A Collection of Thoughts

Getting In the Picture

Janelle and Tammy have been regularly scolding me about making sure that I take pictures of me. I become more conscious of it each year after the Day in the Life project where I always take a picture of myself each day. But realistically with iphoneology there is no excuse-  I have a camera with me all the time and all I need to do is click away until i find one i can bear LOL You know how it is. Also I think back to the photos that I love - the very very scare ones of my grandma when she was younger - often kind of blurry with things cut off and random bits in the background- very iphoneology like I think.

So today I was determined to put myself in the picture and I hope to do it regularly.

 

 1. At the hairdressers - a long overdue colour and cut. I need to share my hairdresser story  I go to a little place in Helensvale and it's so so reasonably priced  $14 if I just want a trim. The last two times they have used a new colour process which takes a little longer it's like 40 minutes for developing and costs a smidgin more but lasts for ages and does a wonderful job of covering the grey. The best I have ever had as I am actually quite grey.  So all up was $49.50 today and I got a goodly way through Sing you Home - which I' m loving - by Jodi Picoult.

2.  Tals needed an "Englishman" costume for guides next week -so we decided a suit taken in would be the way to go- we found the perfect one at one of our favourite op shops for $9 for the two pieces - jacket and pants

3.  It's turned quite cool as the day went on -we were out and about wandering between stores- these are my bargain boots I bought at Target quite a few weeks back they are lasting well.

4. My fab sideboard find - I blogged about it earlier - and there I am in the shadow

5. As we were heading to Lifeline I noticed an Endeavour store I had never seen before - Oh MY goodness it's so fabulous ) I took lots of photos and will share the details and location later. My most favourite op store on the Gold Coast.

6. Heading home - tired and ready for an afternoon nap! I pulled an all nighter last night and went to bed at 5.00am this morning- I had a unit of work to get sorted for school and needed to get it happening. It took all night. I'll share the details round that later in the week too for any Education Queensland readers -I'm using the new Ed studio and oh my goodness so fantastic. Possibilities are endless.

and there you have it - getting in the picture.

What about you ?? I'd love to see you get in the picture. If you do - post a link here - or if you don't have a blog send me a piccy and I'll share it for you :)

 

 

 

 

Top Apps for Kids

I stumbled across this lovely blog in my interweb searching .

I am always on the look out for fun things for the girls to do on my ipad for trips in the car and while I'm not a huge fan of just games we do have some. This is an awesome blog for reviewing apps and I loved that they had quite a few for me to check out that suited the girls age ( 8 ) as many of the apps for ipads in particular are aimed at the  younger ones.

Bookworm - available here

LOVE this -we are all playing it -  Tals and I are great at it - and Daddy is a bit dodgy!

 

 Animal Creator -available here

The girls love this one - you mix animals up to make new ones and colour and add to backgrounds

 Motion Maths -available here

This is mostly about fractions- it makes it really fun-the girls like it and play it but their review was they think boys would really like it - LOL that could also be my non mathematic loving girls though :(- Mind you its all about relevance they can double and half a recipe in the blink of an eye - including all the tricky fraction cup measurements.

Slice it -available here

I love this one - it's really quite challenging and the girls do too

and just for fun - Cake Doodle available here

Hands down the favourite - and Sofs review on it - I can't believe it was so cheap you can make sooo many cakes and decorate them so nicely LOL

So they are our new favourites we are giving a whirl but do check out the blog for others that may suit your children's ages.

If you have any great kids apps I'd love to know- especially ones that will suit my girls

 

I Spy Mystery

One of the best parts of a trip to the apple store for my girls is the chance to sit and play on the computers. They always rush there with Richard which gives me time to shop in peace. He is in boy IT heaven and they are in game playing land.

Their favourite game is I Spy Mystery. After much harping I finally looked into the actual game and where buy it from.

Here is the little you tube promo. I had assumed it was a boxed game on the wall- which maybe it is but I did find it online.

It's managed - not sure if that is the right word through Big Fish Games - which you download as well.

The full games are not free - but you can try before you buy with an hour free trial available. The first one we purchased was only $3.50 as there is a coupon discount - NEW50 if you are a new customer.  The next two were $7.49 each.

So we have I spy Mystery, I spy Spooky mansion and I Spy Library has just finished downloading in our little game thingy at the moment.

The girls love them - beautiful  illustrations and challenging enough to keep them quite occupied but not impossible to cause tears :) they have both worked their way through I spy  mystery.

These are Scholastic games so fit under the educational banner - but even better there are complementary  mix and match games over at the scholastic website which are free.

I did find one version for the Ipad through the US  Itunes store but it didn't have a good read up so I didn't get it though the girls really wanted  me to.

Instead we are sticking with it on my Mac ( its also available for PC purchase too)

Here is the link for the ipad version of spooky mansion. Ive chekced out the sppoky mansion it's not super spooky- spooky things but not like gross things for those of you who have little ones.

 Happy spying!

 

 

 

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore

As a book loving family we are always on the look out for new things to read. The other night I stumbled across a really interesting video about a new book that had just hit number one in the ipad app store.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

“Morris Lessmore loved words. He loved stories. He loved books”

It's based on the book by William Joyce and has been developed by Moonbot Studios. It’s not really an app- more an interactive book. The story in itself is just delightful  - it is about people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favour. But its the actual animation and what you cab do using the app which adds such a dimension to the story. This is what I imagined books would be like on the Ipad and now they are.

At $5.49 it will be the best dollars you will ever spend. Now I will apologise in advance because I am totally smitten with this story and beautiful app so this post is filled with every link I can find to share with you.

 

 Here is the promo video :-)

and then I found these little videos on vimeo which goes through the making process You must watch !

There are nine parts in planned apparently ( but for the life of me I can't find where I read that  )  but only four are up so far .  Here is part one.

The Making Of Morris: Part 1 (The Power of Story) from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

You can see the rest here.

Buy the app here. Go now!

Love Love Love

 

Super Food Ideas App

Two months ago I tweeted /blogged eagerly about the soon to be released SFI app.

I love my ipad and we use it a lot in the kitchen when cooking - more so than a traditional recipe book. So the thought of one of my favourite cooking mags loaded to my ipad was very cool!

And it is - TOTALLY AWESOME.  I will never buy another paper copy of SFI.

Here is my take on why I love it - filled with lots of screen shots  :)

Firstly you buy each mag as it becomes available - it's $1.19 and they sit in your library like this.

When you want to flick through one just touch and up it comes- this is the June edition

 

rather then flicking through pages you actually scroll down -with clickable links as you go

click the article you like and it takes your straight to that page ( you can still flick through like a normal mag too ) - See how it has those little two circles - click recipe

takes you straight to the recipe in cook mode

which is  awesome when you pop your ipad in it's stand - the print is large and you flick through each step as you cook

If you click fact - it gives you all the nutrition details for the dish

another nice feature that is within the app is a total measure chart - all different weights and sizes - I am forever googling how many grams in 20 ounces etc- so now I don't need to

There is a variety of different ways to view that allow you to flick through readily and see articles at a galnce

My most favourite  feature is the index - each mag has it as a quick reference with a pic and title of each recipe in that mag - and once again click and you are right there

Some recipes also have a video button

and the videos usually show either techniques or tricks to difficult parts of recipes

The final handy feature is the option to bookmark - you can easily just click the bookmark of a recipe you love and it sits in your bookmark section - the nice thing about this is it is not specific to one issue - so you'll gather all your fav recipes and be able to retrieve them with one click - Far easier than flicking through a huge pile of mags thinking where the heck is the chocolate muffin recipe I wanted to try.

LOVE it- can't rave enough- the girls do too :)  - oh and there is a trial issue which is part of May that you can download for free to see if you like it - I think you will.

You can download the app for free here

Learning Chess

 Chess seems to be making  a resurgence in poularity. One of our librarians is running a chess club at school during the lunch hour and we have 17 boards - each day its a fight to see who can get to chess club the fastest and students are being turned away.

At the girls school they offer chess before school one day a week -though its $75  a term to join- eeeeek (no lessons just games ) .  Tals has been desperate to learn to play and wants to join at school but we can't get her there early enough nor can I justify the dollars.

We had borrowed a couple of different books from the library and Richard had sat down with her numerous times but she still wasn't really getting it.

I'll be honest I have no idea how to play.

 Last night we thought about searching for an app and we have found the best one!

 Its called Dinasaur Chess .

 

You start out as a wee dinosaur - on the left hand side of the screen shot - and it steps you through a series fo activities to learn about each of the pieces

 Then you work thorugh mini games to ensure you are moving correctly.

After that here are mini versions of games against a series of dinosaurs stepping you right up to a full game

 Its so fabulous - beautifully interactive -with support the whole way through. Tals has already worked her way through and is challenging dinosaurs to mini games.

I love the look of it I think Im going to give it a go too so I can learn how to play.

HIGHLY recommend it .  It"s not a free one but totally worth the $3.99. ( We paid $3.99 through itunes its $4.99 in the app store? Not quite following the whole app store versus itunes )

It is also available as a software game for mac and pc - you can see the details here  and the app is available here

 

 Tamar x

School Assignments

 

 ***** Playing catch up on posts I had sorted for last week but with a dribble of connection and no husband home I gave  up ****

via weheartit.com

Week Two of school and we are already knee deep in assignment work . The girls have settled onto their separate classes really well and are mostly completing the same curriculum from what we have seen so far. They both have a series of tasks to complete which they had some choice around. They are related to studying other countries and the format they present in is entirely up to them. There are nine sections to choose from and three weeks to complete three tasks.

Richard  headed off to Sydney for his first week of training so I was in charge LOL. It’s was a crazy week for me work wise ( when is it not ) and the girls started back at guides and  swimming this week too so for our timelines they had to get finished last weekend.

Tals chose to research a game that her whole class can play - She had to research the origin of the game and work out how they would play it. She decided on Scissors Paper Rock and is presenting the Japanese version instead. She also wanted to make a trophy so she could have a class tournament. She had to rope in a friend to help with the cutting of the wood - we are a little challenged in those things. Her trophy turned out great and she used a template on the mac to write it all up.( How good are they ???) I so love mac and that's what they use at school.

Sof decided to make a meal from another country - she chose tacos and researched mexican food. we also found a recipe for Mexican biscuits - which were really simple and totally yummy - the only problem is if you spill a packet of hundreds and thousands - then it's not so easy at all. SIGH. She had to bet a mark out of ten for her dish -so we had the tacos on Friday night while Richard was still home. She’s terribly upset he’s not here to have a biscuit. Sof made a keynote presentation - I had no clue how to use it but she got it sorted pretty quickly.

Next up is a weather comparison and a national anthem and then they are both finishing with an art project - Sof wants to go to GOMA and see the 21st century kids exhibition and recreate something she sees there. It's currently not open due to the floods. We planned to go tomorrow but still no sign of it opening. Tals wants to create a presentation on Street Fashion in Japan. No doubt you’ll hear more about those ones when they happen :)

While I work in schools I know things have changed its only now that I see the fun things my girls get to do and compare it to the stuff we used to do that I realise how different school is these days.

Oh and here is the Mexican biscuit recipe - super fast and yummy! They last a few days too so good for a treat in the lunch boxes.

 

 Mexican Biscuits

1 1/12 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup white sugar
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
sprinkles

 

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Cream, butter and sugar.
4. Add egg yolks and vanilla.
5. Mix in dry ingredients.
6. Shape into one inch balls.
7. Push your thumb through each ball to make a ring.
8. Dip rings in sprinkles and bake for ten minutes.
9. Cool on racks.

PS Thank you to those of you who are emailing me trying to get my emails sorted I'll post here when its all fixed - at the moment both accounts are working but the  bigpond one is sending me multiple copies... like many many many copies.

 

 Tamar x

Get More Value - Week Two

I'm excited to bring you my second installment of Get More Value - sponsored by Kia. If you missed last weeks here is the link

 
 Week Two - Reading Options

We are big bookie monsters in our family. I remember when I was younger - minus children and I used to buy a book a term - each school holiday as my treat. Richard used to say books were wasted on me because I read them too fast ;} aggh the horror thinking back on that all those years ago. ( Though I always had a huge pile from the library.)

Now things are different and with two little growing bookie monsters we have to be pretty savvy about our reading material - what we buy and what we borrow and where we buy from.

I have to admit though I am totally spoilt for choice.

Firstly with my fab fab ipad -  love it so much and it has changed the way I blog, surf and read :) I love reading my google lines on it . I'm also a fan of my kindle app  - though I don't love that so many books are not available in Australia- I do love that so many are FREE as is the actual Kindle app. I can also read in bed in the dark with just the light from the lamp - Richard likes that so the bedside light isn't on till the wee hours of the morning.

There are an increasing number of digital magazines coming out now too which makes for perfect reading. Some are free, others are just a token price. The only thing that I wish was that more traditional magazines were available digitally. I love to be able to bookmark ideas and make notes. Perfect for a PC Mac or Ipad :)

Some of my favourites .....

Sweet Paul - the latest edition just came out today.

It's filled with great recipes and always a heavy smattering of craft and styling ideas. This is the third issue now so if it hasn't been on your radar you can pop back and read some of the other ones too.

Here are some links for you

 Sweet Paul Blog

 Thanskgiving Treats

 Fabulous Fall

 Delicious Spring

Don't be fooled by the cover and think it's only recipes - totally not it's really worth the flick even if the seasons are back to front for us :) I am loving Paul's whole feature on wrapping  this issue.

 

 My other top free ones in no particular order

Small  LMNOP   Inspired Ideas  Maeve

 

And if you are happy to pay a few dollars -$2.99  then you can't go wrong with Toffee  which I have blogged about  earlier but just keep coming back to it - so  so pretty and filled with articles from some of my favourite bloggers.

Danielle

Katrina

Pilgrim

Amanda

 

 

 

 

 

If the whole digi online reading is not to your taste there's always traditional books :0- We have overflowing book cases and both the girls and I always have an ever growing to read or buy list.
We are lucky to have a borders down at Robina - I adore that place.  We can get lost in there for so long - it helps that they also have a Gloria Jean's smack in the middle - so we can coffee and read before we decide on definite purchases. They have a new rewards system - when you sign up you get a $20 voucher and then all purchases go to accrued points - you can read about it here.

While we love browsing in store and Borders does see alot of our hard earned cash I often find that Big W also have a decent range of books at 35% RRP always.  - and it's just a short walk from one to the other at Robina  so we have been known to wander back and forth buying one from here and one from there.

FInally I have to give a shout out to my all time favourite book depository - If you haven't browsed there you really must -  I inevitably find the books we have been coveting at considerably cheaper prices than anywhere else. They have FREE shipping and on average I find that it takes about 7 or so days to hit my mailbox from order. I have just placed our Christmas reading order - or should I say mine :)  I did manage to snaffle a couple of things for the girls too.

On my reading list is

 Unbearable Lightness       Paper Doll Primer                Dark Lover

I read a couple of great reviews about Portia de Rossi's new book so I'm keen to give it a go. The girls have a series of Paper dolls coming  from Belle and Boo so  I can't let them have all the Paper Dolly love themselves hence the Black Apple book and I am starting the Black Dagger Brotherhood series on Jilly's recomendation.

 

  

 Hand Stitched Felt   The Girls Colouring Book  The Girls Christmas Book

Hand stitched felt is for Talia along with some felt and more embroidery thread - It was recommended to me by Mel. Tals loves to stitch.  I have heard good things about the colouring book so I'll be saving those for a Christmas gift. The Christmas book comes in a boys version too- and is filled with lots of puzzles  colouring and craft etc so this will go in as a birthday present so they can begin to get christmassy ;)

At the moment book depository is offering 10% off all purchases too. The details are all here as to how to get your discount voucher - they do this every year - no catch :) Don't be afraid to sign up if you'd like me to  pop ur email in for you let me know :)

Well I hope that gives you some inspiration as to where you can get value for money for your reading material ;)  This post will stay up top for 48 hours so keep on reading through there will be new posts over the next few days.

If you are still on the look out for some bargains check out  the www.getmorevalue.com.au website which has been launched to celebrate the great value of new KIA Cerato Hatch.  My favourite deal for this week is purchase any product from logitechshop.com.au & receive a 20% Credit Voucher on your next purchase.

Happy reading and shopping

Tamar xx

 

 

 

 

Connected

via weheartit.com

 YES

Finally I am back and everything is up and running again. I mentioned the other day that my internet had slowed considerably since Christmas and had reached a point where I couldn't even get a page to load. After many frustrating phone calls to our service provider we have now been switched to a wireless business plan. Apparently there is a mobile tower  800m from our home that we can connect through and being on the business plan means we are only competing with business plan customers not every gamer known to man that we had been completing with. I have speed again and I can load a whole page I can actually load more than one at a time! Seriously from 3.00pm to 3.00am for the last three weeks we have only been able to get a skerrick of a connection.

 So now I'm back properly with much to update and organise :) My Imac is running beautifully I have worked out most of the things that I usually do and I also have CS5 installed again so I'm cooking LOL

 hopefully :)

 

Editing Photos

Today I had a workshop at the Apple store to try to see if I could work out how to manage all my photos and images - they are currently sitting on my external drive waiting...  I watched a great demo on a product called Aperture - which is much more advanced than Iphoto - I loved what it does. I learnt so much from the guy running the workshop he was a photo journalist in the US for 20 years before coming to work for apple AMAZING info.

So tonight I have spent many hours sorting the 20 odd photos that I downloaded from my camera and working out a new workflow. I'm trying to remember all he said. I think its going to happen for ne.

In the meantime I am still waiting for my serial no from adobe for CS5 and while aperture has some awesome editing processes 

1. Im clueless how to use them

2. I  can't work out how to layer etc  like I do in photoshop...

So Im booked in for another session next week.  In the meantime I'm emailing between my school laptop which has CS4 on it and my home mac - its slow and not really doing it to me because I'm struggling to work out where to save on the mac but I'll get there.

Im writing this all so in 3 months time and the stress is all over  I have a record of what has been filling a crazy number of my hours.

I'll share kinda where I am at.

This is a sneak peek at a secret project I am working on :) See are you impressed? I downloaded this photo resized it  and saved it to a file called blog photos and I have worked out where the original is too..

I know not so impressive really but its amazing how much you take for granted that you know how to do then all of a sudden you don't.

 

The other thing that I'm super happy about is that I now have the chance to create a real workflow and I'm confident to delete photos and save the edited ones.  I have to confess my other photo system was a shamozzle that I was constantly changing. 

I'm excited to have a back up too - which I never had before.
So its all going to be fine.

If I dont go mad working on the process :)

PS My blog posts may be a bit random over the next little bit as I have lots to share that goes back a bit so please hang in there :) Its all an adventure isn't it?