Country Snoskred

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Anxiety Level: High

9 Comments Posted on June 27, 2015June 27, 2015 by Snoskred

I have just taken my first Valium in nearly a year.

I think the last time was around the 16th of July 2014, for work related reasons. Since I left work I really have not had much to stress me, until today.

When it comes to medication for anxiety, I feel much the same as Abbey Bartlet from The West Wing –

Do you know what this lifestyle does to the body? The minute your system senses stress it releases a hormone that constricts the blood vessels, contracts the heart muscles, stimulates the adrenal gland.

You stay in this state for not a hundredth of the time that you and I have existed like this and the vessels begin to shred. The heart permanently constricts. The intestines, the immune system, shut down. Relieving those conditions is the one responsible course of action I can take.

One of my biggest fears in life is The Other Half using power tools. Some of them I’m good with, like cordless drills. But anything that involves the potential for terrible injury, I am very fearful of those things.

There are good reasons to be fearful of these powerful items. The immediate story that comes to my mind is that of Gayle Shann which was on Australian Story – they just did an update on it in the last few weeks.. She survived but was terribly injured, losing one arm and the arm that was left has not regained any movement at all.

We’re going to have some concrete laid in weeks ahead, between the house and the “man cave” and to cover the gravel driveway. But before that can be done, The Other Half needs to dig a few trenches, one for the power to the shed, and a couple of drainage trenches.

So, until the ditch digger is returned, I will be under some stress. Fortunately for me, the Valium is starting to kick in, and rather than sit here curled in a stressed ball all day, I think I can get up and do the vacuuming and some other indoor jobs I have planned.

And that is a good thing – both for my mind, and my body. :)

A small technical note – the blog might go down for an hour or so later today, hopefully not, but the servers are in the man cave and the power will need to be turned off and reconnected.

fears, Home

Carter & Happy – WW

12 Comments Posted on June 24, 2015June 19, 2015 by Snoskred

Carter has new headgear and a lap rug

Carter, Home, kitties, Wordless Wednesday

There Was An Incident..

12 Comments Posted on June 19, 2015June 18, 2015 by Snoskred

There was an incident is a phrase heard regularly in our household. In fact it is somewhat of a normal occurance for The Other Half to arrive home from work and say “How was your day” to be met with.. “well, there was an incident..”

An incident in our household could be anything, from spilling sugar or dripping tea onto the counter from a non-cooperative tea bag.. right up to me walking into something and leaving a massive bruise, or somehow damaging myself in some way. Whatever the incident, when this phrase is spoken, the listener knows that the full story of the incident will be coming to them as a surprise.

The term originates from my being an aviation nerd and the FAA and NTSB have this thing about definitions of accidents VS incidents.

I mention this because our past weekend contained a number of incidents, some of which were quite scary. There was the Wine Bottle Incident, when I got out of my awesome Volkswagen Polo holding two birthday presents in those cute little bags you can buy in stores, only the wine bottle bag broke and somehow the wine bottle dropped onto brick pavers and still it managed to survive! Had it broken, that would have been considered an accident. :)

There was the mildly terrifying incident of The Spider In The Shower which I kept to myself because thankfully it was only a Daddy Long Legs which decided the ceiling was getting too hot and steamy and now would be a good time to drop on a web through my shower space. The Other Half was in the Man Cave at the time, thus he did not hear my spider scream. I know this to be a fact because anytime he hears that spider scream he arrives ready to dead the creature.

There was also the incident of burned fruit toast, which cost me two slices of gorgeous cafe raisin toast which I got on special at Coles last week. I tried my best, really and truly I did, but I was not born with the Toastmaster gene.

I usually consider myself banned from making toast due to That Terrifying Incident With A Fruit Muffin Where I Took Out All Phones And Computers In The Call Centre, For Two Hours In The Middle Of A Work Day, Thus Rendering The Call Centre Completely Inoperable.

That incident did scare me away from toasting for a long time, because the toaster made sparks and jumped into the air when I tried to use the high lift. It might have involved me using the toaster but I was NOT the one who bought a cheap $15 toaster from Kmart, nor was I the person who wired the kitchen safety switch into all the other safety switches thus any kitchen incident would have deaded the entire switchboard.

But that fruit toast was plump, gorgeous, and it smelled exactly like hot cross buns. It tempted me into toasting, and as usual, I failed quite spectacularly. I suppose we were lucky that nothing caught fire.

Then there was the incident of my lolly bag breaking in an unexpected place, spilling these cute little white dusted toffee apple almonds out of their safe little home – they kept landing on my lap rug.

To begin with, I could not work out how they were escaping the packet! When more of the chocolate coated nuts were eaten, I finally figured out that there was a hole in the side of the packet..

Those little nut friends originated from Coles where there is a range of items from Naked Truth and every one I have tried has been very tasty indeed. These little nuts are my favourite because of the crunchy coating on the nuts. I am very well behaved and only eat two of these every few days, so one packet lasts quite a long time with me.

About Snoskred, Home, The Other Half

Cabinetry Take Two

10 Comments Posted on June 17, 2015June 16, 2015 by Snoskred

Let us take a closer look at the second glass cabinet of keepsakes.

The top shelf is quite full so I’m breaking it down into two parts.

Lots to see here – various ceramic figures two of which I made myself right next to each other on the right hand side, the silver haired lady in the purple glitter gown, and the red haired lady in the green glitter outfit. Multiple fairies of various versions. Plus a Halloween snow globe which I believe Sephy sent to me.

Here we have another Fairy friend, a moonstone Dolphin which I got in Hawaii, another dragon, and a pink sparkly cat which came from a Korean friend of mine.. There is also another Fairy friend hiding at the back there.

This large doll came from the same Korean friend. :)

This large doll I found somewhere in a shop. My parents had a bunch of these dolls which came from Japan and I am trying to start my own collection.

The middle shelf – a couple of glass tealight holders at the very ends of the shelf – an elephant sits next to my very own DeLorean time machine. On the other side is a garden gnome I made myself. In the middle is a somewhat battered but extremely special to me keepsake – a ceramic dog ashtray that belonged to my Grandfather.

The bottom shelf – my Hawaii Domo sits in some glass desk units which belonged to The Other Half’s Mother. The two ceramic cats are from Sephyroth – the ones which were hidden in my new shoes! – a ceramic keepsake holder which has some glitter inside and a special mother of pearl jewellery case.

In future Wednesdays here on the blog, I intend to take a closer look at some of the keepsakes on Wednesdays.

Happy Snoskred, Home, things to remember

SodaStream Saturday #1

15 Comments Posted on June 13, 2015June 13, 2015 by Snoskred

As mentioned in this post – Long Weekending – we recently bought a new Soda Stream from Harvey Norman.

This week, we’ll take a look at my new SodaStream.

The one we bought is this one. It comes with an 2 flavour bottles – Cola and Lemonade – plus a c02 canister which will make 40 litres of bubbly drink and 1 one litre water bottle. It is an incredibly good value deal.

In fact such good value that if you pick up a 60 litre gas bottle while you are there, you can go home and make 100 litres of soda water for just over $100. That works out to around $1 per litre.

Future gas bottles retail at $51.95 – you bring in the old one and swap it for a new one – and make approximately 60 litres of bubbly water. You will then be making your bubbly water for .86 cents a litre. No more lugging soda water home from the supermarket. YAY!

Here is a look at the gas probe that goes into the bottle and fizzes it up, and the place where you twist your bottle into. The machine is super simple to use, and every 60 bottles or so you’ll have to replace the gas canister, which is also very easy to do. You do get an instruction book as well.

The gas canister lives inside the back part of the unit. You just press that button and pull the top upwards.

And here you see it pulled apart.

You can use tap water, rain water, any kind of water – and you can even bubble up things like white wine or some forms of alcohol, though it does mean you’ll have to find a good way of washing the water bottle afterwards. We have a filter tap installed here which I use.

There is an option to hack it and use larger c02 canisters. We have not done that here yet so all I can say about that is you can search for SodaStream hack in your search engine and you’ll see multiple different options.

I don’t use syrups or cordial with my mineral water very often. I find them to be too sweet and I have grown to love that tangy bite of plain mineral water. When I feel like I am coming down with a cold, I might do half orange juice, half soda water over ice. This makes a fizzy awesomeness and the super coldness of the ice soothes my throat.

From time to time, I put fruit in just to make it a treat. The fruit takes on that tangy bite, and the mineral water takes on the flavour of the fruit. You can use any fruit and even some vegetables like carrots if you are so inclined.

I’ve written one post on the blog about cutting up an orange the fancy way and putting it into my mineral water. I’ve also posted about making sparkling ice tea here, just scroll down past the cinnamon muffins.

For the next few Saturdays, I am going to write a post about the different ways I use the soda water – or Mineral Water, if you’re posh – that I create with my SodaStream. After that, I’ll post one every now and then when I try something new.

Citrus is in season right now, and I’ve been citrus-ing it up just lately. Next week I’ll show you a fruit which people would not normally think of putting in their mineral water.

Happy Snoskred, Home, SodaStream

The Art Room

19 Comments Posted on June 12, 2015June 9, 2015 by Snoskred

A couple of weekends ago we spent some serious time tidying up my art room, which had become a bit of a mess and a dumping ground for stuff that did not have a proper home. We also hung up a lot of art on the walls – some of it in order to hide where the previous people had pulled the paint off the walls when they removed some of their art work, which is why this next photo might seem like a slightly odd way of hanging art –

The little frame you spy next to the tiger is specifically hiding one of those paint ripped off spots. Probably some people might think it is a weird way to display art, but those ripped off paint spots irritate me enormously and I actually kind of like the non-symmetrical aspect of this group of art.

Over on this side, it is more about where the studs were in the wall than trying to hide anything, because this side of the room has no ripped off paint areas.

This piece of art is an interesting one – it is actually similar to foil art and any photos I take do not really do it justice.

In that photo above you see some stuff I have left on the table to sort through and find new homes for. Also some sparkly contact paper which I found at Kmart. I’ve used it to make some stickers of my Denkyem stencil which I’ve put on my laptop –

There is also a strip of holographic duct tape that Sephy sent me once. If I recall correctly, he took me on a video walk of Walmart and when I saw this holographic duct tape I declared it must be posted to me. And so it was. Please excuse my still drying from just being wiped with an anti bacterial cloth laptop. :)

In part this little tidy up was inspired by adult colouring in books becoming a thing, which is inspiring me to get back into art again. But also, it was inspired by things like me not being able to find all my wrapping paper and gift bags. These have now all been placed into one box –

I love holographic things, as I think you can tell by the awesome 35 metre roll of wrap I bought from Costco. Here is a closer view of that!

There you have a little tour of my art room, and you can expect to see some new projects appear here on the blog.

About Snoskred, Home, Snoskred Art, Who Is Snoskred, yay

Cabinetry

7 Comments Posted on June 10, 2015June 8, 2015 by Snoskred

As requested by Fish Of Gold on the Long Weekending post, here are some closer shots of my collectible cabinet.

First I should mention that the cabinet itself was purchased several years ago at an imported furniture sale. It is similar in style to my other glass cabinet which we had purchased in Adelaide..

Second I should mention, I did a little photoshop in this next pic because the flash reflected on the wood and it hurt my eyebulbs. I did not wish to inflict same on your eyebulbs. So please excuse my dodgy bucket filling. ;)

At the back is my Take That Mirror – I had all kinds of Take That merchandise – In front on the stand is a ceramic jewellery box which I painted myself. The large blue puffer fish sits in front of my paperweight. There is a pink crystal triangle, another paperweight with fish and coral, a green crystal triangle, a block of glass with a dragon etched inside it which is designed to stand on an LED light stand, and though you can’t see it very well, a metal snake attached to a green crystal.

This is my China themed shelf. It has a special folding Panda screen given to us by my Chinese cousin. In front is a ceramic Buddha that The Other Half made at ceramics, and then some other Buddhas I have collected over the years many of which sat on my work desk in various call centres. They have Feng Shui uses. Also there is a Green Malachite cat which was brought back for me from Africa by my Dad.

On this shelf – Many of my glass snow globes. I don’t know why but the water inside seems to be receeding – they all were completely full when I got them and I can’t find any leaks.. There is also a moon lander bought from Aldi, a ceramic keepsake holder, a ceramic pig figure, and a copper pencil sharpener boat.

And the final shelf – – At the back is my ceramic castle which I made and painted. Also at the back you can see my Gruen Transfer mug, which I won in a competition. In front are some of my glass items including 3 glass tealight holders in green, blue and red, two glass globes which are used in a tealight holder that I’m not using right now, a crystal bell, and my gorgeous cobalt blue and gold glass container. I love cobalt blue things. :)

Drop back next Wednesday for Cabinetry Take Two! ;)

Happy Snoskred, Home, things to remember

Long Weekending

17 Comments Posted on June 7, 2015June 7, 2015 by Snoskred

The June Long Weekend is a time to get some shiznit done around the house. I kicked it off on Friday, cleaning my DVD shelves and one of my collectible cabinets. Last week there was an incident, where I fell off my little yellow stool I usually stand on to light my candles, so some sturdy steps are now in place.

I love my DVD shelves but I do not love the dust that tends to collect on them, not at all. I sometimes think maybe I should just make them all into digital files and then pack them away, but that is a lot of effort to go to, and dusting them is probably simpler, quicker and easier.

I still have more cleaning to do -there is another glass cabinet full of awesome – I really want to photograph everything that is in these cabinets one rainy day soon.

but as Saturday was a sunnyish afternoon, we headed outside. Me to pick up fallen branches and sticks after some windy weather, the other half to mow the lawns.

I also spent some time pulling down branches from the top of the chook pen. There is an entire ecosystem going on up here which would never have existed without my Redcomb meeting that hawk. There are orb weavers, leaf spiders, silk worms and caterpillars making homes safely away from pecking beaks. If the chooks could get up here they would have a fantastic meal. Unfortunately – well, fortunately for the ecosystem – they can’t, and those branches are pushing the chook wire down and needed to be removed, or at the very least, some of them did.

I tried to remove the webs and spiders first in the hope of not getting them on me.. :) Also so they would not become barbecued spiders later in the day because a trip to Bunnings to buy a fire pit was on the afternoon agenda. Nobody likes a barbecued spider!

First we stopped in to pick up a new SodaStream as ours broke. We don’t use much in the way of syrups at all – I am much more likely to throw in some fruit and call it awesome. I’ll have to do a post on some of my favourite combos. They were on special for $48 at Harvey Norman which was pretty decent and it came with a c02 bottle, a new reusable SodaStream plastic bottle for the water to chill in, plus two syrups – lemonade and cola – which The Other Half might use.

The Other Half has wanted a fire pit for a while. Of course by the time we went to buy the one he liked, they were all gone. We’ve ended up with something slightly more expensive but he is happy and this will mean a lot of the fallen branches can feed that caveman fire desire rather than heading off to the dump in the ute, and keep The Other Half warm while he’s outside with his telescope at dark time.

Over to You –

Is it a long weekend where you are? What are you up to? :)

country life, shopping

Time Travel

1 Comment Posted on June 3, 2015June 4, 2015 by Snoskred

Let us go back in time, to April 2008. We went on a car cruise with some fellow Xr5 Turbo owners. You can read the post here, and here is a video I posted a couple of days later.

Aussie Culture, cars, driving, New South Wales, yay

Around Here

6 Comments Posted on May 15, 2015April 10, 2016 by Snoskred

It has been an eventful couple of weeks here in Snoskredland. So what is happening around here? I’m going to do a quick rundown of a few things we’ve been up to..

Eating: Loads of vegies. The Other Half said to me that if I steamed Brussels Sprouts for him, along with some carrots and cauliflower, he would eat them. So we’ve been having a huge bowl of vegies alongside some of our meals these past two weeks. I’ve discovered that I love Brussels sprouts myself. We went through 1kg of them in the last two weeks. I also get to put in some of my faves, like broccoli and mushrooms which he will not eat..

Loving: Having our wall art back up again. It has been freaking me out a little, which is odd coming from someone who sits with a full size skeleton in her lounge room. But it has been so long since we’ve had these things on our walls that it is taking some getting used to. I’ll put some of our wall art pics through this post.

Hating: “It’s a Mitsi” – no, teevee ad people, saying one line over and over does not create a catch phrase. Plus, way to go on the research front. Apparently there were ecstasy tablets named Mitsi a few years ago.

Watching: The final season of Mad Men. Season 6 of The Good Wife. Veep – I LOVE Veep! The new season of Deadliest Catch. Australia’s Next Top Model – I am a huge fan of Brittany.

Preparing: 8kg of chicken, cut up, foodsaved, and frozen in the space of an hour on Monday afternoon. It was $5.99 a kg, which is over half the price we normally pay. I have 3 bags for chicken and bacon pasta, 8 bags of chicken pieces for stir fries or Honey and Mustard chicken, plus several bags of chicken steaks for pepper chicken or chicken and sweetcorn soup.

Snacking: on carrots, and many apples I have in the fridge. Dawn is right with what she said in this post – be prepared – I find that if I have snacks and other items already prepped, I’m much less likely to eat things I shouldn’t.

Planning: Menus on a fortnightly basis.

Mourning: the loss of photos and other data – A bad thing happened to our server box.. :( It is way too technical to explain how we have it set up but I will give you a quick and basic overview. The Other Half uses a RAID array which is essentially 5 hard drives set up to work together, storing all our movies, TV shows, and photos.

We do have a lot of DVDs and blu-rays, in particular a lot of tv shows. Rather than store them on the DVDs like many people do, we took to keeping them digitally because we have setups that allow us to watch them on our tv screens without having to handle the DVDs at all. Better for the DVDs, longterm, and better for us to binge watch.

It has been fantastic to have it as a virtual library where you can flick through and pick what you feel like at the time. The backup to the virtual library is, of course, the DVDs. Except the photos, which we usually back up to a DVD every so often.. and it had been a while. Since 2008. :(

So of course the universe would choose this moment to have not one, not two, but THREE of the hard drives fail. When they fail, they try to backup all the information to the other disks, and they managed to do that with the tv shows, the movies, but not the photos.

We’ve lost quite a lot of images, and The Other Half has been kicking himself for not having backups, etc. I don’t see the point in doing that – it is done, they are lost, we have to build a bridge and get over it. Most importantly, we need to make a new plan for storing photos going forward.

food, General Chit-chat, get organised, television shows, wall art