2007 Blog Tour - Day 8

Today Nymeth has a link to some free Christmas music downloads, and a recipe for Portuguese Sweet Rice which sound delish!

The rest of the stops on the blog tour are:
9 December - Raidergirl, Chris
10 December - Dewey
11 December - Suey
12 December - Chris
13 December - Jill, Stephanie (Written Word)
14 December - Robyn
15 December - Alyssa,
16 December - Rachel
17 December - Literary Feline
18 December - Dev, Stephanie (Confessions of a Book-a-holic)
19 December - Callista
20 December - Tiny Little Librarian
21 December - Carla, Susan Higginbotham
22 December - Carolyn Jean
23 December - Booklogged
24 December - Kailana, Carl

2007 Blog Tour - Day 7

Today we are stopping off at Wendy's blog. She is talking about her memories of her grandparent's Christmas, and has another delicious sounding cookie recipe.

Which of Santa's Reindeer are you?

Saw this over at Wandeca Reads and thought it looked like fun! Not quite sure which answers I gave to get this result, but still......

You Are Dancer

Carefree and fun, you always find reasons to do a happy dance. Why You're Naughty: That dark stint you had as Santa's private dancer. Why You're Nice: You're friendly. Very friendly.

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

How about you?

2007 Blog Tour - Day 6

Today, we are off to visit Laura! Laura is a new to me blogger, which is really cool because as much as I love to visit all of you, I do like to discover new blogs too!

Not only is her post about Christmas...it's also her daughter's birthday...so Happy Birthday to Julia!

2007 Blog Tour - Day 5

After taking a trip down memory with Valentina yesterday, we are now off to Melissa's blog, where she has a post up about Christmas Stories and a delicious sounding reciper for Hot Chocolate.

Enjoy!

Christmas Day forecast!

For all my talk about having a hot Christmas, I have just seen the extended weather forecast for Christmas Day. They are saying that they believe that it is going to only be about 17C (62F) here in Melbourne! That's the equivalent of a mild winter day for us!

2007 Blog Tour - Day 4

Thanks everyone who stopped by yesterday. I hope that everyone has enjoyed the posts so far.

Today, we are off to Valentina's Room to see what festive fun she will serve up!


This is where the tour is going to visit over the next couple of weeks:

5 December - Melissa
6 December - Laura
7 December - Wendy
8 December - Nymeth
9 December - Raidergirl, Chris
10 December - Dewey
11 December - Suey
12 December - Chris
13 December - Jill, Stephanie (Written Word)
14 December - Robyn
15 December - Alyssa,
16 December - Rachel
17 December - Literary Feline
18 December - Dev, Stephanie (Confessions of a Book-a-holic)
19 December - Callista
20 December - Tiny Little Librarian
21 December - Carla, Susan Higginbotham
22 December - Carolyn Jean
23 December - Booklogged
24 December - Kailana, Carl

There's still time if you want to join in the fun!

2007 Blog Tour - Day 3

Today you have not one, but two stops on the Advent Blog Tour. The first is at Lady Tink's blog, and the other is right here!

When I lived overseas, one of the things that amazed most people was the thought of having a hot Christmas. One thing that can be a little different is the food. My mother never cooked a hot Christmas lunch. The first time I ever had roast turkey was when I lived in England and had to cook it for ten people! Of course, now that it is other people who are doing the cooking she is more than happy to eat a hot lunch! One of the great things about Christmas lunch in Australia is that there is inevitably some seafood somewhere on the menu! Yum!

For me, it is of course normal to have a summer Christmas, but lots of people would ask if we spent Christmas at the beach. I can safely say that I have never spent all day Christmas Day at the beach. I have been down there at sunset on Christmas Eve with friends, which is always pleasant, but not during the whole day. Besides, how would your turkey taste if it was chocful of sand! Having said that, we do quite regularly end up in the pool on Christmas Day, which is great, especially when it's hot! One of the big advantages of having Christmas in the Australian summer is that you get to do lots of great outside activities. I spent my teenage years heavily involved in Salvation Army activities, so we used to go Christmas carolling around the streets, ending up at one of the church member's houses for a swim and a barbie!

That long introduction was leading up to me talking about something that is an Aussie tradition - Carols by Candlelight. Each of the major cities has a Carols by Candlelight service, with the ones from Sydney and Melbourne being televised across the country. Thousands and thousands of people crowd into a major park, bringing blankets, food, champers, and good company and spend the late afternoon waiting for it to start to get dark enough to start the carol service and most importantly, to light the candles, and at the end of the night....fireworks! Lots of famous singers participate (as well a few celebrities who would like to think that they can sing), the audience sings along, all the while helping to raise funds for some major charities.

However, even more fun are the local services that are held all over the suburbs. They can vary in size between really small, and quite large events depending on the area. One of the ones in my area is held at Werribee Mansion. The gardens become a huge picnic ground for several thousand people. The ice cream van does a brisk business, Santa inevitably makes an appearance and everyone goes home full of Christmas cheer. It is a perfect event for families to get together and spend some time together, although you do need to ensure that you remember the sunscreen and the insect repellent!

There were so many videos up on Youtube that I struggled to know which ones to choose, but in the end I have gone with Jessica Mauboy (runner up in Australian Idol last year) singing one more traditional carol, and a poppy Christmas song.







In closing,this is a fun sitewhere you can make yourself into an elf. It takes a while to load, but it's fun once you get it! So from my son and I, Merry Christmas!

Click here to Elf Yourself

Blog tour - Day 2

What a great start to our blog tour. Becky not only gave us cookies, but also a soundtrack to go with them!

Today we are off to visit Lisabea! Her post is up here!

Let the fun begin!

Well, it's hard to believe but the 1st of December is upon us, and that means it is time for our 2007 Blog Advent Tour to begin!

Our first stop is at Becky's blog! Can't wait to see what she comes up with!

The other thing that we need to do today is to draw the winner of the book that Kailana and I are giving away as part of this! I've allocated everyone a number, then gone to Random.org and generated the winning number! The winner of Christine Kringle by Lynn Britney is......Raidergirl! If you could email either Kailana or myself with your contact details we will organise for you to get your prize as soon as possible! Congratulations!

Once again, we would like to thank everyone who has signed up for our Blog tour this year. I hope you all have a lot of fun. Oh, and if you are inspired and want to join in, just leave a comment and we can still put you down for a day!

Let the blog tour fun begin!

Holly's December cooking challenge...with a twist!

The ever fabulous Holly has announced that she is doing a December cooking challenge where she is aiming to cook 5 new things every week for the month of December, and she has asked her fellow bloggers if anyone wants to join her. Now, I have to say that five new things a week is a bit much for me, but as long as I can modify the challenge a little, then I am going to participate!

So, what are my rules going to be? Well, I am going to challenge myself to say that I need to cook at least five nights of the week, and that I will try one new recipe. That may not sound much for most people, but for the last few weeks my son and I have been living on take-away. Tonight is the first night I have cooked a meal (that wasn't a chuck in the microwave frozen meal) in nearly two weeks. Shocking I know! The main reason for that is that I have been completely disorganised, but also by the time I have commuted for 3 hours total in the day, as well as done a full day of work I am exhausted by the time I get home and just thinking about what to cook is just a step too far. I know that it isn't exactly a great state of affairs, and probably explains why I am the size I am, and keep on gaining more weight, but I really want to do something about that as well. One thing that I am doing is to try and ween myself off of normal Coke and onto Coke Zero if I have to have Coke, or otherwise water. I know a lot of people think they taste the same but to me they taste completely different. It would be a start at least.

You can probably also expect at least one cookbook post. A few weeks ago I was thinking about doing some, and then it just never happened.

I did have one pleasant surprise today. I hate clothes shopping at the best of times, but I am going to a wedding tomorrow and so I needed to get something to wear. I went to a shop and the lady was really good. She bought me top after top that I would never have chosen to try on and they all looked really, really good. Instead of it being the usual....that will do...I actually had to choose between four tops. Unheard of! Of course, if I lost some weight then it would be much easier every time I went to the shops.

Christmas cards

So there has been basically no activity on this blog for months, and does that reflect how much card making I have been doing??? Sadly, the answer is pretty much. The only cards I have been making are the ones at the monthly workshops, and I have even missed the last two of those.

However, a couple of weekends ago, I suddenly starting making things again! Strange but true. Some of the photos are average, but you get the idea I am sure! Then today, a friend from the US wanted to see what I have been making, and so I posted them here! Then tonight, I was thinking,...I really should do a proper post, so here we are!




This card is a tri-fold card. All the way through making it I was unconvinced at how it would work out, but once I put it all together, I loved it, and now have made 3 in this colour, 3 in green, and will be making more to send out to people!



This one was just an idea I wanted to try with stripes of glitter. I have to say that I was pretty pleased with the way it worked out, but I think that if I make it again I will put the white card with the stripes on against a different colour card or something.




This was another messing around one, and in the end I was quite pleased with how it worked out, but it was a pain in the butt sticking all those little HO's on there!


I really like this one, and am probably going to make more of them. I also made one with 5 stars too. The fact that both the paper and the card are shimmery doesn't really show up, but IRL you can see it.



These two were made using the offcuts of the stars for the card above. The funny think is I was showing a girl at work and she loved them! Didn't have the heart to tell her that they literally took a couple of minutes to do!



Because I have actually been playing around, I do have a few more ideas, but we will see how we go in terms of actually putting them all together!


In the next couple of days I will post the cards that we were doing at the workshops.

2007 Advent Blog Tour

***************************STICKY POST*********************************


After the success of last years Advent blog tour, Kailana and I thought it would be fun if we had our own virtual advent calendar again this year. After all, why should the kids get all the fun of opening a box on the advent calendar and finding a little treat in there?

Each day anyone who wants to participate could take turns sharing a little treat with our friends here in blogland. For example it could be something about a holiday tradition, or a recipe, or a picture of a hot guy dressed as Santa, or a favourite Christmas memory, movie, song...anything you like. Even if you don't celebrate Christmas we would like to hear about what your family does during the holiday season, whether it be celebrating Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or anything!

We will create a list of links so that as people express interest we will add them to the list, and then we will post a link directing visitors to the appropriate blog. To give people a chance to get organised, we will start on Sunday 1 December. If there are more people than there are days that's fine too.....the more the merrier!

In addition to getting to see lots of fun things and maybe finding new blogs there is also a chance to win a copy of Christine Kingle by Lynn Brittney. We will draw the name of the winner out of the list of people who have signed up prior to the blog tour starting, so get in and sign up for your day soon!


1 December - Becky
2 December - Lisabea
3 December - Marg, Lady Tink
4 December - Valentina
5 December - Melissa
6 December - Laura
7 December - Wendy
8 December - Nymeth
9 December - Raidergirl, Chris
10 December - Dewey
11 December - Suey
12 December - Chris
13 December - Jill, Stephanie
14 December - Robyn
15 December - Alyssa
16 December - Rachel
17 December - Literary Feline
18 December - Dev
19 December - Callista
20 December - Tiny Little Librarian
21 December - Carla, Susan Higginbotham
22 December - Carolyn Jean
23 December - Booklogged
24 December - Kailana, Carl

Signing up is easy! Just leave a comment either on this post, or the similar one at Kailana's blog!

Priscilla

I was doing pretty well at NaBloPoMo...until last night that is! But I do have a relatively good reason for not having posted last night. I went to see the musical version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. And the best thing was ....the ticket was free! One of the girls I work with won 20 tickets so there was a whole group of it. The show that night was full of ticket winners and there were a couple of cameos during the musical of stars from the radio station who were giving away the tickets!

The musical itself was pretty good...not the best I've ever seen but entertaining enough. The costumes were AMAZING! and the singing and music was great too! I was a little on edge because my boss's boss was sitting next to me, and she is a very polite and softly spoken lady who doesn't swear and lives a very clean life so every time the F bomb was dropped I flinched a little. She said today that she loved the costumes and songs, but felt it was a little too crude. She knew what the storyline was but even so it was a bit too over the top for her liking. I guess I was a little surprised that she was coming to see it in the first place but I guess it's hard to turn down a free ticket!

It ended up being quite a late night. I just missed the 11.05pm train, and so had to hang around on the platform for half an hour waiting for the next one. It was supposed to leave the city at 11.35pm and arrive at its destination (which is my station) at 12.25am. It left on time, but arrived 15 mins later than scheduled! And they can't even blame peak hour for being that late!! By the time I got home it was 12.45am, and given that I had to be up at 6am....no time for blogging!

In fact, I am thinking that it is very close to my bed time about now!

It is not too late

Don't forget about the Blog Tour that starts in a few days time. If you still want to participate then just leave a comment either on this post or on the Blog tour post.

I have been thinking about what I am going to post, but I am not 100% sure yet exactly what you will see as my contribution!

Not the smartest thing I have ever done!

So today I was on the phone talking to someone, and I decided that I really needed to clean my purse out at the same time...as you do! No problems at all! Except when I got to the train station tonight and there was an inspector there who wanted to check out tickets and I realised that I have thrown away the wrong train ticket today. Instead of throwing away the train ticket that expired two weeks ago, I have thrown away the ticket that still has two weeks to go before it expires! Not exactly the smartest thing I have ever done, and a complete waste of 75 bucks, which is what two weeks worth of train ticket is worth!

Our new Australian Idol

The last couple of days

Or perhaps this post should be subtitled 'where I gush some more about Paullina Simons!'

First, I will start with how gracious Paullina was when we met her. This below is a picture of all the books that Paullina signed for me. Obviously they are not all mine, but I was getting books signed for people who live in a few different countries where her books are not quite so available!



On Friday I took a day off work to go and see Paullina. I've never ever been to a book signing before, so I wasn't really all that sure what to expect. She was signing in the city at 12.30pm, so I wandered into the city carrying a pile of books and got to the venue about 12.15. I got in queue, and was only about 10 people from the front, but then I figured that seeing as I wasn't in very much of a hurry that I would wait for some friends from the forum. There was much texting of "how far away are you" but eventually there were three of us there so we took our place in line and waited. It was lucky to have others there that you knew because that definitely made the wait feel shorter.

As the line moved more towards the front it was obvious that she was taking time to chat with everyone and not just sign and move on! Now, I am sure that I have mentioned that I mod on her forum, and so spend quite a lot of time there. Mary (I have changed the names to protect the innocent!) was before me, and as the assistant said to are you Mary...THE Mary who posts on the forum?". And then she looked at me and said "And are you Marg?" which really surprised me, but she must have seen photos of us from the get togethers we have had in the past. When she got to me I explained that only one of the books that I had today was for me, but all the others were from other people. When I mentioned who the books that she was signing were for she knew exactly who I meant, and when I gave The Summer Garden to her to sign for one girl, Paullina knew that TSG was her favourite without me saying anything! She was extremely gracious, and said to me that I must be very busy, because she knew that I posted both on the official forum, and at Voy, and also blogged! She was so warm and gracious, and made us feel as though she was as pleased to see us as we were to see her. Then Sue behind me stepped up and Paullina not only took the time to find out who the she was and chat to her, but also to talk to her four year old daughter who had been waiting in line too. After that we said that we were all going to the dinner on Saturday night and we would see her there, and that was it. In the mean time someone else from the forum had turned up, so we waited for her to get through the queue and then went off and had some lunch together.

Then on Saturday night, we all gathered again for a dinner. Paullina took the time to come to our table a couple of times, and as soon as she came to the table she knew exactly who she had met previuosly and who she had not, which is pretty amazing when you consider how many people she must have met during the six events she had in Melbourne alone. I sat next to the mother of one of the girls from the forum, and we swapped book recommendations and reading stories, and generally had a really lovely time! It was also really good to catch up again with people who have become friends through the time we have spent together online, and also at the various meet ups we have had over the last couple of years!

The previous day when I got home I had gone on the forum and posted something along the lines of it's obvious that Paullina lurks a bit because she knew so much about us, and so I was really quite surprised when at the dinner she said "Now Marg, there is no reason for you to worry about me lurking!" which was a little embarrassing, but in the end it's not that I am worried, it was more that I was so surprised and thrilled!

For dinner we had chicken breast stuffed with cheese and pine nuts and something else, on a bed of tomato sauce and served with roasted potatoes, beans, peas and salad, and then sticky date pudding and ice cream for dessert. After dinner, Paullina got up and gave a 30 -40 minute presentation which was very entertaining, and featured some pictures of the places that Paullina went to as she went when she went on a research road trip as part of the writing process for Road to Paradise. She was funny and warm, and had the crowd in the palm of her hands. She certainly made me want to reread RTP now that I had very clear pictures of the journey that she took. A few questions from the audience and then it was time for more book signing.

We waited until the very end so that we could have a little more time, take some individual and group photos and have a chat, and it was really lovely. There will be some photos eventually, but of course, my camera batteries died even though I had recharged them the day before and hadn't used my camera at all! Always the way! Not that anyone wants to see photos of me anyway. I most certainly don't!

All in all, the last couple of days have been really great. Now that she has moved onto the next section of her tour I hope that the other fans really get to enjoy meeting her as well.

Now, I just need to get all those books posted to their relevant homes! I guess I am going to be making friends with the man at the post office this week!

Take me to your leader!

Actually, that might be a bit difficult at the moment because we are going through a transition period at the moment. We have a new Prime Minister elect, so the old Mrs Prime Minister will be frantically packing up her personal items so that she can get out of the Prime Ministers house as soon as possible, and the new lot can move in!

Kat has posted a list of some of the more interesting aspects of Australian elections. When I was living overseas the one that provoked the most interest was the fact that it is compulsory to vote in elections here. I guess that that is not strictly true. It is compulsory to get your name crossed off the electoral roll. In most people's case that means rocking up to your local polling station and getting your name crossed off. I guess though,if you are there, you might as well vote for real.

The worst thing I think about going to the polling station is having to run the gauntlet. There are people representing all the various parties and candidates there with their literature trying to get you to vote for their particular candidate. Talk about wasting paper!

Oh well....our civil duty is down for the next 3 to 4 years (for Federal elections anyway). Now let the broken promises begin!

Summer Reads 2007

The State Library of Victoria seems to run a new program nearly once every year, and they have just announced the new program which is called The Summer Read. The programs focuses on a selection of 20 book either set in Victoria or written by Victorian authors (last years was called Reading Victoria: 20 Novels Set Close to Home). The good thing about this type of program is that it at last brings to my attention a whole heap of authors that I probably wouldn't otherwise hear about.

The books this time are:

Company by Max Barry
A wonderful satire of corporate culture. If you like The Office this novel is for you.

Ron McCoy’s Sea of Diamonds by Gregory Day
Passion for the Australian coastline and mixed blessings of development.

The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser
Mystery and romance moving between current-day Australia and mid-20th-century India.

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher
The latest DI Challis Peninsula crime novel.

The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize by Peter Doherty
An inspiring account by Nobel prize winner Peter Doherty.

Broken by Ilsa Evans
Some things can never be fixed once they are broken.

Delinquent Angel by Diana Georgeff
Born secretly and adopted into a high-profile Victorian family.

Well Done, Those Men by Barry Heard
Experiences of life before, during and after the Vietnam War.

In My Skin by Kate Holden
Memoir of an educated, everyday girl arriving in the world of drugs and prostitution.

Diamond Dove by Adrian Hyland
Humorous narrative juxtaposed against a murder mystery in Central Australia’s Indigenous communities.

Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy
A collection of award-winning short stories.

Spiral Road by Adib Khan
Secrets unfold during a visit to a dying father in Bangladesh.

The Unexpected Elements of Love by Kate Legge
A story about balancing career and multi-generational family life.

Cricket Kings by William McInnes
Set in the western suburbs, this story is about much more than cricket.

Landscape of Farewell by Alex Miller
Everything changes when a feisty young Australian Aboriginal academic attends a lecture in Germany.

Dodging the Bull by Paul Mitchell
Strongly written, socially aware short stories set in Australia and abroad.

Patriot Act by James Phelan
A must-read for fans of the political thriller.

El Dorado by Dorothy Porter
A unique verse novel telling the story of a serial child-killer stalking the streets of Melbourne.

Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
A warm family memoir of immigration and coming of age in multicultural Footscray.

Hoi Polloi by Craig Sherborne
A humorous autobiography about growing up in a New Zealand pub.

Of these books and authors, I have read a book by Garry Disher before, and have heard really good things about Unpolished Gem. This is a book that I will be reading in the next couple of weeks. Other than that I haven't really read any of them, or heard of some of them! I have to say The Lost Dog sounds great!

There is also a display on at the State Library which I might make an effort to go and see as well! Maybe!