Eucalyptus Country

It’s the 14th of July and you know what that means?? It’s Bastille Day in France….it has the same significance to the Frenchies as the 4th of July does to the Americans or the 26th of January does for Australians. I’m not remotely French but I am rather taken with the French. I studied French all through school, read a lot of French history and fell in love with beignets when we had a visiting bonafide French teacher who taught us how to cook them.

Beignets taste pretty much like donuts and they are really easy to cook – seriously, even I can knock up a batch of beignets and I am probably one of the most mediocre cooks I know. So go on, celebrate your inner Frenchie! And if you aren’t French, enjoy them anyway. Bon appetite!

Beignet Recipe

4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

1. Mix eggs, milk, sugar and vegetable oil in a bowl.
2. On a piece of baking paper, sift together salt, flour and baking powder; add to egg mixture.
3. Mix with a wooden spoon into a dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured, clean work surface; roll out and cut into strips.
4. Place into deep hot oil and fry until fluffy (turning once).
5. Place in a dish of caster sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and roll until well coated.

Those of you who have been dropping by for a while now will know that we have had somewhat of an ongoing DIY landscaping project taking place. Well I’m happy to announce that we’ve finally reached what I would call Stage 2! Yay! The deck is down, we’ve put in the back garden bed and today we ferried who knows how many wheelbarrows of white crush gravel up the driveway. But I am pleased with the result – it’s a really bright and clean look now. I’ve put a before shot in as a thumbnail on the right there so you can see the change in the area. The next step is the spa….so it’s all coming together now. I can actually see the finished product taking shape somewhere outside of my own head – now that truly IS a blessing for me.

Leigh is back at it again. She’s got the whip out and is cracking it in the “Bloggest Loser Challenge” for all the bloggers out there who might want to shed a bit of their winter poundage. I managed to lose 3.5kg or so during the last challenge. Now I’m up to a 5kg weight loss….which may or may not be a fluke. I have been trying to be a little more conscientious about my eating habits and exercise levels but I wouldn’t say I’ve been extremely regimented as far as either one goes.

Over the course of the challenge, I’d like to think I can lose at least another 5kg – maybe more considering it is going for another 12 weeks. Given that I have reached my first 5kg loss milestone, I’m going to go and treat myself today. Lush is my all time favourite store when it comes to yummy smelling, spoil yourself silly products and I think it is about time I went and stocked up my supply.

Edited to add – I’ve decided that it probably deserves it’s own little page here. So if you want to follow my progress through the challenge, just click on The Bloggest Loser tab.

Well no, I’m not going to transform this pumpkin into Cinderella’s coach to take her to the ball.

But what a beauty hey? And to think it started life as a bunch of seeds, carelessly chucked into the corner of my sister’s backyard. Believe me, there was no effort in propogating the pumpkin vine that it came off. It sprung up almost overnight and proceeded to take over most of the backyard and has produced about six or seven pumpkins the same size as this one. She took it as a bit of inspiration and has since turned her rather dead grassed area into a thriving backyard vegetable and fruit garden. She has been blessed with not only a green thumb to grow them but also wonderful soil for growing produce. I’d better start trolling my recipe books for pumpkin based foods to make the best use of it.

Halfway through the year – scary!! Only 26 more photo ideas to come up with on a Sunday…..how on earth am I going to make it?? Nevermind, I promised myself I won’t quit this challenge so I guess I’m just going to have to get creative.

This weekend, I decided that my bathroom needed a bit of a revamp. We have a shelving unit in the bathroom that provides access to the cat park for the felines of the house. But it was made out of plain masonite and although well constructed, it was ugly as sin! So I got this really bright idea that I could buy a tin of primer and a topcoat and make it all pretty.

So eight hours later, here’s my finished product. I think I might have to make it even more funky by getting a paw print stencil and putting some kitty prints over the top and sides in a white or pale yellow paint. And it was all too easy with acrylic paint – clean up is a breeze, even if you end up covered in it from head to toe. I do think though when it comes time to repaint the house, that I should probably get a professional to do the job for me.

Way back in February, I remember having a good laugh reading Leigh’s story about the men’s undies left on the footpath outside their house. Now that story made me wonder about the owner of the undies and why he thought the footpath would be a perfectly good place to leave them. It’s not like you go for a walk down the street and suddenly decide, gee I’ve just bought a new 7-pack of Rios from the shop, I’ll just ditch my old pair here and pop on my new ones. The mind really does boggle. But I digress….

A couple of weeks ago, the people renting next door moved out quite unceremoniously. The owner spared no time in getting the house ready for market – the professional cleaners did the house from top to bottom, the exterior has been scrubbed down and the garden has been thoroughly weeded, pruned and mowed. There is now a sparkly new “For Sale” sign outside the front of the house and there is an open house this weekend.

I wonder then, why there is a solitary pair of men’s underpants just sitting on the outdoor clothesline in plain view. Is this a new sales pitch? Free pair of undies with every house sale in June?? Or were even the professional cleaners too repulsed to touch them to take them off the line?? In any case, with the open house coming up this weekend, it will be interesting to see how many people actually notice. LOL