What Simply Works!

It’s getting colder and colder by the day.  And despite Sydney’s winter being ‘milder’ than in the U.S. East Coast or Canada, I.still.don’t.like.it.  The Autumn cold leaves me wanting to use the heater round the clock, so, imagine how it will be like when it’s officially winter season next month?  I don’t even get to check our mailbox anymore and let the husband do it so I don’t have to walk out the road where the rest of the residential mailboxes are.

Well, whether its mailboxes or the laundry, I still gear up just go out these days.  Funny no?  While my husband loves the colder, chillier months, I prefer just the right blend of the summer heat and cool wind.  I can live in Hawaii!

My daughter and I were walking back to the car park yesterday when she saw two puppies tied to a post at a restaurant.  The puppies were so playful, no doubt passersby took notice of them. Then a thought came to mind.  Assuming that the owners work full days during the week, do they have someone come over to their house to baby sit their pets?  Or do they enrol the puppies to something like Doggy Day Care Rozelle?

Australians no doubt love animals.  And aside from pet care shops, pet stores (e.g. pugaliers for sale sydney) there are a lot of other business I’m sure that exist to better the lives of house pets, just like the doggy day care mentioned.

It is part of our evening routine for me or my husband to check the locks, lights and power switches before we hit the sack.  These days, you can’t be complacent when it comes to securing that all the locks and bolts are set at night or when you leave the house.  And in those days when we’re both too tired and sleepy, we wish we have something like a *KVM switch to do all those checks in just a flick of a finger.

*A KVM switch is a hardware device that allows a user to control multiple computers from a single keyboard, video monitor and mouse. [Wikipedia]

A major house clean-up is in order.  Now that we now the baby’s gender and my tummy’s officially on its 5th month on Wednesday, we have decided to start cleaning up the house to make space for the new baby’s things.  We’re not looking forward to the cleaning bit, especially the carpet cleaning and steaming but ha! we can’t escape it.  We will purchase area rugs too for the living room.  We didn’t realize that the rugs will keep the floor carpet a lot cleaner if we used them from the day we moved to the apartment.

Weeks prior the month of May, major shops nearby have started advertising discounts and freebies for Mother’s Day.  From hair accessories to jewelry, cookwares to shoes and all other womens fashion trends, the gift choices are endless!

As for me, since my mother and sister (my big sis always gets a little something from me, too.), I just finished my online orders this morning.  I’ve always been a fan of online shopping, especially for my folks back home and I am confident that they will once more get the presents on time.  So, if you haven’t done shopping yet for the greatest women in your lives, head over to shopwiki.com and take your pick.

I seldom watch the morning shows on the local channels.  The early morning ones, which start at 6am (I think) to 9am are really good but the ones that come after just cover tons of celebrity and fashion stuff that are not really my interest.  One time, I chance upon a morning show and nearly before each commercial break, the show featured a campaign for an exercise equipment.  I was shocked to see how many types of machines or ellipticals they have these days and I wonder if people do buy or use them.  For me, apart from the good old treadmill, everything else is just a big marketing gimmick.

The husband noticed the bigger ‘bump’ I have these days.  I’m nearly on my 5th month (hooray!) and my tummy is really showing.  And because I’m expecting a major schedule/routine change in our household once the new baby comes, I broached an idea of planning a short and simple get-away.  It will take a year or two before we can bring our youngest family addition to anywhere farther than the church or the mall, for sure.  We’re no sure if this idea will pushthrough, but it will be nice to book an overnight stay at a bed & breakfast or one of the boutique hotels in the South.

Before I fell sick last week, I started doing my photo back-ups, which I left unfinished last year.  I have tons of CDs with stored images from year 2000 and they haven’t been uploaded to my online photo website.  After this, I’ll be uploading the more recent ones, photos from mid last year to this day, which are currently on my iMac.  So far, disk space and computer memory are not a concern right now with the huge space my computer has and the memory upgrade I done at the point of purchase

The past week flew by like a flash.  Two Fridays ago, our little girl was feverish, the next day she was sleeping most part of the day and then she got better on the third day.  She’s had a nasty flu.  The virus didn’t leave our household without first affecting me and the husband.  Overall, we’re glad that we all recovering without any doctor visits, just lots of fruit and soup therapy for me and the little girl and the husband popped a few paracetamol.

I’m cooking like crazy since Friday and I managed to bake a Betty Crocker cake, too.  I feel like preparing lots of food for us in the coming days to help us get back into tip top shape.  Surely, there’s no need for best diet pills with all the weight we’ll be gaining.

I’m beginning to gain interest in baking once more.  For the simple reason that I want to  add variety to our current breakfast and snack options.  Banana muffins have been a regular treat for us and soon enough I know, my “clients” (husband and daughter) will soon get tired of helping me finish the dozens I make each time.

While we were scouting for a room heater at Bing Lee’s today, I checked out a few stand mixers because in order to bake better, I need to start investing on simple kitchen appliances.  Kitchen Aid is a definite beauty but it costs too much for my use so I turned my attention to a home brand.  And because I have no knowledge about these things, I decided to mark the prices in my memory and check online for brands and popular prices.

I was browsing Shopwiki.com earlier today and thought that hand mixers just might do it for me.  It’s cheap and will still serve its purpose.  There are good brands, which I can order online.  But the best thing I should do before placing an order is to ask my friends who are kitchen experts for advice.  I’m a bit excited with this purchase because this means I don’t need to torture my hands to work on my cake mixture. Yey!

An asbestos-affected family was featured on the news when the courts ruled against James Hardie in favor of the grandmother who died due to asbestos exposure. Her husband used to work for JH and she was exposed through years of cleaning/washing her husband’s company uniform. I can’t imagine the pain that her family went through to keep her alive, like going through mesothelioma treatments and such.  But a bittersweet ending to this is that the family will get the compensation that they deserve.

During our quick day trip to Southern Highlands last year, we thought it is best to come back again some time this year.  There were so many beautiful sights, most of which I wasn’t able to photograph, like boutique hotels and wineries.  The best time is Spring because of the flower festival happening in most of the areas within the highlands.  There are just so many beautiful places here in Australia that we have yet to discover.

I am planning to do a photobook for my little girl.  It will be a First Year collection of sorts, a series of my favorite photos from her birth to her first year.  I also plan to have 1-2 photos of her printed on canvas, which of course I’ll display in either her room or ours.  Honestly, I have so many artsy projects in mind.  Sometimes I feel like my mind is racing against time, with so many things I want to do.  I won’t be surprised if one day, I’ll consider having my kids photos printed on shirts, jackets or even mugs! But then, I must have reliable screen printing equipment and that would be too costly!  But if ever I come to that idea, I would likely be checking out printing companies that offer fast, reliable and reasonably priced service.  Sigh, I haven’t even started with my photobook design and I’m already thinking of sourcing for my screen printing project! Hmm.

Ever since I left the workforce, I’d say I became better at handling my personal finances. I touched my savings once or twice, that was when I bought a few gadgets last year, but other than that, my hard-earned money is still intact. Thanks to my husband, who has always been a good influence when it comes to spending.

He gave me a credit card though, an extension of what he has, but so far I have been good at using it for household expenses only. And if I had to buy something for myself (which is very seldom), that means the husband will take care of paying it in full before the due date comes.  What I like about our credit card though is that we can convert the earned points to airline rewards or travel rewards.  Not a bad deal at all.

So right now, I can say that adjusting to my “income-less” arrangement is not “death-defying” as I thought it would be.

I blogged about possible “sharing” my current web host to maximize the unlimited disk space and bandwidth and minimize my bills.  It’s either I do this or move to a cheaper website hosting.  So far, I’m happy with my current host but unless I research on what is out there, I wouldn’t know if I’m really getting a good deal.

Webhostinggeeks.com is a good resource for this.  I like it that the information provided are not at all geek-speak and can be understood by simple website users like me.  I have bookmarked the page, The list of Top 10 Webhosts, which I will peruse soon enough as I’m eager to see what my options are.

Although what I’m dreading to do is to eventually migrate (again!) and go through the birthpains of moving to new hosts.  Ah, the joys and pains of self hosting!  I should have an update on this soon.  For now, I’ll hie off to check out what the hosting geeks have to say.

I have tons of filing to do.  Since we arrived in January this year, after a month long vacation in Manila, I wasn’t able to do bills and account statements filing (which I wish I can just forego doing..).  But now that the stack is nearly as high as the tip of my iMac monitor, I think it’s time to allot an hour or so to attend to this.  Apart from filing, I also need to do a lot of paper shredding of old bills, receipts and term life insurance quotes, which also amounts to time and effort. Woohoo!  Oh what fun!

Qantas Airlines launched their mass layoffs just the other day.  For sure, many of their workers  were sent to panic to look for new jobs or other means of support from the government in order to cope with the crisis.  These days, job seekers in general could not afford to be choosy with the job and company they can potentially get hired into.  The bottom line will always be, practicality.  Whether it’s jobs in sales or marketing, so long as you’re up for the challenge, it’s better than not having a paying job at all.

My erratic sleeping pattern these days does not help in improving the already worse dark circles around my eyes.  In the morning, the very first thing I notice when I look at the mirror are my racoon eyes.  Ha ha.  Although during my little girl’s nap time in the afternoons, I try to catch some Zzzs too.  But I think it won’t make a big difference if I miss hours of sleep at night.  Will eye creams help?  What do you think?

I must admit that often than not, I find cleaning around the house therapeutic.  It may or may not be a “normal” feeling but there is something to smelling the scent of freshly cleaned rooms or smudge-free windows and tabletops that make me happy.

But of course, there is one part of the house, which I try (if I must) to avoid cleaning myself (I willingly pass this chore to the husband..).  And that is the bathroom.  The house that we’re renting now has a glass enclosure for the shower area that is just so difficult to clean!

Anyway, not to dwell too  much on chores (who wants to talk about it anyway?), I just dream to one day have bathrooms in the house with simple accessories and furnitures (looking at the Victoria Plum series make me drool).  The toilet and bath will have a zen-like design, which will look very relaxing and of course, easy to clean!  Hee.

I’m thinking of minimizing my blogging time these days.  I have a very long list of to-dos, things that are not critical but if I continue to leave them undone, they will come biting me on my behind soon enough.

Like gifts for my loved ones.  The second half of the year will be a very busy one for me (and the whole household) and I just might pre-order the birthday and special occasion gifts in the coming weeks so I won’t worry about them when the event draws near.  Any gift ideas (aside from clothes or sports gifts)?