
Add the egg yolk mixture to the pot and return to the stove on a low heat.
Continually stir until the custard becomes thick.

Chocolate Cherry Frosting

100g dark chocolate
50g butter
1/4 cup double cream
2 Tbsp cherry liqueur
1/2 cup icing sugar

Put chocolate, butter, cream and liqueur in the microwave for about 60 seconds
Stir well
Add icing sugar and stir well
Let cool until thick enough to spread on cupcakes

Decoration

Hands and a couple of blades of grass made out of icing and left to harden
Gravestones made out of white chocolate coloured grey
Grass made out of sugar and ground almonds coloured green
Dirt made out of crumbled oreos

To Assemble

Cook cupcakes and cool
Make custard
Cut hole in the top of each cupcake fill with a whole cherries and cherry custard
Make frosting and ice cupcakes
Before icing is set add gravestones, grass, hand and dirt!

All lined up waiting to be cooked

And here they are just out of the oven

Mmmm cherry custard

In this case the cherry wasn't on top, but hiding inside

Iced and ready for some graveyard action!

Finished cupcake

My graveyard

xxx
Mindy

Eloise's Cardie

2008-10-27T18:03:00.003Z

Hello! Well I had a busy cupcake filled weekend - it was good to be at home for a change though. Stay tuned for more cupcakey updates, I'm waiting for my photographer (Darren) to set up a shoot for me so we can capture the cupcakey goodness in it's best light. Anyway as I was saying it was nice to be home but at the same time I'm really looking forward to this weekend when we're off to Cambridge to see Rach and Greg. We haven't seen them in ages so I'm really excited :)

Right well what else is news?

I finished Eloise's cardigan that I've been knitting for ages. Seriously I restarted this about 5 times. The first few to get the tension and needle size right, then I had to start it again because I'd left it so long I'd forgotten where I was up to. Anyway finally got it done! And it's in the post and on the way back to NZ! Yay

Oh quick aside Royal Mail here has this website where you can print out your postage at home (or at work) it's so fantastic! No need for stamps.

Ok here's the top:

Ok that's all for my for today. I'm very tired for some reason.

xxx
Mindy

Klingons

2008-10-25T10:41:00.001+01:00

Well D-brain has been baking again! He's so multi-talented. I'm so proud of him. Anyway his most recent creation lends itself perfectly to a basic Star Trek tutorial for all of you who aren't in the know. Darren and I love Star Trek (and I love that since I turned 22 I don't care what other people think of me anymore and I can annouce to the world that I love Star Trek without feeling the slightest bit of embarassment). I'm only new to it, but I've watched a couple of seasons of Next Generation, and a lot of series of Voyager (Katherine Janeway is my hero ;) ) and a wee bit of Enterprise. Anyway the lesson will now commence.

Exhibit 1: Worf - Klingon

Worf is a full blooded Klingon, although he was raised by a Starfleet officer so he acts a tiny bit more human than other Klingons. Klingons like war and being agressive and they have funny bumps of their foreheads.

Exhibit 2: B'Elanna Torres - Half Klingon Half Human

B'Elanna is a half Klingon half human her mother was a Klingon her father a human, which basically just means she's just a like a really moody human. With some bumps on her head but less pronounced than Worf's.

Exhibit 3: Muffins - Half Klingon Half Triple Chocolate

Chocolate muffin, white chocolate chips, dark chocolate pieces and a dark chocolate Klingon forehead!

:)
Mindy

Froggies!

2008-10-24T09:39:00.008+01:00

Time for another batch of cupcakes! This time I wanted to do something really cute and I was thrilled when Marie at work volunteered her children to try my cute kiddie cupcakes - it was really nice working with an actual audience in mind. So I went to the lolly section of the supermarket for inspiration and found some great little toadstool lollies, I painted some spots on them and they looked brilliant, but I needed something else to go with them so I thought what goes with toadstools - froggies! So then I got to work and made some little froggies. Not the best executed fondant sculpting in the world, but it was my first go! Anyway the little froggies were made - and I must say for some reason Darren loved them - he hid some in the kitchen and wouldn't tell me where they were, only that they were "watching me".

Then it was time to make the cupcakes. I used the delicious white velvet recipes from How To Eat A Cupcake - I think I'll probably go through all those recipes before I try somewhere else. Anyway the cupcakes were made and I spent a day thinking about how to do the decoration - before eventually deciding to drop the toadstools and just have the frogs on lilypads. So now I have a whole bunch of toadstools to use later! I might make gnomes for them one day.

Anyway here's some piccies:

The white egg looking blobs are supposed to be lillies - anyway I decided they needed something else so I added some reeds... and here's the finished product:

And here is my evil fiance enjoying a cupcake:

xxx
Mindy

Anniversary Cupcakes

2008-10-23T09:52:00.004+01:00

On Sunday it was Thomas and my 3rd anniversay. Awww. As is our tradition, we went and saw a Kiera Knightley movie, this year it was the Duchess. We both really enjoyed it. Gosh Tom loves his costume dramas ;-)

I decided to make Hello Cupcakes! chocolate box cupcakes. It was a great plan as it had lots of room for creativity. The only problem is all the lollies I bought to decorate them with- I used so few and have eaten so many!

So I used the Martha Steward one bowl cupcake recipe again. I really like this recipe. I find the cupcakes are nice and rich but I do find that they don't rise very much. I am going to need to find a nice high rising chocolate cupcake one day. Here they are before the decorating, I really loved the red cupcake cases (I actually intended the red and brown to be the same size but I bought them at different times ;-) )

And here they are after decorating. Awww. So yummy!

Almond Roca

2008-10-22T20:00:00.000+01:00

Well I'm in love. With food. Again. Not food I made myself this time though. I love food. Anyway a colleague at work went away I'm guessing to America and bought back this "candy" for us all to try a piece. I bit into it and it was love at first bite. It's hard to describe - I'm not sure this would have the same kind of impact on anyone else in the world it may just be a personal thing but I thought these were amazing! It was like toffee that didn't break your teeth or stick in your teeth either. It was almost like a biscuit to bite but so much better than a biscuit. And it was gorgeously buttery and had chocolate round the outisde and it all just went together perfectly! I sat there having enjoyed it then had to get up and go and check the packet and find out some more info. So I found out they were Almond Roca Buttercrunch for Brown and Hayley

Of course in the back of my mind as I was eating it was "hmmm how am I going to find out how to make this stuff!". So next time I want a challenge I can pull this one out of my pot of challenges I've got in the back of my mind.

In other news I solved something which had been a real mystery to me. Everyday I noticed as I was exiting the female changing room and walking towards the building exit to go for my lunchtime run that my thumb hurt and was rubbed red. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what could be causing this! I could not think of anything... until the other day I caught myself in the act so to speak. i.e. I realised how I was hurting my thumb while doing it... can ya guess? It was putting my shoe on I was using my thumb like a shoe horn. Hehe ok so that wasn't very interesting but I must say it was a huge relief to me to get to the bottom of it.

xxx
Mindy

Look at what my baby did!

2008-10-21T17:35:00.005+01:00

Wow I am so proud today. Last night I was working on this week's cupcake decorations which of course Darren wanted to eat. Poor boy was dismayed when I told him not only could he not eat them, but I wasn't even going to make the cupcakes that they were going to adorn until later in the week. I suggested he did some baking himself. To my surprise he agreed - well said he would - I was dubious.

I shouldn't have doubted him I came home to the delicious smell of baked goods and 7 delicious looking chocolate muffins sitting on the bench. I must admit I was a little worried that doing something like baking all by himself without any advice may not provide the most perfect results (no reflection on Darren I just know how much I had to rely on Mum the first times I baked, and still do if I'm cooking something new I haven't cooked before). But he did really well. And to put his own touch on them I think the batch had a whole block of Cadbury Caramello crammed into them. Yum!

If this sort of behaviour keeps going I won't be baking my own birthday cake next year!

xxx
Mindy

Christening Cupcakes

2008-10-20T09:04:00.005+01:00

On Sunday my cousin's baby was Christened (and looked adorable) and I helped celebrate by making cupcakes (any excuse!) After many attempts at finding the perfect lemon cupcake recipe I think I found it- the Lemon Poppyseed Recipe in Hello Cupcake! So good, it rose, it was light and airy and was still really yummy after spending the night in the fridge. I didn't include the poppyseeds for looks.

Here are the poppyseeds on my new cupcake plate filled with lemon curd- yum!

I made my first swiss meringue buttercream. I made it with meringue powder as I'm a little concerned with raw eggs in NZ- it was really yummy although it was pretty tricky to set, it ended up in the fridge for a bit. It was very very late by the time I got round to icing so no piping but I had previously made white chocolate flowers for the top so you couldn't see the icing anyway. I find working with chocolate can be quite frustrating but once it's set it always looks pretty good :)

More Cupcake Stuff

2008-10-16T21:03:00.005+01:00

Ok well I know if you don't like cupcakes you won't find this interesting. But really. Who doesn't like cupcakes. Who doesn't like ganache for that matter! So the other day I said I'd post my recipe for the frosting I put on my chocolate mud cakes and so here it is. This is rough as I like making things up as I go - especially with something like frosting - butter, chocolate, cream how can you go too wrong!

White Chocolate Ganachy Mousse Frosting:

200ml double cream
225g white chocolate
60g butter
2 Tbsp icing sugar

Put chocolate 1/3 cup cream (about 60ml) and butter into a double boiler and stir until melted and smooth
Cool chocolate mixture to room temp
Whip the remaing cream
Little by little fold the chocolate mixture to the whipped cream adding the icing sugar while doing this to keep it stiff
If its too runny to be pipable refridgerate until it is whisking it up when you take it out of the refridgerator - it will get very hard so you just need to be patient and refridgerate it till it's the consistency you want to work with.

That's all.

Now Darren has been spoiled with cupcakes lately and wanted some for desert - I had a whole bunch sitting there to take to London in the weekend so I felt kinda bad he wasn't allowed to eat those. Also I had left over chocolate from the mud cake cuppys that was burning a hole in my pantry so I whipped him up two with a recipe I totally made up on the spot and couldn't remember it if I tried - so I won't bother. But I did make them look pretty and put delicious frosting on them - again I made it up on the spot and can't remember - it was ganache based though with an egg white in it.

Here's my pretty picture! Well here's my pretty cupcake - I need someone to teach my how to take better photos of my baking... Lyndy Loo I need you!

xxx
Mindy

Choc Mud Cupcakes

2008-10-16T20:24:00.005+01:00

Ok so if I do say so myself these were a HUGE success. I am trying out the recipe for our wedding cake so wanted to see if I liked the flavour. I do indeed! I'm quite disappointed as it looks like I've found a winner with my first try. I almost don't want to share the recipe but I will - it's likely Ame will be the only one who ever uses it from here anyway!

Chocolate Mud Cupcakes

Yield - About 18

125g dark chocolate
125g butter
1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules
1/3 cup water
1 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 1/3 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 Tbsp oil
1/4 cup whole milk with a dash of white vinegar added

Preheat over to 160 degrees celsius (not fan forced)
Prepare cupcake tins/liners whatever you're using
In saucepan stir chocolate, butter, coffee powder and water together over low heat until smooth and then set aside to cool to room temp
Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt in a large bowl and stir in caster sugar (I always sift things twice)
In medium bowl whisk eggs, oil and milk. Add egg mixture to dry and stir until well combined.
Add the chocolate mixture in 3 lots, stiring well in between each.
Put in cupcake liners!

Don't fill the cupcakes too much as this recipe does rise but doesn't do a nice cupcake mound (I based it on a cake recipe) but it will do a very flat top (which ends up nice and cookie like!) but not the best if it overflows too much. I'd say 1/2 fill would probably be best.

I will post the recipe for the white chocolate ganache mousse recipe later I've got to try and remember what I did (I made it up).

And here's the final product! You can see the nice cookie like top, but trust me the cupcake has a totally flat top under the icing (BTW I made the cute little flowers with advice on piping chocolate from Ame thanks Ame! Not bad for a first attempt).

xxx
Mindy

Next Game Piccy

2008-10-16T08:29:00.004+01:00

Ok so I had two entries for that last picture. This is good news if this keeps up throughout the game I can give everyone who entered a big prize! (Yay for Lottie and Ame!). The correct answer was Paris, Amy got it we were up Notre Dame.

Ok here's the next picture:

I'll give you a clue, this one is somewhere in England :)

Right well I had a really fun night last night making very yummy cupcakes from a semi-made up recipe and a made up frosting recipe so I'm quite proud of thre results. Pictures and details to come tomorrow!

xxx

Mindy

Taffy Trouble

2008-10-15T08:08:00.000+01:00

This won't be a very textual post, it's a photo journal of my taffy making troubles and a desperate plea for help ;) What happened was the other day something made me remember about how when I was a kid, a young inexperienced kid I on one or two occasions made pull taffy. Successfully. And it was fun. So I decided to try it the other day, googled a recipe and ended up with a disaster on my hands. Here's the basics of making taffy:

Boil sugar and water till it gets to a certain temperature
Pour it onto a (preferably marble) board and let it cool whlie working it with knives into a ball
When it's cool enough to pick up you pick up the ball and pull it, fold it, pull it, fold it etc till it's almost hard then cut it into pieces.

Simple! Well it was when I was young. I got to the picking it up bit and pulled it once or twice then it all turned to fudge. Literally, instead of being smooth and pullable it turned into a more fudge like consistency.

Not to be put off I decided to have a second go and tried a different recipe and photo documented the process - but it had exactly the same result. If anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong I'll be grateful - otherwise I'm going to wait until I've got a proper candy thermometer before trying again. My current thermometer is a bit crude I dripped some of the boiling liquid in a glass of cold water and seeing if it goes brittle.

1. It was all going so well, look how neatly I pre arranged all my ingredients.

2. This is the sugar and water boiling, ok so this isn't the nmost exciting picture in the world.

3. Mmmm then we add the cream and butter!

4. Now it starts looking really good this is just before I deemed it ready to pour.

5. Still looking nice and taffy-like cooling in the pan

6. Working it with my knives... it's still looking delicious and taffy like

7. I even managed to pull it once or twice.... till....

8. FUDGE! As soon as it turned powdery I pressed it really hard into this sandwich tin and it did still make delicious fudge.... but I wanted taffy!!!!

xxx

Mindy

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

2008-10-14T07:28:00.008+01:00

Hey People,

Tom and I went to his mum's for dinner on Saturday and I decided to make lemon meringue cupcakes, partly because I wanted to find a nice lemon recipe. To make the base cupcakes I actually just used a normal cupcake recipe and added lemon juice instead of vanilla. But they were a disaster! They were so buttery- they had like a cup of butter for a mixture meant to only make 12 cupcakes (I think I got a few more than that but still!) Here they are before going into the oven (note, I filled the cases quite high after my chocolate cupcakes I made the previous week failed to reach the top of the cups).

And here is a picture of them after baking. They look pretty good don't they? So I left the room for like two minutes and when I came back they had shrunk! It was crazy, like they completely came away from their cases. So in the end I just took them off.

Next I put holes in each cake and filled them with yummy lemon curd (so delicious- thanks for the recipe Mindy- they were definitely the highlight of the cupcakes). Aren't my holes pretty? I then made meringue (I just used the Edmond's recipe for lemon meringue pie here- you can't beat Edmond's), I tried piping it but that wasn't going to happen so I just plopped it on the top, put some coloured sprinkles on top (to match the pink and white merignue) and baked them until golden. They actually turned out okay. I think that since I used only meringue for the topping which was quite light and because the lemon curd had such a lovely strong taste it really cut through the buttery-ness of the cakes. I am going to make some more curd for cakes this weekend but think I will try a different lemon cupcake recipie and maybe ice them with lemon cream cheese). If anyone has any awesome lemon cupcake recipes let me know!

Bananery Goodness!

2008-10-13T11:24:00.004+01:00

Howdy,

I've got a fair bit of news to tell at the moment. Well not so much news more just catching up on what I've been up to - it's been fun though! Today however I am just going to talk about yesterday when I made banana cupcakes! They were goooood.

I got the recipe from How To Eat A Cupcake (again thanks Cassie!). I made the banana ones. These ones were a much goopier cake like mixture and very yummy! I made half the recipe and got 10 cupcakes.

For the frosting I had to get inventive as I have totally run out of sugar. That makes making frosting difficult. I seriously have no sugar of any form left in my house. No brown, no icing sugar, no caster sugar, and the white sugar was the first to run out. So anyway as I've always maintained I'm an inventive baker because I'm too lazy to get proper ingredients - though yesterday I had an excuse as the supermarket was already closed by the time I realised my sugar predicament.

Anyway so bring on Mindy inventiveness and I made up a great frosting recipe based on Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I think I'll call it Mindy's Yummy Banana Honey Frosting.

2 egg whites

100g butter

1/4 cup honey

6 teaspoons Splenda

1/2 ripe banana really really squished

1/2 tspn vanilla extract

What I did was heat the splenda, egg whites and honey on a double boiler then beat them with the egg beater until soft peaks form. I softened the butter and mixed it thoroughly with the banana and vanilla then little by little beat the butter into the egg mixture. Unfortunately no matter how much I beat it it didn't get stiff enough to hold it's star shape when piped, it just needed more butter so next time I'm going to try with more butter. But it was almost pipable and after being in the fridge set to be nice and hard and delicious. I really liked it as it wasn't too rich despite being quite sweet and it was nice a light which complimented the reasonably heavy cupcakes.

Xxx

Mindy

New Zealand, Parents, and Alton Pics

2008-10-09T19:22:00.005+01:00

Ok so I thought I'd talk briefly about how awesome New Zealand is. I have absolutely loved being here and getting to do the stuff that I've got to do but I am getting really really really excited about going back to New Zealand. What do I love about New Zealand... everything! What do I miss about it? Well lots, I miss the buildings and especially the houses, the fact that so many houses have decent sized gardens, and with the exception of state housing areas all the houses look different from each other and are all different colours. I miss marmite. I miss all the interesting people and cultures we have there. I miss the frosty Christchurch mornings followed by beautiful sunny winter days. I miss the sea. I miss being able to hop in a car and being able to get to the beach, or the mall, or the city centre, within 20 minutes. I really miss the people I think. BUT I do fit in well here with English manners and that kind of thing, I like the slightly higher level of politeness they have here.

Anyway also I wanted to say that having spent quite a bit of time with collegues in meetings lately I love how parents act with their kids. Well the parents at work anyway. I love how they happily reject calls on their cellphone from everyone, but if it's their kids calling they always answer. I love how domestic problems warrant excusing themselves from a meeting when not much else would. It reminds me of my Dad and all his meetings I've interrupted in my life. I hope I can be like that when I'm a parent :)

Lastly here are some more Alton Tower pics, as everyone likes pictures!

This is the entrance to the queue for Rita, and also it is a photo of me:

This is Nemesis, you can see how you're hanging in your seat, this was the one Darren and I were right up the front of the ride for:

This is air, where you sort of are in a lying down position a lot of the time you're hanging face down.

And finally this is me having a great time on the carasole - look how pretty my horsie is!

Ok time for me to go and eat porridge and watch Farscape now! Gotta love Farscape. By the way Aeryn Sun is so much hotter than Vala Mal Doran.

xxx

Mindy

Yum!

2008-10-08T17:50:00.009+01:00

Ok so I picked a recipe! I went with the same one as last time - the goal really this time was to make round cupcakes - and I achieved it - well they could have been a nicer shape I suppose - damn fan oven. I need to figure out which is the bake without fan setting :) Anyway I've done a photo journal to document the life of my cupcakes!

Stage 1 Pretty cupcake cases all ready to go!
Stage 2 Mmmm yummy batter - I was good and didn't eat too much.
Stage 3 Ta da! All cooked :) Some of them a little lopsided but not too bad.
Stage 4 Ready to be filled.
Stage 5 Yummy caramel custard filling I'll go into details of this after the photos.
Stage 6 Even yummier chocolate custard filling.
Stage 7 Caramel custard in bottom, with chocolate on top of that.
Stage 8 Dissolving sugar in egg whites for Swiss Meringue Buttercream.
Stage 9 The beating - by hand with an egg beater begins, this was the first rest I had to take.
Stage 10 A long time later ready to add cocoa and vanilla.
Stage 11 Voila 12 little cupcakes!
Stage 12 Mmmm yummy fillings.

Right so the good thing about these cupcakes is they actually make you loose weight. If you only have one. Well that's on one condition you have to make the swiss meringue buttercream beating it by hand with an egg beater. Man that was hard work... it took me almost an hour I think all up to get the frosting made and the cupcakes frosted. That was my exercise for the day! I'm concerned though that I'm going to build up better muscles on one arm that the other as I can only beat it turning with my right hand and holding the beater with my left.

Also the fillings were to make things more interesting - I'm glad I put them in too as they were delicious. I was just going to go with the chocolate filling but then I looked at the sized holes I'd made and the amount of chocolate filling I had and realised I wouldn't have enough so I made the caramel filling too.

So for the recipes for the fillings. This morning I found an old tin of custard in my cupboard, this was bought ages ago before I learnt how to make custard. Anyway for the caramel custard I put maybe about 1/2 cup of the custard and 25g or so of butter, and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar in a bowl and microwaved till the butter was nice and soft and mixed it up anbd cooled to room temp. It could have had a little more butter in it maybe. The chocolate custard was made in a simlar way, 3 heaped desert spoons of custard, 100g of chocolate drops, 25g butter and 1 tablespoon of milk. In the microwave for 1 minute, stir up then cool to room temp.

I got the frosting recipe from How To Eat A Cupcake it's the chocolate swiss meringue buttercream, I made half the recipe but I didn't have any chocolate left so I left that out of the recipe.

Anyway hope you're all hungry now. Hehe. Think I'll go have a cupcake.

xxx

France and Cupcakes vs Muffins

2008-10-08T11:26:00.006+01:00

Hello it's me! I went to France for two nights, so Amy was right that's why I didn't write the last two days but cheers to Amy for keeping the momentum going! Anyway I got a bit confused when I logged onto my blog as I saw a post that I hadn't written. So to make it more obvious who is writing each blog we're going to copy Adam and Nick's page because they have the very smart idea of putting a picture at the start of the blog of the person who is writing the blog. That's why there's the really pretty picture of Amy on her blogs now. I don'thave as many cool or funny pictures as Nick and Adam unfortunately but they are just two really funny guys.

So I left for Paris on Sunday night, got there late, had a nice dinner with two work collegues, got to bed late, woke up not too early, train to Nancy, had a long day at work, back to the hotel room for 20 minutes quick call to D-brain, out for dinner with same people from meeting, back to hotel late and to bed, up early back to office for more meetings, train back to Paris, another meeting (just as an observer this time), train to airport, airport for HOURS (plane delayed) plane back to East Midlands, 1.5 hours later after drive back to Doncaster arrived home. 10.30pm Tuesday night. All this equals very very exhausted Mindy! So it's weird Mum asked me how was France - well it was nice being in France but it's not like you get to really make much of the opportunity. We did have nice meals both nights though.

So I'm working from home today (just taking a morning break now actually) and at lunchtime I think I'm going to make cupcakes. Yum! I think I might just make the same recipe as last time though I am still undecided. Tomorrow's post will reveal my final decision. This cupcake making venture is primarily because I want to try out the fancy silicone cupcake cases I bought (I bought some for Kirsty face for her birthday and had to get some for myself, especially after my first batch of squarish cupcakes), vand also because I feel like it.

Question: I have been looking at a lot of cupcake websites at the moment and have come across something that baffled me. Well lets step back for a moment I did have a wee pondering in my head when I first started thinking about cupcakes and that was, what is the difference between a cupcake and a muffin. Well I'm not sure if there's an official distinction but the way I settled that one in my head was a cupcake was really just a cup sized cake whereas a muffin is more likely to be bit-ty and have a rougher texture and interesting things in it. I would have liked to say cupcakes come in cases and muffins don't but very often muffins you buy do come in cases. Oh and one other distinction is cupcakes are iced whereas muffins aren't as much, unless they are those yummy moro bar muffins with the big splodge of cream cheese icing on them. Yum!

Anyway so I was pretty happy that cupcakes and muffins both existed in their own right and were distince entities. Then I came across savoury cupcakes. Now I'm sorry but to me these are just muffins. Even if they have a creamy cheesy "frosting" they are still just muffins. That's my two cents anyway.... thoughts?

Ok this wasn't particularly interesting, sorry but I am tired!

See you tomorrow with cupcake piccies hopefully!

xxx

New York- First Weekend

2008-10-07T05:13:00.011+01:00

Ok ok, settle down people. I know Mindy promised you a daily blog and well, she seems to be MIA (somewhere in France I suspect). I also know that some of you out there haven't been able to contain yourself these past weeks waiting to hear about my trip to New York (I can't figure out how to upload pictures to Facebook without it crashing. Hmmm). So you are in luck!

First day in town I decided to explore central park for a bit. Gosh it is lovely! That really struck me about NY, all the lovely public spaces but when you consider that they all live in small apartments it makes sense that they have so many parks. My apartment was luckily close to the park and I spent a lot of time there over the next six weeks, running around the Jackie Onassis reservoir most mornings before work.

I was lucky enough to arrive early morning July 4th which meant two things: 1) long weekend and 2) fireworks! I went down to the East River to check them out. I was quite nervous about it since it was my first day there and I was on my own and there were LOADS of people but it was great! The fireworks themselves were cool but the most impressive thing was how long they lasted for! They had cute smiley face ones too :)

My second day I did the big one, the Cloisters and the Met. Gosh, the Cloisters was brilliant, it definitely makes it to my top 3 things in NY list. It is a small part of the Met up the top of Manhattan at the end of a beautiful garden overlooking the hudson. It is completely dedicated to Medieval Art and is housed in a reconstructed Abbey. And the whole place is so quiet, really atmospheric. I loved it! The Met was good too, I was there for ages, but it was a little crowded for me, and I kept getting lost (6 hours people!)

Then on Sunday I took the train up to the Bronx (with Police officers in every carriage!) and went to the Bronx zoo. That was pretty cool except I spent most of the time thinking how much Tom would have liked it. The gorillas were the best- such amazing human characteristics. They also had a cool butterfly garden (which was only a little frightening) and one of those skyride things. I also saw my first chipmunk ever (but not actually in the zoo ;-) )

Ok, that's all for now folks. Stay tuned for weekend 2.....

My Butterfly Cake

2008-10-05T08:33:00.009+01:00

Hello People,

Last week was my birthday which I thought I would honour by making my first tiered cake ever (actually I just wanted to practice making tiered cakes for a certain upcoming event). I think on the whole it went pretty well, I am relatively pleased with the result (and it tasted good too!) I have decided that the key to a successful cake is to keep it nice and busy and draw the eyes away from the crookedness and bumps in the icing ;-)

So here is me crumb coating the cake. Basically there were three tiers of carrot cake, each cut into three levels and filled with cream cheese icing and pineapple and then crumb coated in buttercream to smooth the edges in preparation for the pettinice.

And then the fabulous Kirsty came and helped me roll out and smooth down the pettinice on the tiers (and judging by the job I did on the cake board it's a good thing she did :) Here is one tier after the pettinice has been put on.

Now I tried painting the icing but that didn't really work out so I covered it in coloured fondant and piped chocolate on. That worked much better! I then attached chocolate ribbon (it neatened the edges). Here are the three tiers with the stripes and ribbon. Still kinda messy I know!

That's where the busy is better comes in. Earlier in the week I made chocolate butterflies (idea borrowed from my awesome Hello Cupcake book I bought in NYl; note the white sprinkles were individually picked out with a toothpick- that's dedication!) and chocolate leaves (the easiest cake decorating technique ever!), and whola! A three tierd, rolled icing cake.

Day at Alton Towers

2008-10-04T19:39:00.010+01:00

Well Darren and I had an awesome awesome day at Alton Towers today. To be honest I wouldn't say it's the best amusement park in the world, but it was very unique. Of course I'm not an expert at all - I've been to Rainbow's End a couple of times, Disneyland and Dreamworld but when I was much younger. I think the difference about Alton Towers was there was a hunking great big castle right in the middle of it - seriously.

Complete with absolutely stunning grounds - some of them even didn't have terrified screaming people hurtling through them:

It was an incredibly cold and often raining day but to be honest I don't think we would have enjoyed it as much if it hadn't been - as I'm sure the weather played a big part in keeping the queues down. We only had to wait for half an hour a couple of time.

The good big rides there were quite honestly great! My favourite was Oblivion which was similar to the ride at Rainbow's end where you just drop down that pole really really quickly, the difference with this one was you were facing down at the time, staring a a big smokey hole you were about to plunge very rapidly into. It was great. Darren's favourite was Rita which was also very good - it was pretty much just like a normal roller coaster, except A LOT faster. It was awesome.

Here is a nice picture of Darren at the Park:

I found it interesting because I don't likie these things at all until I'm actually on them! Like to be honest I was a little nervous about going and having a horrible day. And man was I really nervous before our first ride (Rita) but I loved it! Oh! But Darren is horrible, this other ride Nemisis, you are sitting down suspended and we were in the queue and got to the point where you had to decide if you wanted to queue for more time to get to sit up the front, or go in the normal queue. And Darren quite literally dragged me into the front queue! It was wicked though. You see like I said I think I don't like this type of thing but really I do.

Finally here's a cheesy rollercoaster shot for y'all:

I'll put some more photos up on facebook in due time. But you'll find Darren puts a much fuller selection up normally on his bebo - you'll have to get him to add you as a friend but he's a friendly guy so I'm sure that won't be a problem.

xxx

Mindy

All things porridge

2008-10-03T08:27:00.000+01:00

It is hopefully a well known fact by now that I am a porridge worshipper. Porridge is without a doubt the best food in the world. I have it twice a day. But that's all old news. New news is I've been wanting to take my porridge eating experience to the next level. Ever since I read on Wikipedia that true Scottish porridge is not made with rolled oats but with steel cut I've had a niggling feeling that I've been missing out. Recently however this niggling feeling has become a full blown mission ever since deciding that it might be easy to find steel cut oats now I live in England. Unfortunately this is far from true. However never one to shy away from a mission I am determined to track down some steel cut oats!

Firstly though everytime I explain my mission to someone I get totally blank looks followed by the question what are steel cut oats... or more simply "what?". So here's a quick explanation.

Porridge (as we know it) is made from oats that have had their outer husks removed, also called oat groats. Oat groats are not flat, this is what they look like:

Rolled oats are flat they are made by steaming and flattening and often flaking oat groats. Often packets labelled as "Scottish porridge" are actually whole rolled oats where the oat is a flattened whole oat - however this is not true Scottish porridge. Rolled oats look like this:

Steel cut, pinhead, or Scottish Oats are made by cutting oat groats into smaller pieces, and make a more textured, chewier and more nuttier flavoured porrridge (so I'm told). Steel cut oats look like this:

Don't they look yummy!

I so far have a couple of leads on where I can obtain some... stay tuned for updated!

xxx

Mindy

New Game

2008-10-02T08:08:00.000+01:00

Howdy everyone!!

I just thought of cool new game to we can all play. I haven't posted too many of the photos from our travels on this actually blog (there are a little more on facebook and bebo) but I was thinking I'd post a photo and you could all guess what city or notable European destination it was taken at! Then after a series of several photos there'll be a prize of some sort! I'll try and make sure each one contains some sort of clue so you don't need to have visited the place to recognise it. I'm not anticipating an overwhelming response so maybe even guessing every once in awhile will be enough to get you a prize.

Ok so without further ado here's the first image, I'll start with an easy one:

Rightio what else is news.

I don't have an ipod.

That isn't exactly news - it's been the case forever and probably always will be but it's an important fact about me that might not have come up before. In lieu of an ipod I have an extremely reliable 256mb mp3 player bought for a mere $40 about 5 years ago off trademe. I personally think it will last forever but I'll keep you updated.

I'm also considering giving up diet coke again but doing it properly this time - not just cutting down. But I'm not quite ready to commit yet so I'll also keep you updated about that one too.

Oh and I'm in training - running training. Darren reckons he can beat me and I reckon he can't so we're having a race on the 2nd of November, 10km. Then we'll compete against other people in a proper race on the 16th November. So today I went for my first run in a week and a half and it went well I'm looking good to kick his ass!

Ok hope everyone is well!

xxx

Mindy

Sewing

2008-10-01T00:01:00.002+01:00

Ok so I was trying to keep this all a secret as I was going to give one of my embroidery pieces to Amy and Tom as a housewarming present but I've since decided that it would be much more sensible to take it home with me instead of posting it (being that there's glass in the frame etc) and I can't keep a secret for that long sooooooo I can share pictures of the embroideries I've done. I will probably still give them one the surprise will just be now which one! I've actually been very happy with how they've turned out in the frames, it was well worth getting the mounts made for them - it makes all the difference.

So here's the first one it's from a book called "Small Scale Embroidery: In Cross Stitch and Other Techniques" by Brenda Keyes which is a really nice book, I'm actually in the middle of another cross stitch from that book and I'm planning to do one other one from it as well.

The second one is one I made up the design for myself with elements borrowed from other designs, and it's a bit hard to tell but actually has some gold thread in it too. I don't like the frame on this one as much but it doesn't look too bad until you compare it to how much nicer the first frame looks! (I bought the nicer frame second).

Oh I just realised you don't get a good feel for the size of these, they are both really small the first design is 2 1/4 inches square and the second 3 inches square. Also these are know as blackwork where the design is made not from doing cross stitches but just by stitching the design with no or little filling using back stitch.

Ok that's all for now.

Bye!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY!!!!

2008-10-01T00:01:00.000+01:00

Happy Birthday to you

Happy Birthday dear Amy

Happy Birthday to you!!!!

Happy 24th Birthday to my lovely sister Amy :) I hope she has a fantastic day and doesn't get too stressed out about cake decorating considerations ;) Wish I was home to celebrate with you Ame - next year!!

xxxx

Prague

2008-09-29T22:04:00.000+01:00

Hello Readers!

Last weekend Darren and I went on a pretty last minute holiday to Prague. Darren had a couple of involuntary days off work (due to the job at that site winding down) so it was a case of check all the cheap airlines and see where we can get to - Prague came in the cheapest so that was good enough for us!

Anyway it was a really lovely weekend. I'd definitely recommend Prague - but to be honest I really haven't found a place I don't like yet so maybe I'm not picky enough or something. Everywhere we've been has had it's own personality and charm. In terms of physical beauty though I'd say Prague is definitely up there, there were many gorgeous old buildings with a unique style of exterior decoration - quite highly decorated.

We spent the first morning in the castle, where we visited this gorgeous church but I can't remember if it was a basicilica or cathedral and I'm sorry I can't be bothered looking it up. It had very vibrant stained glass windows - I spent ages just looking at them while Darren wandered around as usual taking hundreds of photos.

In the afternoon we rushed back to the other side of the river to do a walking tour but I got the wrong meeting spot so we just explored the old town square and did quite a walking tour of our own! Then - sorry to admit it - we had TGI Fridays for dinner. I haven't had this since it was in Chch where the Vic and Whale now is and well I just really wanted to for old times sake. And I must say I really enjoyed my meal too!

In the old town square there's a cool clock tower with an astromical clock. Each hour from 9am- to 9pm I think there's a short ceremony where a skeleton to one side of the clock starts ringing a bell - apparently to tell us we're going to die, the two men on either side of the clock shake their head to say no we're not, and there are two or four saints or something that circle in and out of doors above the clock. Then the clock chimes. It is quite cool, but more amazing is the crowd of tourist who gather every single hour of the day to see this!

The next morning we did make it to the right spot for a great free walking tour which was really good we got to learn a bit of cool history and see some things we wouldn't have found ourselves. Like this cool statue.

And just so there's a picture of me in this post (haha) here's a picture of me in Prague - notice my cool new jacket which I purchased a couple of weeks ago from my favourite shopping spot - the Yorkshire outlet mall :D

xxx

Mindy

Stuff and Things

2008-09-27T18:52:00.004+01:00

Howdy!

Ok I haven't blogged in awhile. I've been reading a lot more blogs lately though so that's encouraged me to get back into it a little bit more. It's funny as I think I've said before when things aren't going well I don't generally feel like blogging but this hasn't been the case lately - things have been really great for ages - maybe it's just that I've been distracted by my hobbies.

Ok so firstly Amy and I have become obsessed with cakes and cake decorating, which has also led me to the discovery of some awesome cupcake blogs too! These are the sites I've been frequenting:

I was even inspired to make some cupcakes today. They didn't come out quite round as I don't have muffin tins to cook them in so they sort of had to keep their shape in the cases by their close proximity to each other. It worked pretty ok, I'll just have to make sure I don't fill them too full. Can't wait till I get back to New Zealand to all my baking trays etc. Also I think I'll need to buy a cake mixer too.

Also just when you thought I couldn't get anymore geekier or home-maker-ly-er I've taken up embroidery. I've so far done two little blackwork designs, one from a book I got out from the library and one I designed myself. I've always thought that cross stitch etc was a bit silly as there was no creativity in it as you were just following a pattern - but I must admit you do have to be neat and it is so rewarding to see the work progress... I'm addicted. Plus also of course there is the challenge of creating your own design.

So of course I've been neglecting my knitting and my French has suffered immeasurably for several months. But I am hoping to get back to it.

In other news Darren and I are now almost coutning down till we go back to NZ. I am really looking forward to it so much. We're going to love the last few months we're having here but I really am ready to come home. I've got lots to come home to - meeting Eloise, Christmas with family, meeting all the new people at work, the new building at work, my bike, doing some bike and running events in Christchurch etc etc.

Hope everyone else is also well and happy!

Love,

Mindy

Public Safely Announcement

2008-09-27T10:57:00.002+01:00

DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN!

Vegetable Goulash

2008-09-08T13:24:00.002+01:00

Well I had an absolutely exciting weekend. We got our first very early wedding present from my lovely friend at work Ann who got us a slow cooker. She left work on Friday so she gave it to me then - and she said I should start using it immediately. So being the good girl I am and doing what I'm told I had it going all weekend! Slow cooked porridge on Saturday morning for breakfast (the best ever with apples and raisins in it - delicious!), chicken casserole cooking on Saturday, pork chops overnight on Saturday and the subject of this blog my vegetable goulash on Sunday.

I'm not sure what something has to be to be considered a goulash but I love the word goulash so I'm calling this goulash regardless. And it's not actually vegetarian even though it doesn't have meat in it because I used beef stock - but you could use some other kind of stock. It is really thick and hearty and has a delicious smell. Anyway I thought I'd share this recipe with everyone - although posting it here also means it will be easy for me to find it again if I ever forgot it!

Mindy's Vegetable Goulash

Makes 6 servings

50g barley
50g green lentils
1 very large potato (approx 200g) - cubed to about 1x1cm cubes
2 large carrots (approx 150g) - cubed into small cubes
1 small onion (approx 60g) - finely diced
3 stalks celery (approx 120g) - cubed into small cubes
1/2 red capsicum (approx 60g) - chopped
1 tin tomatoes & juice (I used whole tomatoes and chopped them roughly)

50g tomato paste
1 Tbsp smokey paprika
2 beefy stock cubes
2 cups boiling water
3 tspns cornflour

The method couldn't be easier. Put all the vegetables and lentils and barley into the slow cooker. Combine paprika, cornflour, crumbled stock cubes, in small bowl, add water stirring to avoid lumps, add tomato paste. Pour liquid over vegetables and cook in slow cooker on low for about 8 hours! Or (though I can't vouch for this) you could cook in a big pot on the stove but you'd probably want at least another cup of water to account for the evaporation.

Enjoy!

Mindy

Explosion

2008-08-21T08:32:00.001+01:00

I had an interesting night last night, below is a portion of an email I have just composed to send to the supermarket ASDA where I buy my groceries:

I had the very disconcerting experience last night of awakening to the sound of an explosion in my kitchen. I went in to investigate and found that a bottle of ASDA diet coke had exploded out the bottom of the bottle in my cupboard. It was one of a four pack which had not been opened. As you can imagine this caused considerable damage to the other grocery products in that cupboard not to mention a huge mess! I'd just finished cleaning it up when a second bottle from the four exploded. I quickly undid the lids on the remaining two bottles. The first bottle exploded at 3.45am and then next at 4.10am.

The coke had been purchased on Tuesday 19/08/2008 and had not been shaken or in other way strangely handled. I had simply purchased it from the Doncaster ASDA, put it in my car, driven home, then put it away in the cupboard. The cupboard is just a normal cupboard where I keep coke and other grocery items.

Stupid things I have done

2008-08-19T19:26:00.006+01:00

Hello all! I suddenly got inspired to write this blog detailing the stupid things I've done in my life. As I started thinking about it there were more than I realised! Bearing in mind that historic stupidities will probably only be in my memory if they had sufficient impact on my life. Now don't worry - I'm not depressed and fishing for compliments, this is purely a piece for your amusement! I know I'm cool and great my list of cool things I've done will probably be much longer!

In the last 24 hours

Put pepper instead of salt in my porridge
Biked halfway to work realised I'd forgotten my ID tag
Got excited when I saw I had a new email, then realised it was from me
Accidently sent myself an email that I meant to send to someone else
Took a big hard bite on my apple and managed to somehow bite the ulcer on my lip at the same time
Hit myself in the head with a pot - seriously - accidentally too!

In the last month

Heated a knife on the stove to assist with chopping frozen meat, then pressed down on the knife with my finger. I now have a very straight edged burn scar :)
Dropped a jar on my big toe nail. I now have a beautiful blue toe nail
Put the indicator on in the car instead of putting the windscreen wiper on
Put the back windscreen wiper on instead of the front one
Opened the fridge in such a way that an egg from the egg holder in the top shelf of the door had an abrupt meeting with the floor
Opened the fridge in such a way the top shelf of the door fell out, broke, and the egg that was on the top shelf also broke (separate occasion to the one above)
Straight out dropped an egg on the floor (I haven't been having a good month with eggs)

In the last year

Ran into the back of someone at traffic lights while engrossed in conversation with Lara - luckily I was going VERY slowly so no damage to either car
Got a text from the "bank" asking me to ring a number, rang that number and was asked for my account number and password, gave these. Luckily for me it was actually the bank. But it was a stupid thing to do!
Barged into a locked door expecting it to open - a security card swiping system had been installed a month earlier
Opening the car door in such a way that it whacks me in the head - I do this often - it's got some kind of nasty spring on it

In the last 26 years

Constantly (at least once a fortnight) attempting to drink and missing my mouth
Constantly dropping my cell phone on the ground (I now have one with a nice strong metal faceplate)
Returned from a run ,walked in our office kitchen, got a drink and biscuit then went into my office only to realise it was not my office - I was on the wrong floor! We'd shifted floors a few weeks earlier
Frequently walking into door frames
Not once but twice put a plastic bowl containing bread dough into an oven turned up to full - the intention was to turn it to full for a minute or so, then turn it off completely and it would be a nice warm environment for the dough to rise in. Melted plastic flavoured bread anyone?
Won a bulk auction of what I assumed were 30 dvds - the turned out to be video cassettes - Darren helped me commit this one :)
Broke my little toe by banging into our couch in the dark
The hair dying fiasco of summer 2006/7
Not once but twice left my wallet on the seat in a public place, once a mall, once an airport, once I got it back, once I didn't :(
Left a bag of my Christmas shopping on the floor in a shop where I'd put it down to look at something - realised sometime later and had to retrace me steps to find it!
Bounced on Mum and Dad's bed and broke the glass light shade with my head
Was concentrating intently on sewing a felt Christmas decoration for our tree that I didn't notice I'd sewen it onto my skirt
Decided that it was up to me to discipline Amy for jumping on her own bed so pushed her off onto a very sharp corned stereo (sorry Ame - she still has the scar on her back)
Decided to help Dad out and started painting the garage floor and did what I'm sure was a very professional looking job for a 3 year old!
My favourite: Bought the running hose inside, I think it was to help Mum water the plants but to be honest I have no recollection of this, however my parents however do!

I might have to have a sequel as I'm sure lots more things will come to me! I think it's fair to say that I have below average co-ordination though!

:)
Mindy

Greece!

2008-06-20T08:58:00.007+01:00

Hello World!

Sorry I haven't written in ages. Sometimes I don't write when I'm a bit down. But luckily in this instance I've just been lazy - well actually maybe not lazy, maybe busy - which is just the opposite really! I don't really spend much time at all just sitting down doing nothing when I could be blogging. Yeah - I've definitely been busy!

So I'll start at the most recent exciting thing! Darren and I went to Greece. This took a lot of organisation and I did a fantastic job if I do say myself. 2 flights, 2 train trips, 2 ferry trips and 3 hotels! We flew from London to Athens which was a LONG journey. We left Donny around 5pm on Friday and arrived at our hotel in Athens 5am! And despite that I still couldn't sleep when we got there - excited I think! At 7.30am we got up to explore the city and try and beat the crowds and heat! We didn't really beat either but the crowds weren't too bad really. We have a lovely photo though of me at 9am already too hot! Here's just a couple of Athens photos (we have hundreds) - Darren has lots of photos on his bebo and I'll put some up too sometime probably.

Then the next day we went over to the Port to pick up our ferry tickets for Ios, then had half a day looking around Piraeus (the port town). We mostly just walked down this incredible market that went alongside the metro line for kms! It was narrow, stalls either side, jammed packed with people - and pickpocketers! We had to get pickpocketed once on our holidays and it could have been worse, we only lost 35 euros - and managed to have a laugh about it.

The ferry to Ios was... boring. It was a fast ferry and as such you couldn't go outside, and had allocated seats more like an airplane. But it was a good chance to sleep and 5 hours later we arrived in beautiful Ios. Our hotel was fun - filled with young people (mostly Americans) and had welcome shots that night at 10pm. Darren and I had dinner in a lovely restaurant with a great sunset view, then went up to the hotel bar for strawberry daquiris - yum! At 10 there were the welcome shots, and at 12 we headed down to the hotel owner's club. It was unbelievable how alive and busy everything was - this was a Sunday night - I guess that doesn't matter in Ios!

We had a lovely night out but I didn't sleep in much because when I woke up it was just too beautiful. At 10.30 we headed down slightly worried we'd missed the hotel breakfast - but it hadn't started yet and wasn't looking like it would start anytime soon, so we grabbed some from a restaurant - I had delicious yoghurt, fruit, muesli and honey mmm then we headed to the beach!

The beach was gorgeous! The sea was the perfect temperature to cool you down, but not so cold you didn't want to stay in. We spent the whole day there! Just reading and relaxing. We had souvlakis for lunch - I was looking forward to what I hoped was going to be my most authentic souvlaki experience - but they came with french fries in them! So I'm afraid I'll have to rate the Kebab Queen on Greers Rd slightly higher!

The next day brought another day at the beach - this time the Port beach, and walking around the Ios Port before heading out that evening to Santorini.

I think I'll write about Santorini in the next update as I don't have any photos to go with that yet they were on a different memory card.

So what's been happening in my life since then! Well Susannah and Cory arrived to visit when we arrived home so we spent the weekend with them! It was also lovely and I think I'll also write about that later with photos to match. And now I've just had a week at work, have a fun run this weekend, Bridget arrives from NZ on Monday and Wednesday we're off to Dublin, Friday we're back again, Sunday Bridget leaves for Hungary, and Sunday my parents also arrive!

Phew!

I hope everyone is well, and I hope you don't have to wait too long for my next blog!

xxx

Malta

2008-05-07T19:08:00.004+01:00

Well I have had an exceptionally good last few days!

On Thursday afternoon I left work a little bit early to catch the train up to London. (Even though it's technically South of here). ANYWAY... I had a fairly uneventful journey and showed up at Kings Cross ready to hop on the underground to get to Victoria. Well that was the plan but it was not to be... the escalators were broken so King's Cross Underground was closed! No problems just a quick walk to Euston Station... in the heaviest rain I've ever been in. I was absolutely saturated by the time I got there - and don't you just love the way jeans soak up the ground water. Anyway got to Vic station, train to Gatwick, then bus to a hotel to wait for Lara. Who arrived soon after me! Yay!

A very early wake up saw us sitting on the plane to Malta at 6.30 (after the airport bus first took us to the wrong plane!) waiting to leave. Our scheduled departure time was 6.30... we left at 7.30. But no matter - our holiday was just beginning - we had no where we needed to be in a hurry.

From the moment I stepped out of the airport in Malta I knew I was going to love the place. It was gorgeous - outisde the airport was palm lined streets... in general though there was not much in the way of genery, not many tree - the whole place was very sandy coloured - emphasised by the buildings that matched perfectly. The heat was gorgeous though. Even better the bus into town was exceptional value at something like 47c too!

We spent the first day exploring Valetta - the capital city. It was a delightful small city, full of character. Built on a penisula it was surrounded on three sides by water. We even went down to some boat sheds and slipways... where I did just that - slipped right on my ass! But no matter - nothing was broken and I just had a very slimey bum. Most exciting was a daisy bush I found which was the same as the daisies we get at Church Bay back home!!! We unfortunately didn't get to visit St John's Church (Cathedral? Bascilica?) to see the paintings, as it was closed - we didn't mind at all though as we got to witness a very special funeral procession, complete with a marching band. We found out later it was the funeral of the first president of Malta who had died at the extremely respectable age of 99.

Oh also worth mention is the delicious Maltese flavoured icecream we had, it was delicious with peel and hazelnuts in it... yummy!

Ok time to get the bus to the hotel... around an hour's trip this set us back 58c! The hotel was charming in it's own sort of way. It got away with being a bit tired and having questionable flushing mechanisms on the toilets because of it's stunning views thanks to it's exception position looking down on Mellieha Bay. We found a lovely restaurant where lara took on the daunting (well daunting to me!) 4 course Maltese dinner: a platter, rabbit spaghetti, rabbit stew, and Maltese sweet with Maltese liqueur. I had canelloni.

Lara had the great idea of taking a tour around Gozo the following day. This was a fantastic was to get around the sights and learn a bit. The exciting start to the tour was a trip across on a large ferry. First stop was a Church which was nice, but just another Church. Then a folklore museum which was ok, but in a gorgeous old "mansion" - the rooms were tiny though but the courtyard in the nmiddle was delightful. We also saw the Azure Window (a big hole in a seaside cliff), the Inland Sea (a lagoon), a tourist popular swimming beach Xplendi Bay, a traditional cottage craft area famous for lace making, the citadel in Victoria and most exciting the oldest freestanding stone structures in the world Ggantija... built in 3600 BC.

Back to the hotel for cocktails by the pool, then an easy tea at the hotel of mostly pizza.

Day three. Beach, sun, sun louger... need I say more! We did almost nothing. It was great! It was only almost nothing and not just nothing as Lara did manage to slice the top off her little toe (poor Lara!) and we both got a bit sunburnt. More cocktails in the shade then off to find tea. Another restaurant - this one with a very interesting colour scheme - bright peppermint, and pink! Lara had octopus, Mindy bravely tried a tiny bit (not admitting the visible suckers put her off a little) and then enjoyed her ravioli! Hehe.

Day four we went home. Which was not the smartest idea we've ever had. But it was a really wonderful holiday! Thanks so much Lara!

:)
Mindy

Mmm Custard

2008-04-30T18:21:00.002+01:00

Well I don't mean to boast but I can now add custard to my repertoire of things I can cook. Additionally I can also now add repertoire to my repertoire of words I can spell!

We didn't have a very big tea for dinner on Monday so I decided to make pancakes for desert, I thought it would be nice to to have chocolate sauce with them. I remember at Christmas I'd made a chocolate icing based on custard, so I decided to look for a recipe for chocolate custard. I found one and gave it a go, and it was a horrible (but yummy) disaster. Did you know custard can curdle? I didn't... I wondered why it had so many tiny bumps in it - it wasn't at all the consistency of custard!

So I headed to google and did some research and found out why custard curdles. Basically if the egg yolks get too hot too quickly.

Now happily I'm in the habit of making egg white omeletes at the moment, so when I got home from work tonight and whipped up an omelete and then I had two egg yolks left over... so I thought time to give custard another go. I unfortunately didn't have much milk at all, but I kept going anyway. This is my recipe I made up which ended up making some very rich yummy thick chocolate custard which you wouldn't eat by itself but as a topping for something... like icecream!

Ingredients:
2 egg yolks (room temperate)
About 200ml milk (I used skimmed) use more than this if you don't want it super thick, I was planning on using about 280ml.
40g of caster sugar
Tbsp cocoa
tspn cornflour
drop of vanilla

Method:
1 Heat the milk up in a saucepan with the vanilla, just so it's almost boiling.
2 Whisk the egg yolks with the cocoa and sugar and cornflour to get a nice even consistency
3 Pour a tiny bit of milk into the egg mixture and whisk, pour another tiny bit in, you don't want the egg yolks to get too hot too quickly.
4 Keep pouring in the milk and whisking until all the milk is in the eggs
5 Return the mixture to the saucepan
6 Put on the stove at a very low temperature - and don't walk away! Keep stirring it the whole time! And just sit here patiently until it's as thick as you want it. Maybe 10 minutes of something.

And there you go! Enjoy!

Me, Right Now

2008-04-28T21:44:00.002+01:00

One of those questiony things taken from Claire's blog:

me, right now!

	1. A morning person? Yup! 2. Are you a perfectionist? Nope, in some things (onto the 5th time starting on Eloise's cardie, but generally good enough is good enough) 3. Single? Nope 4. Currently suffering from a broken heart? Nope 5. Okay styling other people's hair? Depends on the style, I did some Bridget's hair beautifully once I remember. 6. Left handed? Sure am! 7. Shy around the opposite gender? Not really relevant hehe I think this question is more for teenages. But I guess just answer the damn question - the answer is no. Well no more than I'm she around anyone! DO YOU: 1. Bite your nails? Nope never 2. Currently regret something that you have said? Oh definitely... can't think of something specific, but I often say things I regret in the middle of arguments. 3. Curse frequently when you get mad? Nope, I don't swear much at all. 4. Enjoy smoothies? Especially mango, or banana and mango! 5. Enjoy talking on the phone? Yup especially to Mum and Dad, but I wish I felt comfortable calling more people more. 6. Have a pet? Only Becky back in NZ 7. Have a tendency to fall for the "wrong" person? Don't think so 8. Have all your grandparents? No :( I haven't had all of them since I was 2, have just one now. 9. Have at least one sibling? 2 wonderful sisters who are my best friends. 10. Have Caller I.D. on your phone? Is this question from before the time of cell phones? I do on my cell phone but not on my landline. LAST PERSON WHO: 1. Slept in bed with you? Darren 2. Saw you cry? Darren 3. Went to the movies with you? Darren 4. You went to the mall with you? Darren 5. You went to dinner with? Darren, Rach, Greg, Susannah and Cory 6. You talked on the phone? Dad 7. Made you laugh? Darren WOULD YOU RATHER? 1. Pierce your nose or tongue? Tongue, except I wouldn't want it to damage my teeth 2. Be serious or be funny? Funny 3. Drink whole or skim milk? Whole 4. Die in a fire or drown? Drown DO YOU PREFER. . 1. Flowers or candy? Flowers... it's been AGES since I've gotten flowers. 2. Colour or Black? Colour 3. Sunrise or sunset? Sunrise, though hardly ever see that, I see the sunset here frequently and it's so beautiful. 4. M&Ms or Skittles? I don't know! Um probably M&Ms 5. Staying up late or waking up early? Wake up early ANSWER TRUTHFULLY !! 1. Do you like anyone? Yup 2. Do they know it? Yup (haha these are teenager questions again) DO YOU PREFER... 1. Sun or moon? Sun 2. Left or right? Left 3. 10 acquaintances or having two best friends? I have 10 best friends! 4. Sun or rain? Sun at the moment because I'm sick of staying inside - but I love the rain a lot 5. Vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream? Chocolate if it's by itself, vanilla if it's a side 6. Vodka or Jack? Jack FOOD: 1. Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it? I cut it before I cook it, and twirl it when I eat 2. Have you ever eaten Spam? No 3. Favorite ice cream? Phish food 4. How many kinds cereal are in your cabinet? Only one at the moment - porridge! 5. What's your favorite beverage? Mango and banana smoothie 6. Do you cook? Yup IN THE LAST MONTH, HAVE YOU? (YES OR NO) 1. Had a b/f or g/f? yes 2. Bought something you didn't need? yes 3. Sang in front of people? no 4. Been kissed? yes 5. Been hugged? yes 6. Felt stupid? no 7. Missed someone? yes - all the time 8. Danced Crazy? don't think so, wish I had though 9. Gotten your hair cut? no 10. Cried? yep 11. Lied? oh yup, but just a white lie

Ok looks like that's it. My sore throat has now come back, I think I'll have no voice tomorrow when I wake up - it feels like it's been disappearing all day!

Love
Mindy

No Subject

2008-04-25T19:04:00.005+01:00

Hiya!

I just felt like blogging and I don't know what I'm going to write about yet so I didn't really know what to put as a title. Thus there is currently no title. Though I put no subject because that's like what emails say, which isn't really that funny. But not everything has to be funny.

Well today is my first ever Anzac day away from NZ, but then yesterday was my first ever April 24th away from NZ and tomorrow will be my first ever April 25th away from NZ. So well, I think I'll be ok. I bought a poppy to wear anyway, I'm not quite sure what the poppy was for as obviously they don't sell Anzac day poppies here, but I figured it would fit the purpose.

Do you wanna see the kaftan I knitted for my gorgeous wee niece Eloise? You do? Well ok then here it is...

And Darren tried it on to see how it fit...

And then I decided to knit something for my darling sister Claire so I made her this scarf...

And that's all. Now I'm knitting a baby cardigan also for Eloise. It's made out of pretty dusty rose wool, it's almost purple and it's the first time I've knitted with tiny wool and tiny needles so it takes a lot longer!

What else is news? Well I have a new desire to get into my French lessons I've been teaching myself. It's hard, but I'm being lazy too. What I'd learnt so far wasn't enough for me to say anything in French while I was in France, but I think it did enable me to understand a tiny bit more - I could grab certain words.

One thing I absolutely loved in the office we were in in Nancy was that each time someone arrived at the office they came around everyone and shook their hand and said bonjour. Even me and they had no idea who I was and why I was there. It was so nice. A lot of people also went round and said goodbye at the end of the day too! Very civilised I thought.

Darren put on this martial arts movie last night. Sometimes I don't like them much, as sometimes they are a bit short on interesting characters and plots, this one was not much different - but for some reason I really liked it! In fact I can't wait to watch the end of it tonight (I fell asleep - but that's because I was tired from travelling). It was called Showdown in Little Tokyo.

I can't actually wait to go to Japan either (there were Japanese people in the movie last night). I've been thinking maybe I should learn Japanese again. I say again even though I haven't really learnt it properly, but I did take it for two years in high school. I have a friend Michiko who could help me! I can't really remember any words but enu. Which means dog. Kawaii means cute I think too. And instead of saying knock knock they say kotsu kotsu. We had a song that the postman sang as he went round the neighbourhood I think saying "kotsu kotsu" as he knocked on the doors. Anyway the thing I liked about Japanese was it was easy to pronounce in that it was pronounced exactly as it was written, I'm not sure if there are any exceptions to that but I didn't come across any. Anyway I can still read most of the characters I learnt so I've got a small headstart in learning Japanese.

I think I will. I think I'll try and learn French and Japanese. It is very doubtful I'll get the two mixed up in my head. I should try and learn a word each day in French and Japanese. To cheat I'll make dog my first word as I already know that in Japanese. Ok just learnt it in French it is chien. Good done.

Ok well hope everyone is well! I'm missing my sisters a lot today. I think they need me. Or maybe I need them. But anyway I just have to do what I can from here.

:)
Mindy

Yes I'm strange

2008-04-24T13:59:00.002+01:00

Hello! I'm in France! Well I am as I'm writing this, by the time I publish it I'll be in England again... but just pretend ok?

So how did I get here? Well I went down to London for a meeting on Friday during the course of which we were on a conference call with some people in France who decided it would be better if I were there in person. So it was decided I'd go down on Wednesday. Not much notice at all really!

This is a picture of a lovely square, Stanislas, in Nancy

Anyway so I was dismayed to find out it would take me a day to get to Nancy, and a day to get back. It wasn't actually as bad as I first thought, the time was mostly just in the waiting for trains. Anyway bright and early on Tuesday morning (6.59am) I caught the bus to Doncaster station to begin my trip to Nancy. First down to London Kings Cross, then walk across the road to St Pancras station, then on the Eurostar to Paris, then walk a block to another Paris station, sit and wait for two hours, then train to Nancy where I arrived 5.47pm local time!

France appears to be lovely - I really want to come back in a tourist capacity. Everywhere in Europe I go is lovely though it seems. Older buildings are just more decorative and prettier! It was lovely and warm last night so I decided to be brave and went out for a explore and I was glad I did. I found some beautiful looking buildings and a gorgeous square! Part of the reason for my courage was the hotel I'm staying in happens to be a huge high rise, so I knew I couldn't get lost as I could see it from wherever I wandered to!

Today was work and a very nice guy approached me at breakfast who was also English and going to visit the ECR (Euro Cargo Rail) Offices so I had myself a ride. The day was productive... I've got a lot of work ahead of me now though!

Ok finally as to why I'm strange. Because I'm in France and instead of having delicious French food for dinner I'm having baked beans and an apple. Hehe. My excuse, I'm getting sick and just feel awful - you know that terrible feeling you get when your throat is tickly and then sore and you know there's worse to come! And you know how when you're getting a cold things taste a bit funny too - so really delicious food would be wasted on me. So I'm in my pjs watching Star Trek, knititng, eating an apple and really looking forward to bringing Darren back to France with me next time! I'm sure I'll have to come back again for work - maybe Paris next time and I should be able to make it either side of a weekend so he can come. Yay!

Love,

Mindy

PS (Added next day) I realised something today that made me quite happy. I can confirm amongst strangers I really don’t care in the least what people think of me. Well of the real me – I would be annoyed if they made assumptions and judged me etc. I came to this realization when I was sitting on the train from Paris to London in full view of everyone nearby watching Star Trek on my laptop and knitting.

Just a couple of things

2008-04-12T20:42:00.002+01:00

... to mention today. Nothing too exciting.

First I mentioned on Marc's blog and maybe even in a blog post here a while back that I thought it would be so much better if third part car insurance was compulsory in New Zealand (I think this was in agreement with him) - and lo and behold, an article in stuff about how the government is proposing compulsory third party insurance. So obviously I'm very happy with that.

Secondly did I say my computer got a virus two weeks ago? It was SUCH a pain, put me out of action for days at work! In addition to the virus I had a hard drive error so my computer got taken away on Thursday to be fixed. Nows for all I know I may have mentioned this in my last post, but I'm sorry I really can't be bothered going back to check. Anyway as I said my computer is geting a new hard drive at the moment, so I'll get it back Monday! Woo hoo! I miss it - we've never been separated for this long before ;) Hehe actually I wonder if that's true. No, it can't be, I've been away from it for long weekends before.

Thirdly (yes we're still keeping count) I was just checking the visitor activity on this blog. It is so astounding, my blog traffic has sky rocketed since I posted that picture of a baby tapir. I'm guessing this is because there must not be that many pictures of baby tapirs on the internet so when people search google images for baby tapirs they get my page! Honestly there is at least ten hits each day on the baby tapir image from a google image search. Marketing people should keep this in mind, if they want lots of traffic on their page, then consider adding a picture of a baby tapir.

Fourthly Darren and I watched the new Stargate movie last night. It was awesome. Because it was Stargate. I'd read some bad reviews on it, well not bad as such, but one review that said it wasn't even as good as two good episodes put together, but maybe that's just because Stargate is just so amazingly awesome to start with it would be impossible to be better than it already is. Anyway if you love Stargate you'll love it, if you don't love Stargate you won't. If you love the original Stargate movie but not the TV series then you won't like it either. Or in fact understand it at all - it really is just a conclusion to the series. Sob sob. But at least Sam is in Atlantis now.

Fifthly I finally finished the jersey I'm making (oops I've made) for Eloise! I would post a picture, but then it wouldn't be a surprise for her. As I know she regularly reads this blog.

Good night and thank you,

:)
Mindy

Dave

2008-04-10T16:19:00.002+01:00

Dave is my new best friend. I spend much of my day with Dave. Dave is a free view channel that shows about three programs over and over and over again. These are Top Gear (awesome!), Whose Line is it Anyway and Red Dwarf. I know what you're thinking. Awesome! It even shows the good old Whose Line is it Anyway, the old one with Clive Anderson. Whose Line is it Anyway was my absolute favourite program awhile back, when I was at uni I think.

Anyway yay for Dave. Also of note in my TV regime at the moment is Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It's just good because it's been so long since I saw it and it's such a strong tie to my childhood! That's not on Dave though that's on Virgin 1.

Ok so my life is a wee bit boring that I'm talking about TV... but well you are all the people reading about my sad life ;) Haha.

Oh something extremely exciting happened today. I got a whole bunch of packages descending on me at work. Darren and I had ordered two lots of DVDs (I won't mention that these were Star Trek DVDs as that would be embarassing) and these arrived, and my birthday present from Amy arrived! I had checked with her that I could open it (ie that my actual present was wrapped inside) and I could and I'm so glad I did. She was such a sweetie! She sent me four packets of Extra Drops, which are these sugar free lollies that I haven't seen here (though apparently you can get them, but not as commonly as in NZ!) and some delicious licorice. I've already had a piece, this is RJs licorice, I think it's widely regarded as the absolute best licorice in the world, ok maybe not widely regarded but I'm sure I'm not the only one who holds that opinion! Amy sent 3 packets on onion soup!! You know what that means! Three bowls of dip! Ok non New Zealanders won't get that at all, but that's their fault for not being New Zealanders, and they should just go and be a New Zealander like the best of us are! (Or they could probably just go to NZ and ask a NZer, or they could just ask me and I'd probably tell them).

Here's a tip for you all as well. Jonathan at work recommended the movie "Lars and the Real Girl" and so much do I value his opinion that I'm going to go ahead and recommend it before I've even seen it myself... but rest assured I will be watching it!

Hope everyone is well and happy :)

XOXOX

Remember Me?

2008-04-08T19:11:00.002+01:00

Helloooooo!

Remember me? I know I haven't been around in awhile. Here's a picture of me in case you've forgotten who I am (which would be totally understandable). :)

Well hmmm a lot has been going on here since I last wrote.

Darren and I went to Holland and stayed with Susannah and Cory. It was such an awesome holiday as Rach and Greg came over from Cambridge too! Oh that was Easter, so I guess that wasn't too long ago really.

Ohhh before I carry on I should say the most important thing! HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLAIRE! It's my baby sister's birthday today. She turns 19! Sometimes she seems a lot older and sometimes she seems a lot younger hehe. Uh oh. I just did some maths, that means it was 7 years ago almost that I was 19. Urgh! I'm old! Thinking back though to when I was 19... well lets just say I've come a long way. I can still remember Claire as a baby though, she was a premmie, and stayed in hospital a whole month to grow big and stuff. While she was in hospital I had a cold and I wasn't allowed to go in an visit her for a week or so but Amy still was... man that wasn't fair! Then she came home from hospital on my birthday and I was a bit grumpy about this because I thought she'd steal my thunder... and she probably did but in the end I didn't really mind. Besides Mum and Dad had got me a highlighter pink bike and it was awesome so I think I got over the Claire thing pretty quickly. Well not got over her, of course I loved her so much and still do!

Ok back to Holland. So it was Easter, it snowed. We went to a gorgeous art gallery in The Hague. Which was definitely a highlight. We spent a very cold day in the snow in Amsterdam, where a lot of the day was spent walking to somewhere, finding the queue was too big then walking somewhere else. We did go to a cool kid's science museum called Nemo, and we braved the queue for Anne Frank's house which was amazing to see.

What else. Hmm I don't even know if I've written since my Dad came over! My Dad came the weekend before Easter which was so great! We just hung out a bit (he was only here for 3 days) and also went for a drive to Buxton and went to Poole's cavern which are these cool limestone caves. We also had some delicious meals out... I still salivate thinking about the wild mushroom and pinenut rissoto I had for lunch at a pub. It was sad to see Dad go, I'm such a family girl, and it was just like standard four camp all over again (Dad came to visit one night, it was so hard to see him go, even though I only had like 2 more days left on camp hehe!).

Um what else has happened. Confession time! I've started watching (and enjoying) Star Trek. I'm a total sci fi geek now. Stupid Darren's done this to me. But I always figure it's probably better than to enjoy something than to not enjoy it (like if I pay to go to a movie a try and enjoy it rather than rip it apart).

Work has been hard work lately. Hehe. So I won't talk about that much.

I don't even know if I've written a blog since Kirsty Face had her baby! Well her and Nick's baby I think they're supposed to share. She's a gorgeous wee thing called Eloise and I can't wait to meet her. Though when I meet her she'll be a lot bigger than she is now! I'm so proud of Kirsty and Nick and Eloise, even though it's really nothing to do with me! I would post a photo but I think it's bad enough when parents get out your baby photos when you're a teenager and embarrass you with them, I wouldn't want Eloise to get embarrassed by her picture on the net. Trust me she's cute! Claire has some pictures on her bebo, which is much more private than a blog so if you have bebo and have Claire as a friend check her out :)

Congratulations also to my cousin Hamish and his wife Sam who also had a baby in the last month! Another gorgeous girl called Lily. And Beth's sister Emma had her wee boy James, I think he's called. So really March has been a baby-full month!

Ok that's just about enough from me I think.

Lots of love,
Mindy

Finish this Sentence

2008-03-07T15:00:00.003Z

Borrowed off Lottie's bebo :) And needed 2 minutes of light relief during a tough day!

Finish The Sentence

1. My ex still......? Um plays guitar
2. I love... my fiance and porridge
3. Maybe I should... brush my hair
4. People close to my heart... know who they are! I hope!
5. I am listening to... Nothing :(
6. I don't understand... why people buy those those butt ugly cars
7. I lost... myself once or twice
8. People say... that every cloud has a silver lining and I agree!
9. The meaning of my screen name is... Well it's just my name so that's not very exciting
10. Love is... everywhere
11. Somewhere, someone is... eating porridge!
12. I will always... love porridge (haha)
13. Forever seems... huge
14. I never ever want to... hurt people, but sometimes I do
15. When I wake up in the morning... I start cooking my porridge so it's ready for when I'm dressed!
16. I get annoyed when...people speed and when I burn my porridge
17. Parties are... sometimes best when its just a few of your closest mates
18. My pet(s) is... my fishies that Kirsty is looking after
19. Kisses are the best when.... they're unexpected
20. Today I... will relax after a hard week and have some porridge
21. Tomorrow I will.. go for a run and have some porridge
22. I really want... a hug from my Dad (1 week till he comes!) and to eat some porridge
23. I need to tell... someone about my day - I need to offload!
24. Life is... all about being the kindest person you possibly can be and eating porridge
25. I promise... that I will try and learn from every mistake I make

Ok that got a little silly - there wasn't so much mention of porridge, I went back and added more porridge references. But porridge is great, and I'm tired so I think I'm being funny when I may not be!

:)
Mindy