My yummy man has introduced me to all kinds of good things since he came into my life. Television shows like Blake’s 7 (currently watching season 3 - no spoilers please!) and The Goodies, books such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and many fab games such as Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights.

Another game is Animal Crossing on the Nintendo DS which we love to play together, either by visiting each others towns or playing side by side and laughing at all the funny things the characters say. An example of this was Sally who lives in my town of Blossom and, like the other resident Squirrels, comes out with some classic lines. The latest was “Nothing makes you feel young at heart like a bug in your pants!“. hehe

I’ve been steadily working on having my town one of Squirrels and Kitties. So far I have six Squirrels, one Kitty and a Zebra. I found a neat site where you can record the price of Turnips in your town plus make a picture of all your residents. Mine is below:

Hopefully, Nintendo will soon announce Animal Crossing for the Wii! Does anyone reading this also play Animal Crossing (DS or GameCube)?

Yes, I’m still here. I’ve just been extremely lazy when it comes to updating my blog.

We just had a lovely weekend in the Blue Mountains where we found the perfect place to order our Wedding cake (and we got to sample yummy chocolate cake mmm) and then on our way home we received a call that our Wedding outfits are ready, yay!

No posting of clues or photos of what we will both be wearing. Let’s just say that we are going for a very different theme to what people will be expecting and we want to keep our outfits secret until the big day.

We’re getting there with the Wedding planning. We have the ceremony and reception venues booked, we have a celebrant and a photographer. We have our outfits organised and now our cake. Need to work on the invitations now and get them sent out later this month. Busy, busy, busy. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy!

I’ve started listening to fiction podcasts as I work and knit. I long to be one of those people who can knit without looking at their hands, but I’m not at that level yet. So I’ve been seeking out interesting podcasts to listen to.

I’m a little tired of the giggly knitting podcasts, preferring the ones that are more serious and actually offer some substance and good entertainment. My current favourites are Escape Pod and Pod Castle, which offer science fiction and fantasy short stories. If you like scifi and fantasy, try them out!

My beloved geeky man has recently introduced me to the fabulous series Blake’s 7 which has fast become one of my most favourite scifi series. I’m looking forward to listening to the audio episodes of Blake’s 7 as well as those of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yes, my love has been doing a thorough job of educating me of all that is good in the world of scifi! I adore him! :)

A new to me author he has also introduced me to is Connie Willis. So far I’ve read Bellwether, Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. I thoroughly enjoyed each one. I’ve just started reading Remake, but finding that a little harder to get into. I shall persevere!

In recent times, I have become somewhat obssessed by Squirrels (partly due to playing Animal Crossing WW on the DS). I find it totally wrong that Australia has no squirrels. That is just plain unfair. So, I have started collecting squirrel related items. So far I have the grand total of two items. Hmmm, not that impressive! I have a little Wade Whimsies squirrel figurine and a PJ top that has a cute little squirrel and the word ‘Nut!” Kmart has no more squirrel PJs this year, and I find that wrong, too. The world needs more squirrels! Or rather, Lysh needs more squirrel items!

I’m rather tempted to try making these adorable Squirrelly Swedish Mittens by Elliphantom Knits. If I could master crocheting, I would also make Potato the Squirrel. Eeee, the cuteness! The fluffy tail!

I’ll leave you with a link to a video taken from a documentary about Squirrels: The Squirrel Obstacle course.

After some frantic weeks of searching, himself and I have found somewhere lovely to live. We now live on the North Shore of Sydney and have not only a water view, but a view of the city which looks exceptionally beautiful at night. Another bonus is that we often get wonderful views of storms and all from either the lounge room or all cosied up in bed! The photos below were taken a week or so ago when a storm was raging and the two of us were perched on the end of the bed, using the bed rails as makeshift camera tripods!

Now that we are more or less settled in to our new home, regular posts will now resume! :)

Mmm…cream. Is there anything that cream doesn’t go with? It can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. It goes with meat, vegetables, chocolate, pasta and everything in between. It adds that last, mouth watering touch when served swirled on top of desserts and dusted with sprinkles.

While trying to find something to take a photo of and only finding boring subjects, I happened to glance at my mug and thought “Ah, cream piped onto coffee or hot chocolate! Bingo!”. So I made a cup of coffee, piped on some cream and added a dash of brightly coloured sprinkles. Yes, I really suffer for my art!

This led on to me wondering what web sites I could find about that luscious stuff called cream. Behold:

• Wikipedia’s entry for cream, featuring a dandy chart of milk products,
  including cream.
• Types and varieties of cream
• The history and use of sour cream
• All about salad cream
• How to make butter (from whipping cream)
• Peppercorn Ice Cream
• Cream of Peanut Soup. Okay, so it doesn’t contain cream, but it does have it in the title! And it just sounds odd which makes it very appealing to me.

A full sized version of the photo at the top of this entry is at my Flickr account.

When you’ve spent most of your life in a rural area, do you ever get used to living in the city? This is something I think about now and then. More so when the city is at its noisiest or when the crowds of people scurrying along the city streets overwhelm me. One of my favourite past times for so long, was to go for a long walk. I often feel the desire to go walking now, but walking alongside busy roads quickly diminishes my desire for a walk.

The noise level is something that is vastly different here to where I grew up. The noisiest things you’d hear on a typical day in the mountains were Currawongs having a singsong, whereas here it is lawns being mowed seemingly every few days, the never ending rumble of traffic in the distance, people arguing and neighbouring apartments playing music very loud.

Today I keep finding myself daydreaming about how on cloudy days like this in the mountains, you can walk watch as the mists rise out of the valleys and start to gently flow through the trees and envelop everything in an ethereal wispy aura. Plants are adorned with tiny gems of dew and on a walk you can find so many little natural treasures tucked here and there.

I rarely use my cameras now, hence my neglected Flickr accounted. My favourite type of photography, the one that I have a passion for, is nature photography. The tiny, delicate details of plants and flowers as well as views of breathtaking natural splendour. The photos above are from the archives of the days when I would take up to 400 photos per walk, even if it were just around the garden. Come to think of it, only one of the above photos (of the waterfall) wasn’t taken in the garden.

Perhaps I should challenge myself and find a new photographic subject. Maybe colours or the details of everyday items. There’s an idea!

For Christmas my wonderful man bought me a Wii! We still get a giggle out of telling people who’ve never heard of them, that we love to wii in the lounge room together. We’ve got some very strange looks out of that little gem! hehe

Game wise we have Wii Play and Wii Sports which came with the console, Rayman Raving Rabbids 1 & 2 (Bwahhhh!), Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 and The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. We also have a copy of Animal Crossing for the GameCube because the DS version is one of our favourites. I hope the Wii version of Animal Crossing comes out soon!

On our want list is Endless Ocean and Link’s Crossbow Training. I’m also curious about Kororinpa, has anyone played that? It looks very cute and I am a sucker for cute!

Oopps, I seem to have redesigned again! I wasn’t happy with the other design so I worked on a completely new one. I couldn’t find retro clipart of french fries but a bacon wrapped olive is just as good! I must admit, however, that I am sorely tempted to edit the picture and turn it into a bacon wrapped prune - devils on horseback! Yummy!

The olive image is from the fantabulous Tack-O-Rama which features lots of wonderful retro clipart, fonts and other goodies.

Oooh, I’ve been very naughty and not posted for ages! I was working on this design before Christmas, but with such a busy time I didn’t get a chance to sit down and finish it until today. I say finished, yet I still have some tweaking to do. The comment layout isn’t up to scratch yet, and I want to include a Kitty in my header image once I decide how and where. Yay for Kitties and Squirrels! :)

Much news to be written about along with links to be linked to and photos to be posted. Probably tomorrow as the icky summer heat has given me a headache and I’m not in a writing kind of mood. I’m in more of a ‘must find snow and go submerge self in it’ kind of mood.

Happy New Year!