Poor, tolerant Cat...

Kiarah with Leo...

Not my cat. I am allergic. A friend of mine has a cat, Leo and he is the most placid little cat you can find. He lives in a house with five children from 3yrs to 11yrs... He gets pulled every which way and mum has to make sure he has time out so he can have a sleep every now and then. Or eat for that matter.

He is truly a very loved cat... Fits in so perfectly into the family as well. :)

Cheers Damaris

Latest Power Bill Adventures...

I can't believe it but I totally forgot to write about my goings on with our latest Electricity bill... Well here it is...

We had our new digital meter put in two weeks before we had our reading done and I knew our bill should be around $175 for the last quarter. I got my bill and nearly had a heart attack. It was $212.15. What the????

So I went over my meter readings, which I do every day at 7am and found that the meter reading they had for my old meter was out by 200kWh. I read my meter as the technician was just about to take it out and replace it with the digital one so I knew that my reading was correct. With this information I called Ergon to see why I was out that amount of hours...

The lady was every so helpful I must say. She was soooo lovely. She rang the Depot in Warwick and yes they had put down the correct reading on the paper but when it was transferred into the computer system, human error made it 200kWh more. Problem solved. The bill was cancelled and a new one was issued. This time it was $174.50. Woohoo. That is much more like it.

It did get me thinking though. There are allot of meters being replaced in Australia at the moment with the surge of solar panels going on roofs. How many of these people read their meters? Not many I would suspect... So how many are potentially being overcharged due to human error. I am glad that I saved my family this money and that I was on the ball.

Needless to say I will continue to read my meter every day at 7am. :)

Cheers Damaris

Don't do this at home...

Two big whoppers...

Russell went out and watered the veggies while I was making dinner on Sunday night and look at the piccy. That is what he came in with...

Way too overgrown. The zucchini cut up fine and would have been fine to cut smaller but this lot the chooks enjoyed. And the ducks actually. They love veggies... There would have been no taste to it and probably not even good to use as a filler. So the animals had them. Took two ice cream containers and a huge mixing bowl to fill and they had a feast all right. The boys loved watching them devour it. :)

Next time must check under the huge leaves a bit more so that we can pick them when they are still eatable...

Cheers Damaris

Veggies...

This is half the lettuce. It was huge...

At High school Timothy has been growing his own veggies since the beginning of the the school year. He has to tend to it, water it, weed around it and make sure there are no bugs etc...

Well he brought home his first lettuce last week and that night we ate half of it straight away. Yummy. He loved it that he could help with providing for the meal and loved telling us how he had looked after it. He also brought home some spinach. That one he had to share with others as there was not enough to go around the class otherwise, something that he did rather reluctantly.

Like it was his baby he tended to its needs. :) He has now asked for a small patch at home that he can look after starting in spring. What a great idea for high school to do that. We have always had veggies and fruit growing but not until they did it in school has he taken soooo much more of an interest. He wants to give growing Watermelon another go as he loves them and then also wants to sell surplus. Here is hoping. :)

Cheers Damaris

Happy Anniversary...

Today my husband Russell and I celebrated 17 years of Marriage... Has been a great day too. In the morning I was greeted with a wonderful poem that he wrote me. It was two A4 pages long... Was wonderful how he went over our years together... We have certainly had our ups and downs but I know that I would not want to be anywhere else. That is for sure. :)

I was also allowed a sleep in and didn't surface again till nearly midday. How wonderful is that. Thanks boys for being quiet. :) Mum needed that sleep. Have not been sleeping well at all for the last two weeks so was very welcome.

We then went to go out for lunch at Glengallan House but we locked ourselves out and didn't get back into our house for two hours... Luckily we have good friends that helped out and we ended up going into town to get keys cut for spares... We also got some lunch at Mussel's which was yummy as always. Then some quick fruit shopping and back to pick up the boys.

They are going out to a circus tonight, it has come to town. Parked at the back of our local pub. How cool is that. Lisa and Russell are taking the boys and we will watch a movie while they are gone. Then all kids, our boys and their two friends will come and have a sleepover tonight. :)

Won't hear them much as last Thursday a new version of Pokemon came out so their heads will be in their DS lite anyway. Awwww to be a kid again.

Now don't forget that tonight is Earth Hour from 8:30pm. All our power will be going off. Nothing new for us but doing it all the same. :)

Cheers Damaris

Painting...

My table all set up, ready to go... :)

This week one of my jobs that I had on my 'list' of things to do was my painting table. I had arranged it ages ago just how I wanted it but with time it had things put on top of other things and ended up looking worse than a dog's breakfast. It was time for action...

Not only did I dust it all and wipe it all down but I decluttered while I was at it. I gave three recycle bags worth of things this morning to Lifeline. They saw me coming and smiled... Yes I had been there a lot these last few weeks. :)

So now I have all my brushes set up properly. I really need to get back into painting. I have not done any really for the last 2.5yrs. Since we moved out here. Always something else to do...

Now that things are settling down, I am going to make time for it. And I have started. Took things things and did one base coat. Out of three that is not bad and a start... :)

Cheers Damaris

More Plums...

Newly added jam, now in the pantry. :)

Was going through the freezer the other day and realised that I still had some frozen, cut up plums that were just in a container and that needed sorting out. Could use the container too. Ended up making some Plum jam. Was good to do that again. Been a while since I have made jam and then water bathed it. Can't wait till the glut of fruit comes again. Especially grapes from the Stanthorpe area. :)

Cheers Damaris