A Collection of Thoughts

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 ****

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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

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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 :)

 

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?

 

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.

 

 

Ipad Love

I make no bones about it before the Ipad was released I so wanted one and now its been out a while I really want one. So much of the work I do at this computer could be done on the ipad with the family instead of squirreled away in my room.

I have budgetted one into my convert to mac plan and I am nearly there and I gosh I can't wait.

In the meantime while have been  madly reading  up on everything  so when I finally get it I'll be ready to play I mean work..

I found these ipad skins  - the last one is by Kelly Rae Roberts  - I can't decide which one I like the best

   

 

 

I heart I{everything}

While I am not a mac user ( one day ! ) I have been converted to the I heart mac school with my IPOD and IPHONE and then today I say the preorder is up for the IPAD

I' m not sold on this - the price for one but I'm mighty tempted - maybe the next one??

 

and then I tell you if you want to know something sort it out yourself -as you may be aware I've been running and its hard to time and work out how far I have gone accurately. So  before my birthday (Oct last year) I started nagging Richard about a watch or something to help me time the distance he kept saying he knew what I needed and to just wait.

I said what about one of those cool nike things you put in ur shoes?

no  expensive shoes no no no he kept telling me

I said can't you just buy it separate?

Nope of course you can't he said

and I believed him

ANYHOW

My best friend's son works at the Nike outlet store -and I said to him again  just last week why can't I buy one of those sensor things separate - no you can' t he said  they want to sell shoes not just sensors

SIGH

so tonight I read on Cathy Zs blog about her Nike Sensor that she just puts in a pad thing on her shoe and I think

NOOOOOOOO

really? like I have been asking for all this time?? no couldn't be.

I kid you not I googled and had the answer in 20 sec YOU CAN BUY THEM

and what's worse is that you've been able to since 2006 if the yahoo answers are anything to go by

seriously??

kinda cross with myself for not looking into it

so now I want to take my cute tree vase back and have a Nike sensor given to me for mothers day - just joking I love my tree

 But hmm seriously I want one

I do have the watch Richard promised but you know what I can't work it - too many buttons and doesn't do distance

to save you some research

if you just have an ipod like me ( i don't run with my phone ) you need  the sensor and sport pack  $48  at Nike or Apple - and yes you can buy online

 

 or if you use your iphone or itouch  instead then you  just need the sensor chip which is $28

 

Not sure where Im going to find any of these gadgets but im thinking the friendly apple store at robina may send me in the right direction
So you will also need one of these type of things so you can pop the sensor onto your shoes

 
chip clip

lace lid

Marware pouch 

Good for tracking our walking too ???

So excited about this!