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About Me

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NSW, Australia
I'm made it past 50! married for over half my life, have 3 kids all grown and I'm loving this part of my life.I was a nurse in my younger days but an unhealthy dose of rheumatoid arthritis put a damper on my career,so I'm at home with the internet.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Bride growing twins blogs

Just a quick note ,you've all been along for the ride with me on Gemma's journey from bride to impending mother hood. Gemma has joined the blogging world and has started her own blog.

Between us we're going to run a competition to guess the weight of the babies , sometime in April after the draw for the honey.It gives me time to think of a suitable prize in the meantime.

I hope you enjoy her blog .






Blogging: our new family tradition

Friday, March 23, 2012

My Life in Toys

I haven't done one of these in ages and the shoes, "stuff" , television , movies and food were very popular.

Now with grandbabbies coming my thoughts are turning to toys again.

So today it's My life in toys .




Very early I remember a few toys in a box at the end of my bed. Some squishy squeaky toys like the ones we give the dogs today.




Wooden blocks that had 4 different puzzles.I can still remember the smell of them.



My first Christmas my grandmother gave myself and my cousin Gayle one of these clocks, battery operated, it used to run forward on its little feet. I lost it when I was 4 ,I'd love to replace it so if you see one, let me know or grab it and I'll pay you back.


Every time my mother vacuumed I did too...I remember actually having a huge tantrum because the batteries were flat.


I used to play with a doll much like this one except she didn't have the hat and she had a crew cut.I'm also not so sure she wasn't naked.It was my mums doll from the 1940's and she had given it a trim when she was a child. Sadly one day it went in the bin.




Once we were on our feet and not wobbly, we played outside, the yard was fenced, it was all dirt and later grass ..... there was no sandpit or swings.I thought the hose was a great toy, not so much fun for mum when the yard was dirt and not grass.



My 2nd Christmas I woke up to a dinky



and matching table and chairs, these aren't the same, can't for the life of me find a pic. I did find the same blue and red metal table and chairs at a vintage shop last year but woah! they wanted over $200 for it. ouch.


Around preschool age I discovered dolls. Paper dolls. All the girls in the neighborhood would have an old biscuit tin full of clothes for their cutout dolls. No Barbie's, too expensive,even f I'd been given one by a relative, it would have stayed in the clothes it came in.But the paper dolls, we played for hours, making up stories about what we were dressing them for, cutting out new clothes from the books and swapping the ones were were sick of.


ohhhh my soul for a bride doll. I begged for her. Finally got one......... all she did was sit on the cupboard or the bed, bit of a letdown, and later my sister ripped her head off .


Every year in the late 60's early 70's Xmas day wasn't complete without a large carboard stocking covered in red netting that was full of little plastic toys and weird lollies. One of the things I did play with out of these toys that mostly only lasted the one day was the pick up sticks. Little pin ball machines and sliding squares puzzles also sometimes lasted more than the day .


One Christmas my Uncle Jack introduced me to gambling!!!



My parents liked board games . Dad bought me this one, played it with us kids a few times but then when us kids played on our own he found it too noisy.We weren't allowed to play in our rooms often, but this game was our "in". I bought the same game for my kids, a few of the pieces still turn up from time to time....and yes the noise drove me batty too.



Around the age of 8 , my friend Kerri, was very into craft and so then I was too. So many teapot warmers and hats were made of these long tubes of wool,always in lairy colours.

For my 8th birthday a sewing basket, I put the toys away for a while.Again this one was Kez's idea.She never left craft, I'm only just getting back into it...funny that...we just found each other after 30 years....she's still influencing me !!! If Kerri jumped into the fire would you???? my mother said this a lot.But...she has all the good ideas.






Another thing the young Miss Kerri gave me was a love of good stories, this was the first of quite a few we shared over the years. We were both way ahead in our reading, leaving "Are you my mother?' style books behind really quickly.



This was a great board game,another birthday present.




My sisters and I played this one, but it was so complicated to just join in,so nobody liked it much.It's an expensive game, I bought it for my kids because I remembered it but they didn't like it.A little too slow for them.


ohh so any hours, so many arguments and accusations of cheating.Always the most fun being the banker.Like being the school teacher while playing schools, somehow bossy. Which suited me, apparently I was a bossy kid.

Not many people remember this one, but my sisters and I played this one for hours, I met my husband around the time of playing this one and he got roped in too.wonderful capitalist training here.



My mum bought me this for xmas when I was in my 20's , she was playing at work and thought I might like it.For a while in the 80's everyone I knew played this. I used to play during night duty, in kids ward, never woke the kids up, but we got some complaints from the mums staying over with them. I still have the box somwhere, the kids used to play it with mum when they were small.




In the 80's we bought a you beaut coleco vision tv games console , played it for a while but not really that into it and didn't get another console until the children were grown enough to want a sega master system.





Now my toy is my laptop, facebooking, blogging, reading,arguing with trolls, storing photos,reminding myself things with post it notes...........




Don't forget to enter the giveaway for the Harden Honey and visit my fbpage.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

A little giveaway contest



I have a jar of Harden's Own Honey to giveaway.

I have mentioned where I live many times,so I thought I would give the place a plug. We have a budding tourist industry all to do with make it, bake it, or grow it, as it is an inland rural village. This is my favorite produce.....other than wine ....which I can't drink.

If you're ever in Harden -Murrumburrah, popping into the Harden House of Honey is a must do, they have the yummiest honey milkshakes.Not as sickly sweet as it sounds, just yuuuum. They have everything bee and honey related,a small museum of sorts and how it's done demo.Some really cute gifts here and a coffee shop.For the kids the even have the photo op bee cutouts they pop their little faces into .






If you would like a jar of honey in the mail (well bubble wrapped )
1.leave a comment..how you best like your honey
2.like Iwasntbloggedyesterday facebook page and leave a comment there
3.follow me on twitter

any or all of these methods will get you an entry :)


winner will be announced 30th march :)

good luck

Sunday, March 11, 2012

shower with a chance of babies


Nope, that is not snow. It's spider web. Yes, creepy. I shudder every time I look at it and THIS is why...........



urghh. Wagga Wagga the largest inland city in NSW has been in flood as the Murrimbidgee River rose to over 10 meters. The spiders decided they wanted out,came up out of the ground and wove webs, everywhere. Apparently they hope the wind will carry them elsewhere. Just how many spiders are there in the ground??? I'm only an hour and a half from there ,similar geography....shudder.




I thought Gemma might like a baby shower, so with a nod to her vintage wedding we organised a traditional morning tea.Mismatched cups and saucers, floral and glass cake trays, sandwiches and cake in the CWA rooms, of course.



the tags on the water bottle proclaim "OOPS..My water broke"




It was lovely, a lot of laughs from the games that Gemma's sister and mother inlaw organised and beautiful gifts for the babies who will certainly not be nekkid this winter.






I made" it's a boy" and "it's a girl" and twins banners from paper doily's , cardboard circles and baby wrapping paper cutouts. Lavender and turquoise were the colours. Turquoise is hard to find so we ended up with various shades of green, it worked.there was a lollipop garden table centrepiece and I had a go at those tissue puff balls too, youtube is a great teacher.... to a point. I wanted to make her a cake. My inspiration was this:

and this




What I made was this :





Gemma with her big belly and me with my big belly, only mine is twinless. She is 24 weeks in this pic taken last week.


I have been looking at a lot of baby forums , there is lots of advice


all the advice in the world really and reading it all brings back all the angst I had as a new mother...am I doing it right?



I was talking to a friend who works on a chook farm and when I was a child my aunt used to live and work on one and mum and dad took us out there for holidays. Holiday? we decided to help and worked our butts off.
anyhoo, I was comparing then to now, and said "ohhh that was about 25 years ago now".....then I did the numbers, CRAP,it was 40..............forty...it doesn't look any better in letters either ......... years ago. How can that be?

there are signs though.... Gemma was talking to us about not "going out" .She thinks her dad doesn't like "going out" He says he did like nightclubs but " I don't like loud music, or drunk people..... "that IS a nightclub Dad!"