A Collection of Thoughts

The Passage

Being school hols and a lack of internet connection the girls and I have been doing some serious reading _ I'll share some of the stuff they have been into with you too over the next few days but tonight I just finished the Passage by Justin Cronin.  And I have just done a quick google to get the details behind it. I was lent it by a friend and hadn't really heard of it had only seen it in the bookstore. The cover is quite haunting and compels you to pick it up - so I had read the blurb a couple of times but kept putting it back unsure.

It's a huge book 800 pages - Heavy which I usually don't love as I read in bed and toss and turn building piles of pillows around myself to hold my book in place -and the bigger the book the harder this is to do LOL.

I loved it pure and simple  It was unputdownable - It reached a point where I just wanted to gobble it up but wanted it to go slower too because I could see it was coming to an end. The characters stay with you long past the last page. Some parts I feel like I want to go back and read again which is very unlike me!

I just read on wikipedia that the rights have been purchased for a movie I hope that happens.  The second one is due out in two years :) It's going to be a long wait.

 Here  are the details

"It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born." First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear-of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse. As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey-spanning miles and decades-towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun. With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterful prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction

source

Definately not a light or fast read but well worth the journey.  :)

 

Angus and Julia Stone

If you have been reading my blog for some time you'll know that music doesn't really figure prominently in my life - I love "songs" but have no real affliliation to anyone or any style. One of my  favourite apps is shazam because now I can actually start to name some of the songs I like and then download them in my itunes.

But mostly I listen to alot of  umm High School Musical Justin Bieber Pink Katy Perry  you get the idea - whatever goes and sadly quite often whatever my 7 year olds introduce me to LOL

A few weeks back I saw Angus and Julia Stone on a morning show  and liked their quirky look and mellow sound 

Tonight now I have connection ;)  I have finally downloaded some of their music and looked more into them - Totally loving it!

If you haven't seen their website you must go check it out - so fun - I love the photo page in particular the pictures are in frames-

and hand-stitched cross stitch welcome sign - etc  -totally worth a  good look here

Connected

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 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 :)

 

New Top

 I always struggle to find tops that are appropriate for umm my muffin top among other things :)  :) :)

I rarely find a button up shirt that buttons well - and so many of the casual shirts that fit balloon out and I look like I'm pregnant

 So I tend to wear cami/singlet tops with cardigans over the top. I saw this one in Target the other  day - Its a Hot Options brand which umm usually don't fit - and when I saw the elastic  around the waist I thought bleh thats  never goign to work but always the optimist I went to try on.

 If Trinny and Sussanah had been wth me I know they'd approve - The V neck perfect for my  umm curves LOL  The sleeve length  good  not stopping at the widest part of my arm and the  elastic waist covering my  tummy :) Light weight made out of a shimmery satin very pretty!

 And more importantly they come in a rainbow of colours I bought a grey one and then I went back and got  this purple and a  khaki. I'm thinking I may neeeeed  a aqua or teal blue too before Thursday - cause they are on special at the moment  25% off  - only  $26 something. I wore the gray one the other day with a  black cardi and blingy flower.

If you are kind of my shape you may want to give them a try :)

 Happy shopping
 

 PS I'm still working between two computers to edit images so I'm sorry the sizing isn't quite right on that cute fabric strip from pugly pixel - when I realised there was no way I was going back through the rigmarole of starting all over :)

 

 

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?

 

Milk + Cookie Favours

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This is so cute I'm crazily trying to think of a reason to use them!!
Tamar xx

I'm Back

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 Hello! is there anyone still here ?

I have had a little unexpected break  due to multitude of reasons which I'll share over the next day or so when I get all sorted. Thank you for the lovely emails and texts of where on earth are you I'm sorry to have just disappeared.

I have been working ( school work! ) marking QCS for 5 days straight

We finally took the leap to mac and have been working through the transition I know Im going to love it but Im not there yet

My suburb it seems is the worst in Australia for internet connection -  Its so slow now that Typepad times out before the compose page will even load. Richard has been battling wiht our provider to get some answers but some  googling and message boarsd have revealled that its just this area we are still on adsl1 and the exchange can not cope with the growth development. From 3.00pm to 3.00am its jammed with gamers and the speed is so bad. Makes trying to do anything really really difficult.

I've been still battling my asthma.  I'm on a new trial to see if I can get on top of it  but have another chest infection at the moment

Our library was hit by an arsonist two Friday nights ago thats where my office oh my goodness the mess its just so disheartening

and finally yesterday was Richards birthday and he was on hols so we spent yesterday and some of today doing fun family things

 I have many photos and stories to tell but tonight is going to be devoted to installing CS5 so I can whip up some stuff for a lovely site that have kindly invited me to be a guest designer .

 So all should be resuming as per usual very soon

 emails kinda out of control and I lost some in the transition but Im trying to get that sorted too :)

 All good

 I have missed my blog.

 

 

Marshmallow slice

Do you have this months Masterchef magazine??

There is an ad in there for a marshmallow slice

I have now made it twice and can confirm its really good and SUPER fast

Just in case you don't here is the recipe

• 1/3 cup  castor sugar
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup shredded coconut
• 3 whole wheat biscuits crushed
• 150 grams melted butter

 Mix together and press into a lined tin - bake for 20 minutes until golden  brown

  Topping

• 2/3 cup of  Strawberry Jam
• 1 packet of marshmellows - I only use a  250gm bag

While the base is warm spread the jam and top with the marshmallows - Bake again for about 7 minutes until top is slightly melted.

Cut into pieces. A little goes a long way and OMG so good with hot tea.

Thank you for your well wishes -  I headed back to the Drs today and we've changed the plan again :) Its all going to be good LOL :)

Don't forget to enter my chocolate giveaway here

 

I {heart} chocolate! - a giveaway :)

Chocolate gets a fairly regular mention on my blog and in my recipes - so imagine my joy when I was contacted by NuffNang to see if I would be interested in testing the new Bar of Plenty blocks of chocolate from Cadbury. While I rarely have any a specific advertising I happened to already have a half eaten block of the Roast Hazelnut and Honey Roast Cashew in my fridge and they were promising to send me some more! Vanessa also asked if I'd like to host a sweet giveaway for my readers so I quickly agreed.

My package arrived last week and after already eating a block or two ( it's been a busy week! LOL ) I  wanted to try something different with the ones I was was given so the girls and I had a quick think tank about our favourite chocolate recipes and which ones we should try these out on.

For the record Cadbury have released two new flavours - Bar of Plenty Oven Roasted hazelnut and cashews gently flavoured with honey & Berry fruit and crunchy vanilla shortcake. The hazelnut one is my favourite  and the berry one is the girls favourite - but we really will eat both very happily roflol

So for our first recipe share we have a great dessert - decadent though soooo simple and never fail. Inexpensive too - under $5 in total. The Bar of Plenty chocolate is on special in my local woolies I noticed the other day. - even better right?  ( It's also available at Coles and IGA )

Bar Of Plenty Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients

• Roast Hazelnut and Honey Roast Cashew Cadbury Chocolate  ( 190gm block )
• 450mls pouring cream
• Strawberries for decoration ( optional )

Break the chocolate into pieces

Melt  -in the microwave - 2 minutes on 70 % heat

Whip the cream until soft peaks form

Fold the melted chocolate into the cream

Place in cups

Pop some strawberries on top. Refrigerate until required.

 

YUM YUM YUM

If you want to make it for 6 people I would recommend 600ml of cream and two of the Bars of Plenty.

I used the Hazelnut and Honey Roast Cashew chocolate for this recipe  but I think the Berry Fruit
and Crunchy Vanilla Shortcake one would make a wicked mousse as well and you could top it with raspberries!

For your chance to win a $50 worth of chocolate goodies from Cadbury all you need to do is answer the following question-

“Why are you in love with Chocolate”?

Blog or tweet the giveaway and pop back here and let me know and that will give you another chance to win :)

Entries will close on the 5pm EST on 20 September 2010 and I will draw a winner shortly after.

Make sure you check back as I'll be sharing our second recipe using the Berry fruit and crunchy vanilla shortcake chocolate when I announce the winner.

Happy chocolate eating  :)

PS Cadbury is running a promotion too and you can read up more about their new chocolate on their site. This  giveaway is sponsored by Nuffnang and Cadbury.

Please see the terms and conditions Download FINAL TCs

 

 

 

Hospital :(

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A crazy 24 hours for me marked by a mad dash by ambulance into hospital. I've never been in an ambulance before it was very interesting those guys works so hard! Unfortunately the Gold Coast private hospitals were on by pass so I was admitted to Southport Hospital. Amazing  staff but incredibly overworked and its just kind of a chaotic experience in the accident and emergency section -  such a range of conditions - and while I needed to be admitted-  there were no beds available. So I spent the whole night and much of today there in A and E with the ambulances toing and froing I got no rest at all. In the end they agreed to discharge me despite my peakflow not measuring what it should and I finished my final consult with the specialist standing in the hall before discharge because there were no chairs left and they had already reallocated my temporary bed.

The whole experience at Alllamanda or Pindara has always been much calmer I have to say. That being said my Dr at Southport was very knowledgable about asthma and took a long time consulting with me re my history and they seem to do a really good education program too. I heard most peoples stories its impossible not and on every discharge it was you can't go till you've seen  the psych the lung guy or in my case the asthma specialist which I think is really good. I got some great advice and a strict strict regime of things to follow so fingers crossed this may work.

So I'm on go slow for a few days hoping to shake this latest bout of asthma and hoping not to have to go back in tonight. Much blogging and googleline lines to catch up on I struggled to keep my phone in my hand with all the bits and bobs I was connected to LOL. and for the record - my aunt who's an oncology nurse at John Flynn said If I had driven into  A and E at one of the private hospitals then I would have been admitted they only close to ambulances. Good to know last night we didn't have a choice and had to get in fast but if there is a next time then that's what I'm doing!

HOW cute are these cupcakes??  Stay tuned I have the most awesome giveaway coming up- chocolate related :)