One thing I can't stand more than anything and I mean anything, I have just spent 5 minutes trying to think of things that I dislike more and all I could think of was spiders and cockroaches, is poor customer service.
My general distaste for the men and women who engage in this behaviour is well founded and deep seated. I genuinely detest people who treat a paying, or even non-paying customer for that matter with a sour look, a short temper and a bad attitude. After all, without us, there would be no retail jobs.
I was about to enter into a tirade about an "incident" that I had with a staff member at a Spotlight store a few weeks back but quite simply, the tirade is boring and my efforts to address the issue with the staff member through calm, collected and polite means followed by a complaint to their head office via their web page and the consequent lack luster apology from some random who rang me at home on a Friday evening at 6pm, just fell on deaf ears and for a while there made me feel as if what is the point in complaining in the first place? What is the point of the company having a complaint page on their website if the follow up is just as poor as the shit head who served me at the beginning of all this drama? It seems this wasn't an isolated incident and a friend who I told my story about Spotlight too had also had an encouter of the rude and unhelpful kind at the same store just a few weeks prior.
It made me think a little deeper about what the hell is going on in the world? Why had so many people working in customer service become so angry with their customers, so angry with the world and so thoughtless about their approach with people?
Watching an episode of Insight from a few weeks back where the topic centered around Internet trolls, I had an enlightening moment of clarity and perhaps an answer to my above question. If you've read any of my past posts, you will know that I don't think too highly of those that engage in antisocial behaviour online, however one troll they interviewed was more than your average 'under-a-bridge-dwelling' troll and made some really poignant statements one of which resonated with me- "the core of it is that people are so dissatisfied and I think they're dissatisfied because our generation is the first in a long time that knows they're looking downward. That our civilisations are in decline and if you want people to be less discontented you're going to have to improve the management of the society. You know, spread wealth a little bit more and generally make people have a sense of a positive outlook on the future. That as long as they think that the future is negative they're going to be at war with the external society."
Perhaps that is what was wrong with all these jaded customer service people, in fact, perhaps this was part of the root cause of a lot of problems we have in society. Perhaps these people were overworked, perhaps these people had watched one too many of their fellow colleagues being made redundant and were worried the same was going to happen to them, after all it seems that redundancy is the new black. Perhaps they were but a bunch of skeleton staff working to keep big businesses afloat on a remuneration package that left little in the hip pocket at the end of every week and it's no secret that retail pays pittance. I can say with utmost certainty, that the woman that served me a few weeks back at Spotlight and the unit that served me yesterday at Woolies as an example, looked as miserable as hell. It was a sad state of affairs. They put me in shit moods and I truly wondered why they participated in such jobs if they were just so terribly miserable that the only way they could function in their positions was to make everyone else around them feel just as miserable too.
Blah! Life is just way too short to have people around me with their negativity and their poor outlook on life but I can't escape it, it's everywhere, I'm a consumer I need to purchase to survive and everyone I know seems to be having repeat bad experiences with customer service folk just like me and I'm not just talking about a one off episode in their life many many moons ago, I'm talking about recent, prolonged and continual dissatisfaction.
For me, the reason that it bothers me so much is that a smile is free and as wanky as that sounds, it won't kill you to smile at someone even if you feel negative within yourself. You'd be amazed at what it does for you and the recipient when you engage in the activity. Trust me, it won't crack your face and it won't kill you, try it! But on a serious note, in my line of work, I have met many people whose future doesn't look good, their outlook on life is one that is drastically cut short, many of them given but weeks to live lives fraught with pain and suffering but I can't remember a time that any of them treated me as rudely as some customer service staff have. Yes, the situation and the setting is entirely different and yes, some of them have found it difficult to smile and to engage with me, but they have very real and valid reasons not to. Those that ignore you when you walk into a shop looking for help, snatch your credit card off you, can't even bring themselves to say hi or how can I help you, bark orders at you down the line of the phone when all you rang for was assistance...I just see no need and it frustrates me immensely.
For a while I felt like it was just me and that I was the target in some weird Truman Show-Esq poor customer service racket but fear not, there are entire TV programs, news articles, current affairs topics and media investigations dedicated to bringing poor customer service under the spotlight. Mary Portas is most well known for pioneering to improve customer service particularly in the fast fashion retails sector, think Supre as an example. She sheds light on the fact that many big businesses continue to report record profits but don't recycle profits by way of improving the quality and quantity of customer service by investing in their staff. Again, another reason why some customer service staff show little if any enthusiasm for their profession.
All in all, there is a fair argument for both sides and it is big greedy businesses which are shaping society. Just like the troll said, there needs to be a better spread of wealth and not just that spread of wealth in the form of hand fulls of cash being thrown from the office window of the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, a bank which boasted a statutory net profit after tax for the full year ended 30 June 2012 of $7,090 million, an increase of 11 per cent on the prior year, although I certainly wouldn't argue with them should they wish to engage in such an activity, but change can occur when we start at the grass root level, in fact, half the time that is the only way to change.
Take the local dump. Ours charges a minimum of $40 to dump rubbish even if you were to dump just a bucket full. As a result of the sky rocketing prices to remove and dump waste the bush land in our local area is infested with mounds of gyprock, brick, broken furniture and all manner of rubbish because people are either 1. protesting against the price of rubbish removal and dumping or 2. can not afford to dump legally. So along comes a little guy from the council who puts up this little pink ribbon around the mound of crap on which is something printed to the effects of "illegal dumping" etc etc and it gets left there, like a mark of the fact that someone is watching, watching enough to just put a ribbon on it? Perhaps it is the ever increasingly unattainable zen in one's life that is upsetting people, the exorbitant cost of living and maybe it is being treated rudely and unfairly for no good reason.
For now, I reside to the fact that I will have to endure poor customer service from time to time for years to come. I don't see it changing any time soon, I don't see Wesfarmers or Woolworths, Woolworths being the largest retail company in Australia and NZ and the owners of Woolworths, Woolworths online, Safeway, Food for Less, Flemmings, Thomas Dux Grocer, Macro Wholefoods, Safeway Liquor, BWS, Dan Murphy's Woolthworths Liquor, Cellarmasters and Wineark - Wine storage and Retailer/Langtons Wine Auctions/Dorrien Estate Winery/Vinpac - Bottling plant/Winemarket - Online retailer/International Liquor Wholesalers - Imports/WineIQ - Telemarketing/Cellar Force - Telemarketing, ALH – Hotel and Poker Machine operator, which is 75% owned by Woolworths Limited. This makes Woolworths one of the largest players in the Poker machine industry, Caltex Woolworths/Safeway, BIG W, Dick Smith, Tandy and Masters Home Improvement, well, I don't see them doing anything to improve their service over night and quite frankly, they don't have to, they hold the biggest monopoly over food, grocery and alcohol supply in the country, they don't need us as much as we need them. Greedy much?
What I will do however is get on my soap box if and when poor customer service comes knocking. I will name and shame the individual and the company, I will complain should the problem be big enough to warrant it, I won't shop and give these businesses money they don't deserve, if and when I can avoid it and I will make a stand for the little people making the giants rich and being treated poorly for it in the process even if by staff jaded by the giants too. That, I won't stand for!
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Dear Diary
M.I.A again I know I know!
I feel like writing things to the tune of "where does time go?", "how does time go so quickly?" bla bla, blanket statement about time flying when it has gone at the same pace for eternity. I sound like such an old biddy when I say "time flies", but it kind of has...
Tomorrow is my little girls first day of kindy. We call child care "kindy" in this house. It sounds way cuter than child care. The words "child care" sound sterile to me, "kindy" seems far sweeter. As a result of her graduation from stay-at-home-baby to kindy baby I have spent the last few days and weeks getting us all prepared for the new chapter in our life. Her starting kindy is a big deal for me. I have a very real sense of a door closing and another opening. Tomorrow will be just as much a big day for her as it will be for me. I know many people who have made comments that a baby's first day at child care or kindy if I may, is harder for the parent than it is for the baby or child. I wonder how many babies would concur with this statement? I don't know many who could engage in a in-depth discussion over it. I know for a fact that this is going to be a massive almighty transition for my little girl. She is mega attached to mummy. She is a massive mummies girl and quite frankly I like it that way. It doesn't mean she tones down her general distaste for most things other than food or food or food, for me, it doesn't mean she settles or sleeps any better when I am around, oh no, she ain't afraid to let me know when shit has hit her little fan, but what she really doesn't take lightly to is my absence. There are days I can't even get up to walk to the other side of the room without her erupting in fear that this action may mean I leave for eternity and never come back. She, is not going to like this one little bit.
As such, I won't start work until a week from tomorrow. I need to help her embrace this new chapter with the ability to run to her rescue when she needs me. Yeah, yeah, I can't do that when I am at work, why prolong the inevitable you say and I say shut up to you hmm hmm, but right now I can. I can take this week to just be there for her when she needs me while also making this as easy on her and on us as a family as possible. She is sensitive and precious and needs to know that this needn't be frightening forever.
In order to get this whole kindy thing happening and also at least feed her once a day I need to make the hour round trip from home to kindy to home about 3 times tomorrow. My darling husband suggested that I just sleep in the car. I suggested that perhaps the elves and the fairies can do the house work, the shopping, the washing, make dinner and re-pot a few dead and or dying plants in my absence? Perhaps those elves and fairies might just wax his eyebrows off in his sleep if he weren't careful throwing around such oh so impossible ideas again. I have no idea what I will do with my day tomorrow as I have no idea how in between doing those 3 x 1 hour trips I will have the chance to do anything other than just drive and then get out of the car at home stare at the walls unable to make a conscious decision and then get back in the car again and drive. Perhaps I should just sleep in the car??
Tuesday seems like it might not be so much like I am imprisoned in my car but it does mean at very least 2 round trips. Wednesday might be just one and if there is a god he will ensure that it is just one. I still need to rearrange my life so that we can all take a trip to my mums for the weekend, the "just sleep in your car" dude and I are going to a really fancy shamcy dinner in the city sans children and then need to repack the car like we've driven half way across the Americas when we've really only had one night at mums and get my shit sorted to get up at the crack of dawn Monday to restart my life as a working mother of two. The week ahead will be the busiest of my life. In amongst all of this I need to stick by my dad at his darkest of darkest hours. He needs my strength and my courage and my ability to solider on more than he ever will in his life. I need to take the bull by the horns and keep it together for everyone.
While I am tired, I am motivated and ready and anxious for this next chapter to start. I am ready to return to work, I am ready to be a confident mother who can get things done while still having fun with my kids.
Bring it on baby!
I feel like writing things to the tune of "where does time go?", "how does time go so quickly?" bla bla, blanket statement about time flying when it has gone at the same pace for eternity. I sound like such an old biddy when I say "time flies", but it kind of has...
Tomorrow is my little girls first day of kindy. We call child care "kindy" in this house. It sounds way cuter than child care. The words "child care" sound sterile to me, "kindy" seems far sweeter. As a result of her graduation from stay-at-home-baby to kindy baby I have spent the last few days and weeks getting us all prepared for the new chapter in our life. Her starting kindy is a big deal for me. I have a very real sense of a door closing and another opening. Tomorrow will be just as much a big day for her as it will be for me. I know many people who have made comments that a baby's first day at child care or kindy if I may, is harder for the parent than it is for the baby or child. I wonder how many babies would concur with this statement? I don't know many who could engage in a in-depth discussion over it. I know for a fact that this is going to be a massive almighty transition for my little girl. She is mega attached to mummy. She is a massive mummies girl and quite frankly I like it that way. It doesn't mean she tones down her general distaste for most things other than food or food or food, for me, it doesn't mean she settles or sleeps any better when I am around, oh no, she ain't afraid to let me know when shit has hit her little fan, but what she really doesn't take lightly to is my absence. There are days I can't even get up to walk to the other side of the room without her erupting in fear that this action may mean I leave for eternity and never come back. She, is not going to like this one little bit.
As such, I won't start work until a week from tomorrow. I need to help her embrace this new chapter with the ability to run to her rescue when she needs me. Yeah, yeah, I can't do that when I am at work, why prolong the inevitable you say and I say shut up to you hmm hmm, but right now I can. I can take this week to just be there for her when she needs me while also making this as easy on her and on us as a family as possible. She is sensitive and precious and needs to know that this needn't be frightening forever.
In order to get this whole kindy thing happening and also at least feed her once a day I need to make the hour round trip from home to kindy to home about 3 times tomorrow. My darling husband suggested that I just sleep in the car. I suggested that perhaps the elves and the fairies can do the house work, the shopping, the washing, make dinner and re-pot a few dead and or dying plants in my absence? Perhaps those elves and fairies might just wax his eyebrows off in his sleep if he weren't careful throwing around such oh so impossible ideas again. I have no idea what I will do with my day tomorrow as I have no idea how in between doing those 3 x 1 hour trips I will have the chance to do anything other than just drive and then get out of the car at home stare at the walls unable to make a conscious decision and then get back in the car again and drive. Perhaps I should just sleep in the car??
Tuesday seems like it might not be so much like I am imprisoned in my car but it does mean at very least 2 round trips. Wednesday might be just one and if there is a god he will ensure that it is just one. I still need to rearrange my life so that we can all take a trip to my mums for the weekend, the "just sleep in your car" dude and I are going to a really fancy shamcy dinner in the city sans children and then need to repack the car like we've driven half way across the Americas when we've really only had one night at mums and get my shit sorted to get up at the crack of dawn Monday to restart my life as a working mother of two. The week ahead will be the busiest of my life. In amongst all of this I need to stick by my dad at his darkest of darkest hours. He needs my strength and my courage and my ability to solider on more than he ever will in his life. I need to take the bull by the horns and keep it together for everyone.
While I am tired, I am motivated and ready and anxious for this next chapter to start. I am ready to return to work, I am ready to be a confident mother who can get things done while still having fun with my kids.
Bring it on baby!
Friday, August 31, 2012
Status Update
I am going to try and make this post as least boring (is that even proper English "as least boring"?) as possible and at least haha look at me, I'm so great as possible too as I don't tend to do the whole "I'm so fabulous thing", I find it vain and annoying. And now I am pretty much going to be vain and annoying...
I have now been on the Lose Baby Weight diet for about a week but have been focusing on diet and exercise seriously for 9 days. On Wednesday I had lost 2.8kg, yesterday I had gained a kilo and with that I decided to drop my glass scales off my balcony and watch them shatter like all my hopes and dreams onto the driveway below. I am glad that I didn't follow through with that slightly odd act as today when I weighed myself the tally is now up to 3.2kg and I am pretty happy with that. I do however vow not to undo all my good work with this good result as I have done time and time again.
I decided that I might take some measurements which I have never done before. The tally board shows a total loss of 5cm from hips, waist and thighs which is even nicer and I can definitely feel that I have changed a little bit and trust me, I am looking and watching like a hawk.
As for my challenges, the results of week 1 are as follows:
NO CHOCOLATE & NO WINE
- Success: 6 days
- Fail: 1 day
EXERCISE
- Success: 6 days
- Fail: 1
This weeks challenges, starting Wednesdays was to be no pasta and no butter but I already unknowingly achieved that goal too. I may have inadvertently ingested butter at a kids party on Tuesday when I ate a sandwich and I have had to test the kids ravioli to see it is cooked before they ate it, so sue me, but seriously, that's pretty bloody good for me let me tell you because if anyone asked me what my favourite food is, what food I would eat if it was my last meal, what food I would eat if I had just come out after 50 years in the slammer and what food I would eat if I could eat food and never get fat- it would be pasta!
I went to Cargo Bar (oh dear God how did I enjoy a nice quiet glass or three of wine in the Sydney sunshine on the harbour with no children in tow, serenity, the chance to have a complete and uninterrupted conversation, to eat seated, not inhaling food over the sink like I had become accustomed to...oh, sorry, got a little carried away there) with one of my oldest friends. I had contemplated having just a glass of champagne and then following it up with water but I didn't. What I did have was quite a few glasses of wine so that was most certainly a fail day, but I had abstained from wine and chocolate aside from some 70% cocoa chocolate which was gross for 6 days. As for the exercise I have walked, worked out or done some form of exercise every day except for Sunday when I gave myself a bit of a rest.
As for the food part, I have stuck to and not strayed from the diet plan each and every single day. I have eaten cleaner and healthier and fresher than I have in a very long time and am now realising how much I miss this food. I had fallen into a bit of a rut, I had become lazy in some areas whilst I had become beyond busy in others. Lite n Easy now in hindsight wasn't as fresh as I first thought. They did a good job, but this diet is soooo much better, keeping me fuller for longer with no frozen meals which is without doubt Lite n Easy's major downfall. I have since learnt that frozen meals are worse than getting takeaway. At least with takeaway it is made relatively fresh in fairly similar circumstances as you would make you own food just with shit loads of salt. As for frozen, there is too many hidden nasties that aren't required in home cooked or even restaurant cooked food because it is made fresh, to be eaten immediately.
I have had the healthy option when I have eaten out both times in the last 8 days which has in the past been my biggest pitfall. I used to use the excuse of eating out, to make poor choices, but not this time. It has been salad and fish or meat and yesterday I didn't even finish my lunch which is a first. I was engrossed in some good catch up conversation with my girlie's but that aside, I still ate what I needed and left the rest.
I have learnt about thermogenesis, I have been reminded how good red meat is, I have upped some of my walking to running, in part I can thank that to thinking yesterday that I was being followed by some weirdo, but he wasn't actually a weirdo, he was just like the other people walking home, just walking a tad too close to me and that I was listening to Bohemian Rhapsody which not only made me what to run but play air drums and wave my hands around in the air like a mad lady. I have downed 4 cups of green tea each and every single day and when I can muster up the courage I have had a table spoon of arsenic, sorry, apple cidar vinegar in hot water before every meal which is supposed to aid with digestion. The arsenic has been the hardest part as it is just foul, I would also describe it as another four letter work starting with 'f' but I'll spare you the French. I have put a reminder in my phone repeated everyday for the rest of eternity with the reasons why I want to lose weight and am still using the Map My Run App and annoying everyone I know with it posting to Facebook. It is a great way to see how far I have walked and challenge myself with each block of exercise to walk or run harder and faster each time.
This blog post here is yet another reminder that there is no turning back. A lot of my family and friends will know that I am on this missions and will question me about it constantly won't you! I need that, I need the mission to be made public, so that failing is public and hence a lot less likely because people are watching and waiting now.
Watch me go!
I have now been on the Lose Baby Weight diet for about a week but have been focusing on diet and exercise seriously for 9 days. On Wednesday I had lost 2.8kg, yesterday I had gained a kilo and with that I decided to drop my glass scales off my balcony and watch them shatter like all my hopes and dreams onto the driveway below. I am glad that I didn't follow through with that slightly odd act as today when I weighed myself the tally is now up to 3.2kg and I am pretty happy with that. I do however vow not to undo all my good work with this good result as I have done time and time again.
I decided that I might take some measurements which I have never done before. The tally board shows a total loss of 5cm from hips, waist and thighs which is even nicer and I can definitely feel that I have changed a little bit and trust me, I am looking and watching like a hawk.
As for my challenges, the results of week 1 are as follows:
NO CHOCOLATE & NO WINE
- Success: 6 days
- Fail: 1 day
EXERCISE
- Success: 6 days
- Fail: 1
This weeks challenges, starting Wednesdays was to be no pasta and no butter but I already unknowingly achieved that goal too. I may have inadvertently ingested butter at a kids party on Tuesday when I ate a sandwich and I have had to test the kids ravioli to see it is cooked before they ate it, so sue me, but seriously, that's pretty bloody good for me let me tell you because if anyone asked me what my favourite food is, what food I would eat if it was my last meal, what food I would eat if I had just come out after 50 years in the slammer and what food I would eat if I could eat food and never get fat- it would be pasta!
I went to Cargo Bar (oh dear God how did I enjoy a nice quiet glass or three of wine in the Sydney sunshine on the harbour with no children in tow, serenity, the chance to have a complete and uninterrupted conversation, to eat seated, not inhaling food over the sink like I had become accustomed to...oh, sorry, got a little carried away there) with one of my oldest friends. I had contemplated having just a glass of champagne and then following it up with water but I didn't. What I did have was quite a few glasses of wine so that was most certainly a fail day, but I had abstained from wine and chocolate aside from some 70% cocoa chocolate which was gross for 6 days. As for the exercise I have walked, worked out or done some form of exercise every day except for Sunday when I gave myself a bit of a rest.
As for the food part, I have stuck to and not strayed from the diet plan each and every single day. I have eaten cleaner and healthier and fresher than I have in a very long time and am now realising how much I miss this food. I had fallen into a bit of a rut, I had become lazy in some areas whilst I had become beyond busy in others. Lite n Easy now in hindsight wasn't as fresh as I first thought. They did a good job, but this diet is soooo much better, keeping me fuller for longer with no frozen meals which is without doubt Lite n Easy's major downfall. I have since learnt that frozen meals are worse than getting takeaway. At least with takeaway it is made relatively fresh in fairly similar circumstances as you would make you own food just with shit loads of salt. As for frozen, there is too many hidden nasties that aren't required in home cooked or even restaurant cooked food because it is made fresh, to be eaten immediately.
I have had the healthy option when I have eaten out both times in the last 8 days which has in the past been my biggest pitfall. I used to use the excuse of eating out, to make poor choices, but not this time. It has been salad and fish or meat and yesterday I didn't even finish my lunch which is a first. I was engrossed in some good catch up conversation with my girlie's but that aside, I still ate what I needed and left the rest.
I have learnt about thermogenesis, I have been reminded how good red meat is, I have upped some of my walking to running, in part I can thank that to thinking yesterday that I was being followed by some weirdo, but he wasn't actually a weirdo, he was just like the other people walking home, just walking a tad too close to me and that I was listening to Bohemian Rhapsody which not only made me what to run but play air drums and wave my hands around in the air like a mad lady. I have downed 4 cups of green tea each and every single day and when I can muster up the courage I have had a table spoon of arsenic, sorry, apple cidar vinegar in hot water before every meal which is supposed to aid with digestion. The arsenic has been the hardest part as it is just foul, I would also describe it as another four letter work starting with 'f' but I'll spare you the French. I have put a reminder in my phone repeated everyday for the rest of eternity with the reasons why I want to lose weight and am still using the Map My Run App and annoying everyone I know with it posting to Facebook. It is a great way to see how far I have walked and challenge myself with each block of exercise to walk or run harder and faster each time.
This blog post here is yet another reminder that there is no turning back. A lot of my family and friends will know that I am on this missions and will question me about it constantly won't you! I need that, I need the mission to be made public, so that failing is public and hence a lot less likely because people are watching and waiting now.
Watch me go!
Friday, August 24, 2012
A little white board, a little smoothie, a little organisation.
I woke up on Tuesday after having a legendarily bad sleep, yes legendarily, legendarily is a word, click and you will see, feeling strangely enlightened, energised and very very clear headed. This wasn't the "I'm seriously deliriously tired" enlightened, energised or clear headed, it was true blue, honest clarity.
My baby girl is a right mess at the moment with a really nasty virus, she is wonder weeking, her sleep is all over the place and she hasn't taken to teething quite as well as one might have hoped for. Monday night saw her wake at the unusual time of 9:00pm RIGHT when I was getting into bed. I was treating myself for the first time in what felt like decades to an early nights rest, she had other ideas and was awake until 12am requiring some serious hands on rocking, patting, sushing and me stomping back and forth to her room in frustration to get her to go to sleep without screaming down the house. She then woke at 3am and decided that she'd string us out till 5. During that time we had one incident of the big boy being woken up by her crying requiring more hands on settling for him, one incident of my husband standing at the door of the baby's room staring in on me while I had my eyes closed while feeding her only to scare me shitless when I opened them, me yelling at him because he looked like a freak/robber/knife wielding murderer in the dark staring in on me, only for me to realise the next day that he had only being standing there for about 0.0000000000000005 of a second and one episode of me yelling at him in frustration and then waking up the whole house and I'm pretty sure the dog barked too. It was neither fun nor exciting, all those things you thought parenting would be BEFORE you had children.
That night, after 3 huge bowls of pasta, I went to sleep sensing that a change was upon me and woke knowing that I had to do something about it pronto. Perhaps it was a carb coma, perhaps it was something else but I just had to make a change. The change centred around being more organised and losing the rest of this baby weight I've been carting around. 10% will be given to being more organised as I am pretty good at that already the other 90% going to losing baby weight. I feel I owe it to myself, my body, my heart, my liver, my back which aches constantly, my boobs which are too big, my knees which I am sure could do with a little break too, my husband who deserves his wife to be just a tad lighter under foot, my children who will want and will need (if I have anything to do with it) me around for many many years to come and my brain which needs a little bit of a pick me up too. I have done the big big weight loss thing in my early 20's losing more than 35kg's and have always been very fit- if I wasn't rowing or playing basketball with the girls at work I was at the gym or walking and running every afternoon. Two children 17 months apart, 18 months out of the last 2 years being up the duff and more than 18 months breastfeeding and still counting, my body has taken an absolute beating and I want it back big time. This has been the longest period in the history of me that I have not had a gym membership or been involved in some sort of team sport. It was time to shake things up.
I have been eating really well for a while now but always treated myself for being so good all week with a really big dinner, some wine, some chocolate, some cake and week in week out I was undoing all my good work with just one or two bad meals. I stuck with eating Lite n Easy 5 days a week for more than a year now, I even ate it when I was pregnant with my baby girl but ate a higher calorie diet so that I didn't compromise on the calories and nutrition that I needed while pregnant. My doctor thought it was a great idea and I liked how easy and convenient it was to have the food delivered. I still like it, in fact I perish the thought when I think about where I would be if I wasn't eating it, but I need a change. Lite n Easy will always be there, but for now I just want to get back to making my own food, trying a different diet with more fresh ingredients and giving the Lose Baby Weight smoothies a try too.
I have been following Lose Baby Weights (http://www.losebabyweight.com.au/) page on Facebook for a while now. I had seen enough transformation photos to make me jealous for a life time and I wanted my picture to be up on their website one day too so I emailed them and got a response immediately. The next day I bought their 28 day Diet and Exercise Guide and some of the breastfeeding friendly smoothie powder mix, some fish oil caps and got a free cream with it as well and if you know me you'll know how much I love free things. It literally got dropped off to the front door about an hour ago and I am ready to rock and roll and give one a try tomorrow for breakfast.
I have added inspiration everywhere so that I keep on track- inspiration pictures on my Pinterest and my phone, the Lose Baby Weight Checklist's and my challenge board in the kitchen with weekly challenges. This weeks is no chocolate and no wine, next weeks is no butter and no pasta, I have a tally for the number of days I exercised with this weeks aim to be 5 and a tally for the number of days I ate really well and didn't fall off the band wagon. My weekly challenges don't mean that wine, chocolate, pasta and butter are off the diet indefinitely but I do need a challenge, to test my will power and my endurance. I am going to do personal training with my best friend every Saturday and god knows she is going to punish me, I am going to join the gym at work when I start back next month and I am going to use every bit of help out there and pick myself back up each and every time I fall off the wagon and keep going. I feel weighed down by this extra baby weight (pardon the pun) in every aspect of my life and as I embark on my return to work I need to be at very least a little fitter than I am right now, I need more energy, my metabolism needs a kick start and I need to be focused and clear headed for the challenge that lies ahead.
To help, I have upped my household organisation and bought a white board and a pin board to put at the top of the stairs. I have a weekly planner, a calendar and have timetabled how and when I am going to get two children up, ready for child care, dressed and fed, myself dressed, fed and looking respectable for work each and every day, ready to leave by 7am and to start work by 8. My days will be long, I won't get home till 6pm so I need to be organised. If I am to fit in healthy eating, healthy cooking and exercise then this is going to be one tight ship.
I foresee this taking some time. Getting into a new rhythm with work, diet and exercise is all about the lifestyle change that everyone is always harping on about and it's true, this is a whole new life. Wish me luck.
My baby girl is a right mess at the moment with a really nasty virus, she is wonder weeking, her sleep is all over the place and she hasn't taken to teething quite as well as one might have hoped for. Monday night saw her wake at the unusual time of 9:00pm RIGHT when I was getting into bed. I was treating myself for the first time in what felt like decades to an early nights rest, she had other ideas and was awake until 12am requiring some serious hands on rocking, patting, sushing and me stomping back and forth to her room in frustration to get her to go to sleep without screaming down the house. She then woke at 3am and decided that she'd string us out till 5. During that time we had one incident of the big boy being woken up by her crying requiring more hands on settling for him, one incident of my husband standing at the door of the baby's room staring in on me while I had my eyes closed while feeding her only to scare me shitless when I opened them, me yelling at him because he looked like a freak/robber/knife wielding murderer in the dark staring in on me, only for me to realise the next day that he had only being standing there for about 0.0000000000000005 of a second and one episode of me yelling at him in frustration and then waking up the whole house and I'm pretty sure the dog barked too. It was neither fun nor exciting, all those things you thought parenting would be BEFORE you had children.
That night, after 3 huge bowls of pasta, I went to sleep sensing that a change was upon me and woke knowing that I had to do something about it pronto. Perhaps it was a carb coma, perhaps it was something else but I just had to make a change. The change centred around being more organised and losing the rest of this baby weight I've been carting around. 10% will be given to being more organised as I am pretty good at that already the other 90% going to losing baby weight. I feel I owe it to myself, my body, my heart, my liver, my back which aches constantly, my boobs which are too big, my knees which I am sure could do with a little break too, my husband who deserves his wife to be just a tad lighter under foot, my children who will want and will need (if I have anything to do with it) me around for many many years to come and my brain which needs a little bit of a pick me up too. I have done the big big weight loss thing in my early 20's losing more than 35kg's and have always been very fit- if I wasn't rowing or playing basketball with the girls at work I was at the gym or walking and running every afternoon. Two children 17 months apart, 18 months out of the last 2 years being up the duff and more than 18 months breastfeeding and still counting, my body has taken an absolute beating and I want it back big time. This has been the longest period in the history of me that I have not had a gym membership or been involved in some sort of team sport. It was time to shake things up.
I have been eating really well for a while now but always treated myself for being so good all week with a really big dinner, some wine, some chocolate, some cake and week in week out I was undoing all my good work with just one or two bad meals. I stuck with eating Lite n Easy 5 days a week for more than a year now, I even ate it when I was pregnant with my baby girl but ate a higher calorie diet so that I didn't compromise on the calories and nutrition that I needed while pregnant. My doctor thought it was a great idea and I liked how easy and convenient it was to have the food delivered. I still like it, in fact I perish the thought when I think about where I would be if I wasn't eating it, but I need a change. Lite n Easy will always be there, but for now I just want to get back to making my own food, trying a different diet with more fresh ingredients and giving the Lose Baby Weight smoothies a try too.
I have been following Lose Baby Weights (http://www.losebabyweight.com.au/) page on Facebook for a while now. I had seen enough transformation photos to make me jealous for a life time and I wanted my picture to be up on their website one day too so I emailed them and got a response immediately. The next day I bought their 28 day Diet and Exercise Guide and some of the breastfeeding friendly smoothie powder mix, some fish oil caps and got a free cream with it as well and if you know me you'll know how much I love free things. It literally got dropped off to the front door about an hour ago and I am ready to rock and roll and give one a try tomorrow for breakfast.
I have added inspiration everywhere so that I keep on track- inspiration pictures on my Pinterest and my phone, the Lose Baby Weight Checklist's and my challenge board in the kitchen with weekly challenges. This weeks is no chocolate and no wine, next weeks is no butter and no pasta, I have a tally for the number of days I exercised with this weeks aim to be 5 and a tally for the number of days I ate really well and didn't fall off the band wagon. My weekly challenges don't mean that wine, chocolate, pasta and butter are off the diet indefinitely but I do need a challenge, to test my will power and my endurance. I am going to do personal training with my best friend every Saturday and god knows she is going to punish me, I am going to join the gym at work when I start back next month and I am going to use every bit of help out there and pick myself back up each and every time I fall off the wagon and keep going. I feel weighed down by this extra baby weight (pardon the pun) in every aspect of my life and as I embark on my return to work I need to be at very least a little fitter than I am right now, I need more energy, my metabolism needs a kick start and I need to be focused and clear headed for the challenge that lies ahead.
I foresee this taking some time. Getting into a new rhythm with work, diet and exercise is all about the lifestyle change that everyone is always harping on about and it's true, this is a whole new life. Wish me luck.
Friday, August 17, 2012
To eBay or not eBay? This is the question.
I've been a long time user of eBay but for selling more than buying. Over the past 8 or 9 years my rating has tallied up well into the hundreds, closer to the thousands in fact and has afforded me the opportunity to interact with some very interesting buyers. It has at times been my best friend and my worst enemy and at others it has near destroyed me and I have vowed more times than I can count not to deal with eBay ever again. When I say interesting, I truly mean it, many of my customers have been quite frankly some of the strangest people I've ever had to deal with, they are after all just names on a screen and we all know we can do what we want and say what we want online can't we hmmm!!! They cover all extremes and there's a broad range of adjectives out there to describe them. After a comment on my post titled Online Shopping: The Good The Bad The Ugly reminded me that I hadn't listed eBay as a potential shopping site I felt that eBay indeed needed a bit more than just a few sentences, it needed a post of its own.
I started out selling vintage, rare and designer clothing and footwear and at one point I was making quite a business of it. I shopped at goodwill stores snatching up amazing labels and beautiful vintage finds and selling them on eBay. While at uni I needed a bit of extra income and this was a great way to rake in the cash. When I first started out, eBay itself was relatively new and the market for one of a kind, second hand vintage clothing was at an all time high. eBay had become a remarkable place to sell these unique and rare items that people once had to trawl through vintage shops far and wide to find and the listings weren't saturated with overseas sellers labeling their cheap and nasty goods as "vintage one of a kind, retro, boho" etc when they are none of the above. 100% of my items sold and at very respectable prices at that, the buyers paid on time every time and on the whole were very happy with their pre-loved, one-of-a-kind goods.
However, the overseas sellers invasion on eBay now means that selling your beautiful tan leather 1970's mint condition clutch isn't so easy when you have to compete with cheap copy versions that are neither leather nor vintage. Potential buyers now have to wade through hundreds of pages to find yours if they don't use the advanced search options. The chances of your item being diluted in a sea of cheap overseas products is high and their competitive price point means you're no longer guaranteed to make top dollar like I used to. It is hard to sell that vintage bag for $50 when there is a similar dodgy cheap and nasty version for 99c that looks like vintage and looks like leather if you stand about a kilometer away.
Our current economic times means buyers are more frugal and demand the highest quality for the lowest price and this has caused me more headaches than an 8 month old baby who wakes up three times a night. I recently sold my top of the line 3 wheeler jogger pram. It was a hard sell, I really didn't want to part with this item. It was my first ever pram purchase and this baby was top notch, you couldn't buy better and I had looked after it like a little glass ornament. If anything I had worn it in for the next owner, I'd done them a favour. They got a $1100 pram for less than half the price, there were no marks, no stains and I swear black and blue my son never wee'd in it, truthfully, he didn't, but I appreciate we all worry about wee and poo and vomit when we buy second hand children's things don't we? I had all the manuals, warranty card, rain cover, bug cover, SPF50 cover, bassinet, every single last attachment and add-on you could think of. I listed all the attributes, took 3 million photos from every angle, it was spit shined and ready to rock and roll.
The pram had at one stage, more than 30 watchers but failed to sell 3 times over and then the stupid questions started. I had one person ask me whether the wheels had dirt on them? Um, well yes, you dick of course they have dirt on them, the wheels have come in contact with the ground haven't they?! I gave them the benefit of the doubt and responded with a very nice "Hi there, thanks for your question. So, yes the wheels do have some dirt on them, the pram is second hand bla bla bla" thinking, are you for real, am I really answering this question. Then the questions about naming each and every single mark on the pram and how long and how deep it was and no, I'm not joking. I again gave this potential bidder the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she was a second hand re-seller and while I didn't name all the marks I gave her a general overview...no bids! I had one person ask me to bubble wrap and send the bassinet to her overseas- NO! And another ask me if they could come and inspect the pram before they bid on it- NO AGAIN! Others asked me for quotes on couriers, quotes to send parts of the pram via Australia post, it was beyond ridiculous and while I am sounding ultra hard work here myself, all I wanted was for someone to make a bid, come pick up the pram and take it away. I was in no place to be selling it for parts or parts of the sale via the post. I wondered what I had to do to get rid of this pram in one piece to one legit buyer. In the end I had to list the individual pieces separately and sold the pram alone and the bassinet with the additional extras and all for a lot less than I had wanted to. In short, it was the biggest run around I had ever been part of and again swore to be gone with eBay.
So, my word of warning here is, don't expect your top notch item at rock bottom price to always sell. Expect that selling something more than just a few measly dollars will result in your buyer being mega picky and mega fussy and mega bloody annoying over parting with their hard earned.
And then there was the story about the weirdo who harassed me when I was trying to sell a new iphone and the strange circumstances that surrounded the sale. I had bought it from eBay but when I got it I decided that I didn't really want an iphone and preferred my Nokia after all (don't worry I have since learnt the error of my ways). The wrapping had been removed, but the phone itself was brand new and never used. I listed it on the higher price side compared to other previously listed iphone's but wasn't in a hurry for it to sell, all I wanted was to recoup my cash plus a little extra. A few days into the listing an online iphone reseller contacted me telling me he thought I was ridiculous for selling the phone for the price stated and that I would never sell it to anyone, no one would be so stupid to buy it. WTF? I was sure to give him a piece of my mind once I picked my jaw up off the floor in some pretty colourful language at that. The phone did actually sell, someone bought it with the Buy It Now price and we arranged a day and time to meet to swap money for phone. The buyer repeatedly pushed to meet us at home to pick it up. Given that it sold for $600 and given that the arranged pick up day resulted in us not being at home, we decided to meet at a McDonald's car park down the road, out in the open, less chance of a snatch and run etc etc. Again, he pushed to meet us at home and it all started to become a bit weird and a bit dodgy. He refused to meet us anywhere other than our home address and it just stank of a potential home invasion. He never met us at McDonald's and I decided that it was just safer to bite the bullet and keep the iphone for myself. Another lesson learnt.
Other strange but true stories include the time I sold a very large box of mixed clothing items to some weirdo who claimed she never received them but when I called her local post office was told she had in fact come to pick up the box. This dirty thief opened a case against me through Paypal claiming that she never received her goods and the amount was deducted from my Paypal account. I lucked out by nearly $100 and was all sorts of mad. I had not sent the item with any form of tracking and the receipt from Australia Post for lodging the item as well as them stating she had in person picked up her item, wasn't enough evidence for Paypal- no tracking number, we no help you! She had found a loop hole in the system. Essentially anyone can claim through Paypal that their item hasn't been received if the buyer has no proof, doesn't send the item registered or has any form of tracking on the box. I vowed never again to send anything as regular mail. Each and every single last item would have tracking and anything purchased above $50 would have the full rigmarole attached- tracking, registered, signature, person-to-person, you name it, I wasn't going to be duped again.
My stories with the crazy people of the nation don't end, I have had non-paying buyers leave me negative feedback which is totally out of line given they didn't fulfill their commitment to pay. One recent circumstance had me spend hour upon hour talking with eBay staff over the circumstances surrounding the sale. Essentially the buyer was told not to pay until I gave her a postage quote for a large box of children's clothes. Despite the listing stating that the winning bidder would need to wait for a postage quote once I knew their post code she decided that wasn't on and left me negative feedback when I told her postage was going to be $20. It made no sense and she had no right to leave negative feedback under their extortion policy. After more fussing and back and forth emailing the negative feedback score was removed and my 100% perfect record returned.
Right about now you're probably thinking eBay doesn't sound all that glamours and well no, it isn't at times but to no fault of their own. With every 5 items I sell at least one person fails to pay and I end up needing to relist the item only once the mandatory 5 day wait is up after an unpaid item case is opened. I always follow through with the unpaid item assistant, it means I get back my listing and final value fees and the little pests who fail to pay get a strike. It's a very minor slap on the wrist. While you can put in place provisions so buyers with more than 2 strikes in 1 month can't bid on your item, once the month is up the provisions no longer apply. The non-paying, argumentative buyer is always the most time consuming with their back and forth emails. I have spent hours reiterating the same 2 pieces of information to buyers who can't seem to grasp the fact that I don't do freebies and I won't accept their out-of-eBay offer which mind you is against eBay policy. These are my worst nightmare and they are the most persistent of them all. eBay no longer lets you leave negative feedback for people who don't pay which I think is ridiculous because it leaves a very one sided perspective of pest bidders. You can cancel the bids of dodgy bidders or bidders with really low feedback scores but deciphering who is dodgy and who isn't is hard and I have never gone down this path although a lot of my listing descriptions state I will just for scare tactics.
Listing items however has become much easier over the years. There are templates for well known items with all the item specifics e.g. the dimensions of a McLaren Stroller so you don't have to get out a tape measure and scales to provide all that useless information, a stock photo is also provided so if you don't want to take a photo you don't have to. The first couple of listings per month for each seller are also free and listing photos no longer costs a small fortune as they too are free. I find the best time to list an item is so that the sale finishes in the evening e.g. 7pm onwards when people are home on their computers ready to follow the sale and put in their final bids in an all out last seconds bidding war. Listings that end on a Friday night after most of the country are home and relaxed after a few TGIF wines and eager to spend a little cash is invaluable although these types tend to be the ones that quite often fail to see the sale through and pay, perhaps they wake up in the morning after a tipsy evening and regret their purchase? One might never know.
As for postage, the option for local pick up will definitely weed out the serial pests as postage has become so ridiculously overpriced it is criminal. If someone is willing to come and pick it up then they tend to be pretty genuine, it saves you going to the post office, waiting in line and avoids any issues around non-receipt. Always sell your items with tracking on the package and always try your best to wrap the items at home with paper, garbage bags, masking tape, old boxes, large paper envelopes etc. Australia Post capitalise on their post packs, packing materials and satchels which are a massive rip off and really misleading. First off they provide no protection for your item as they are easily ripped and because they are so convenient you can be mistaken into just throwing in even the lightest and smallest of items thinking it is just easier, cheaper and more convenient but essentially even if your item only weighs 1g you'll still pay for postage on the item as if it weighs 500g and if it's more than 500g you'll pay the same postage on a 501g item as you would on a 3kg item and there is quite a considerable difference. So sending a small item in a A4 envelope you wrapped and addressed at home that only weighs 100g will be about $2 compared to the $8 satchel. Unless you are going to stuff that satchel to near breaking point within the weight limit then it isn't worth it. Bunning's has free boxes in every size and shape imaginable so don't pay $5 for a box when you can get one for free.
When it comes down to buying on eBay my experience isn't as broad as selling however these are my findings. Career eBay sellers with eBay stores tend to be less competitive in price and I have found there are generally cheaper stores elsewhere online. I have been able to find a few random items on eBay that I couldn't find elsewhere but I am frequently burned by poor quality, grossly over or undersized items compared to Australian sizings despite their sizing charts and measurements and with a lot of overseas sellers claiming to be selling original items which aren't original but copies, you have to be careful about who you give your money to. I know of a number of Ergo Baby carriers sold on eBay that have been fakes, eBay sellers claiming to be re-sellers for Asics, selling their top line Kayano sneakers for close to RRP that aren't original Asics and designer children's clothes that aren't so designer. It pays to go through feedback scores, question the seller before you buy and take note of the origin of the item e.g. the country it is being sold out of in the postage instructions. If something is claimed to be Australian Made but the item location is in China then one might be lead to believe it ain't actually Aussie made after all.
I know I haven't painted a great picture of eBay but I also know I am not alone. I have many friends who sell on eBay regularly and have had hundreds of different issues over the years. Accounts being hacked and losing all their feedback scores, disgruntled customers not willing to follow through the appropriate avenues for returns and refunds, accounts being suspended for often ridiculous reasons and lengthy waits for assistance with site issues, rectifying problems with suspect buyers etc. If you're selling name brand clothing you must be very careful to respect intellectual property rights and copyright. I recently had a listing banned and removed for unknowingly using wording similar to the wording a particular clothing company used to sell their jeans and was warned that if I did this once more my account may be suspended or cancelled.
eBay is a great way to compare products and prices, their advanced search function which shows "sold items only" is great for getting an idea of how much your item might sell for and is currently worth before going through the process of listing and allows you to determine whether it's worth listing or just donating your goods and there are many genuine bidders and sellers out there who I should make note of but bidding and selling does come with all the above warnings.
I no longer trawl through vintage and goodwill shops looking for amazing finds to sell on eBay, I don't have the time nor the patience and have been burned far too often. I now resort to eBay for getting rid of my larger house hold items such as old desks, old furniture, outdated and no longer used baby swings, rockers, old clothes and shoes etc. It is cheaper to list and sell something on eBay than to take things to the dump half the time. I sell our old clothes and the kids clothes in bulk lots to reduce the headache of listing individual items, make all items available to be picked up and have very strict guidelines for purchase. Looking out for designer clothing swap meets is far more fun than selling on eBay and you can even snap yourself up something in the process, other sites such as Gum Tree and the Trading Post have often turned out to be better avenues for buying and selling large items and I have found both to sell items remarkably cheaper than eBay.
Occasionally eBay comes up with the goods but sadly that is for me becoming more and more of a rarity. Happy Shopping but please....be careful!
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Where have I been?
Quite simply- 50 Shades!
I have been utterly engrossed in the 50 Shades Trilogy and therefore quite detached from my blog the last 2 weeks. If I haven't been reading, I have been nursing sick kids and doing my utmost to avoid their germs so I too don't get sick. Looking after sick kids while you yourself are sick is near impossible. This blog post from Crappy Pictures describes and illustrates it better than I could think to imagine. Treat yourself, she is one shit funny lady, not afraid to take the piss out of her kids and her parenting situation, for some it's the only way to survive motherhood.
My engrossment has resulted in some seriously late nights and very bleary eyed mornings. I get little if any time to read during the day so have taken advantage of the the baby in her big girl room to read into the wee hours of the morning. Sadly I don't do mornings too well and the late nights, early mornings, being woken time and time again when all I want to do is have like even 5 hours uninterupted sleep makes me so hell crazy mad and tired and all sorts of emotional nonesense and as a result I haven't been able to juggle the kids, 50 Shades and the blog all at once and yes I am admitting that I could not and would not multitask on this one.
I finished the last book Sunday night, well 1am Monday morning to be precise and am feeling a little twitchy. What will I do now that there is no Ana and no Christian? I did fear this feeling when I was near the end of book 2 so made sure to read book 3 nice and slowly, savouring every last word. This wasn't no Pulitzer Prize winning novel but it was captivating and I did enjoy reading it immensely. The next book on my list to read, in fact this was a re-read, I need to update myself on how in the hell I am going to manage the terrible twos is the Second Baby Survival Guide but it's no 50 Shades...far far from it and as a result I am struggling to move past the first couple of pages.
The Big Boy is beyond testing the boundaries, he is lighting small fires to them he has been so la la crazy and as a result I needed to refresh my memory on what to do and how to handle his newly found dissatisfaction with the baby and with making a massive song and dance about every tiny small task we need to complete to just get through the basics of the day. He is talking with gusto and trying to fit so much into the few short hours he is awake that my head spins just watching him. He amazes me constantly with the new things he says and the tid bits he remembers but he is struggling to share and everything the baby lay's eye's on he has already claimed a hundred times over, has marked his territory and nothing is to be messed with. Rattles, girlie dolls, teething rings, their all his, he is a little Bower bird with his well hidden stashes that just 2 seconds ago he had no interest in nor even knew existed.
But, one must be patient during this time. Their little heads process so many emotions all at once and they know nothing about how to appropriately deal with them and react in very much a caveman like manner. It is fascinating, annoying and overwhelming to deal with all at once. Very much the roller coaster of emotions. I have coped and I have not coped. I have spent a fair bit of time on the phone crying to my darling mother, the darling husband who is just as perplexed and tired but tries his utmost to stay cool and keep it together and have surrounded myself with all my nearest and dearest to avoid feeling alone and isolated, although with as big a family as I married into and I myself have that is never going to be possible. I am a lucky lady, there is always a shoulder to lean on and cry and wipe snot on too.
Monday was my birthday. It was my first birthday as a mother of two. It was a totally different birthday to one I have ever had before. This one I wanted to be not just about me but about all of us, us as a family of four. Previous birthdays have been wild week long, fortnight, even month long events of catching up with friends, massive parties, dinners, cake and lots of champagne. This one was about us spending time together doing stuff we all liked doing- eating hot chips and chicken Cesar's, giant slides, stir fry and experimenting with cake- just the four of us. It was perfectly relaxing, I had a little munchkin come stomping into my room and say "happy birthday mummy, open your presents" in a massively gorgeous munchkin voice, helped me open my gifts and also helped me eat my favourite chocolate sprinkling lots of tiny fragments of coconut into our bed but who cares, you can do that on your birthday.
My baby girl drew me a scribble picture and my darling husband framed it- she is so squeezable and the picture just melted my heart even more. I got to lay on the lounge and sleep, I just got out of bed and went and fell back asleep on the lounge and let me tell you as a mother of two small noisy needy children you have no idea how much of a rarity this is and managed to get the kids to both sleep for 3 hours together at the same time. It was near perfection until the kids decided that I no longer needed to celebrate my birthday and both had massive meltdowns after dinner. Oh well, you can't have it all but what I did have while it lasted was as close to a perfect birthday as possible.
I have been utterly engrossed in the 50 Shades Trilogy and therefore quite detached from my blog the last 2 weeks. If I haven't been reading, I have been nursing sick kids and doing my utmost to avoid their germs so I too don't get sick. Looking after sick kids while you yourself are sick is near impossible. This blog post from Crappy Pictures describes and illustrates it better than I could think to imagine. Treat yourself, she is one shit funny lady, not afraid to take the piss out of her kids and her parenting situation, for some it's the only way to survive motherhood.
My engrossment has resulted in some seriously late nights and very bleary eyed mornings. I get little if any time to read during the day so have taken advantage of the the baby in her big girl room to read into the wee hours of the morning. Sadly I don't do mornings too well and the late nights, early mornings, being woken time and time again when all I want to do is have like even 5 hours uninterupted sleep makes me so hell crazy mad and tired and all sorts of emotional nonesense and as a result I haven't been able to juggle the kids, 50 Shades and the blog all at once and yes I am admitting that I could not and would not multitask on this one.
I finished the last book Sunday night, well 1am Monday morning to be precise and am feeling a little twitchy. What will I do now that there is no Ana and no Christian? I did fear this feeling when I was near the end of book 2 so made sure to read book 3 nice and slowly, savouring every last word. This wasn't no Pulitzer Prize winning novel but it was captivating and I did enjoy reading it immensely. The next book on my list to read, in fact this was a re-read, I need to update myself on how in the hell I am going to manage the terrible twos is the Second Baby Survival Guide but it's no 50 Shades...far far from it and as a result I am struggling to move past the first couple of pages.
The Big Boy is beyond testing the boundaries, he is lighting small fires to them he has been so la la crazy and as a result I needed to refresh my memory on what to do and how to handle his newly found dissatisfaction with the baby and with making a massive song and dance about every tiny small task we need to complete to just get through the basics of the day. He is talking with gusto and trying to fit so much into the few short hours he is awake that my head spins just watching him. He amazes me constantly with the new things he says and the tid bits he remembers but he is struggling to share and everything the baby lay's eye's on he has already claimed a hundred times over, has marked his territory and nothing is to be messed with. Rattles, girlie dolls, teething rings, their all his, he is a little Bower bird with his well hidden stashes that just 2 seconds ago he had no interest in nor even knew existed.
But, one must be patient during this time. Their little heads process so many emotions all at once and they know nothing about how to appropriately deal with them and react in very much a caveman like manner. It is fascinating, annoying and overwhelming to deal with all at once. Very much the roller coaster of emotions. I have coped and I have not coped. I have spent a fair bit of time on the phone crying to my darling mother, the darling husband who is just as perplexed and tired but tries his utmost to stay cool and keep it together and have surrounded myself with all my nearest and dearest to avoid feeling alone and isolated, although with as big a family as I married into and I myself have that is never going to be possible. I am a lucky lady, there is always a shoulder to lean on and cry and wipe snot on too.
Monday was my birthday. It was my first birthday as a mother of two. It was a totally different birthday to one I have ever had before. This one I wanted to be not just about me but about all of us, us as a family of four. Previous birthdays have been wild week long, fortnight, even month long events of catching up with friends, massive parties, dinners, cake and lots of champagne. This one was about us spending time together doing stuff we all liked doing- eating hot chips and chicken Cesar's, giant slides, stir fry and experimenting with cake- just the four of us. It was perfectly relaxing, I had a little munchkin come stomping into my room and say "happy birthday mummy, open your presents" in a massively gorgeous munchkin voice, helped me open my gifts and also helped me eat my favourite chocolate sprinkling lots of tiny fragments of coconut into our bed but who cares, you can do that on your birthday.
My baby girl drew me a scribble picture and my darling husband framed it- she is so squeezable and the picture just melted my heart even more. I got to lay on the lounge and sleep, I just got out of bed and went and fell back asleep on the lounge and let me tell you as a mother of two small noisy needy children you have no idea how much of a rarity this is and managed to get the kids to both sleep for 3 hours together at the same time. It was near perfection until the kids decided that I no longer needed to celebrate my birthday and both had massive meltdowns after dinner. Oh well, you can't have it all but what I did have while it lasted was as close to a perfect birthday as possible.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
How not to clean the house
I am OCD when it comes to cleaning. Mess, finger prints, lint in the carpet, scuff marks on the tiles, they all just make me want to gag. While I am OCD about mess and cleanliness I also like to complain about how much I have to clean at the same time. I dig my own grave with my OCD ways and always try and find someone to blame or carry on that my husband doesn't do enough around the house even though I end up redoing what he does do anyway. It's a complicated affair, one not even I understand half the time. In fact I will often start ranting and raving in my head while mopping the floor "god why doesn't darling husband do this more often" when in actual fact it is generally he who does the floors anyway. My brain starts trying to immediately pass the buck and it's my rational side that needs to remind it to chill out. See, my cleanliness really is an issue, it messes with my head.
I have a habit of also saying out loud "I don't know who does this, but I am so sick of the mess" almost as if I am living with 100 people and can't be quite sure who tipped a bucket of little people over the floor or spilt milk on the carpet. It's as if I don't know who made the mess when I actually do. Strange and complicated I know. Don't even bother trying to understand my cleaning ways.
Having two children, a dog and a boof of a husband will do that to you. There is no end to the work one has to do around the house. You could clean for the rest of your life and still find more to do, a bit like painting the harbour bridge, once you get to the other end you have to start all over again. All that aside, I recall just before I had my son that I was stressing about how I would be able to keep on top of the cleaning once I had a baby to look after. A friend told me that you eventually learn to drop your standards and let go. I dropped my standards in some areas but ended up replacing my desire to be neat and tidy with other things. While I wasn't able to do my big Saturday morning whole house top to bottom clean with the stereo pumping what I was able to do was iron things while the baby slept instead. I ironed baby socks, baby singlets, tea towels, I once even ironed my bedspread while it was on the bed because it had a few creases. I simply replaced my habit with another equally weird OTT/OCD one. I am still OCD, I still clean incessantly and constantly and am proud of how well this house has shaped up after 5 years of wear and tear and 2 years of brutality from a toddler however there was one thing that niggled at me and it was the grout in the downstairs tiled kitchen dining area and it all started with grout in the bathroom.
Somehow as if over night mould sprouted in my shower. Prior to the invasion I had boasted a pristine girlie bathroom that no mould was welcome in. If I saw mould I killed it dead with every bit of chemical product and man power I could find. This time though it wouldn't budge and the lime scale was getting pretty bad too. I decided I needed the heavy stuff and went to Bunnings. I found an enormous wall of chemicals and got as excited over them as I would do a new pair of shoes or some new products of beauté. I picked Long Life grout cleaner and some CLR cleaner. These two were based on acid and that was a good thing, this shower needed acid!! The CLR worked pretty well on the lime scale but didn't remove it all, the Long Life however didn't work what so ever so I decided on some vinegar and bi-carb soda. That seemed to stop the growth until it sprouted behind the tiles and grout. What had I done? It appeared, when I got up close that the Long Life had actually eaten the grout and given mould a new home behind the tiles which I now couldn't remove. I had inadvertently made the problem worse. The grout that was keeping moisture away from the tiles was no longer and I had trapped mould unable to scrub or burn it away with acid. Damage done!
This didn't stop me. I just decided that perhaps the Long Life was too harsh for the shower and probably should have done a test patch like the instructions said. But who actually does that any way? I'm far too impatient for that sort of nonsense. Perhaps there was different grout for different surfaces and uses and thought that it was likely that the downstairs tiled area would have harder wearing grout more able to withstand grout cleaner so I set out to clean downstairs. Now, Long Life is serious stuff, sulphuric acid serious and it did wonders for the grout but cleaning it required a lot of scrubbing, wiping off the acid, wiping again, mopping after and then a very thorough wash of the mop after so no acid got near the polished floor boards. It was essentially a massive pain in the arse, but the floors looked unreal once done, almost new even. I stopped and marveled at my handy work for days after and talked to everyone I knew about Long Life as if I had such a boring life I could not talk about anything else. Some thought it was great, others thought I was crazy to be so sick for cleaning products.
5 months on the grout was getting grubby again and the very thought of cleaning it festered in my mind. While the Long Life did the job it was still a little harsh on the floors, were there was an air pocket in the grout, it ate through it and left little black spots speckled here and there. You also needed a face mask, lots of gloves, lots of old towels and lots of time. I had the face masks and towels and gloves but time I did not. I decided to mix a concoction of my own this time. A little boiling water, some bleach from the laundry, some detergent and then the infamous bi-carb. With each dash of product I added, I lent back in case I inadvertently made my own home bomb. I had no idea if the combination of chemicals would explode in my face or burn my hand off. It did neither and in almost a quarter of the time it took to use the Long Life and it's arduous process of spraying, leaving to sit, scrubbing, wiping, cleansing and mopping I was done and again marveled at my beautiful floors but the joy didn't last very long. Oh how wrong was I.
I had done it again! A bit like my grout in my bathroom and the time I left exit mould too long in the sink and it tarnished the metal drain. The bi-carb had left this grainy, rough, chalky residue over the entire floor. Not only was I adding bi-carb to this potent concoction I was also tipping some on the floor to dab my brush in as a bit of extra abrasive. You stupid woman! I literally said out loud "what have I done?" I was panicked. Had my OCD tendencies resulted in complete destruction of my the entire downstairs kitchen and dining room? What do I do, what do I do I thought. How do I fix this? I was worried that I had damaged the surface of the tiles. It looked as if they had shriveled a bit under the strain of this concoction I brewed up. I dashed to the kitchen draws and pulled out the scraper and tried to scrape this chalky residue off. Some came away, but there were lots of smears and mess everywhere. What was being removed was a super fine white dust, quite possibly toxic. A bleach bi-carb dust! Brilliant. I was now going to not only ruin my tiles but poison my entire family.
I needed to think quick. I boiled up some water and got a scourer and a bit of detergent and thought maybe I could scrub and wipe it off. Burning my hands in the process I went on hands and knees again over the floors begging for this treatment to work. The whole time I was thinking how much it would cost to repair and if this didn't work I was going to be in big big trouble. In the end I had to scrape, scrub and mop the floors 3 times to remove the baked bi-carb and it did come off but my mistake essentially tripled the time it took to clean the floors and made a serious mess in the process, one that took the good part of a day to remedy.
So, my moral to this OTT and slightly ridiculous story is don't use Long Life grout cleaner, I actually think it's meant for outdoor use on much harder wearing surfaces and don't use bi-carb. While it is nice to think you're being environmentally friendly and all you may just find yourself creating far more work for yourself than you planned. Patch testing is vital. For the price of waiting a mere 24 hours after a patch test you might actually save yourself a lot of money and heartache when you realize that not following the instructions means you need to re-tile and re-grout your entire downstairs eating/kitchen area, just a quiet $20,000.
Put down the sulphuric acid and walk away!
I have a habit of also saying out loud "I don't know who does this, but I am so sick of the mess" almost as if I am living with 100 people and can't be quite sure who tipped a bucket of little people over the floor or spilt milk on the carpet. It's as if I don't know who made the mess when I actually do. Strange and complicated I know. Don't even bother trying to understand my cleaning ways.
Having two children, a dog and a boof of a husband will do that to you. There is no end to the work one has to do around the house. You could clean for the rest of your life and still find more to do, a bit like painting the harbour bridge, once you get to the other end you have to start all over again. All that aside, I recall just before I had my son that I was stressing about how I would be able to keep on top of the cleaning once I had a baby to look after. A friend told me that you eventually learn to drop your standards and let go. I dropped my standards in some areas but ended up replacing my desire to be neat and tidy with other things. While I wasn't able to do my big Saturday morning whole house top to bottom clean with the stereo pumping what I was able to do was iron things while the baby slept instead. I ironed baby socks, baby singlets, tea towels, I once even ironed my bedspread while it was on the bed because it had a few creases. I simply replaced my habit with another equally weird OTT/OCD one. I am still OCD, I still clean incessantly and constantly and am proud of how well this house has shaped up after 5 years of wear and tear and 2 years of brutality from a toddler however there was one thing that niggled at me and it was the grout in the downstairs tiled kitchen dining area and it all started with grout in the bathroom.
Somehow as if over night mould sprouted in my shower. Prior to the invasion I had boasted a pristine girlie bathroom that no mould was welcome in. If I saw mould I killed it dead with every bit of chemical product and man power I could find. This time though it wouldn't budge and the lime scale was getting pretty bad too. I decided I needed the heavy stuff and went to Bunnings. I found an enormous wall of chemicals and got as excited over them as I would do a new pair of shoes or some new products of beauté. I picked Long Life grout cleaner and some CLR cleaner. These two were based on acid and that was a good thing, this shower needed acid!! The CLR worked pretty well on the lime scale but didn't remove it all, the Long Life however didn't work what so ever so I decided on some vinegar and bi-carb soda. That seemed to stop the growth until it sprouted behind the tiles and grout. What had I done? It appeared, when I got up close that the Long Life had actually eaten the grout and given mould a new home behind the tiles which I now couldn't remove. I had inadvertently made the problem worse. The grout that was keeping moisture away from the tiles was no longer and I had trapped mould unable to scrub or burn it away with acid. Damage done!
This didn't stop me. I just decided that perhaps the Long Life was too harsh for the shower and probably should have done a test patch like the instructions said. But who actually does that any way? I'm far too impatient for that sort of nonsense. Perhaps there was different grout for different surfaces and uses and thought that it was likely that the downstairs tiled area would have harder wearing grout more able to withstand grout cleaner so I set out to clean downstairs. Now, Long Life is serious stuff, sulphuric acid serious and it did wonders for the grout but cleaning it required a lot of scrubbing, wiping off the acid, wiping again, mopping after and then a very thorough wash of the mop after so no acid got near the polished floor boards. It was essentially a massive pain in the arse, but the floors looked unreal once done, almost new even. I stopped and marveled at my handy work for days after and talked to everyone I knew about Long Life as if I had such a boring life I could not talk about anything else. Some thought it was great, others thought I was crazy to be so sick for cleaning products.
5 months on the grout was getting grubby again and the very thought of cleaning it festered in my mind. While the Long Life did the job it was still a little harsh on the floors, were there was an air pocket in the grout, it ate through it and left little black spots speckled here and there. You also needed a face mask, lots of gloves, lots of old towels and lots of time. I had the face masks and towels and gloves but time I did not. I decided to mix a concoction of my own this time. A little boiling water, some bleach from the laundry, some detergent and then the infamous bi-carb. With each dash of product I added, I lent back in case I inadvertently made my own home bomb. I had no idea if the combination of chemicals would explode in my face or burn my hand off. It did neither and in almost a quarter of the time it took to use the Long Life and it's arduous process of spraying, leaving to sit, scrubbing, wiping, cleansing and mopping I was done and again marveled at my beautiful floors but the joy didn't last very long. Oh how wrong was I.
I had done it again! A bit like my grout in my bathroom and the time I left exit mould too long in the sink and it tarnished the metal drain. The bi-carb had left this grainy, rough, chalky residue over the entire floor. Not only was I adding bi-carb to this potent concoction I was also tipping some on the floor to dab my brush in as a bit of extra abrasive. You stupid woman! I literally said out loud "what have I done?" I was panicked. Had my OCD tendencies resulted in complete destruction of my the entire downstairs kitchen and dining room? What do I do, what do I do I thought. How do I fix this? I was worried that I had damaged the surface of the tiles. It looked as if they had shriveled a bit under the strain of this concoction I brewed up. I dashed to the kitchen draws and pulled out the scraper and tried to scrape this chalky residue off. Some came away, but there were lots of smears and mess everywhere. What was being removed was a super fine white dust, quite possibly toxic. A bleach bi-carb dust! Brilliant. I was now going to not only ruin my tiles but poison my entire family.
I needed to think quick. I boiled up some water and got a scourer and a bit of detergent and thought maybe I could scrub and wipe it off. Burning my hands in the process I went on hands and knees again over the floors begging for this treatment to work. The whole time I was thinking how much it would cost to repair and if this didn't work I was going to be in big big trouble. In the end I had to scrape, scrub and mop the floors 3 times to remove the baked bi-carb and it did come off but my mistake essentially tripled the time it took to clean the floors and made a serious mess in the process, one that took the good part of a day to remedy.
So, my moral to this OTT and slightly ridiculous story is don't use Long Life grout cleaner, I actually think it's meant for outdoor use on much harder wearing surfaces and don't use bi-carb. While it is nice to think you're being environmentally friendly and all you may just find yourself creating far more work for yourself than you planned. Patch testing is vital. For the price of waiting a mere 24 hours after a patch test you might actually save yourself a lot of money and heartache when you realize that not following the instructions means you need to re-tile and re-grout your entire downstairs eating/kitchen area, just a quiet $20,000.
Put down the sulphuric acid and walk away!
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Did you know?
My husband and I are always trying to one-up each other in the "did you know?" stakes. We take great pride in sourcing and delivering wonderful facts that we pray the other one doesn't already know so that we can surprise one another with our apparent talent, intelligence and wit. Half the time we have heard them on the radio or read them in a book, journal, newspaper or an online source which also means so have a million other people but that doesn't dampen our attempts at trying to be as smart, witty and intelligent as often as possible.
Since the invention of Google which according to Google started out in January 1996 by two uni students, delivering information to all corners of the globe has never been easier. Finally we know what happens when you try and pop popcorn with a handful of mobile phones, nothing, that's right nothing, it's a hoax and just when you thought you would never be able to find the time difference between the Bahamas Turks and Caicos Islands and Sydney you now do and let me tell you, there was a time when I needed to know the difference all the time. Information, pictures, people, businesses and buildings are all connected and the information flows like wildfire and I love it. I Google things all the time, even my name, just to see if I have been linked to something weird and wonderful and amazing since the last time I Googled myself. But beyond childish nonsense of such a nature, Google continues to broaden my knowledge and my imagination.
In this post I have tried to find some useful facts, some interesting ones that you probably or at least I am hoping you haven't heard before because lets face it, I am tired of hearing the same old ones repeated time and time again. I have also tried to debunk some purely by investigating a bit harder, digging a bit deeper and asking the question "really, do right handed people really live longer than left? How is that possible? Why? Huh? Show me the figures!"
If I think of something I Google it, you never know when you might need to know that fact in the future, how you might slip it into a conversation and why sit there wondering unless wondering is your thing. Go hence forth to Google and open your mind to the many weird and wonderful facts available to you. Let's hope that even a small few of you find them as interesting as my husband and I do, that they spark some sort of conversation and make you giggle at Google along the way. If you know some that you want to share just comment below or contact me via the link above.
Note: Just to be a Debbie Downer I must put a disclaimer here. These statistics and facts I have below are drawn from the Internet, some I have been told, some I could have quite possibly dreamt of in my sleep and are actually hideously incorrect, others from print media, some from TV. So...take them with a grain of salt and don't go adding them into your next uni essay or child's school project without first checking that what I have checked is in fact correct. This is purely just for fun.
Happy fact finding my friends.
1. A prune is a dried plum. I know! Amazing!
2. The air temperature inside a bushfire is around 800 degrees Celsius. Hot hey! It gives a whole new meaning to bush fire season and I make no jokes about that, it is not a laughing matter. Truly!
3. Geographically the US is larger but Australia is approximately the same size at the contiguous states. The picture below explains it all.
However, the population of Australia is about 21 million compared to the nearly 300 million people populating the US of A. Now, this might be a bit of those "ahh, really dumbass moments" but I am not geographically minded, in fact you'd be disgusted if I told you how atrocious my geography really is and I blame it all on my year 7 geography teacher who in all honestly was a flat out bitch. That aside, I still find this fact amazing. After all, I have such grandiose ideas of the enormity of the States, that such a country should be far bigger and wider the Australia, but apparently not. See, terrible at geography aren't I?
4. Australia is approximately 23 times the size of Vietnam yet Vietnam has more than 4 times the population of Australia. Now, next time you complain about having to touch shoulders with someone on the train or brush past someone in the supermarket shopping isle think about what it is like for the Vietnamese. Vietnam also holds the record for the most broken bones in all countries in the world due to their large number of traffic accidents. According to statistics taken from a source published in 2009 there were 30 million motorbikes in Vietnam with traffic accidents causing the most deaths for people aged between 18-45, 80% of which are attributed to motorbikes. Causing so much devastation, traffic accidents in Vietnam are often referred to as natural disasters.
This map shows the size of Vietnam in comparison to West Leederville in Western Australia. (Vietnam in pink)
5. A 1966 Volvo 1800S and its one owner Irv Gordon of East Patchogue, New York, USA owns the Guinness world record for highest mileage in the same vehicle he has been driving for more than 45 years. As of July 2012, the car is 34,000 miles shy of the 3 million mile mark (4,828,032 km). To put this into perspective the circumference of the earth is 40,075km and the distance between Earth and the Moon, about 360,000km so essentially he could have driven to the moon and back 6.5 times over. The car was destined to be a lemon. With considerable quality control issues and poor sales the 1800S was designed to aid Volvo's entry into the sports car market after their previous models attempt only sold 68 cars.
6. I recently heard that renewable energy in the form of wind farms is the primary cause of bird and bat deaths in Australia. Well, take Spain as an example. According to Spain's Ornithological Society, its main bird conservation charity the country's 18,000 wind turbines kill up to an estimated 18 million birds and bats a year. Ouch. However we can't blame wind farms as much as one would like it, it is actually glass windows. Glass kills more birds than any other human related factor.
7. A hurricane releases more energy in 10 minutes, than all the world's nuclear weapons combined
8. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match
9. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. Wrong! Stop worrying lefties, it was proved to be based on a floored analysis and groundless.
10. Australia has over 6,000 species of flies, about 4,000 species of ants, and about 350 species of termites. Dear God!
11. The roof of the Sydney Opera House weighs more than 161 000 000kg's (161,000 tons)
12. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans. We can thank KFC and McDonald's for that one.
13. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency. Busy man.
14. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human. Why God, Why?
15. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa
16. The infamous “I feel lucky” button is nearly never used on Google. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button yet only 1% of Google users actually every click on it. A study found that the button actually costs Google $110 million dollars a year as it bypass's all advertising on the search engine results page taking you directly to the first search result at the top of the list.
17. Did you know that honey can contain the Clostridium botulinum bacteria which if ingested by children can result in botulism which is a rare but serious illness.
18. The reason why women’s dress shirt buttons are on the left and men’s on the right is because when buttons were first used during the Victorian period maids used to dress the ladies, and since the maids put on their shirts the buttons were put on the servants right side, hence the women’s left.
19. The most expensive shoes in the world are ruby slippers located in Harrods in London, which cost $1.6 million, has a full time security guard. The shoes are made from platinum thread and has 642 rubies in them. It took over 700 hours to produce the shoe.
20. While awake, your brain generates between 10 and 23 watts of power. That's enough energy to power a dim light bulb.
Since the invention of Google which according to Google started out in January 1996 by two uni students, delivering information to all corners of the globe has never been easier. Finally we know what happens when you try and pop popcorn with a handful of mobile phones, nothing, that's right nothing, it's a hoax and just when you thought you would never be able to find the time difference between the Bahamas Turks and Caicos Islands and Sydney you now do and let me tell you, there was a time when I needed to know the difference all the time. Information, pictures, people, businesses and buildings are all connected and the information flows like wildfire and I love it. I Google things all the time, even my name, just to see if I have been linked to something weird and wonderful and amazing since the last time I Googled myself. But beyond childish nonsense of such a nature, Google continues to broaden my knowledge and my imagination.
In this post I have tried to find some useful facts, some interesting ones that you probably or at least I am hoping you haven't heard before because lets face it, I am tired of hearing the same old ones repeated time and time again. I have also tried to debunk some purely by investigating a bit harder, digging a bit deeper and asking the question "really, do right handed people really live longer than left? How is that possible? Why? Huh? Show me the figures!"
If I think of something I Google it, you never know when you might need to know that fact in the future, how you might slip it into a conversation and why sit there wondering unless wondering is your thing. Go hence forth to Google and open your mind to the many weird and wonderful facts available to you. Let's hope that even a small few of you find them as interesting as my husband and I do, that they spark some sort of conversation and make you giggle at Google along the way. If you know some that you want to share just comment below or contact me via the link above.
Note: Just to be a Debbie Downer I must put a disclaimer here. These statistics and facts I have below are drawn from the Internet, some I have been told, some I could have quite possibly dreamt of in my sleep and are actually hideously incorrect, others from print media, some from TV. So...take them with a grain of salt and don't go adding them into your next uni essay or child's school project without first checking that what I have checked is in fact correct. This is purely just for fun.
Happy fact finding my friends.
1. A prune is a dried plum. I know! Amazing!
2. The air temperature inside a bushfire is around 800 degrees Celsius. Hot hey! It gives a whole new meaning to bush fire season and I make no jokes about that, it is not a laughing matter. Truly!
3. Geographically the US is larger but Australia is approximately the same size at the contiguous states. The picture below explains it all.
However, the population of Australia is about 21 million compared to the nearly 300 million people populating the US of A. Now, this might be a bit of those "ahh, really dumbass moments" but I am not geographically minded, in fact you'd be disgusted if I told you how atrocious my geography really is and I blame it all on my year 7 geography teacher who in all honestly was a flat out bitch. That aside, I still find this fact amazing. After all, I have such grandiose ideas of the enormity of the States, that such a country should be far bigger and wider the Australia, but apparently not. See, terrible at geography aren't I?
4. Australia is approximately 23 times the size of Vietnam yet Vietnam has more than 4 times the population of Australia. Now, next time you complain about having to touch shoulders with someone on the train or brush past someone in the supermarket shopping isle think about what it is like for the Vietnamese. Vietnam also holds the record for the most broken bones in all countries in the world due to their large number of traffic accidents. According to statistics taken from a source published in 2009 there were 30 million motorbikes in Vietnam with traffic accidents causing the most deaths for people aged between 18-45, 80% of which are attributed to motorbikes. Causing so much devastation, traffic accidents in Vietnam are often referred to as natural disasters.
5. A 1966 Volvo 1800S and its one owner Irv Gordon of East Patchogue, New York, USA owns the Guinness world record for highest mileage in the same vehicle he has been driving for more than 45 years. As of July 2012, the car is 34,000 miles shy of the 3 million mile mark (4,828,032 km). To put this into perspective the circumference of the earth is 40,075km and the distance between Earth and the Moon, about 360,000km so essentially he could have driven to the moon and back 6.5 times over. The car was destined to be a lemon. With considerable quality control issues and poor sales the 1800S was designed to aid Volvo's entry into the sports car market after their previous models attempt only sold 68 cars.
6. I recently heard that renewable energy in the form of wind farms is the primary cause of bird and bat deaths in Australia. Well, take Spain as an example. According to Spain's Ornithological Society, its main bird conservation charity the country's 18,000 wind turbines kill up to an estimated 18 million birds and bats a year. Ouch. However we can't blame wind farms as much as one would like it, it is actually glass windows. Glass kills more birds than any other human related factor.
7. A hurricane releases more energy in 10 minutes, than all the world's nuclear weapons combined
8. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match
9. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. Wrong! Stop worrying lefties, it was proved to be based on a floored analysis and groundless.
10. Australia has over 6,000 species of flies, about 4,000 species of ants, and about 350 species of termites. Dear God!
11. The roof of the Sydney Opera House weighs more than 161 000 000kg's (161,000 tons)
12. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans. We can thank KFC and McDonald's for that one.
13. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency. Busy man.
14. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human. Why God, Why?
15. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa
16. The infamous “I feel lucky” button is nearly never used on Google. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button yet only 1% of Google users actually every click on it. A study found that the button actually costs Google $110 million dollars a year as it bypass's all advertising on the search engine results page taking you directly to the first search result at the top of the list.
17. Did you know that honey can contain the Clostridium botulinum bacteria which if ingested by children can result in botulism which is a rare but serious illness.
18. The reason why women’s dress shirt buttons are on the left and men’s on the right is because when buttons were first used during the Victorian period maids used to dress the ladies, and since the maids put on their shirts the buttons were put on the servants right side, hence the women’s left.
19. The most expensive shoes in the world are ruby slippers located in Harrods in London, which cost $1.6 million, has a full time security guard. The shoes are made from platinum thread and has 642 rubies in them. It took over 700 hours to produce the shoe.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Baby in a big bed.
My baby girl recently graduated to her big girl bed and I reclaimed my bedroom as my own.
I did a little tally in my head the other day and calculated that we had shared our bedroom with our children for almost 18 months. I had enjoyed almost every minute of that time and was always conscious not to push them into their own room too quickly. They would only be so small and able to sleep in their beautiful little bassinet next to my side of the bed for such a short period of time in their big long wonderful lives and I wanted to cherish every single last minute of it. I knew that once they went into their own room the bassinet would be packed away and an end of an era in their lives and mine would be upon us. I loved everyday that I woke up, I was greeted with big beautiful eyes looking up at me begging for me to gaze down on them and say good morning. That in the depths of the night all I needed to do was slip my arm out from under the doona and rock the swinging basinette to resettle them back to sleep and that if they needed to be fed they were right next to me and within arms reach.
Leading up to my baby's move I noticed that she was getting more and more unsettled in the late evening right before we were about to go to bed. She would wake up and cry with intensity, clearly distressed and unhappy. I had been so used to her waking at around 9-10pm that I just assumed she was doing what she normally did but that teething was causing her some pain and hence the unsettled screams. Most nights were drawn out and by 11:30pm my husband and I were a wreck, we went from toys, to play gym to singing back to toys to occupy her but she was terribly unhappy and once my most favourite part of the day, getting into bed, flicking through crap on foxtel or playing with my iphone before I went to sleep was abandoned as we tried desperately to keep our little girl happy, then to try and settle her in her bassinet by rocking, patting and shushing her to sleep. Some days it would take more than an hour to get her to nod off. It was without doubt her most unsettled period of the day. Once asleep she slept through but getting her there was becoming harder with each day that passed.
Now my little girl, she's sleeps like a rock, put her in her bassinet, few little coo's later and she is asleep. Self settle, no worries! I have never really had an issue with her sleep except during growth spurts but I quickly learnt to just go with the flow and not let those periods worry me, if she didn't want to sleep then I wasn't going to force her. Night time though was strange and in the back of my mind I kept wondering whether us being in the room while she was either asleep or trying to go to sleep just disturbed her sleeping mojo. We tried excruciatingly hard to keep quiet when we went to bed, we even took turns sitting next to the bassinet ready to rock her back to sleep while we got changed and brushed out teeth in case we woke her but so many things were against us.
First of all, our floor boards, they creek and you'd be forgiven for thinking that each step is going to send you falling through the first floor the noise is so shrill. We have even tracked a path around the joins so that we can avoid making noise. My husband had to abandon getting ready or showering in the ensuite boys bathroom and took up residency in mine which I was none to happy about, it's a girl bathroom, no boys allowed, but truthfully, it was becoming so very difficult to keep quiet and not wake the baby. Add to that she really was fast outgrowing the bassinet, her little head just a centimeter or two shy of the top but worst of all I was petrified of having the two kids sleeping right next to each other when at any time either one of them could wake up and having a crying fit which the big boy did on random occasions after a night mare or when he wasn't well and the thought of then having to resettle two children and not just one was sending me grey. The logistics were like trying to understand mathematical chemistry. In the end I resided with the fact that the kids were most likely going to keep each other awake or wake each other up for the rest of the time they lived together under one roof together and that getting hooked up on the what ifs wasn't worth my time.
I decided, although a little reluctantly, that I would trial her sleeping in her bassinet in her room when the big boy was at daycare so I could attend to her when she woke with the aim to try and resettle and comfort her with no disruptions and ample time on my hands. I was aware that for some babies the move to a new room and a new bed can be terribly disruptive, I had after all experienced a bit of difficulty moving my son to his room for the first time and had the memory not far in my mind. And then she got sick, and then I got sick and then my son and then my husband. It wasn't the right time. 2 weeks passed and she was still in our room. It all came to a head one afternoon when she was a bit all over the place but I really needed to get dressed, clean our room and change the sheets on the bed. She just needed to sleep somewhere else in peace and without the floor boards from hell creaking and the sound of sheets flapping around and clothes being hauled across the room. I dragged the bassinet to her big girl room, tucked her in, put on the white noise nice and loud and left. 2 minutes later asleep!
Huh? How did that happen so quickly? I thought it was a fluke, maybe she was just really tired, I was after all expecting a massive protest, new smells, new sights, new sleeping environment, nothing. Next sleep the same and the next and the next. While I dragged the bassinet back into our room for one more night sleeps not wanting to enforce too much change too quickly I decided that I would test her out at night on the second day of operation Big Girl Bedroom Change-Over. 5 minutes, fast asleep and wait for it, she slept from 6pm till 630am. Not one noise came from her room. The next night one wake up, one sook at 4am but back to sleep with a shush and a pat and awake at 8am. The night after that 12 hours back to back, not a noise.
I had seen enough to know I had seen it all. Clearly she was begging for some quiet, dark, white noise filled space to go to sleep in. Sleeping in our room, even though dimly lit was enough to keep her awake, our movements and the barely audible tv in the background, it was simply rousing her out of her sleep when she was clearly wanting to and capable of sleeping through. She had after all been sleeping through from day one for at least 8-10 hours, she was just ready to show us how she could do a 12 hour sleep without batting an eyelid.
I was over the moon to have my room back but more than anything I has happy that my little girl was happy to be in her own room without one single fuss in the world. Always wanting to strike while the iron is hot I decided to push my luck and see how she would go in her own bed. She had such a beautiful cot, I had made her a patchwork quilt, there was an abundance of bamboo cotton sheet sets she had been given for her baby shower just waiting to be put to good use so I made up her bed, pulling all the sheets way way down so her little tiny body would be covered just enough to keep her warm but not to swallow her up and decided that I would give it a whirl. I popped her in her bed and decided that seeing as she was capable of self settling that I would just do what I normally do, put her in her swaddle suit, pop her into her bed and tell her I am going out and leave her. She slept!
I was so amazed that I checked on her three times while she had a nap. Despite the sound and motion sensor monitor I just couldn't pick my jaw up off the floor and believe that she had gone from sleeping in our room, to sleeping in her own room in her bassinet, to sleeping in her cot all in just two days and then sleeping through the night every night bar one and for 12 hours at that. WTF! Amazing, blessed and a huge sense of relief came over me.
Last night we dismantled the bassinet and I wrapped it up to put it away. My husband told me that we can now sell it if we like, we can buy another one for the next baby (we'd like to have another baby down the track but not any time in the near future) I said "are you crazy? I'm not that ready to end an era" I can do the big girl bedroom but I will hang onto the bassinet and hope that it can stay tucked under my sons cot until another baby comes along and then I'll think about selling. For now, sweet dreams my children.
I did a little tally in my head the other day and calculated that we had shared our bedroom with our children for almost 18 months. I had enjoyed almost every minute of that time and was always conscious not to push them into their own room too quickly. They would only be so small and able to sleep in their beautiful little bassinet next to my side of the bed for such a short period of time in their big long wonderful lives and I wanted to cherish every single last minute of it. I knew that once they went into their own room the bassinet would be packed away and an end of an era in their lives and mine would be upon us. I loved everyday that I woke up, I was greeted with big beautiful eyes looking up at me begging for me to gaze down on them and say good morning. That in the depths of the night all I needed to do was slip my arm out from under the doona and rock the swinging basinette to resettle them back to sleep and that if they needed to be fed they were right next to me and within arms reach.
Leading up to my baby's move I noticed that she was getting more and more unsettled in the late evening right before we were about to go to bed. She would wake up and cry with intensity, clearly distressed and unhappy. I had been so used to her waking at around 9-10pm that I just assumed she was doing what she normally did but that teething was causing her some pain and hence the unsettled screams. Most nights were drawn out and by 11:30pm my husband and I were a wreck, we went from toys, to play gym to singing back to toys to occupy her but she was terribly unhappy and once my most favourite part of the day, getting into bed, flicking through crap on foxtel or playing with my iphone before I went to sleep was abandoned as we tried desperately to keep our little girl happy, then to try and settle her in her bassinet by rocking, patting and shushing her to sleep. Some days it would take more than an hour to get her to nod off. It was without doubt her most unsettled period of the day. Once asleep she slept through but getting her there was becoming harder with each day that passed.
Now my little girl, she's sleeps like a rock, put her in her bassinet, few little coo's later and she is asleep. Self settle, no worries! I have never really had an issue with her sleep except during growth spurts but I quickly learnt to just go with the flow and not let those periods worry me, if she didn't want to sleep then I wasn't going to force her. Night time though was strange and in the back of my mind I kept wondering whether us being in the room while she was either asleep or trying to go to sleep just disturbed her sleeping mojo. We tried excruciatingly hard to keep quiet when we went to bed, we even took turns sitting next to the bassinet ready to rock her back to sleep while we got changed and brushed out teeth in case we woke her but so many things were against us.
First of all, our floor boards, they creek and you'd be forgiven for thinking that each step is going to send you falling through the first floor the noise is so shrill. We have even tracked a path around the joins so that we can avoid making noise. My husband had to abandon getting ready or showering in the ensuite boys bathroom and took up residency in mine which I was none to happy about, it's a girl bathroom, no boys allowed, but truthfully, it was becoming so very difficult to keep quiet and not wake the baby. Add to that she really was fast outgrowing the bassinet, her little head just a centimeter or two shy of the top but worst of all I was petrified of having the two kids sleeping right next to each other when at any time either one of them could wake up and having a crying fit which the big boy did on random occasions after a night mare or when he wasn't well and the thought of then having to resettle two children and not just one was sending me grey. The logistics were like trying to understand mathematical chemistry. In the end I resided with the fact that the kids were most likely going to keep each other awake or wake each other up for the rest of the time they lived together under one roof together and that getting hooked up on the what ifs wasn't worth my time.
I decided, although a little reluctantly, that I would trial her sleeping in her bassinet in her room when the big boy was at daycare so I could attend to her when she woke with the aim to try and resettle and comfort her with no disruptions and ample time on my hands. I was aware that for some babies the move to a new room and a new bed can be terribly disruptive, I had after all experienced a bit of difficulty moving my son to his room for the first time and had the memory not far in my mind. And then she got sick, and then I got sick and then my son and then my husband. It wasn't the right time. 2 weeks passed and she was still in our room. It all came to a head one afternoon when she was a bit all over the place but I really needed to get dressed, clean our room and change the sheets on the bed. She just needed to sleep somewhere else in peace and without the floor boards from hell creaking and the sound of sheets flapping around and clothes being hauled across the room. I dragged the bassinet to her big girl room, tucked her in, put on the white noise nice and loud and left. 2 minutes later asleep!
Huh? How did that happen so quickly? I thought it was a fluke, maybe she was just really tired, I was after all expecting a massive protest, new smells, new sights, new sleeping environment, nothing. Next sleep the same and the next and the next. While I dragged the bassinet back into our room for one more night sleeps not wanting to enforce too much change too quickly I decided that I would test her out at night on the second day of operation Big Girl Bedroom Change-Over. 5 minutes, fast asleep and wait for it, she slept from 6pm till 630am. Not one noise came from her room. The next night one wake up, one sook at 4am but back to sleep with a shush and a pat and awake at 8am. The night after that 12 hours back to back, not a noise.
I had seen enough to know I had seen it all. Clearly she was begging for some quiet, dark, white noise filled space to go to sleep in. Sleeping in our room, even though dimly lit was enough to keep her awake, our movements and the barely audible tv in the background, it was simply rousing her out of her sleep when she was clearly wanting to and capable of sleeping through. She had after all been sleeping through from day one for at least 8-10 hours, she was just ready to show us how she could do a 12 hour sleep without batting an eyelid.
I was over the moon to have my room back but more than anything I has happy that my little girl was happy to be in her own room without one single fuss in the world. Always wanting to strike while the iron is hot I decided to push my luck and see how she would go in her own bed. She had such a beautiful cot, I had made her a patchwork quilt, there was an abundance of bamboo cotton sheet sets she had been given for her baby shower just waiting to be put to good use so I made up her bed, pulling all the sheets way way down so her little tiny body would be covered just enough to keep her warm but not to swallow her up and decided that I would give it a whirl. I popped her in her bed and decided that seeing as she was capable of self settling that I would just do what I normally do, put her in her swaddle suit, pop her into her bed and tell her I am going out and leave her. She slept!
I was so amazed that I checked on her three times while she had a nap. Despite the sound and motion sensor monitor I just couldn't pick my jaw up off the floor and believe that she had gone from sleeping in our room, to sleeping in her own room in her bassinet, to sleeping in her cot all in just two days and then sleeping through the night every night bar one and for 12 hours at that. WTF! Amazing, blessed and a huge sense of relief came over me.
Last night we dismantled the bassinet and I wrapped it up to put it away. My husband told me that we can now sell it if we like, we can buy another one for the next baby (we'd like to have another baby down the track but not any time in the near future) I said "are you crazy? I'm not that ready to end an era" I can do the big girl bedroom but I will hang onto the bassinet and hope that it can stay tucked under my sons cot until another baby comes along and then I'll think about selling. For now, sweet dreams my children.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
It's not all toys and change tables in this house- REVISED
One of my most favourite things to do is decorate my home. I am constantly looking for new ways to bring life, colour and character to the furniture, walls and all the rooms and living spaces. I get asked all the time by friends and family where I get my inspiration and ideas, where I purchased pieces from and ways in which to keep things clutter free and organised. However on one of my many hundred daily trips up and down our steep flight of stairs I stopped and had a really good look at our lounge room. I was saddened by its appearance. At one point it was my most favourite place next to my bed in the whole house. It was once a warm and inviting room, the heart of the home, lots of scatter cushions thrown on our red leather lounge, flowers I had picked out every Saturday morning at 6am from Flemington flower markets sat next to the TV and on the coffee table lined up in matching vases, books on the glass side table and a scratch free, mark free, pristine shiny lacquered coffee table.
Fastforward a few years and the room was now bare. The cushions had been removed as I couldn't be bothered trying to soak off finger prints and snot smears from dirty little fingers and noses that had used them in a similar fashion as one would a wet wipe or old tea towel, the coffee table was probably more aptly used as fire wood, it had the deepest of gouges in its surface, every edge had been scratched from the dogs nails as it jumped up and down on it hunting for food, every corner had a kiddie bumper on it to prevent the corner from gouging out a childs eye or making an indent in their forehead. Every corner of the 8 sharp square wood handles on the draws also too had a rubber corner. This one coffee table was covered in a total of 20 soft kiddie safe bumper rubber corner thingies and I'm not exagerating. It looked atrocious not to mention the top 4 corners had been glued, reglued and then glued down again with brown liquid nails and then screwed into the wood to keep them in place. I should also make mention that the glass side table I touched on above, it found a new home out the front of the house on the grass medium strip with a "free take me" sign. Within minutes it was gone. It was only a few weeks later that I realised that it too was actually a replica (at least I bloody hope it was) of a quite expensive moulded glass side table. I pray that it wasn't an original as it was a present/hand me down. Oops!
That same day I set out to bring my house back to life. My son was now at the age that we could have a discussion about the use of cushions as snot rags so I went forth to the internet and bought a whole heap of new ones and two big poufs to bring colour back to the room. I picked out browns and reds and blues and pulled out a few old cushion covers from my large stash to mix it up. I got a black permanent texta and went around and coloured in all the gouges and little paw/nail marks in the coffee table so that they weren't as obvious (don't! I know!) and added a new mat under the table too. As much as I toyed with the idea of throwing the thing from a cliff it was the perfect height for my son to use to put toys on so I just sucked it up and told myself that maybe in 20 years time when the kids had moved out I would buy myself a new coffee table.
Over the next 6 months the updates spread through the house. We had made it through the stage where crawling and first walking toddlers pull down everything in sight and must inspect, chew, ingest and destroy every single one of your precious possessions and even though baby would eventually start on her own path of destruction I was tired of the appearance of my home. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't about to go and put a whole array of glass votive candles and vases back on the coffee table or my crystal Royal Doulton matching photo frames that were a wedding gift from my maid of honour in arms reach, but what I did do was invest in a few child friendly pieces.
First was the mother of all toy wardrobe/chest/combo's that would house the growing plethora of toys we had accumulated and gave them the respect they deserved by grouping like toys and sets together. I proped colourful childrens books ontop of the tiers along with additional buckets to house the big chunky toys that didn't fit in the toy bins. I made a soft area for bean bags, poufs and pillows in front of the TV that would separate the open plan lounge area into sections along with large foam mats and rearranged the lounge room a little to accomodate the changes. With just a few dollars and a few hours down the lounge room was already looking better and I started to like it even more than I did pre-children. It resembled the home of a family now and that bought warmth to my heart.
Below are these updates in photo form as well as where to find most of the items you see. I hope they inspire you to make cheap and cheerful updates to your home if and when needed.
These cushions would have to be my most favourite from my collection. I am cushion obessed. Cushions can change the whole feel of a room and every few months I mix up the colours and patterns or go out and buy some more to keep up with cushion trends and welcome in new seasons- neutrals for Winter and bold striking patterns for Summer. I never spend more than about $20 on each. First of all the material required to make a cushion is less than a half a meter for a standard 40cmx40xm cushion and unless you're buying cushions made from French silk then paying $100 just for the cover is daylight robbery. This doesn't necessarily mean that I make cushion covers often, though I should and I could, it just means that with material costs and labour no cushion cover should really cost you more than $20-$40.
From L-R
- Ikea Sanela Grey floor cushion cover $16
- Ikea Kajsa Trad Black & White floor cushion cover $15
- Old Ikea cover- not available anymore
- eBay Bird Cage cushion cover $14.99
- Old Ikea cover- not available anymore though they have loads of the same size small rectangular cushion covers in stock that are just as funky.
I get asked about this masterpiece here all the time. We have toys in every single room of our house including the bathroom and the laundry. If you're not careful they will take over your life let alone your house. Prior to the addition of this toy wardrobe we had all the toys in the green plastic tubs you can see here. Small toys in one bin, medium in another, large toys in a box under the stairs but come Christmas those bins were as useless as tits on a bull.We started off with the the three tiered section on the right and added the two other single upright sets as the collection grew. Altogether it cost approx $440 and is worth its weight in gold. It is pretty pricey but buying the three individual sections over about 12 months meant that the $440 didn't have to be dished out straight away. Beyond housing the toys in an orderly fashion- duplo with duplo, tool set with tool set pieces, car and trucks altogether it has helped my son play with one toy at a time rather than pulling everything out at once and making a right mess. He has learnt to put things back where they came from and knows where a particular toys is rather than rumaging through trying to find a needle in a lego haystack. I have used chalkboard labels on the front of each box which I bought from Bright Star Kids online. You use a soft chinagraph pencil which wipes off with a wet wipe when you need to change the label info.
(prices for unit with boxes shown in link minus lids)
- Trofast combo $181
- Trofast single combo 91cm $107
- Trofast single combo 145cm $152
On the left are my poufs. At first the idea was a purely decorative one but they have since come in handy as additional seating for when we have lots of friends and family over and are currently propping up my feet while sitting on the lounge. The jigsaw mats are from Bunnings and have saved the floor boards more than I know from being more scratched than they already are, more scatter cushions and some bean bags for chillin out on infront of the TV.1. Poufs- Ezibuy.com.au
2. Mats- Bunnings- Polytuf Foam Mat with holes set of 4- $14.90 though last time I bought these they were on special for $9.
3. Cushions- Ezibuy.com.au
4. Left beanbag- kmart (looked way better in the picture on the packet than it does in real life but you get what you pay for right?)
5. Right beanbag- Mojo kids beanbag from eBay which cost about 3 times the price of the large beanbag on the left but this is the real deal in kids beanbags and could most likely withstand a nuclear bomb it is so well made. They are currently being sold for $47.90 which is a right deal and a lot less than what I paid a year ago.
Cute little tent from Ikea- Cirkustalt $29.99
I love, love, love my green apples in a vase. I look at them every day and smile. They have bought new life to my kitchen. I stole this idea from Dan and Danni off The Block. It seemed that once they did it everyone else on the show did too and therefore I had to follow suit. The apples aren't looking their finest here, I need to update with some fresher of the Granny Smith variety, but if you don't dig green you could do any fruit that lasts a few weeks like lemons, red apples, oranges or even fill it with some old school match boxes- my mum and dad did this a long long time ago and had match boxes from nearly every corner of the globe back when smoking was cool or coloured rubber bands or anything colourful that catches the eye.2. Apples $3/kg
No boring kettle and toaster here, these are my red Morphy Richards toaster and kettle from way back. Morphy Richards now have a new range of colours but me personally, I'm not a fan. I'd much prefer to hold out for the Breville lime kettle and toaster combo below to hit our shores.
My photo wall is the focal point of our house. I have friends and family who have visited our place a hundred times over that still stand and stare at the wall for hours. I regularly change the photos with both recent and old prints and then even I stand there for hours looking over them all.To do this properly I strongly suggest laying out all the frames onto the floor in the design you want and taking a photo of what you decide on. For this job we went with Wall Mates from Bunnings that drill into the gyprock, I just don't trust those 3M sticky tabs to hold anything other than feathers. This does mean that there are about 300000 holes in the wall as there was a few misalignments along the way but you can patch, sand and paint later on. I bought most of the frames from Hot Dollar. The 4x6 were between $3-$7 and the larger ones ranged from $9-$15. I reused a lot of old ones and have swapped them over and updated them over the past few years. To fill in the gaps I have put up trinkets, some of my sons art pieces and the shell body of some sea urchins I collected down at La Perouse many moons ago.
This did take a bit of balls to do. I was concerned about what the wall would look like when the frames came down and what happened if I got bored with it? Well, the wall will look terrible after but like I said, it can be patched and sanded and painted and although it will never look new again and a little bumpy and a little dodgy this wall was always calling for something pretty full on, just look at it, it is huge. It is a big undertaking and best done slowly, making sure all frames have those little hooks in the back will really help, something we learnt the hard way and had to remedy with small hooks and picture wire which was nothing short of a pain in the arse and only tripled the time it took to do this. The frames tip and wobble a bit and after a few weeks with vibrations from walking upstairs they do need to be pushed back in place with the broom for the high ones but I never regret doing this and have no intention of taking it down AT ALL! It is pretty hard to get bored with something like this as it can so easily be changed with new photos, new frames and new bits and bobs in between.
This is our "kitchen catch-all" from Ikea. I am not sure it was ever going to stand a chance to be used for chopping on. As you can see here it is being used for anything but that job, instead houses more junk but that in itself is a handy job in this house. We used it once or twice to wheel out and pop coffee cups and the kettle, milk, sugar etc on top when we had parties but that job too has been retired. None-the-less I love it and it fills the little void in the kitchen as well holding all the oily pots and pans and our white board and baby bottles and sippy cups and tissues and water bottles and you name it. I plan on painting it sometime in the near future as I am not the worlds greatest fan of birch and it does lend itself to some paint as it is totally unfinished and pretty raw when up close.- Bekvam Kitchen Trolley (Ikea) Birch $79.00
So, I have been really slack in doing this and was at a friends house on the weekend and noticed she had her little girls height up on a sticky chart on the wall. Aside from the record of height in my kids Blue Books I hadn't recorded it anywhere else and coming from me that was really slack as I record everything. It didn't worry me drawing on the walls and I was going to do that until I saw some giant rulers on Etsy as well as the pull down height chart that the boys- Mike and Andrew had in their guest bedroom on The Block. I ended up getting this one from Domayne.
1. Domayne 2 meter Guage Wood Depth Ruler $79.95
Like I always say, art needn't be expensive. This is a poster that I bought when I was at uni doing my under-grad. I can't exactly remember why posters were being sold at uni out on the playing field as random as that was but when this one caught my eye I needed to have it. It's Green Turban (Le Vert Jade) by Tamara De Lempicka and was about $10 from Blue Dog Posters, a far cry from the $200,000 someone recently paid for the original artwork. The poster size was pretty standard so the frame could be purchased ready made from a framer and way way back in 2003 it was only $20. Framing has now become a lot more expensive but don't settle for the little place that only does "custom" work. A lot of posters are standard large frame sizes so shop around and find someone that already has the frame ready made. You can even mount it yourself and save yourself even more money.Sydney Art and Framing Supplies at Silverwater sell loads of ready made frames. They are grossly cheaper than getting a custom job. http://www.artandframing.com.au/
This lithograph was a 21st present from my brother. It's Salute to Five Bells by John Olsen with the poem Five Bells by Kenneth Slessor below which inspired the art work itself. 
If you prefer to make your own art pieces for the house then a material covered canvas could be a good alternative to poster art. This is a large canvas from Bunnings covered in some Ikea fabric. The fabric choices are endless and Ikea are always updating their prints and patterns but don't be limited to Ikea. I discovered a while back that Spotlight have stepped up their game and have some great fabric choices too. I found that in years past it was pretty dire but their range is much better now and you could even try some textured fabric if you didn't like patterns and prints.
I love this picture of New York City. It pictures the Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan NY and I could stare at it forever. It was originally hung in my brothers Newtown Cafe but now lives in my bedroom. It makes a great statement as it's huge. I'll let you guess where it's from...did you say Ikea? Bingo!- 1. Ikea Premiar Picture printed on polyester 200cmx140cm $249
Don't be fooled, all those draws weren't nearly enough storage for my bathroom. It really left me no option but to indulge in my other obsession which is woven baskets. I'm sick for sea grass and these little numbers from Kmart that fit perfectly under my bathroom sink and cupboards are great for keeping the curling wand and straightener and hairdryer and hair brushes and all sorts of bathroom junk. Sadly the S-Bend stands in my way of filling the underneath section with 5 perfectly positioned baskets hence the odd gap.
Do you hate chrome shower caddies? I do! They claim to be non-rust but by merely being in the presence of water they seem to disintegrate and the rust has not gone down well with the grout in my shower. As a result of one too many shitty shower caddies the grout is now this rusty brown colour which no amount of harsh chemical can remove and while the orange plastic isn't really my colour I wasn't left with two many other options when it came to plastic hanging baskets from Hot Dollar. It was these or pink sparkly numbers. These baskets are $2.50 and can hold about 1000 times their own weight, just look at the collection of products above. They don't rust, are well out of the way giving me more space in my shower and hardly get wet because they are up so high.
This is another one of my great storage finds. The gap between the bath on the left and the shower screen on the right was only 34cm wide. Trying to find something to house even more junk was hard because nothing really fit in between this space. Prior to finding this storage unit I had another large woven basket there. It got wet and I won't make you sick with what happened when I picked it up one day and realised it probably should never have gotten wet. I hunted high and low to find something narrow enough to fit in this space. I toyed with getting a tall narrow CD/DVD rack to hold all the items but this was the communal mummy/kid bathroom so unless I was going to nail the CD rack to the wall it wasn't the safest option. We had a CD rack in my husbands bathroom which was brilliant for holding creams and lotions and potions but was out of the way of the kids so it could easily be blocked off from little hands. I found this exact same storage unit which is chrome but funnily enough the non-rust chrome which they should probably have used in shower caddies and let me tell you it's been soaked to the core by little would-be bath swimmers and is still not yet rusted, on an online bathroom storage supplier for $90. I thought it was a bit steep so copy and pasted the product name into google and found the EXACT same one (picture above) at Office Works for $39.00. Bargain! It's a little rickety but for $39 who cares.
1. Office Works 5 Draw Chrome Trolley White $39.00
I am in love with Chevron and when I was trawling through the Target online store snapping up a bargin on their 1000 thread count sheets for 40% off I noticed they had this pillow on one of the beds in their pictures. I nearly fell off my chair. I had been tossing up whether to grab some chevron printed cushion covers from Etsy for a few weeks but when I found this available in Australia I was in chevron heaven. This cushion is only available instore and I was lucky enough to grab it for $9 also on sale. They have them in yellow, green, red and orange as well as a black and off-white chevron print too. Target actually had a pretty cool range of scatter cushions which I plan on keeping an eye on when next doing a cushion update.
When my bedside table touch lamp died a small part of me died too. Once you go touch lamp you won't want to go back to anything else. I hunted everywhere for the same touch lamp so we had matching ones, even sort of matching would do but I couldn't find anything in my budget or my taste. To Ikea I went. They didn't have touch lamps but they did have these cool work lamps. They were way out of my budget as well but when I saw them I couldn't resist. The tray underneath is a serving tray which helps to keep everything on the table and sticky fingers at bay.2. Ikea Klack tray $14.99
I'm always searching online before I make any purchase. As it was nearing the time when my little boy would graduate from the high chair to his own little table I went in search of something that would not only fit in with our furniture but that would stand the test of time. This doesn't actually fit in with our dining table and chairs at all but who cares, it's gorgeous and was really well priced and not much dearer than any of the other sets available. The table top is gloss 2pac MDF, I beg my children to try and dent this, it's heavy and super hard wearing. There are loads of online furniture stores that sell replica furniture both in adult and children size in various grades, some better than others. This set is from Glicks Furniture- http://www.glicksfurniture.com.au/.
My Tolix stool was one part ornamental one part impulse purchase but has come in such great use and gets used all day every day. This is another Glicks Furniture purchase.- Glicks Furniture- Xavier Pauchard Replica Stool
In addition to The Block, a lot of my inspiration for keeping my home bright and fresh and funky comes from the show Home by Novogratz and Nine By Design on Foxtel. It's my one home improvement TV program indulgence as all the others leave me totally uninspired. Both shows are centered around husband and wife design team Courtney and Bob Novogratz. These guys have 7 kids and have managed to build an amazing interior design empire. They are at the forefront of quirky home design and I love everything that they do. They mix old with new, luxe with less and are always unearthing an up and coming artist or showcasing some of the more left of centre artists that you rarely hear about. They will happily mix a $50 rug with a $40,000 desk but it's not about the $40,000 desk it's about a whole new look and approach to living that mixes prints and bold colours and modern design with antique pieces or pieces that you have bought back to life with a splash of colour DIY style. I love that! http://thenovogratz.com/
I should also credit Ikea given that half of what I own is an Ikea purchase and I love that the latest addition to the Ikea family in Tempe is about hmmm...15 minutes drive from here. I am always inspired and I have never ever left their store empty handed. They suck me in every time and I love it because I always come home with another few dollars worth of smiles plus a scatter cushion that I have to try and talk my way out or hide from my husband. I have never once had an issue with quality or with putting together an item or a missing bolt or screw or allen key. They will gladly exchange or refund which is a good thing in my books because sometimes things don't always look the way you planned them to look in your home and no one likes to be the owner of a thick shag pile poo brown rug with nowhere to put it.
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