Tinkerblue

Which House are You?

We went to Hogwarts, We went to Hogwarts.  Not really, but it could have passed as Hogwarts.

For the last 3 years Barb has been busy as organising Island Magic 2007.  She was the co-director.  Hubby and I have heard much about it.  We have seen the preparation, and we wanted to see  the completed project.  So on Friday after work we flew over to the Island.  Island Magic was held at Shawnigan Lake School.  And parts of the campus reminded us of Hogwarts. The conference started on July 21st - the day book 7 was released.  Barb , wearing a witches hat, opened her speach with, "Welcome to Hogwarts."

This small hut at the lake on the edge of the forest......could be Hagrids hut, the lake and the Forbidden Forest.

The Chapel.... Part of Hogwarts Castle.  Maybe the spire where Nobert was rescued from?

The dining hall.......Howarts dining hall complete with house banners!

We stayed for dinner and the final wrap up of Island Magic.  The attendees had many complimentary things to say about the conference, Barb and Eleanor, and the rest of the committee.  Well done Barb.  They were so successful there was even more than one newpaper article about the conference.  If you are interested in Calligraphy you can read more about the actual conference on this blog.

So if you were 11 and going to Hogwarts for the first time which house would the Sorting Hat put you in?  Take the Sorting Quiz.

Or

Depending what sort of mood I'm in when I do the quiz I could be either Gryffindor or Slythering!

Today is 28 days to 65.  So this morning I the email below to Stew.

28 days to go.  28 days to go. 28 days to go. 28 days to go. 28 days to go. 28 days to go. 28 days to go. 28 days to go. 28 days to go. 28 days to go.

It's so very, very close.

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and whey
When along came a spider
who sat down beside her
and shouted STEW WILL BE 65 IN 28 DAYS!

Are you done yet?  Are you done yet? Are you done yet?  Are you done yet? Are you done yet?  Are you done yet? Are you done yet?  Are you done yet? Are you done yet?  Are you done yet?

Keeping with the Harry Potter theme from last week.....in the year wizards and witches turn 11 they start attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and are sorted into houses by the sorting hat.  So pretend for a minute that you are a wizard, and pretend for a minute that you are turning 11 this year, and not 65.  What house would the hat put you into?

Harry Potter Sorting Quiz

Hey at soon to be 65 at least you are younger than Dumbledore!

Happy 28 days to 65 years
Love Dave and Rachael

Countdown to 65

My father in law, Stew turns 65 on August 27th. 

Dave and I decided that 65 was a significant birthday, and deserved something more than normal.  After all, at 65 you become a senior.  You get discounts at the movies, on the ferry, on the bus etc etc.  So back on June 23rd, we started the 65 days to 65 countdown.

Every day we send Stew a little something to celebrate.

The countdown so far:

• 65 days - a card
• 64 days - little hand towels that you put in water and they expand to full size for his camping box
• 63 days - we flew over to visit
• 62 days - Dave took his dad to the gun club for some shooting (clay targets, not real birds)
• 61 days - a copy of the "Prayer for Tourists" as in the next 12 months he's going to Alaska, Mexico, Australia and on a 4 day cruise.
• 60 days - a bottle of Steinlager beer - a reminder of our trip to New Zealand in 2003
• 59 days - 65 chocolate coins
• 58 days  a brain teaser word game - got to keep exercising  that brain
• 57 days - a bottle of Chocolate Stout - "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" but he's not old, so therefore he should try a new beer.  How about a chocolate beer?
• 56 days - emailed an "EtchaSketch"  (link courtesy of Laurie)
• 55 days - emailed "Fridge Magnets" (link again, courtesy of Laurie)
• 54 days - emailed a Youtube link to Fireworks over Sydney. There were fireworks for Canada Day, and Independance Day, so why not Fireworks for Stew.
• 53 days - emailed Harry Potter Trivia (with a countdown to the Movie, the Book and Stews Birthday)
• 52 days - emailed "August 27th in History" - a list of things that happened on August 27th
• 51 days - emailed a list of hit songs that were popular on August 27th in the past
• 50 days - emailed a link to the hotel we (hubby, me and the in laws) will stay at in Fiji next year.  Wanna see?  Westin Fiji.
• 49 days - emailed how to say I'd like a beer please in as many languages as I could find
• 48 days - we gave him a break from our incessant celebrating (or tormenting)
• 47 days - emailed "Things to do in Fiji" and a link to the trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• 46 days - emailed a link to the cottage we will stay at in Bundaberg, Queensland next year. 
• 45 days - emailed "65 Things to do in Bundaberg"
• 44 days - emailed a link to the Rocks Pub Tour, which we will do in Sydney next year.
• 43 days - Rubbed it in that I saw Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix. 
• 42 days - emailed a list of the Greatest Films of 1942
• 41 days - emailed 1940's decade of Trivia. Back in April, Barb got 4/10.  Can Stew beat that?  Yep - he got 7/10
• 40 days - emailed a list of differences between DisneyWorld and Disneyland - we are stopping at Disneyland for the day on our way to Australia.
• 39 days - Bottle of Tylenol to help him get through the next week.  My mother in law is organising a calligraphy conference, Island Magic, and Stew is running the bar.
• 38 days - Harry Potter Bookmark
• 37 days - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• 36 days - box of Harry Potter Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans
• 35 days - Harry Potter Chocolate Frog
• 34 days - Harry Potter Jelly Slugs
• 33 days - a can of VB.  He's been serving others all week at the bar, so I figured we'd serve him a drink.
• 32 days - emailed bumper stickers for seniors.

Today is day 32.  So we have 32 more days to go. 

I have quite a few more things up my sleeve.  But if you have any suggestions let me know.   I thought of making a list of 65 advantages of being a senior.  You know like, reduced fares on transit, etc etc.  But.... I can't think of 65 things.  Can you?

And Stew if you're reading this, happy 32 days to 65 years!

I Cannot Cook...

Yet I have quite the collection of cook books and recipes.  And the recipes are the bane of my organised kitchen. 

This is the shelf in the kitchen that holds my recipe books.  It's relatively organised.  The white boxes hold Magazines, Australian Women's Weekly  and some smaller cook books.  The larger books are inbetween.  The blue folder you see - that's the unorganised part.

It looks so innocent.

Until you open it up.

Then it just explodes everywhere. 

I have to find a better way to organise it all. Right now, it's too much hassle to find anything, so these recipes never get used.  In that binder are

• recipe cards mainly 4x6  but some 5x7 and some smaller.
• pages ripped from magazines
• recipes hand written on loose sheets of varying sizes
• print outs of webpages
• print outs from emails
• recipes off the back of food packaging

The magazine pages and the printed pages all fit in plastic sheets. 

But what about the cards, the food packaging, the smaller sheets.  I don't want to type them up, I like the randomness of them.  I don't want to use a box, as I would like to keep them all together in one place. 

What I need to find are plastic sheets that fit a 8 1/2 x 11 binder but hold different sizes.  I 've seen plastic pages for photos (they hold 4 photos that are 4x6).  They'd work for the cards etc but they are bigger than the binder. 

Oh, so that's an easy fix, buy a new binder.

Not so easy.   I don't like a lot of the prepacked recipe binders. And I want something a little nicer than the current boring office binder that I'm using now.  I'm fussy, I know.

I like the look of these from Russell and Hazel

But at $110.00 USD they are just a little out of my budget.  And everything would have to be written on to their pages and cards.  Too much work.

I like this one too and at $34.95 USD it's in my budget, but they are not taking orders anymore.  (so why have the website running still?)

How do you organise your assortment of recipes?

Mum, Dave, Barb, if you are reading this

You can add this to my wish list.  It's a tad on the expensive size but it's perfect!

Can't work out what it is?  It's a water jug.  And it's a Whale!  It's from Jonathon Adler.  Around here Home Outfitters or maybe it's Linens 'n Things, carry his stuff.

Smells a little fishy to me

It's July right?  So you think I would be posting the july project for the In Stitches Sew Along, the bathroom caddy.  Nope.  I'm still catching up.  The May project was the apron.  And it's done.

I really like the colours and the fabric.  Yellow and orange have become my colours of choice this summer.  And the little fish are adorable. 

If I can give this up, it is destined to become a gift, along with a salmon plank, a recipe and a bottle of wine.

And with Book 7, comes the end

I was prepared.  I re-read books 1-6.  Finishing book 6 on Friday morning.  I had preordered three copies of the book to be delivered to a friends house on Saturday (we're in a postal code that is not eligible for Saturday delivery).

And then plans changed.  Now we were going to be out of town on Saturday.  And I wouldn't be able to pick it up until Sunday night when we back.  No bloody way. I was not waiting that long.  So I planned to pick up a copy on our way to the border this morning.   

But last night I was still wide awake...battling some insomnia, so at 11.30pm I headed to our local book store.  At 1201am Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows went on sale.  By 1220am I was in my car and headed home. I was so tempted to start reading it last night.  But I knew I'd never put in down, and I'd still be reading when were suppose to be getting up this morning.

I started to read it in the line up for the border.  Then we decided the line up was too long - almost 2 hours.  After much discussion we turned round and headed home.  On the way home, Barb called to say that the preordered books had arrived, so we stopped into to pick them up.   

Once home I put on my comfy wide leg lounge pants, got a bottle of water, turned off my cell phone and planted myself on the couch.  6 hours of interruption free reading.  And I am done.  I laughed, I cried, I yelled in anger and hubby laughed at me.  "It's only a book!" he says. 

Want to know the ending? 

Are you freaking kidding me?  I am not telling.

All I am going to say is, it wasn't at all what I expected and it was everything I expected. 

I am sad that this is the end of the series.  But there are still two more movies to come.  Yeah. 

We were supposed to fly one copy over to my father in law on the island, but the weather is not cooperating, so his copy is still here.  I wonder if he will give in a buy a copy before we can fly his over.

And guess what? It even fits into Kelli's Green Week.  Book 7 is printed on recycled or ancient forest friendly papers. At least in Canada it is.  You can read the full article here 

And she flew off into the sunset

I don't think anyone ever believes me when I say, Hubby will take you flying.  I keep saying it, but noone takes up the offer.  Finally....

We took Cristina and John flying on Tuesday night.  Neither had been up in a small plane before, and if they were nervous they certainly didn't show it.  They were excitied.  Hubby likes taking new people up.

We flew out and over the Strait of Georgia to Victoria.  Normally a 45 minute drive to the ferry, 90 minutes on the ferry and then a short drive on the other end.  In the plane...under 30 minutes.  We landed in Victoria, and had dinner at the Spitfire Grill.  Huge, great burgers.  and Potato wedges.  Very yummy.

We then flew up the island further, over Maple Bay (where the in-laws live), back across the Strait of Georgia, over the Gulf Islands and Vancouver.   Hubby let Cristina fly: 

Yep she flew us pretty much all the way from Victoria, back to our home airport.

The sun was setting on the way back over the Gulf Islands:

(the sunset reflected in the ocean)

and it was nightfall as we flew over Vancouver:

(this worked better than the first photo I tried to take at night!)

Hubby took the controls back and landed us safe and sound.

Dual Flush

No the toilet doesn't flush twice.  It has two different buttons, one for, er, how do I put this..liquid/solid #1/#2 or blatantly pee/poop.  pee = half flush.  poop = full flush.  It uses 0.8 and 1.6 gallons of water, depending on the flush. This half flush and full flush technology can reduce water usage by up to 67% compared with the traditional toilet that uses 2.9 gallons in a single flush.

Photo courtesy of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia.

Common at home, but I don't think I've seen one, here in North America.  I didn't realise until now, but it's actually an Australian innovation.  You can read more here.  And a dual flush toilet is compulsory in all new built homes at home.  Every little bit helps when it's the driest continent and in the middle of a drought.

Right now, we can't justify spending money on two new toilets, but when the one's we have die, or we win lotto, we will replace them with dual flushing toilets.  But I thought I'd post about them during Kelli's Green Week.  Education is part of helping mother earth.

Miss Butler must be one tall woman

I'm finally getting round to posting the wide leg lounge pants that were the April Assignment for the In Stitches Sew Along.  And they are long.  Very long. 

I made the first pair (on the left) as a birthday gift for a friend.  She's roughly the same height as me - 5'4 and they are way too long.  We could just about make another leg from the fabric we had to cut off.  She's getting an almost matching tank from Old Navy as well.

I made a second pair for me, out of the same fabric, and when I cut them out, I purposely made the bottom of the legs 5" shorter.  Then double hemmed them.  And they are still too long.

I like the pattern. The directions are easy to follow and I can make a pair in an evening.  I think it took me longer to wash, dry and press the fabric, than it did to make the pants. 

Hanging them out to dry

Our clothes that is.  Growning up in Australia, our clothes very rarely went in the dryer.  We always hung them on on the clothesline in the back yard.  Everything went on the line - underwear, clothes, sheets, towels, you name it.  It's better for the clothes, they last longer.  And it uses less electricity and energy.  Well, more of my energy, but that's not we're talking about.

Photo from Hills Hoist This is very similar to the one that is in my parents back yard.  It's a permanent fixture.

When I first moved to Canada everything went in the dryer.  But I prefer air dried clothes.  So hubby built me a drying rack. We don't have a backyard, so it had to fit indoors, and fold out of the way when not in use.  Now most stuff is air dried.