‘Lucky’ crawled out from under the bonet of our car after we travelled 100k. He was a little shabby from the experience and had a couple of little burn marks on his head. He came from the Queensland Hinterlands, but as he was in need of care, we were also not in an area suitable for his release anyway, and because we were continuing our travel home the next morning we decided to buy a travel tank, some crickets and nurse him back to health. We also got advice from wildlife who advise us NOT to release him in an area where he was foreign to. So by default… we had a new pet. We have had him since 2004 and I have to say,… he is very cute. More about him later.

It’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve been very busy as usual (being a mother and partner) and I’ve not had much time spare to play with wire or fire :},.. whenever I’ve had a small chunk of time… it’s usually very late at night and I fear that if I were to play with wire or fire that late at night, I’d most likely poke an eye out or burn my head in the flame as I nod off.

Recently however,. things have calmed down here somewhat and I’ve been able to get back into the swing of things. I made a dangle bracelet for my son to give to a friend for her 15th birthday (forgot to snap a photo and only remembered after it was wrapped). I haven’t played with my Bobcat torch again yet… but I visit it now and then up in the studio and fondle the glass rods a bit,lol.

I can’t wait to get back to playing with hot gooey glass on a rod again. I need to find myself an affordable annealing kiln first, because I cannot help myself,.. I just have to make those big fancy beads (I’m a wannabe fancy lampwork bead maker hee hee) and they will just crack in half if I don’t anneal them in a kiln. So,.. I’m looking for a kiln,..but not looking too hard…these things are expensive and I don’t really want to find a kiln that I might love,..and I cannot not get it,. and it will cost me and arm and a leg.

In the mean time,… most of my free time is spent upgrading (read re-coding) my website. Ok,..I feel the perfectionism has crept in and is holding me hostage in XHTML and CSS code, validating it and removing errors. Oh but wait… what’s this for a change,… I have upgraded and made some changes to this blog today and aaaaaaar it’s PHP. So anyway,.. I’m still working on the first three pages I started a week ago,lol but am almost done with the home page. It’s looking good,..(and I mean the code is looking good) and working well in several browsers. The other two pages that I have started on already,.still have a tonne of recoding and validating to do, and look a little untidy in the browsers as the links and texts have lost their uniformity etc and I have to go back into those pages once the conversions a complete and fix up that uniformity again. I have a long way to go, to convert the rest of the website from HTML to XHTML and CSS, but I think just knowing what I do now,.. the rest of the pages will be easier and quicker.

Perfectionism is a trait I have and is most often my downfall,.. as those who also have this trait will understand,..it can, and does very often work against you. However,.. this trait has led me to develop a strong desire to be able to make myself the perfect coffee at home, consistantly,.with only the flavours of the beans and different blends giving a varied taste and interesting appeal.

I used to drinking instant coffee at home blerrrk!,.and at the same time became more and more dissatisfied with the coffee I was having when out and about, so developed my thoughts and desires of being able to make the perfect coffee at home.

So,.. with perfectionism taking hold,.. the persuit for the perfect coffee at home came at a price and I now have an espresso machine, a grinder to ‘grind on demand’ just enough for the cup/s,.. 10k+ of green beans (they last for over a year in this state when stored correctly) and a little home roaster. I’m currently making another roaster so I can roast larger than 100g at a time. I also have a tonne of other coffee making paraphernalia and a dedicated coffee cupboard phrrrt.

I now pour the perfect coffee at home,.way better and fresher than I have ever tasted in any cafe,.. but as tempting as it might be to try out my latest roasts/blends all day long,. I stick to two coffees in the morning,. and usually one or two in the afternoon/evening. So just because I have gone so far as to roast my own green coffee beans and ‘grind on demand’ to obtain the freshest possible coffee,..I’m not a coffee guzzler by any means,. I just desire ultra fresh coffee when I do have it.

I will talk more about my coffee obsession and discoveries and maybe you might be converted too,lol.

My kids occasionally have YouTube frenzies where they look for funny vids, and consequently we’re back on dialup speed for a few weeks each month *sigh*. Sometimes though they dig up some beauties, so I thought I would bring them here to give you a smile.
Here is a little doll that is so gorgeous and animated in her singing. Check out the emotion on her face,..what a cutie. I have watched this video quite a few times over the past 12 months and even love the tune myself as does my daughter. I’d love to know what she is singing though,lol.

Enjoy!

As you can see, things are looking a little different here,.. and very messy and erm.. just wrong ;). I’m playing with things right now and my blog will look a little disjointed with odd looking for a while with strange looking links/titles/categories and so on. I’ve also upgraded wordpress to the latest version but in the process, I can see that a few posts have gone strange with the entire post becoming a link etc…. and I’m sure there will be more anomalies found as I get into it more.

I hope to have everything all configured nicely transformed in a few days time…. but it could take a little longer,.. having done this before with wordpress… it’s fiddly and time consuming.

Hope you will like the new look and more regular updates,…. I’ve been busy over the past 12months,.. but I hope to have time this year to blog a bit.