Sunday, February 28, 2010

Cocktail night

For the longest time now, my friend Mel and I have said that one of these days we'd have a cocktail night. We finally arranged it for this Saturday and this is what happened.

Firstly, some of you may have noticed my Facebook status updates. Yes, we had a hobo situation. They had messed up my house and it took me a while to get it clean again. They were just not being helpful and got in the way while I tried to clean.

Some people have ants. I have hobos...

Moving right along...
So I thought that perhaps I'd gone slightly overboard with all the cocktail paraphernalia that I had bought for the night.


Turns out though that we used pretty much every plastic cocktail glass, all the umbrellas got used and the swizzle sticks. There was some fighting over the naked lady swizzle sticks...

Christian got called into work when an alarm went off and so I was stuck at home alone and completely bored for about an hour before people started turning up. So I made myself a cocktail and set about taking photos of things.



I just loved the shadows.

Barb and Mikey came round with the boys and we made the boys mocktails so they'd feel included.
Perhaps Will has watched too many Bond movies because he wanted an olive in his glass. He settled for a marshmallow.


I would like to assure the good folks at Child Protection that these glasses do not contain alcohol!


In a very short space of time my kitchen returned to Hobo State, including the empty booze bottles and paper bags lol


One of the more dodgy cocktails of the evening. Called Death In The Afternoon, it was an aniseed liquor concoction of questionable drinkablity.


Barb refused to have her photo taken so I warned her I would take a photo of whatever was visible. This turned out to be her boobs lol


My friend Jann, who wasn't happy to just have his photo taken. He wanted to display his exceptional 'Asian poses'. Here is 'Hello, this is me'.


Here is 'Peace man'.


And 'I'm drinking a beverage'.


Christian had experimented with numerous cocktails, the disappointment of the night being the 'Flirtini'. He says it was because of the lime juice, I thought it was because of its ability to make even a manly man seem girly. The jury is still out on that one.
He was not deterred however and bravely searched for other enticing concoctions.


Vanessa and Sarah find something amusing. Owing to the sheer volume of alcohol consumed, I doubt there was much happening that wasn't amusing...



Helen and I trying in get a good photo. This one seemed to be the pick of the crop.



Vanessa and I have been friends since we were 9. We lost contact in our final year of high school but thanks to the glory of Facebook, we've gotten back in touch :)



Aha! I jump upon poor unsuspecting Sarah for a photo.




And force Mike into having his pic taken too.




The night had progressed to the 'drunken game of darts' stage. Somehow I managed to get two darts in at a physically impossible angle. That's the beauty of alcohol i guess!



Christian and Barb teamed up and it was Christian's skill at anything, drunk or not and Barb's sober state that saw them kick our arses.



Christian's winning shot. We played 501 and you have to finish on a double. His first shot hit the beam, the second lodged in the magnetic clasp that keeps the cabinet closed. His last shot snagged a double 3.
Bastard.



That's the end of my photos. People started disappearing home soon after and the night wound down. I still have a shitload of booze lined up in my kitchen and so there's a pretty good chance that another cocktail night will be held in the near future.
And now I'm going to go and lie down in a quiet room because I'm feeling slightly delicate at the moment...

Friday, February 26, 2010

A day in the life of...

What I have done today so far...

*Was enjoying my sleep in since I'm not gardening today and was absolutely exhausted.

*Was woken up by my sister at 7:30am who was under the mistaken impression that I was working but would still actually be home at 7:30am. Wrong on both counts Barb!

*Discovered that my hunch I had critters living in my keyboard was correct. Last night I sprayed it with fly spray and found this morning that numerous tiny cockroaches had crawled out and died on my desk.

*Said 'Ewwwwwww' really loudly and as quickly as possibly disconnected Roachville and replaced it with an old keyboard of Christian's.

*Headed out to the shops. First stop, Dan Murphy's for Passion Pop and Champagne needed for punch and cocktails. Secondly, got petrol before car starved to death, Thirdly, head to Woolies and spent much, much more than I was intending on food and snacks for cocktail party...

*Got home and made a fruit smoothie.

*Sat on couch reading 'The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl' and eating Easter eggs.

*Begin blog post.

What I will do with the remainder of my day...

*Finish blog post

*Go to a friend's house for the afternoon where I will most likely watch bad tv, play with his exuberant dog and store up on cuddles.

*Come home and feed Miss Molly Moo.

*Go to work (nightfill) :(

*Come home and phone Mouse :)

I bet you are now overwhelmed by the sheer excitement of my life ;-)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

New blog

Just letting y'all know that I have me a new blog, especially for photos. Yay!

Nettie's Photos

Saturday, February 20, 2010

The garden and Darcie's birthday outing.

A garden post for Shawna and Boo! Enjoy ladies :D

Last Friday I wasn't being paid to do anyone else's garden so I thought I'd take the time to actually do something in mine. It had begun to look rather sad and neglected and lots needed to be done. On the Thursday night I had headed to Bunnings (the major hardware and gardening store here) and had what I like to call 'A Bunnings Orgasm'.
You see, I have a Bunnings fetish, I simply cannot walk out of the store without something for my garden, usually over a hundred bucks worth of something for my garden...
And this time was no different. $115 later I had compost/soil conditioner, petunias, garden ornaments, a dwarf apricot Oleander (one of the Mighty Tough, Super Hardy range lol), a new miniature rose and some sheep poo (yay for manure!).

I was kept rather busy on Friday. Apart from taking a slight break to drive the twenty five minutes to Christian's work to pick up some house keys after accidentally locking myself out (loooong story) and another trip to Bunnings when I realised I didn't have near enough plants to fill my empty pots, I accomplished quite a lot.

These are my pots out the front (please note the soil here is shocking and so I have a mainly potted garden). I replaced the miniature rose on the right after the last one succumbed to the intense heat we've been having lately and replaced the annuals I had in the small pots with some white Petunias. I also swept around and picked up all the dead leaves and it looks much better.


Out the front we have two garden beds my Dad built, the only ones we have. The beds have been built right up but the soil is still pretty bad. I weeded and then dug in compost and sheep shit and I'm hoping it will improve the soil a lot.
Apart from some bulbs that aren't out at the moment, I've ripped out everything from the beds apart from the Frangipanis.
We have two Frangipanis, one scarlet which is a very traditional shaped Frangipani...



and our white one which is not so traditional...
It seems to have the traditional shape with a smaller flower in the middle. My gardening bosses are coming round in a couple of weeks for a party and I'm hoping to get their opinion on it as I've not seen one like it before (not that I in any way, shape or form claim to be a Frangipani expert)


I forget what this small tree is called (something like Snow Bush I think...) but it sits to the right of my front door and in summer has thew most glorious pink leaves. This photo just doesn't do it any justice at all. The dog stake is new :)


This little guy is another of my new ornaments and he's sitting the rose closest to the door. When the wind moves him, he waves!


Just a general view of my front garden (please ignore the dead and uncut lawn!)


A while back I was doing a job of laying roll on lawn and there were six rolls left over. Our back lawn has been in a very sad state, full of weeds and so we let it die off this summer and our plan was to rip it up and start new with seed. Six free rolls of lawn though was too good an opportunity to pass up and so we laid it a couple of weeks ago. It seems to be taking nicely. Our plan when it is fully established it to rip up the rest of the grass, fence it off to keep Molly out and plant seed. Hopefully we'll swing it so the seed and roll on merge nicely together.


And moving out the back. I just hope you're not too thoroughly bored as yet ;-)
On my second trip to Bunnings I picked up several Gerbras because they were just so pretty and as they like full sun should do well in this spot.


Just a quick shot of some of my pots. Nothing much has changed here except a tidy up and a Petunia added. Boo wanted to see it though :)


Oh and this little man...


The opposite fence. This is a trouble spot for my poor plants and some things just don't do well at all. I had several pots, the gloomy graves of long lost plants, that needed to be filled and so I used up the last of my Petunias and my remaining Gerbra. The plant in the white pot on the far left is the Oleander and I hope it will go well there. It's a funny spot. Just out of sight on the left are my ferns and palms that do really well in the shade of the house but that one spot gets morning sun but afternoon shade. My Geraldton Wax carked it, I think due to not enough sun and the rose I used to have there just never flourished, possibly for the same reason. I'm hoping that being Mighty Tough and Super Hardy will help increase it's chances...


I can never remember what these two trees are called. Some kind of Elm maybe? My Dad potted them when he lived here and shortly after I moved in I repotted them in these massive pots (that Bunnings encounter was much more expensive...) and they have just gone berserk. I have strung up some solar powered fairy lights in them but unfortunately I have been unable to get a good night shot of them so you'll just have to use your imagination.


So there you have my garden. Still a lot to do but looking much better than she has lately.

Now my niece Darcie has grown up all of a sudden and next week will be ten. Ten! Can you believe it! It's scary to think that a whole decade will have passed since she was born. I feel old!
I told her I would take her shopping for her birthday and so she came over today (Saturday) and we went out with her mum, Jo.

Before we went out though I told her I needed pics of my garden and we inevitably got more than just the garden.

This is Miss Molly Moo wanting us to play ball with her.


Darcie pulling a face...


I don't think she realises that is the wind changes, she'll be stuck like this forever...


We were heading out to Carousel, a huge centre in Cannington but on the way I told her we had a stop off to make at our small local centre. She didn't know what was install but when she saw him, her face just lit up.

Isn't he beautiful???


However, after months of wanting a ride in the Snoopy kennel, Darcie came over shy and refused at first to get in. Eventually she did though and found that one of the down sides to being almost ten is that you're not the target group of shopping centre ride inventors.
It was a little small...


Oh the disappointment!


After that we headed out to Carousel and while there I tried to find this shirt. I bought it the other day from a surf shop ( I never go into them! Ever! I lost my surf shop virginity!) and was wearing it this morning when I rang Boo. I described the shirt to her and she said that she'd rather like one and so I figured while I was out I'd pick one up. Unfortunately, they seem rather popular and they only had XXL ones left :( So I will probably have to get one online but for some reason they don't ship direct to the UK so it'll have to take a roundabout way to get to her!

We were all pretty tired and the three of us traipsed around numerous toy departments, getting more and more exhausted each minute. I explained to Darcie that she didn't have to chose something right now and she didn't even have to get a toy/game/dvd but could save the money and use it to go to the movies or play mini golf in the future. This appealed to her but since she also had some money that Nanna had given her, she eventually got a skateboard from Christian and I (all broken bones will be entirely out fault!) and kept the money from Nanna for future use.

We then headed down to Scarborough to the beach to have fish and chips for dinner and to have a play on the playground and to chase the waves. Darcie was very eager to get down to the water...


I love this photo even though she is a little poser!



It was rather overcast and we'd had a few spots of rain and so the ocean was rather wild.


Look! Some freak with only four toes has been down this way! lol



Wondering if it's too rough for a dip...


Darcie and I just before we left to go home. As you can tell, it was rather windy.


And so I got home, exhausted and sleepy and had my first bath of the year! I love soaking till I get more wrinkly than a Nanna and it gives me time to read so now I'm feeling quite relaxed.
After I finish this post I'll probably have an early night and sleep cannot come soon enough!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Scitech, The Saints and cheesecake

Valentine's Day. A day to celebrate young love, old devotion and the clanking of gold coins in the florist's counting room...

When you've been together for as long as Christian and I have been, Valentine's day isn't something that takes priority. However, circumstances are a little different this year and so we made a special effort, not so much to spend a heap of money on cheap trinkets and inflated flowers, but just to spend some time together. What with me working two jobs and just the hours I work, we rarely spend much time together and the times we are both in the house at the same time we always seem to be busy with books/computers/games/paperwork.

Not that there weren't presents! But in true Nettie fashion, I forced Christian's on him a day early ;-)
For the longest time now Christian hasn't had a chain to wear, for various reasons. First it broke, then when I bought him a new one he had lost his pendants when we moved so he wouldn't wear just the chain, then I stole the chain when mine broke and finally I could never find him a suitable blokey pendant to go with a new chain. That has all changed now. I found a tiger charm (yay for the Chinese Year of the Tiger) to go with the new chain I bought him for Valentine's Day and I was so happy with the find. In return I received two jasmine vines to be planted along the fence when we finally re-vamp the grassed area.

I discovered that Perth had so little on offer for Valentine's Day as far as events go. Granted, there were heaps of dinner and accommodation deals for Saturday night but come Sunday, there was very little. I searched for theatre and comedy shows, special events or just anything kind of Valentine's-ey but to no avail. In the end we decided on a movie (Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief) in the morning and a trip to the Planetarium in the afternoon.
The movie was ok. It had heaps of well known actors in it and good ones at that but it still didn't really pull off a great show. The main kid was a Zac Effron clone and kept the teenage girls (the majority of the theatre) squealing the whole time and the movie just felt rushed and sloppy but never ending all at the same time. But I guess for what it was, it was ok.

I have wanted to go to the Planetarium at Scitech for the longest time now. Cosmic Collisions was a show on at 3:45 and we headed off in time for that. What I didn't know was that the admission for Scitech includes all Horizons shows and so as well as seeing Cosmic Collisions, we were also able to have a play in Scitech as well. We'd killed a few hours at home by reading and watching the cricket when we could have been shoving kids off displays and playing with static electricity! Dammit!
Cosmic Collisions was awesome and I'd love to take my nephews there some time. I'm always taking the girls out and about but the boys do tend to miss out. It used to be because they were so much younger but now I don't really have that excuse. Sure, they're a handful but I need to start being a more dutiful aunty...

After the show we had about an hour to have a play and we had fun with all the different displays. But there was so much we didn't get to do and I also regret not taking my camera so next time I go, I will endeavour to photo-document the entire adventure.

When we got home we sat down to watch Boondock Saints 2. We love the first movie, it's in both of our Top Three Movies of All Time lists but as always, it just doesn't seem likely the sequel will be released in theatres over here (like with 9 - we waited and waited and it still isn't out yet). And so we've resorted to downloading it and watching a slightly dodgy copy of it. But it was worth it because it was great. Probably not as good as the first but it was left open for a third installment and I've been left enthusiastic about that prospect.

Halfway during the movie, Barb called to invite us around to her place for cheesecake.
This may sound odd, but until you have tried Barb's baked lemon cheesecake, you just haven't lived. The prospect of driving the 20 kms to her place for dessert was very tempting but in the end we decided to give it a miss. It was our night in together after all plus I'm *trying* to be good so we compromised and I made some low fat brownies.
Which were good in their own way...

Friday, February 12, 2010

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Errrr, actually, we don't quite know...

Ok, so it's an airborne creature, but Christian and I still had an argument about this plush cushion my friend Tash got me for Christmas.



I think I threw it at Christian and said 'Eat the wrath of the reindeer' and he said 'Ummm, that's a moose, not a reindeer' and I said 'Uh, look again!'


Christian's argument is that he has a huge mouth, no nose and moose antlers.


My argument is that he has a cute Christmas ribbon...


Reindeer antelers...


And a tag on his bum that says 'Reindeer plush animal cushion'


I think I won the argument but it true Christian fashion he is still adamant that it is a moose.