Birthday Shenanigans

It was my birthday today. One of David's friends shares my birthday. At about 10:30pm last night, his facebook status read "omg... 17. cmon." I commented "totally know how you feel!" When you're sixteen and your friends have all been seventeen for six months, it's not a novelty any more, and you're just wishing you were as old as them.

One day it will be the reverse. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm no longer at the "I wish I was X years old already!" stage.

Having such a late birthday (after most graduation dates) can have some interesting side-effects. It means I graduated highschool at 16. Graduated university at 19. Married before my 21st. It means there were kids in the year below me who were only three weeks younger than me. Or, if they were put through the NSW schooling system (like Mark C who did the HSC in PNG), it means they graduated highschool two years after me... but in Mark's case, are only a week younger than me!

Sometimes I viewed it as a negative (feeling the need to remind people that even though I was nine years old I was actually in Grade 5, and was still turning ten that year) and sometimes it was kinda cool (finishing highschool at 16 makes you look smart... even if you're not.)

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Anyway, it was a good birthday. I actually had both my family and André around which, like at Christmas, was a first. Except Michelle was going away today, so we had our party last night. We had a BBQ with family and just a few friends down at Riverway before going ten pin bowling. I played pretty miserably for the first half of the game but managed a spare towards the end (my overall score was in the low 70s... about a month ago I scored in the 90s). However my brother-in-law scored three strikes all in a row, in the very last round! I'd never seen that before... and then, not 5 minutes later, my uncle did exactly the same thing. We almost thought my mother-in-law was going to make it a third, but she only pulled off two strikes ("only").

Today André made me both breakfast (he offered bacon & eggs, but I just wanted my normal cereal) and lunch (ham and salad rolls). He also took me to see a movie, and then out for dinner at Monsoons. We started our meal out on the balcony but had to move it onto the patio when the rain moved in, but that was ok. I like rain.

I was especially pleased to get a new USB flash drive, new earphones for my mp3 player (both from Mum & Dad) and a field guide to Australian mammals which I've been hanging out for for a long time (from André). Another present I really liked was a pen engraved with "Best Wishes from Pimlico State High School". It doesn't sound like much, but it was from Pimlico's Jubilee celebrations earlier this year. I loved my school and was very disappointed I couldn't attend any of the Jubilee celebrations.

So all in all, a good two days :) And now I think it's bed time...

Why discrimination is sometimes good...

Dim Witted And Off The Deep End, Part 2

Pool | Colville, WA, USA

(A little boy is about to go off the high dive when I stop him. His grandmother, upset, approaches and questions me.)

Grandmother: “Why won’t you let my grandson swim?”

Me: “We don’t believe he is a strong enough swimmer to be safe in the deep end.”

Grandmother: “So can he just go off the high dive?”

Me: “No, if he went off the high dive, he would most likely drown.”

Grandmother: “Well, you are a lifeguard! Isn’t it your job to stop him from drowning? You are discriminating against my grandchildren! You lifeguards are just lazy!”

Honeydukes Sampler Box

As I said in my last post, I'm going to expand on the Honeydukes Sampler Box I gave my almost-16-year-old sister for Christmas. Although it was a bit of work to put together (both in making some of the sweets, and finding some of the more elusive ones in shops) it was fun and Christine's reaction (squealing, bouncing up and down in her chair and clapping) was definitely worth it!

The insert in the sample box

Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans
"Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans--A Risk With Every Mouthful!" - Advertisement at the Quidditch World Cup (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

Jelly Belly used to manufacture actual "Bertie Botts" beans. I'm guessing their licence has expired though, because while they still manufacture a weird-flavoured-beans product, they are not called "Bertie Botts". They're called "Beanboozled Beans". They come in very little boxes, for about $4- $5, depending where you get them from. So I bought one box of Beanboozled beans and a bag of regular Jelly Belly beans, then combined them. So the beans were predominantly normal flavours, with a few weird ones thrown in.

Ice Mice
"Hear your teeth chatter and squeak!" - Advertisement in Honeydukes (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

I made these from fondant (plastic icing), using green hundreds and thousands for the eyes. The noses are just fondant with red food colouring. Many of the blogs I read suggested making Ice Mice from chocolate, using a mint filling, but nothing in the books suggests to me that they are made from chocolate or mint-flavoured. They hardened upon being left in the fridge for several days after making. I imagine they'd harden even if left out, but I didn't want ants getting to them.


Cockroach Clusters
"Reckon Fred'd take a bit of Cockroach Cluster if I told him they were peanuts ?"- Ron Weasley (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

I originally intended to make these as a bunch of peanuts with toffee drizzled over them, but ended up making them basically as toffees with peanuts in them. Many of the blogs I read suggested making these out of chocolate too, with caramel and peanuts inside, but again I don't think the books suggest they're made of chocolate. Judging from Ron's quote (above), I thought they must at least look like peanuts, which is why I chose to use peanuts. I chose toffee as a way to 'cluster' the peanuts.

The picture above is the basic idea - the ones I included in the Honeydukes Box had more peanuts and were made in silicone cups, so were popped out and then wrapped in the baking paper.

Sherbet Lemons
"They're a muggle sweet I'm rather fond of," - Professor Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone).

I found these in a local lolly shop, after much searching. I also saw them online in a few places. In the US version of the first few books, they are called "lemon drops" because they thought Americans would think of an icy dessert upon reading the word "sherbet". Sherbet Lemons and Lemon drops are two very different sweets. You can do your own research, but if you're an American looking for an authentic Harry Potter sweet, go for JK Rowling's original Sherbet Lemons and not Lemon Drops. We see in Prisoner of Azkaban that Honeydukes does sell Muggle sweets, so it's possible they also sell Sherbet Lemons, especially seeing as Dumbledore is so fond of them.


Drooble's Best-Blowing Gum

"...along yet another (Honeydukes) wall were "Special Effects" sweets: Droobles Best Blowing Gum (which filled a room with bluebell-coloured bubbles that refused to pop for days)..." (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).

These were just gum balls bought at a local lolly shop. I wanted to go for all blue gum balls, due to the "bluebell-coloured bubbles" described in the books, but I would have had to go digging through the tub of gum balls to find enough blue ones, so was content to have multi-coloured gum balls.


Chocolate Frogs
"What are these?" Harry asked Ron, holding up a pack of Chocolate Frogs. "They're not really frogs, are they?" (On the Hogwarts Express - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone).

I bought chocolate frogs from Darrel Lea (these were in the shape of normal frogs, not Freddo Frogs) and made pentagonal boxes for them to go in, like the movies, from this pattern. I also made collector's cards using this template. I didn't have the creativity or motivation to figure out how to colour the boxes so just left them white, but if I'd had time, I would have found some purple cardboard to make them out of, so they were at least coloured.

Click on the image of the chocolate frog card to see an enlarged version and see what I wrote for Hermione's Chocolate Frog Card.


Fizzing Whizzbees
"...and another (barrel) of Fizzing Whizbees, the levitating sherbet balls that Ron had mentioned..." (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

These were probably the least accurate to the book. I bought some Sherbet UFOs from the same local lolly shop that I got everything else. The book describes them as sherbet balls, but I couldn't find sherbet balls anywhere. I did find these Lemonade Fizzballs and Fizzy Wizzy online, but they had a minimum order quantity that I was not going to buy.


Golden Toffees
"There were shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-looking sweets imaginable (in Honeydukes). Creamy chunks of nougat, shimmering pink squares of coconut ice, fat, honey-coloured toffees..."

I just made toffees at home. I made them in silicone cups and popped them out, then wrapped them individually in aluminium foil to stop them sticking together, then all together in baking paper.


Chocolate Fudge
"Honeydukes have got a new kind of fudge, they were giving out free samples, there's a bit, look..." -Ron Weasley (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

I also made my own fudge but you could also buy some. I just wrapped a slab of it in baking paper.

Gift Idea: Homemade Gift Baskets

As I mentioned in my last blog, a new gift idea I came across this year was homemade gift baskets. These are great because they are personalised, and can be as cheap or as expensive as you want.

Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of the final products before giving them out at Christmas, but these are some ideas that we did...


A "Quiet Night at Home" Gift basket
This gift basket for Mum contained a Michael Bublé CD, a block of Rocky Road Chocolate, and a box of Nestle Drinking Chocolate saches.


A "Brunch" Gift basket
We did this gift basket both for my grandparents & André's mum, but they were a little different. For my grandparents, I included a bottle of pancake mix, a packet of Apple & Berry oats, a serving plate, Christmas tea towel, a tin of mixed berries, two jars of jam (Ginger Marmalade and a mixed berries jam) and two sample boxes of tea (Chamomile and Lemon Honey). For André's mum, I included a bottle of chocolate pancake mix, a bottle of fruit juice, a packet of Apple & Berry oats and two jars of jam.



A "Hot/Chilli" Gift Basket
This one was for André's dad. He loves anything hot and made of chilli. So in his basket, we included a block of dark chilli chocolate, a packet of Wasabi Peas, a tube of Wasabi Paste, a bottle of Nando's Extra Hot Peri-Peri sauce, a bottle of Mustard, Honey & Herbs marinade, a bottle of some type of chilli conserve, and two tubes of seasoning paste (like what you get in the fresh veggies section of the supermarket) - an Indian flavoured one, and a Chilli flavoured one.

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Another slightly different "gift box" I did was for Christine. This one's for the Harry Potter nerds. It was a lot of work but I had a lot of fun doing it and Christine's reaction (squealing, bouncing up and down and clapping) was definitely worth it.

I made her a Honeydukes Sampler Box. Honeydukes is the sweetshop in the village of Hogsmeade in Harry Potter. All the sweets I made or bought are, according to the books, found in Honeydukes (or are sweets mentioned in other parts of Harry Potter that could plausibly be found there). Obviously my sweets did not have the magical properties that some of the fictional varieties had, but they were still a lot of fun.

The box included homemade toffees, peanut toffees ("Cockroach Clusters") and chocolate fudge, store-bought sherbet lemons, gum balls ("Drooble's Best-Blowing Gum"), jelly beans ("Bertie Botts' Every Flavoured Beans"), sherbet UFOs ("Fizzing Whizzbees"), chocolate frogs ("Chocolate Frogs", complete with collector's cards) and "Ice Mice" (mice made from fondant).

I'll expand on this gift box in a separate post, as I found other people's blogs helpful when putting my sample box together, so hopefully I can help someone else out :)

Merry Christmas :)

Christmas this year was good :) It was my first Christmas with both my family and André. Christmas Eve we finished work at midday so went out for lunch for my brother-in-law's birthday, then that night was 'Christmas' with the in-laws.

Christmas Day was church in the morning, morning tea at the parentals' with family friends, then Christmas lunch with immediate family & grandparents at the grandparents' place. Followed by playing Wii (with the grandparents, no less) then back at the in-laws', looking through photos JP (brother-in-law) took in Europe. Good times.

I found a great present idea this year. Homemade gift baskets. I did four or five of them for family, they were all a hit... I will blog more on that later :)

Mother tweets while son dies... or not

I'm disgusted by what some journalists call 'news' and the way they twist facts to make them sound more outrageous.

I read an article headlined 'Mum Shellie Ross tweets while her son dies'. It sounds apalling. It makes you think the mother was glued to her computer while her son was lying unconscious on the floor.

Instead, it turns out her toddler had fallen in the pool. Her oldest son called the paramedics, and half an hour after the paramedics arrived, Ms Ross tweeted to her 5000 followers with a request for prayer. Five hours later, she tweeted again to mourn the death of her son.

She tweeted twice in five hours. Neither time was she tweeting rather than trying to save her son. The first time was when paramedics were already at the location. The second time was after the boy died. It's disgusting that she's been harassed by journalists, and now the public, and now she's had to give an answer for herself.

Leave her alone. She wasn't neglecting her son when she tweeted. People grieve in different ways.

Google VS 000?

I just read an article about a Dad who delivered his first daughter (fourth child) with instructions from Google, after his wife unexpectedly went into labour at home. To his credit he called a midwife first who was on her way, but, as the article said, "before she arrived Emma, 25, began having powerful contractions."

Apparently afterwards Emma said she'd never complain about her husband being on the phone again, and "thank God for the BlackBerry".

One would think he'd call an ambulance and listen to instructions from the qualified dispatch staff?