a quick pop in

December has proved to be a massive month
School is now out, dancing is done with (the concert was awesome... at least the little bit I got to see of it) & my Miss 7 made me so proud... this is her first year of jazz / modern & tap and she has picked it up extremely well.
This past week has been filled with kids Christmas break up parties, birthday parties and Carols by Candlelight, I am exhausted just from all the to-ing & fro-ing.
Now it's time for the kids to have some quiet time at home before Christmas Day... whether that's possible or not I don't know but I'm trying to remain optimistic.
I've got my gift shopping done, the food shopping is also finished... I couldn't buy too much in any case as our big fridge died last week & the new one hasn't arrived yet... we are surviving with a small fridge / freezer and a bar fridge... on the bright side it forced a thorough clean out of the fridge & freezer, something I've been meaning to do for ages.
Now all that remains to be done is my baking (shortbread, fruit mince pies & tim tam* balls) and keeping the kids entertained. It will be early nights and wholesome food too, we've slipped into some bad eating habits of late and it shows in the kidlets behaviour :(

And I've decided something!
Over the school hols, I am not going to stress about keeping the place tidy, there's no way it will happen when the kids are home all the time in any case. And I deserve a bit more of a break too since we're not going away so I have resolved to watch as many movies as possible and read as much as I can.
I am also pondering the concept of increasing my daily exercise (prompted by a visit to the doc) so that will mean from nothing to something... was thinking I'd try a zumba dvd to do with the kids (since they both like to dance)... I'll get back to you on how that pans out.

So if you have any movie or book recommendations for me I'd love to hear them (some of you have already given me some ideas on Facebook, thanks x but I'm open to more if you think of them)

I shall be back after Christmas, until then hope you have a beautiful Christmas x o x o

from Shish, Hubby, Miss 7 & Miss 3 (aka Poss)

*tim tams are an Australian favourite chocolate biscuit (Oreos are a good substitute)
The tim tam ball recipe can be found here it is the simplest yet yummiest treat, perfect when you need to bring something to a party / bbq etc Everyone will love them, you won't regret trying it!

November 2011

OMG! this has been a stressful but fun month!

the build up to Hubby's birthday was getting huge, I had lists upon lists in an attempt to make it work. For a long while it felt like we were disorganised and weren't getting anywhere but in the countdown the week before, it all came together beautifully. The little things that didn't quite work out didn't matter in the slightest which was a great relief. On the night, we had an insane amount of fun and that's what counts :)

Somehow I also managed to fit in a dance concert costume check (6 different items!) and get miss 7 to 2 community performances. I will add though that without the help of a fab friend, I would not have been able to do quite as much. I can not begin to express how great she's been or how thankful I am to have her in my life. She is too awesome for words :D

So the birthday party & dancing stuff pretty much consumed my month. There hasn't been much time for much else... I've dabbled with my Tumblr account a little, watched a little of my current fave TV shows (see October) and have been reading.

I finally finished "Game of Thrones", of course it was brilliant and yet I am so happy to have finished it. Normally when I discover a series of books I enjoy, I like to continue through the series one straight after the other but I really needed a break so I thought I'd read some of the free ebooks from Amazon Kindle that I'd been collecting.

I started with a couple of "erotic" stories but in all honesty they weren't at all exciting (or even interesting for that matter) but I figured what does it matter? they were free then....

...I started Promise by Kristie Cook, not knowing at all what to expect and found I could not put it down! I will be honest, it reminded me in some ways of Twilight (and I read somewhere in Kristie's blog / website that she was inspired by "an immensely popular series" in 2009, so I'm going out on a limb and guessing it may have been the Twilight Saga... I could be wrong)... however similarities aside I liked this love story a whole lot better. I love a story that sparks an emotional connection between the reader and the characters and I got that a zillion times over, also I love good strong female characters and I got that too! That's one of the big differences* between this book and Twilight, I did not like Bella at all.

So I zipped through Promise in a couple of days... I couldn't help myself, I had to stop and read whenever I could and when I wasn't reading, I was wondering what would happen next. I've also just finished the followup to Promise, Purpose and have enjoyed it just as much. I took a while longer to read it though, what with everything else to do and because I knew I'd have to wait till next year for the final book, "Devotion" so I wanted to savour it.

I'm about to start Genesis, a novella also by Kristie Cook which is a prequel to Promise :)

So it's all good here, hope you're well. And let the countdown to Christmas begin!!!!




*there are many differences and many things I didn't like about Twilight but I can't be bothered going into them all