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Saturday, January 29, 2011

My Exciting Date Night!

Wowsers what an exciting night out!
We went out to dinner at Salut (YUM!) and to watch the lovely Erin Cole-Baker and her brother do their thing.


They were GREAT and we had an awesome night out. I got to catch up with some friends I haven't seen in ages and we finally headed home at about 11am.
Let me rephrase, we TRIED to head home! We got most of the way after dodging major flooding on the main road, but we were stopped dead when we got about 1km from our road. We couldn't even see the road anymore, it was completely covered and too deep to attempt crossing! To give you an idea how deep it was here is a pic of the road in last weekends flood. This whole stretch of road was under water! The fencepost by that tree was completely under water!


We tried heading back into town but it was flooded in so we were stuck in the middle! Luckily for us we have nice friends in the middle who took us in! Also luckily our babysitter was hubbys brother so he didn't mind staying the night and looking after our kids!
SO .. in the morning we drove home and found just how lucky we really were because if we HAD made it home we may not have seen this in the dark and driven in ...


It doesn't look TOO bad right? Could just drive to the side of it right? WRONG! Look what's UNDER it!

CRAZY huh?! Luckily we have a car either side of the hole now and our landlord put some planks over to get any of the other tenants cars out if they dare!
I even got my photos onto a NZ news site here.
So that our exciting date night which will end in a new culvert being put in :-)

Sima J







New Favicon!

Wow! I am super lucky .. I'm a WINNER!
Thanks SO much Angela Noelle from Striking Keys for my Favicon!
Don't know what that is? Check up the top on the tab and you'll see a cute SJ instead of a boring Blogger B. Totally awesome :-)

Sima J

Friday, January 28, 2011

Things I'm loving..


Oops! After accidentally linking Paisley Jaide's own post to her post?! Sorry guys! I figure how to do the links now so here are MY things I'm loving ..

The fact that I won the auction for this super cute Federation skirt for $1 on TradeMe :-)
(makes up for the times when I've sold stuff at a loss!!)


That I get to go out for dinner tonight at Salut with my hubster .. YUM! (both are Yum tehe)

That I get to watch this lovely lady Erin Cole-Baker and her brother sing after our yummy dinner


I love that I got a new haircut from One2One (just a trim, sorry I haven't got a pic of it, it's not that different than the last one really)

I also love that I got to do groceries yesterday KIDLESS (makes life a lot easier!)

Finally I love that a good friend of mine is returning home from Canada in a week YAY!!

What are you loving? Go here and link up at Paisley Jaide!


Sima J




Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A cow for some magic beans ..

You know how the story goes .. Jack and the Beanstalk.
Well I have some magic beans too!! Only I didn't swap a cow for them.
I was given them by my parents, because they had too many to eat.
SO .. why are they magic? Well look below and you will see:
Purple Beans .. add heat and ..


...they turn into GREEN beans!! .. Magic!
Unfortunately they don't provide my parents with a route to a hen that lays golden eggs. (and if it did, Mum wouldn't want it because she is scared of birds! hehe)
Sima J

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Why I've been missing in action..

Hey there! Long time no blog!
Why is that you may ask (or not, but it's my page so I'm gonna answer it anyway tehe)
I've been SEWING!
Thanks to the tutorial on this blog here: Cluck Cluck Sew
I was inspired to start making quilts again!
In the past I've made two quilts with help from my Mum (thank goodness for her expertise!) - here's some of her work:


I made a quilt for my sister and one for a good friend. Here's the one I made for my sister's baby:


I hadn't made any for years now but the tutorial I mentioned earlier made it sound pretty easy (and it has been so far!) so I thought I'd give it a go. It's for a friend who is looking to start a family soon so I figured if I started now I might actually have it done before she has any kids! haha! I've done all the front now and just need to 'stick' (aka baste) it all together and machine quilt it and bind it. (which isn't too hard when you've got a Mum like mine who has all the knowledge and gadgets to help!) So this is it so far:


So once I started I remember how satisfying it is to finish one of these and I saw this quilt and wanted to make it - Either for me, or if I'm feeling generous when it's done I may give it away ... maybe:


However, I thought to myself, "Hey, it'd be nice to make a quilt for our friends who are getting married in March!" SO .. I asked her what she'd like, the kind of colours etc. (since, come on, when does the man care too much about the look of a quilt!?) and so far I have made the front of that quilt too which looks like this so far:


I'm gonna put a light blue border on it to make it bigger so it'll hang over the edge of a king bed. ANYWAY, that's where I've been spending my 'kidless' time :-)
Sima J

Sunday, January 2, 2011

a recipe, a puppy and some waterblasting..

Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed 2010 and are ready for 2011!!
I just looked over my blogs and put some tags on them and in doing so realised that a LOT of them are about food!!
So one guess what's in THIS post.. another recipe!!
I spotted this recipe in a book my Mum had out from the library and thought it looked fairly easy and a good thing to take for a snack to a BBQ.
I would change a few things about it but here it is..

Feta and Spinach Filo Triangles (for want of a better name)
Put together in a bowl:
1 Onion (chopped and softened in some oil in the pan)
Feta 100g, crumbled
Spinach 250g (I bought the frozen stuff and you have to make sure you squeeze out any excess water)
1/4 tsp Basil
1/4 tsp Thyme
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1/4 tsp Salt
pepper to taste
one egg

Oil a sheet of filo pastry, cover it with another sheet. Cut into strips of 4 per sheet:
and put a blob of the mix on the pastry at the bottom.
Fold over and over into triangles.
Brush with oil and cook in 200degree oven for 8-10min.
(I used puff pastry instead and it was too thick and it took longer to cook. Also, I'd put something else in like pine nuts or some pesto.)
Finished Product: I served it with a dish of Sweet Chilli Sauce because they lacked a certain zing.


After the BBQ I took those to, we came home to make ourselves feijoa Margaritas and a cheese board to celebrate the end of 2010 and the start of 2011.
Also these holidays I got to use the water blaster. I LOVE water blasting!! This is the deck nearly finished. It's such a satisfying feeling!

And I shall leave you with a CUTE puppy!! You can own this little guy (if you live in NZ) for only $75. They are my in laws puppies and are adorable (this one's my favourite one).
I hope you've been having a great break and are refreshed and rearing to go for another year :-)
Sima J

Saturday, January 1, 2011

A Christmas Present ..

This was a Christmas present that we were going to buy, but that one of my lovely friends happily offloaded to me for free YIPEE!!
What a blessing!
Here it is at stage one ..
Stage Two ..
Complete!
Lots of bouncing fun to be had :-)
Sima J