Jeya

This is where Jeya likes to lie while she is waiting for the sun to hit her bed in the mornings.... Yes, it is in the middle of the garden. We have learned not to feel attached to any plants in the backyard as they have a tendency to become somewhat flattened.

New Baby Card

I made this card for my friend Kellie who just had a baby girl.

Interesting time was had shopping for the baby - I refuse to buy something pink for a baby girl, so we found a nice green item of clothing for her. Since when is green for boys? The tag said it was for a boy! So I cut that part off the tag. Problem solved!!

Weekend Lunch at home - fresh bread

I baked some delicious fresh bread using a packet of Laucke Crusty White Bread Pre-mix. The 600g bag - it makes up a nice big loaf of bread. We don't have a bread maker (which would be a dangerous thing...), so I just mixed it and made it by hand. Very easy, and very very tasty! All you do is mix 375ml of water with the contents of the pack, knead it, leave it to rise, punch it down and nead a little, put it into a tin, leave it to rise again and then bake it in a 200C oven. It only took about 30 minutes to cook in our oven, but it said on the website to bake for 40 minutes.

We waited for it to cool a bit before slicing it up for our lunch

Janet ate her warm slices of bread with margerine & smooth peanut butter

I made my slices of bread into a salad sandwich, with tomato, lettuce, beetroot, onion & some grated salad (I think Woolies calls it rainbow salad) from a packet (it contains grated carrot, broccolli stalks & beetroot)

Grainwaves - the NZ ones!

I got some of the New Zealand Grainwaves from the Friendly Grocer down the road. (I go there on Sundays to buy the paper, so we have to have some Grainwaves as well). I got the cheddar flavour, since the new Australian Grainwaves do not come in this flavour. So delicious! And since we eat them from our little plastic Ikea bowls, they last us a couple of days.

Cats

Sometimes our cats get a little close to the camera.....

This is Jaspa's nose

and these are Jaspa's freckles

This is Monty's nose

Mashies!!!

Everyone rejoice - Mashies are back at KFC. YAY!!!!!

YUM!!!!!!!!!!

Sleepy Animals

All of our animals have gotten themselves into a routine whereby at a certain time of the night, they take themselves off to bed......

Jeya actually spends most of the day on her bed, but she would feel left out if I didnt include her here also :-)

foodcourt dinner

On one of our Friday night shopping expeditions. I had the Vegie Burger Value Meal from Hungry Jacks. I don't love the Hungry Jacks Vegie Burgers, but they are the only ones available at Grand Plaza on Friday nights, so sometimes I get one. Usually when Subway has run out of bread.

they went a little overboard with the sauce on this occasion!

foodcourt lunch

Another weekend lunch at the food court at Grand Plaza.....



For me, some sushi.... (from the shop near the chinese shop, I can't remember its name, but its where I always buy sushi from, its NOT the actual Sushi shop that is also inthe food court)

vegetarian Sushi (with tofu, carrot & cucumber, I removed the cucumber before I ate it)

Avocado Sushi

and V. :-)

For Janet - a bacon & egg burger - from the Outback Carvery. It had sausage on it too, which was a pleasant suprise.

Rivers

We went on another little expedition to Riverlinks Shopping Centre. First stop was lunch!

I had another wrap from The Ozi Wrap shop. DELICIOUS!!!! They put any salad items on it that you want for no extra charge - EVERYTHING is included! Brilliant!!

I ate my wrap while Janet waited for her lunch to be made at the Bucking Bull shop

Janet had a Lime Milkshake


And a bacon & egg roll.

Since it took so long, when Janet's lunch was ready, I went and got myself some potato gems. Just because. I think they should let you buy just 5 only potato gems. That would get them out of my system. Not that I am complaining about having to eat a whole cup :-)

After lunch, we hit RIVERS! yay!!!!! I got some shirts and a pair of work pants YAY!!!! We love Rivers!!

Biscuits

I made some biscuits for Janet. Or Cookies. Depending on who you are and which name you prefer :-)

I used a recipe for Vanilla Butter Biscuits from good taste magazine, march 1999 issue. I altered the recipe a little to turn them into

Maple Cinnamon Butter Biscuits.

ingredients

125g butter

75g caster sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

2 tbs maple syrup

2tsp cinnamon

115g self raising flour

100g plain flour

2tsp milk

cinnamon sugar for rolling in

1. preheat oven to 160 C

2. beat butter, sugar, vanilla, maple syrupo & cinnamon until creamy

3. sift together flours and add gradually to the butter mixture alternatively with the milk to form a soft dough.

4. roll into tablespoon sized balls, roll these balls into cinnamon sugar. place on trays about 4cm apart.

5. press balls down with a fork slightly

6. bake in oven for 15-20 minutes, or until golden.

Out to Dinner - August

We went to the new Montezuma's at Browns Plains. This time we made a booking for 6.30 Saturday. When we got there, they didn't have our booking. They wondered if it was booked under Marshall instead. uh, no. Read. or anything that sounds like Read. Oh yes, for 9 people at 5pm? uh. no. For 2 people. at 6.30pm, which is now. So they squeezed us in anyway. Perhaps we would have been more fortunate if they couldn't fit us in :-)







The menu's here are large. they take up half the table. And the staff give you lots of time to read it. Lots and lots of time. We eventually placed our order, and also ordered a bottle of water. It said on the menu that drinks had to be ordered at the bar, so Janet went over to order some soft drinks. She was sent back and told they'd send a waitress over. Eventually we got our soft drinks, and eventually we got our water. Both of which we finished before our food arrived. (we were expecting a wait - it warns of this on the menu, something about freshy preparing ach meal? like this is unusual?)



While we were waiting, a couple behind us left after only reading the menu, and another table of 5 left because they had been waiting for their food for so long.....



Eventually our food arrived. Yay. Actually, its not our food. Its chicken and we didn't order chicken, its someone elses food. And then, our food arrived.....YAY

hmmmmmm maybe not yay. that looks like meat. I think this is meat. yes, its meat.

My vegetarian meal turned out to contain meat. I had to go searching for a waitress to bring over to check it out. She took it away, so I was waiting again.....

Meanwhile Janet at her Albondigas - mexican meatballs with sauce and cheese on a bed of rice. This was very hot (steam was coming out of the meatballs for the whole meal) and a bit bland.

Eventually my actual meal arrived Vera Cruz - Cheese Enchillada, bean burrito, rice & beans. It was ok. all a bit bland and boring really, and the cheese enchilada was way too cheesy, and the bean burrito was way too soggy.

When we went to pay, they told us that they would only charge us half price for one of the main meals because of the long wait. When we told her what had actually happened, she gave us a card for a free main meal on our next visit. I don't think we will be rushing to use that one.

Sea World Food

There is a sign when you go into Sea World that says you are not permitted to bring in any food (although they did not check our bags....)





For Lunch, I had the only vegetarian item I could find - a cheese & salad roll. It was premade, so I had to have it as it came. It had Cheese, Tomato, Lettuce, Carrot & Cucumber (which I removed). Quite tasty, but too cheesy for my liking.

Janet had a pie

And we chared this Churro before we watched the Sea Lion show. They are very sneaky with food carts at the front of every show as people wait for it to start.

Sea World

We have bought a special Queensland pass which lets us into Seaworld, Movie World and Wet & Wild as many times as we like until June next year. So that our weekends sorted :-) We went to Sea World on the Ekka holiday. We saw all the shows and all the animals - next time I want to go on some of the rollercoasterish rides.

Shark Bay is the coolest place - I could stay and watch the fish swim by all day

We missed the penguin feeding, and when we went by, there were only 3 penguins visible in the enclosure. Will have to check it out again next time

The dolphin show was great !

This is the only glimpse we got of the polar bears. This one woke up from its sleep in the garden bed and went inside, never to return. I think it needed to jump into the pool for a bath!

The Sea Lion show is corny, but the Sea Lions are very cool