Author: Snoskred

Home Time

4 Comments Posted on September 13, 2017September 12, 2017 by Snoskred

The cat grass has now been planted inside one of our large pots. The cats seem to like it here. They take it in turns to climb up and snack on the grass.

Happy had an audience on her most recent visit to the cat grass, a game hen!

We moved another one of the cat towers to the window cat happy place. They are now taking it in turns to sit in various places on these towers.

I now have a mani to match my toes. As you can see in the background, the jasmine is flowering.

The chooks are laying again, and we are enjoying the eggs.

Somewhat sadly on our last grocery shop we did not find any brussel sprouts at Aldi, and the ones available at Coles were hugely expensive and not great looking. The season might be over. That is a sad moment for us, but it is balanced out by warmer weather. I can’t handle many more of the cold nights we’ve been having.

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Greatest Songs Of All Time

4 Comments Posted on September 11, 2017September 10, 2017 by Snoskred

In the car we like to listen to the highest quality music files available – which these days is a file called .flac – and we have been trying to replace our entire music catalogue with songs in that format.

A few weeks ago we found a set of music files claiming to be “the greatest songs of all time”. There was over a thousand songs in this set. Before we even took the SD card out to the car, The Other Half had deleted just over 20 songs – the outright veto.

I wish I had been given outright veto options, because I would have deleted a bunch of stuff on sight. Shania Twain? Love her and her style, but I can’t stand her songs, unless I am at Lone Star cracking peanuts and throwing shells on the floor. That is the one occasion I will tolerate a Shania Twain song. I might even sing along in that rare instance. I hate the fact that I know all the words. :/ I suspect most of her more popular songs are secretly hidden throughout this list and they will all be crossed off and deleted.

The Other Half printed out a list of all these greatest songs which resides in the glovebox along with a pen, and we set out to listen to all of this music and cross out the songs we downright hate. Ever since then, we have been making excuses to take long drives. We always go the longest way home now.

This past weekend we did an impromptu road trip to IKEA and Costco in Canberra. We started out late which meant we drove the last leg of the trip home in the dark. I think maybe we are odd people because we love driving around in the car. We don’t drive a lot at night anymore, and this screenshot from our dashcam shows why.

A lot of tourists think of Australia as a big theme park with cute animals. They are not so cute when you hit them with your vehicle. When you make the trip from the South Coast to Canberra you tend to see a lot of roadkill. Wombats in particular seem to be murdered a lot by cars as people travel through Kangaroo Valley. We saw two live wombats on the way home, wombling along at the side of the road.

I think my list of greatest songs would be very different to this list. For starters, there are songs and artists we have never heard of. I’ve crossed off at least two Sugar songs. Given that is a US band, and given the high level of Shania Twain, I am guessing this list originated in the USA.

Here in Australia, we would have a lot more INXS, Crowded House, probably some Kylie Minogue and plenty of Abba on a list like this. We’ve just reached song 303, so there will be more roadtrips. :) And never fear, you will hear about the rest of this roadtrip in a future post.

country life

Zoo Friday

2 Comments Posted on September 8, 2017July 30, 2017 by Snoskred

zoo

Spring Cleaning Time

4 Comments Posted on September 6, 2017September 5, 2017 by Snoskred

It is that time of year again. The art room has somehow got very messy. I want to create art again, so work must be done. It turns out I needed to do some preparatory work in various other rooms before I could start working on this one. I started out with the hanging racks – this one you are about to see was covered in jackets, hoodies, ponchos, and tote bags. And now, not.

The scarf bar has been rejigged to give me space to hang beanies and hats if necessary.

The next job to tackle is the hanging rack of bags. This is going to be a tough job and one I have put off a few too many times. I will tackle this. I WILL. :)

This space in my bedroom will soon become the Jewelry Bar. Watch this – and all these – spaces! There may not be much in the way of movie or tv watching happening for a while, until I get all this sorted.

I have a supervisor helper cat. She’s watching the spaces closely!

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So That Was August

6 Comments Posted on September 4, 2017September 3, 2017 by Snoskred

Bargain Beanies – these were $3 each from Cotton On. I wear a lot of beanies around the house these days and I figured for $3 each I might as well have some stylish ones. Why have I been wearing beanies around the house, you wonder? Wonder no more – here are our temperatures for the month of August in celsius –

No wonder I was freezing cold much of the time. Two days where the low was over 10C (50F) – that is very cold for where I live. We have not had much rain at all. We have had many days where there were no clouds, so as soon as the sun disappeared the temperature dropped.

Thank the deities I found these gorgeous and extremely comfortable boots on sale at Mathers – these are the Colorado Caffara which I managed to score for the massive price of $40 during a sale on an impromptu shopping trip with my parents which came to me as a surprise one Saturday afternoon.. They were originally $249. I have been wearing them a lot lately.

I found this goldstone ring for $10 at a local place – I cannot resist goldstone. It is one of my favourite things. I am planning to see if my favourite rings can be resized soon but until then, I can wear this one. It matches my new boots too.

As mentioned in my No Buy July post, I intended to buy this pin from Noni B, and buy it I did, though I got it for just over $17 during a sale. It does pay to sign up for their email mailing list and rewards card thingy, if only to be told when things are going to be on sale. :)

We did a little reorganizing and created a nice sun trap for the kitties which happens to sit right next to the chickens favourite place to hang out and dust bathe when they are free ranging.

They can relax and enjoy the warm sun PLUS have chicken entertainment. Most mornings now they are both found somewhere here.

They take it in turns for the cat tower, the other cat usually sits on the chairs which are covered by an IKEA bath mat.

Meanwhile the chookies have just experienced their first blueberries for the season and they were very happy about it. Delicious blueberries = happy chook moments.

There were two manicures in the month of August – my nail artist opened her own shop this month which was super exciting for her and I am so happy for her. The first manicure was blue with a holographic glitter in it, which threw a rainbow of colours. I got 3 full weeks out of this mani, but in the next photo you can see why I like to stick with tips only – see the new growth which has no polish?

This particular nail colour also showed me exactly where I use my nails to do things, as parts of it turned pink with wear towards the final week of the manicure. The pinky finger in particular got a lot of wear – I figured out this is where my finger meets my tablet cover and I use my pinky nail to hold it upright while reading at night. It was so weird, there was no change in the thickness of the polish or the quality of it, not at all. Just a colour change.

I mentioned the other manicure last week, but here it is pictured resting on the outfit I mentioned. Again it is difficult to take photos of these things and do them justice. You can almost see how it matches this dress perfectly. That is a chiffon tank dress from Millers which I bought in late summer and then the weather got too cold to wear it. I have been thinking about this dress for months, waiting to wear it and finally we got a warm day.

The dress and I, plus The Other Half, went to Shellharbour, then we took our new “long way home” which goes via Robertson, where I took the obligatory Big Potato Photo. It was a beautiful day, reaching highs in the 20s. The next day it SNOWED in Robertson, and we suddenly went from 16C to 6.6C here.

Home, shopping, sparkly

Zoo Friday

3 Comments Posted on September 1, 2017July 30, 2017 by Snoskred

zoo

I kinda got nothing.

8 Comments Posted on August 30, 2017August 29, 2017 by Snoskred

Trust your Snoskred to schedule a pedicure for a day which does not exceed 14 degrees C. I struggle to wear flip flops on a hot summer day here in Australia. I parked as close as I could to the nail salon and walked as fast as I could.

Going there was ok. While I was in there, the local August winds picked up. Walking back to the car was an icy adventure, made more difficult by the sun catching the sparkly in these toes and distracting me from the wind. It is amazing what nail artists can do now – this is a black base with a large, thin glitter applied which makes it look like black opal with highlights of teal, blue, purple, orange and pink. Photos do not ever seem to do justice to these things.

I don’t usually do pedicures other than when I am going on holidays. This year I am going to make more of an effort to take better care of my feet – not so much the painted toes part, but a regular pedicure and I have a referral to a podiatrist. My feet have lost nearly 2 sizes recently and it has changed where my foot is developing the thicker skin so I want to get some advice on that.

My past couple of manicures I have let my qualified nail artist do whatever she liked. It has been a fascinating experience, and I wasn’t really quite sure about this most recent artwork to begin with. I did not realise at the time she did this, but I’d had an outfit in my mind for a while and it was not until I put it on that I twigged – this matched my outfit perfectly! I like to think I mentally transmitted my outfit to her and she did my nails to match.

My mind is blank at this time. I’m going to blame the cold weather. I just want to huddle up wearing all the clothes plus beanies and gloves.

Fingers crossed my blog mojo returns and I can schedule some posts ahead of time again!

Fashion, sparkly, Vitamins

Whoops I forgot to blog!

4 Comments Posted on August 28, 2017August 28, 2017 by Snoskred

We had a super cold front blast through here yesterday and I had to go out and grocery shop in 6 degree weather. I’m sitting here with the gas heater on, a beanie, a hoodie, a rug, and many many other layers. And it seems I totally forgot to blog yesterday like I had planned. My bad! I will catch you up next week. :) Hopefully it will be warmer as it is meant to be spring soon or something.

blog housekeeping

Zoo Friday

6 Comments Posted on August 25, 2017July 30, 2017 by Snoskred

zoo

Catching A Killer

6 Comments Posted on August 23, 2017August 22, 2017 by Snoskred

When I was growing up, The Bill was huge here in Australia. We watched it as a family and we all loved the show – and thus a fascination with all things British policing was born.

Over the years there have been many great documentary shows on the subject – everything from Traffic Cops to Police Interceptors to Sky Cops to 24 Hours In Police Custody – the more of these shows you watch, the more you see how shows like The Bill got things pretty right. You could easily plop the cast of The Bill down into a real UK police station and you would not be able to tell the difference.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon Catching A Killer on the ABC here in Australia – you can still view it on iView (until September 16) and I highly recommend it. There are only two episodes of the show. For those not in Australia, you can currently catch these docos on youtube here and here.

To me the most fascinating part of the documentary is how the police use the ANPR system to track the movement of vehicles in the UK. In both episodes it is a crucial part of the investigation, especially in the second episode. They were able to take 5300 vehicles on the roads at the time and narrow it down to one vehicle.

Did you know that the UK has over 8500 cameras capturing the movements of vehicles across the country? These records are stored for up to two years in the National ANPR Data Center, which can be accessed, analysed and used as evidence as part of investigations by UK law enforcement agencies.

The police can type in a numberplate and see every occasion that particular vehicle has been seen on camera, and they can track where a vehicle goes – the screenshot above shows a vehicle which the owner claimed was at home hitting various cameras across the UK where the green circles are..

They have a pretty decent CCTV network over in the UK as well, and watching them piece together the movements of cars and people of interest is a sight to be seen.

All this to say, if you have a spare minute, watch these documentaries. Especially those of you who enjoyed Line of Duty, this is like the real thing but without all the police corruption and major plot twists!

television shows