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The Package
My excellent friend Sephyroth sent me an awesome package this week. Interestingly, it arrived just one day after I had been at the post office sending my own package – not to Sephyroth and on this occasion I would have much preferred to be sending it to him. I was sending a package to a very much loved Aunt, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer..
I had an idea that I could put together just a few things each week while she is having both radiation and chemotherapy. I can’t be there in person because she lives in Adelaide, but maybe I can put a small smile on her face each week and remind her that all the family here are thinking of her.
For the first package, I made sure to include a few ginger treats that another good friend of mine swore by during chemo. There was also some Chai tea, some pawpaw lotion, some amazing mango scented anti-bac hand sanitizer that smells exactly like you just rubbed an actual mango into your hands, and a few other bits and pieces. I have already picked up a couple of items for next weeks package.
So what was in the package Sephyroth sent to me? Let us take a look.
Some shower gel and handwash from my favourite Bath and Body Works.
Some cup-a-soup and some loom bands.
Many chocolates!
These things are SOOOOO tasty! I love wild cherry flavoured things. :)
Some wax melts – I bought Yankee Candle two wax melts for my next package to my Aunt.
A lovely Wisconsin calendar!
There are actually 2 bottles of 265 antacid tablets. These things do not taste like chalk like Australian Quick-eze does.
A shoe bargain which we chatted about on the Kakao Talk while Sephyroth was in the Adidas clearance store near him.
Another view of the shoes.
Some potato chips of awesomeness.
And my Guaifenesin. :)
Thank you many millions my excellent friend! I will organise a package for you soonest, I already have some stuff put aside to send. :)
Before and After
So you might recall my clock post, and my paperweight post. Here is how the area looked before..
And here is how it looked after I used a table runner to cover the top of the cupboard. The golden sleigh was a Christmas present and I am going to use this to keep all my whiteboard markers and scissors in one place.
This is the area just inside our front door, and it leads into the kitchen. There is a large whiteboard which we probably need to redo from scratch as we made it back in the days we had other people living with us and we used it to track where everyone was going to be each day. what the meal was going to be and who was going to cook it, etc.
I still use the whiteboard for meal planning and we use it to write in things like appointments. I am a huge whiteboard nut, I love the things. I just bought my fourth one, which I will also share with you as a surprise shortly! ;)
The blue bowl I made myself in Ceramics a long time ago. I presently use it to hold the wax melts once I’ve used them in the oil burners several times but they still have some scent left, so I don’t like to throw them out right away.
Broccoli On Pizza
Yes, it is awesome.. :)
Would you try this?
Those Girls
Just a couple of weeks ago I was at Aldi. This poor guy was trying to load the skinny but long boxes Aldi uses to hold the coffee pods into those large box containers they use to hold all their empty boxes. The boxes fell on the floor and I said to the guy – don’t pick them up, I’ll get them – I could see a perfect use for them at my place. You’ll remember the Chicken Merge – I used baked bean trays from Aldi to hold the treats. These long boxes are better suited to the task.
Todays treat – baby spinach and rocket, apple, tomato, tuna.
Chickens like to scratch with their feet when they are eating. With the wider baked bean boxes I used, two things would tend to happen – they would tip the whole box onto its side, or they would get in it and scratch around in there.
These long skinny boxes are perfect for chicken treats. I now bring a minimum of 3x those home each time we visit, Because they are long, there is room for all the girls to check out the treats without anyone having to get pecked. Because they are not very wide, the chicken scratch the ground and then eat the treats, and there isn’t much room for the chickens to get inside them or tip them up onto their side.
You can see how perfectly the girls arrange themselves around these thin, long boxes.
It always amazes me how much chicken behaviour is learned from other chickens.
These new girls did not have the foggiest idea where to lay an egg. When they first merged with the older girls, you would find their eggs on the ground, just randomly. Now, they lay in the laying boxes.
They did not make the Egg Song, ever. They were not very vocal at all. Now, they’re joining in with the egg song, and they are trumpeting and bagerking and making all the chicken noises.
They had tried to dustbathe but were not especially great at it, mostly because they did not grasp what the kitty litter tray full of sand was actually for. They also struggled to make dirt holes in the grass. Now, they are in a yard where everything is dirt, which by the way is exactly how chickens like it, and they spend a good couple of hours a day dust bathing with their new chicken friends.
Lizzy, Mary and Kitty get to share a treat box.
Speaking of chicken friends, how are they going together? Because they have so much space, this merging process is a lot longer than it would usually be. The three newbies still sleep out on the roost in the run at night.
During the day, White Sussex is Queen of the Castle, with the three new girls slotting in just under her, then the game hens, then Redcomb and Rosie are at the bottom of the pack.
Rosie Rosecomb
Redcomb and the two other game hens got a bit confused with all the rain in December – their bodies thought it was winter again, and they went off the lay and moulted as a surprise to themselves, especially as they had only moulted a few months before. They are looking a bit ratty at the moment as the feathers slowly grow back in.
Crabtree and Evelyn Hand Therapy Tin
I bought myself this gorgeous tin full of fragranced hand creams a while back and I have not posted about it. How remiss of me! ;) The reason I am mentioning it now is because I found the musical Christmas tin with 12 hand therapy creams is presently on sale for $55.30.
I have been using this hand cream for several months now and it is far and away the best hand cream I have ever used. I think it is a decent deal at that price tag, especially when you get a keepsake tin as well and 5 tubes of 25g would normally cost you around $50, here you are getting 12 tubes for just $5 more. I’m not so sure on the musical tin thing. But they have some other good specials as well, including 25g of various flavoured hand creams for just $7.
My keepsake tin with a rainbow floral and fruit theme on the outside measures 27cm by 37cm. Open it up, and the rainbow theme continues.
Let us take a closer look at the scented hand creams contained inside.
In this row we have – Pomegranate, Argan & Grapeseed – Tarocco Orange, Eucalyptus & Sage – Somerset Meadow – Citron Honey & Coriander – my favourite scent on this row is the Citron Honey & Coriander.
In this row we have – Lily – Avocado, Olive and Basil – La Source – Himalayan Blue – with Avocado, Olive and Basil being my favourite scent on this row.
Finally – Lavender – Iris – Evelyn Rose – Rosewater – with Lavender being my favourite here.
About the hand cream –
They are not kidding when they say ultra moisturising. For me that is a good thing because I wash my hands more often than a human should. Also, a tiny little dab of this cream goes a long way. I usually use a dab about half the size of a 5 cent coin. It absorbs into the skin super fast and does not leave a sticky residue. It feels quite silky and it stays feeling silky for longer than you would expect.
The scent is intense when first applied – for example the lavender smells like you just took dried lavender and smooshed it with your palms. What I really enjoy about it is that the scent changes over time and you get different hits from the various notes. When you open the tube and smell it, the scent you first smell is not necessarily the scent you will get once you apply the cream.
Some of the scents I am not a huge fan of, though none of them are unbearable to me. My least favourite is the Pomegranate, Argan & Grapeseed. There’s a note in there I don’t like. If you have a Crabtree and Evelyn store near you I would strongly recommend you drop in and try the creams to find which scent is your favourite before purchasing.
If you are willing to take a gamble and risk having a tube or few you don’t love the scent of, the tin of different scents is good. My experience has been you really need to trial each fragrance separately. Id suggest choosing one tube each day for 12 days and apply it 2-3 times across the day.
I bought mine online without having tried it and the only hand cream I have ever used that I like as much as than this one is the Hemp Hand Protector from The Body Shop. However the Hemp cream tends to be a little sticky and takes longer to absorb, and if I use that then I can’t type or touch things for at least 5 minutes, so I mostly save that cream for bedtime.
These little tubes are perfect for me while working at the computer and I’ll even use up the scents I don’t like as much just because the cream is so good. Because there are so many different scents, I like to mix it up and not use the same one each day. And though I have been using these regularly for some months now, these tubes show no signs of my using them. It is almost like a magic trick.
You can find a slightly different version of my gorgeous rainbow tin here –
Crabtree and Evelyn Hand Therapy Tin.
I should mention that I also purchased some biscuits which were amazeballs but I bought them for The Other Half so I only got to eat one. They were not cheap, nor did they taste it. He loves a shortbread and they had an orange one.
I purchased my own products and I am reviewing this product here because I love it. If ever I do a review where the products are supplied to me, I hope you all know I would disclose that very clearly at the top of the post, plus whatever I say will always be my own thoughts and opinions. :)
Kitty Kerfuffle
If pressed to categorize the present goings on in Snoskredland over Christmas and New Years, one would have to thesaurus words for absolutely nothing. Categorically zilch.. Truly Nix..
The most exciting thing going on was a Kitty Kerfuffle involving this pillow pet that Sephyroth once sent me. They have been taking it in turns, and when one arrives to find the spot taken, a glare is given to the occupying kitty.
Favourite 2014 Fashion Moment
Lupita Nyong’o at the BAFTA awards. If you click on that link you can see it from a few different angles. It also changes colour a little under different lights..
It is a fabulous colour – and you’ll note that it fits in with my blog color scheme so I might be a bit biased – that has always been a favourite shade of green for me. The gold belt, the gold wrist cuffs.. it was such a fashion moment in a year of massive Lupita fashion moments, plus she picked up an Oscar.
There was the stunning red cape dress, the gorgeous blue Gucci which competed with the green goddess number for my favourite Lupita look in 2014.
The Fug Girls have a great post put together with many Lupita fashion moments from 2014, both good and bad. Mostly Lupita (or her stylist) picks weird shoes that don’t really go, so the better outfits are mostly the floor length gowns, except this KILLA outfit she wore on Letterman which contained Coat Porn, to boot.
FYI – seems We’re not quite done with 2014 yet here on the blog. A few posts about the place have inspired me to post a thing or two about 2014 things I saw, watched, read, or did.
Swarovskis
If you have been a reader here for even a short time, it will not come to a surprise to you that I love me some bling.
This is my official Swarovski phone case. I first saw it while on an escalator down to the bottom floor of Westfield in Sydney. It was sitting in a case of a phone shop. I knew I had to have it as soon as I saw it, because I love me some Swarovskis. It came with a certificate of authenticity.
I did not know then the reason why – when we dropped over to Paddys Markets, there were so many knock off phone cases with crystals in them. And I bought a knock off for my next phone purely because there were no official ones to be found.
Weekend Jobs, Bits and Bobs..
Our new over the door coat racks – $9 from Kmart.
It is the weekend again here at Chez Snoskred. Yesterday I went and had a CT pulmonary angiogram, which I had been putting off for 4 months! and a shedload of blood tests that involved 15 or so vials of blood. The girl forgot a vial, so I had to go back for an extra needle stick, which I did with extremely good grace considering I hate needles more than anything. So 3 needles total, yesterday. NOES.
Candle Lanterns $7 at Kmart
When she called me, I was at Kmart, where I picked up these cute candle lanterns. Little Kitty has learned to jump, and this means a sad goodbye to my present candle burners. I can’t be certain that she won’t stick her face too near or even in the flame and burn all her whiskers off in the process. I got a perfect ceramic pineapple without any chips for my mother for her birthday as well- I wanted one for me too, but I couldn’t find a perfect one without chips for me. Sorry no pineapple pic, it has been wrapped already.
Yesterday I wrote a list of things I wanted us to do this weekend. Several of them involved a trip to Kmart. The other half checked the calender and realised it is the first weekend of the school holidays, so we ended up going to Kmart last night around 9:30pm because ours is 24/7. It was wonderfully peaceful.
I was actually mid-another-job – laminating Hawaii calender pages to hang on the back of the toilet door – when I ran out of A4 laminator sleeves. I figured we might as well pick some up while at Kmart, also too. Then I came home and completed the laminator job, while listening to the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast on my iPhone.
The other things on the list involved a phone call to the local Chinese to make a dinner appointment for tonight, which has been completed this morning. And a trip to Bunnings – a hardware and garden store for those not in Australia – to buy sand for the chook pen.
Of course a trip to Bunnings never means just getting the thing you went for. The other half has been planning a special planter box for a while, and this weekend he is building it.
I found a gorgeous climbing jasmine, a sieve for the chook pen because the kitty litter scoop is not very efficient for chook poop, and a new bucket to store the chook poop in because all the old lids had broken.
I was quite tempted by these colourful Mr Men items – Mr Men Garden Gnomes, and Mr Men on a stick.
When I mentioned the Mr Men on a stick to The Other Half, who was busy wrangling the trolley and he did not spot them, he was very concerned at that concept, because his mind put the stick, well, guess where. But I showed him the picture and he was quite relieved to see the stick was not near to the Mr Man at all.
So now, off to do chores and jobs of work. Tomorrow, my first official shoes post. It is a good one, I think. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and consider making a shoes post of your own to link up. :)
Happy weekend all!