my beautiful friend from england arrives today

One of my best buddies arrives today from England, well actually from Thailand as they went there for a little stop over.

They are coming for Paul and Christine's Wedding, infact Matt is Paul's brother and he is married to my ex-house mate, she was one of my bridesmaids and I was one of hers..

I can't wait to see them, the last time was when we stayed with them in London in December, we didn't get to see them much as we were both busy busy but this time I have next week off and hope to hang out with them...

Anyhoo - I am very excited!!!!

do you fear being attacked?

Then this is the answer - disguise yourself as a vending machine!

Check out how they work here.

But make sure you tuck your feet in - or else you might give yourself away!

iron chef shenanigans

So yesterday I was running around like a headless chook (what the aussies call chickens) as I had to do all the things I normally do on my Thursday off. Housework, Washing, Shopping but I also had to get all the ingredients for last nights Iron Chef, get to church early with all ingredients an cooking instruments!

I got to the shops and amazingly managed to get most things - I had to go to a few stores to get everything but that's all good. The pressure was on though, I mean if I forgot anything that would be a nightmare wouldn't it!

I also needed to bring in all our electrical appliances so we could make sure that there wouldn't be a massive blow out = no more iron chef.... So I had to get all the ingredients and also about 5 bags worth of utensils, cooking bits and bobs, electric wok (it was all electric cooking baby - no oven or stove), our rice cooker and electric fry pan.. I carted all this stuff downstairs along with the food - I was exhausted before I even left the house...

I put everything in the car and as I pulled out of the garage I thought to myself - 'Self - should you maybe just get out of the car and check that you haven't left anything in the garage as you do have a lots of bags and you don't want to leave anything behind, you do live a long way away and it will be busy peak hour traffic?' - I told Self - 'Naaaaaaaa I am sure I have everything'. I drove away.. I picked up my lovely husband and we drove over to church - peak hour, over the Harbour Bridge, 35 minutes away...

We arrived at church, laid all our cooking stuff out on the 'Yellow Table' - we were the 'Yellow Team' - we had our secret ingredient - 'Coconut' (just for you Holly)! All was good. Or was it!

Our recipes were:

Starter: PRAWNS coated in Coconut and shallow fried with honey/soy/lime sauce on Spinach.
Main: Baltese FISH in a spicy coconut sauce.
Dessert: Pancakes with ICECREAM, Desiccated Coconut and Chocolate Sauce.

Then I looked and couldn't see the pink bag, the pink bag with all the fresh ingredients in - the FISH, the PRAWNS and all the the fresh produce.

PANICK! This was at 6.30pm - the evening started with pot luck dinner at 7pm and then the cook-off at 7.30pm - it was peak hour traffic = bad when you live where we live. SP said he would drive, he would not normally be able to make it back to our house and back to church in time - I felt awful, I am such a scatter brain... He might not even make it back in time for the cook-off let alone dinner - the poor thing.

I had left it in the garage. SELF WHY DIDN"T YOU GET OUT OF THE CAR TO CHECK!!!

Anyway my husband was very lovely, I had sent him a text message to tell him I was really sorry, he sent me a message saying 'you did great today, don't worry, I will be back soon' - how nice is he, I should marry him, Oh I already did.

Amazingly he arrived back AT 7.15pm - thankyou God, he reminded me I didn't have eggs (which he picked up) or ICECREAM (which I picked up at a local shop). He made it back in time to have something to eat and in time to start the cook-off.

Anyhoo, we made our dishes - the first time we had made any of the dishes ever, it was videoed true Iron Chef style and we had fun. We didn't win but we had fun!!! One of the other teams had full on practiced all of there dishes on the weekend - not us!!!! The Blue Team won and all in all it was a good night!

Happy Weekend to you all!

ps that was a bloomin long story!!

forget 'skippy' meet 'lucky'

annandale iron chef

Tonight at church we have 'Iron Chef' Annandale and our bible study is part of the action - we are the 'Yellow Team'.

We have been given a 'secret' ingredient that we are not allowed to tell anyone, and we have 45 mins to cook as many dishes as we like and at the end of it we get judged by 3 judges...

It should be fun, last night at our bible study 'social' we finally decided what we were going to cook, nothing like leavingittothelastminute.co.uk! As I am off today I am going to buy all the ingredients. I hope it all turns out OK as we haven't made any of the dishes before. I hope we don't have any food poisoning on our hands!!!! At the end of the day it's all about the participation - that's what I keep telling myself. We probably should have planned a little more in advance but I am a 'fly by the seat of my pants' girl - so let's see what happens!

Anyhoo, I must go, I have to work on my lip-syncing.

magpie photos

I am normally not a big fan of magpies BUT a few weekends ago when we were at my in-laws place there were these little baby magpies just outside the window. The parents kept coming over to feed them and when they did their little bodies jumped up, they opened their mouths and they started squawking - they were so cute. I took these photos of them - you gotta love the 75-300mm lens for zooming!

whack a poll

Click here to play!

It's not very nice is it! But I enjoyed hitting John Howard on the head a few times ;)

happy birthday little sis

It's my littlest sisters birthday today. She is 6.

Happy Birthday Madison!

I love you ;)

my fav idol knocked out

I am very disappointed as is Ruth, that our favourite Australian Idol contestant, Ben got knocked out of the competition last night. Two of the most popular guys were in the bottom two and I have no idea why.

There is no rhyme or reason to the Australian vote and I do sometimes wonder who is voting.

Both Ben and Matt are so good and to be honst I would have preferred to see Matt go - oh well, Australia has voted and Ben has gone...

Now I have to decide who to go for, I think it might be Carl.

viva la angleterre

So England are through to the Rugby World Cup Finals after beating 'Le Bleu' this morning.. They will play either South Africa or Argentina depending on who wins Monday morning, I think it might be Argentina...

Well done boys! Come on England!

my movie of the bogong moths

come on england

Well we did it, we are through to the semi finals after beating Australia on Saturday night. I started watching the game with only a glimmer of hope as Australia were the odds on favourites to win..

I was pleasantly surprised at how well England played and that they seemed to really rattle the Australian's with their game plan..

I guess what was an even bigger shock this weekend was New Zealand losing to France, another big surprise..

Anyway, I will say no more here ;) But I am very excited to see the England v France semi final on the weekend, we beat them in 2003, we could beat them again if we keep improving as we have...

Come on England!

moths in the city

I am soooooooo annoyed with all of the moths at the moment.. Apparently they are migrating and have lost their way, I hope they hurry up and figure out where they need to be going. They are driving me nuts, I really dislike them flying around, getting into our apartment and getting in my face!

On Wednesday morning while I was on the bus on my way to work I had my bag on my lap and put my hand in it to get something out and felt this flapping of wings.. IT WAS A MOTH! I quickly pulled my hand out, managing not to make any loud squeally noises as to draw attention to myself.. What was I to do next??

I couldn't let it out as it would have been flying all over the bus so I waited until I got to the city and took all the rubbish (I mean items of utter most importance) out of my bag to let the little critter out....

A girl who works in our office told me that yesterday she went to try on some shoes to discover there was a moth in one of them - EWWWWW.

BEWARE MOTHS CAN BE ANYWHERE!!!

call me old fashioned but......

.....when all the seats on the bus are taken and a more 'mature' person gets on the bus - I believe that a man should be the one to get up to let that person sit down... Or even school kids/teenagers with young legs.

Don't get me wrong I am happy to give up my seat for someone older or someone disabled but for some reason I like to see a man offer up his seat first, as I said call me old fashioned....

Instead of Sexy - Bring Chivalry Back ;)

another dove video

h/t David check out the scary stats on David's blog

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SP

Happy Birthday to my lovely husband ;)

the weekend

It has been hot hot hot here these last few days and it is apparently going to hit 34 degrees today - it's not even Summer yet - it's Spring!!!

So heaps happened on the weekend but I haven't got to write about it and even if it is a little bit of old news I am going to write anyway ;)

- Friday night we had our lovely friends, Mr and Mrs Lairdy over for dinner, I brought some scrummy cheeses for starters, cooked roast beef and veggies for dinner and then I had made a lemon cake for dessert - it was a fantastic night with fantastic friends and to top it off my gorgeous friend had brought me some shoes - purple shoes, they are very very cute and I love them!

- Saturday I got up early to watch England in the Rugby World Cup - WE WON!!! Which means we play Australia on Saturday night in the Quarter Finals, we have to win otherwise we are out... I really hope England wins.. After the rugby we went for a run and then we went to a friend's wedding - it was a long day but beautiful, the weather was gorgeous, my little goddaughter was there (I got many cuddles) and I got to see one of my good friends marry a lovely man...

- Sunday I had to work. The Challenge Conferences that we run for MTS have been on the last 3 weekends and so I went up to do some interviews with people who were attending - these will eventually go on a new DVD we are doing which explains what MTS is etc, it will be shown in churches but also to people who are considering an apprenticeship. I interviewed Ministers, people doing an apprenticeship, people thinking about doing an apprenticeship, people at theological college and the wives of those at college too (I think it's important to find out what it means to them too). It was really fun and being the 'shy' girl that I am I just loved chatting and asking my prepared questions... I didn't realise that I was going to be filmed but it all worked out OK and I wasn't too nervous once I got going. I will let you know when it comes out, we will probably put it on you tube too..

- Monday was a holiday. Again the weather was glorious, we chilled out went for a nice lunch near the beach. Then in the evening we went to watch 'Stardust'.. It was OK but not as good as I had hoped, it's a bit cute and some of the special effects were great but it was also a little cheesy.

Anyhoo, that's what I have been up too.. Happy Wednesday Hump Day.

i personally believe miss 'such as' hit the mtv awards

my beautiful God daughter

I got quite a few cuddles on Saturday from this beautiful girl ;)

a new addition

On Saturday we went to a wedding of a good friend of ours, on all the tables at the wedding reception there was a fish in a glass bowl. I went to my seat and found a note telling me I was now the proud owner of the fish on table 11.

The fish (our first pet together - ahhhhhhhhhhh) is a Siamese Fighting Fish and has been named 'Dory' though I keep referring to her as a him?!?!?! I have named him after 'Dory' for a couple of reasons:

1. Finding Nemo has to be one of my favourite movies.
2. In England a very common nickname for me was 'Dory', if you know me - it is really self explanatory and if you haven't met me yet you will get it once you do..

So we are now the responsible owners of a fish.... We got little Dory a plant, some food (always good to feed your pets) and some water cleaner stuff. So far so good.

My past history with fish is not all that good, I killed about 5 or 6 in the first 18 months of being in Australia, my favourite of which was 'Shark-Bait Ooh Ha Ha' - another Finding Nemo name. Let's hope I am a little better with this one.

see you in the quater finals Australia

So here we are again, not in the actual finals but in the quarter finals, England v Australia.

Sorry to my Aussie readers but being an English lass I will be supporting my home team England.

I am looking forward to the game.. Go England!