This Used To Be My Playground

Lately I've been having these flashbacks to my childhood. I keep remembering little scenes, tv shows, food, drinks, places etc from when I was a little 'un. In the hope of not forgetting them again, I've decided to document some of them here, in no particular order.

*Cottee's Lemon Crush cordial

* DJ Bobo

*Ghostwriter (the tv series. Did you know that Julia Stiles guest-starred in one of the mysteries?! True story 

* The Baby-sitters club books. My sister and I devoured these. Over the years we managed to collect the entire series. My favourite character when I first started reading them was Mary-Anne, eventually she got replaced by Stacey though.

*Long drives

*Trips to Rosebud, where my grandparents lived.

*Staying in the caravan park in Rosebud, before my grandparents lived there. Also, Henrietta, the caravan park's hen, who once laid a hard boiled egg for me :D

*Tiddalik, the green tree frog

*Enid Blyton

*Peter Pan

*Strawberry smoothies (Dad used to make these for us)

*Cinderella, the darker, sinister story as opposed to the Disney version. Dad bought me a copy of it one day, I don't think he realised which version he was buying, but it has remained my favourite telling of the story to this day.

*Postman. This was a game that my sister and I used to play for years, which involved finding odd toys and ornaments we no longer wanted, delivering them to each others bedroom, knocking on the door, then running back to your own room to wait for your next delivery.

*Girlfriend (the band)

*Puddle Lane

*Tea-Bag and the Pearls of Wisdom

*Agro's Cartoon Connection

*Grandad's workshop. I remember the smell of it, the neatness of it, the excitement of the place when he was building something for us.

*The yellow slide

*Getting my pen license

*Nana's butterscotch scones

*Fairy bread (which, admittedly, I still sometimes indulge in)

*Starting my first journal at 8....have not stopped since

*Camping, caving and abseiling.

*Disneyland

*The smell of San Francisco

*Reading the Hobbit

*Using landline phones to call friends, having long conversations with them, even though you'd spent the whole day at school with them

*Going to the tip with Grandad and scoring a bike!

*Jeremy Jeremiah

*Rescue Squad

*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Leonardo was me favourite)

*Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (Kimberley, the Pink Ranger was my favourite. I liked her relationship with Tommy, but always though that Jason, the Red Ranger was the cutest)

*Our cubby house! Dad built us a cubby, which had bunk beds, a table and chairs, our toys, curtains and wind-out windows!

*Mum teaching me how to make ribbon roses

*Chocolate crackles, honey joys and toasted marshmallows

There are so many more, but I could be writing forever!

Let me know some of your favourite childhood memories!

Love and Laughter,

Mands xox

My Favourites (some info about me for all you voyeurs out there).

Favourite book? Just one?! Lord of the Rings (not to be confused with Lord of the Flies, which is my LEAST favourite book)

Favourite writer? Tolkien would be the obvious answer here, would he not? However, I shall buck my own trend and say Oscar Wilde

Favourite smell? Vanilla

Favourite sound? My sister's laugh, when she is in hysterics (not literal hysterics!)

Favourite taste? Pancakes with lemon and sugar

Favourite to your sense of touch? Clean, good quality, bed linen

Favourite colour? Turquoise (closely followed by all other colours!)

Favourite bird? Owl

Favourite animal? As a pet: most types of dog. Otherwise giraffes and pandas. 

Favourite flower? Roses (especially pink and white ones), lilies  

Favourite place? Anywhere I feel comfortable, spiritual and calm.

Favourite piece of art? Hmm.... My friend Alicia is a damn good artist, I'm going to go with something of hers!

Favourite possession? My laptop!

My sister and I, we're crafty types....

and no, I don't mean that we are sly and cunning (though we can definitely be that too), but that we like to do artsy things. Our craft materials have, until recently, been stored in random boxes and containers all over the house and in the garage. I like to be able to find things when I'm looking for them, and this is easier when everything is in the one place. So, being the anally retentive pedant that I am, I gathered craft boxes and divided our craft materials into groups, and gave each group its own box. My absolute FAVOURITE of these boxes is one that I made up myself. It was a very sturdy, but very nondescript box. So I prettied it up...Here is what it looks like now (For some reason I have the 'My Favourite Things' tune playing in my mind):

   

 

Basically, every time I saw a picture that triggered a certain "OOH! I LIKE!" reaction within me, I cut it out and put it in this box. They were too pretty to be hidden though, so they became decorations for the box which is now storage for other Pretty Things that shall be used for handmade birthday cards and such.

A couple of my favourite favourite things are:

This VERY cute Fendi bear

 

AND

Very Pretty gumboots that I now covet!

It was my dear, dear friend Alicia's 21st Birthday yesterday. On Wednesday night our whole workplace threw a surprise birthday dinner for her (and wow! she was  surprised.....she almost ripped my arm out of its socket with shock) and I made her a butterfly birthday cake that took an obscenely long time to decorate. Cute result though, the gang seemed to like it (I hear the Smarties were eaten in the car by somebody other than the birthday girl). Vanilla Buttercream, in case you were wondering!

 

I also need to track down a photo of the piñata birthday cake I made for my friend and manager Amber's 30th Birthday. That cake generated far more excitement that a chocolate shell should ever warrant!

Until next time, gang!

Wii Fit

This is seriously the best present I have ever received, mainly because my whole family are involved in it now (my Dad's wii me always makes my sister laughs, she thinks it looks just like him!). I'm usually quite an active person, but have fallen off the wagon a little lately. This has been good for tracking progress, but mainly it's good fun! Even Mum, who is not the most active person in the world, is actively trying to be ranked in one of the balance games...I'll say this about my mother, she's no quitter! She's been playing the same game over and over again trying to make it into the top ten. The wii itself, and its games are extremely fun and I love it, but it's the wii fit that makes me laugh the most. Especially when my "trainer" (you can choose between a man and a woman. I chose the man, because the woman, well.... does she remind anybody else of Cherry from Cherry's Driving School in micro machines for ps2?!) yells at me for having shaky legs, or collapsing onto the board (I'm sorry sir, my arms couldn't hold me up any longer!). It's even funnier when he does this to somebody else!

What are your funny/interesting Wii stories?

Welcome to 2009 and to my blog!

Welcome to my blog! Do you ever find yourself thinking up an idea that seems really good in your head then, when it comes time to put it into practice, there are a million other things you should be doing (yes, I really DO need to beat Dad's high score on Wii baseball), or that the idea seemed better in theory than in practice, due simply to the amount of sheer hard work you realise it's going to be? Do you need to add more work to your life? Wouldn't it be better to procrastinate (oh, need to beat Dad's top score in Wii bowling as well!)? That's me and this blog. However, I'm starting it now, after all, the journey of a thousand miles begins with blah blah blah....

I've recently (in the past couple of months) decided that I would become all crafty and creative and little-miss-homemaker-esque. No idea where any of that came from really, just one day I decided, "I'm going to start MAKING things." So I did. These are some of the things I've made recently:

It was Dad's 50th in December. I insisted on making his cake, believing that a cake baked with love is far better than a cake bought from a store. The reality of the situation was that I had just worked a 10 hour shift, came home to bake 24 cupcakes and attempt to

 bake a double layer chocolate and caramel buttercream cake. Note that I said attempt, this is very important. The cake tins weren't big enough, so I ended up with 2 layers that looked like pancakes. I gave up. The next day

 (the day of his party and his birthday) I refused to be beaten by a cake. And I made it again. This one turned out far better (tasted good too)! 

I was in a very cakey-bakey mood Christmas week! These are some of the vanilla Christmas cupcakes I baked. I found myself slowly turning off cakes as I turned into a baking 

machine. Never fear, my sweet tooth has now returned.

One of my friends has been having a lot of trouble finding a journal that was just right for her, so I made her one that was specifically for her. I got just a plain old hardcover spiral-bound notebook and personalised it for her. I papered the cover, made a little felt dress to attach to

 the front, and then hand-stitched her name into a little felt nameplate. It was the first really crafty thing I've done, so I was a bit excited by the results. 

Here are the before and after shots: 

That's all for now, kids! Love and Laughter xoxo