Author: Renae

Living life as a wife, a stay at home mama of 3 kids under 5, a marriage celebrant, a craft and sewing amateur, a cooked breakfast lover, coffee enthusiast, extroverted socialite, and most recently, someone who is trying to keep a tidy house. It's tough I tell you!

Steak night!

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I’ve always been a bit nervous about cooking steak – there just seems to be a knack to it that I don’t have. Or should I say, didn’t have, until last night. We bought some eye fillet steak from our “local butcher” (I say “local” because it’s 10km out of town, but totally worth the drive) and after marinating it in soy and olive oil yesterday, I cooked them up last night. Uncle Ben kept saying “you can’t ruin a good cut of meat” and I kept thinking “wanna bet?” But I gave it a go, and they were awesome. Granted, I had a bit of help from Hubs and Uncle Ben, but I feel much more confident about cooking steak after last night’s efforts.

And now tonight, I’m going to tackle some fish. (Pardon the pun. Or don’t :-))

Pick of the pics from Brisbane

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With Nanny & Grandpa

Gran & Grumpy (I am not going to make a “pull my finger” joke.)
Ouma & Chanbe
With Poppy

With Aunty Kturtle & Uncle Khicken
With his Nan
Aunty June & Nanna
With Uncle Benny & Mama
With cousin Josie

And Aunty Heather
And cousin Nikki,
cousin Sarah, 
and cousin Amy! 
Hubs is here telling me that that might be enough photos of Chanbe for now… 🙂

Op-shop-a-licious!

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Some days, I’ll walk on in to an op shop and emerge half an hour later empty handed. Other days, I’ll leave with half the shop in my bag. Today was one of those days. Vinnies had just put out a whole new “season” of clothes and boy did I score. The thing about op shops is that they are mostly made up of fairly run-of-the-mill brands, but some days, like today, you’ll hit the jackpot. Now, I must tell you that the clothes I bought for myself were pretty stock standard, albeit mostly new and quite nice, but I came across one of those op shop finds we all dream of: a 100% silk dress from Brown Sugar. I just had a look on line, and a dress like that would normally retail at over $100.

I paid $8. BUT. And it’s a big but. It’s not my size. And I knew it wasn’t my size when I bought it, but I just HAD to buy it? Am I right? I couldn’t let a find like that slip through my fingers! So I stood there, holding the dress, and thought of who I might be able to pass it on to, and after coming up with a few names, I made my purchase. I really hope that it fits my friend and she likes it! But if not, I’m sure we’ll be able to think of someone else to pass it on to.

I do love op shop shopping!!!

Decisions decisions

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It’s 8:30pm. Chance has been in bed since 6:30pm. I’ve just enjoyed a leisurely dinner with Hubs while watching an episode of The Sopranos. I’ve done the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. And now I don’t know what to do. Chance is usually only just settled by now, but we’re trying an earlier bed time for a few different reasons and it seems to be agreeing with us all.

Here are my choices:
1. Go to bed – yeah right, not going to happen. What if I miss something fun!!??
2. Read my book – I’m currently reading “The Red Tent” and really enjoying it, but not sure I’m in the mood to read right now
3. Do the folding – pffft
4. Make Easter Eggs. Decision made…

In the mean time, here is an embarrassing photo!! (Embarrassingly cute that is!) Matchies!!! I saw this top at an op-shop for $2 and just HAD to buy it so I could match my little man. This is SO going to come back to haunt him in 18 years… Hee hee!

The name game

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Pregnant? Looking for a good name to call your first/second/third/etc born?

One word.

Credits.

When I was pregnant, I loved watching the ends of TV shows and movies to pick out names that I liked. I still do it! You get to see names in a new context, other than name books and we certainly saw some good ones!

(That’s not how we came up with Chance, but I got our future daughter’s name from TV!! Let’s just hope I have myself a girl some day!)

((I’m not pregnant.))

Hangin’ with the Chan Chan Man

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The Chan Chan Man is currently occupied with the babysitter

(this video was taken a little while ago, but you get the idea) so it gives me an opportunity to blog! FINALLY!!! Our trip up to Brisbane was just fabulous. Our little man was an absolute star with the travel – the trip back was just as successful as the trip up! It was so lovely to see our family and friends and everyone just went nuts over Chance which was very nice.

I took loads of photos but I haven’t gotten around to downloading them yet, as downloading photos at our place is a little more complicated than you might think. You see, we don’t have a PC, only a laptop (actually, we have 3 laptops and a tablet PC) and the one we use to dowload our photos on to our hard drive is Hubs’ tablet which he takes off the docking station to work in the loungeroom/take to uni etc, so in order to download the photos, I have to wait til Hubs isn’t using the computer, put it on the docking station, plug it in, plug in the hard drive, put the memory card in the computer, try and remember how to download the photos and voila! Easy! 🙂 Maybe it’ll happen tomorrow…

Life has been treating us very well. Chance has learnt some fun new tricks like squealing and poking his tongue out, and he has recently found his feet and is currently trying to put them into his mouth which is super cute. Hubs is gearing up for a big couple of months with exams in June that cover all the work for the last year. Chance and I are cheering him on! And as for me, my mother’s group is going wonderfully well, and I am keeping myself busy with other fun things like baking, shopping, (window shopping that is) going to the gym, and being a latte mum.

All in all, life is good.

We have arrived!

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After 6 “legs” (walk, bus, train, bus, plane, car) Chance and I arrived safe and sound in Brisbane. And not that I want to brag, or jinx myself for the trip home, but our little man was an absolute dream. He slept on the bus, then had a feed and sleep on the train, then happily made lots of cute noises on the shuttle bus to the airport, then slept for pretty much the whole flight. Honestly, it was so wonderful. I had hoped this would happen, and I think I did a good job of keeping calm and relaxed so he could follow my lead. Once we got into the car on the way home, he had had enough and lost it. And I was absolutely fine about it, as I was feeling pretty shattered and disorientated as well so I really couldn’t blame the little guy.

He fell asleep in the car at the top of our street but woke up for party time once we got him out of the car. I think he finally went to sleep about 11. Monday night was a tough night for both of us, with Chance waking up every hour or 2, so we were both pretty tired starting out yesterday. I wondered if I was in for the same fate last night, but he only woke up twice, and then at 6am (7am Wang time) it was time to wake up for good. At 6:30am, Grumpy came and took him for a cuddle and gave me another few hours of wonderful sleep. I feel so much better now. He’s a bit unsettled today but I’m sure he’ll be back to his usual self in the next day or two.

It’s really nice to be back in Brizzie catching up with rellies. He’s at such a lovely age and it’s nice to share this time with family. He’s currently having a bit of a scream so I’d better go and see if I can help out, although Gran and Grumpy seem to have it covered!

Visit

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This time tomorrow, Chanbe and I will be starting our journey to Brisbane. We are catching the bus to Seymour, train to Melbourne, shuttle to the airport, plane to Brisbane and will be picked up and taken back to Gran and Grumpy’s with a stopover at Ouma’s place. I’m getting tired just thinking about it! I really want to share this time in Chance’s life with family and friends in Brisbane so when Virgin had cheap flights, I couldn’t resist.

I think it will officially be the longest I’ve ever spent away from Hubs 🙁 I know quite a few people who spend weeks and/or months away from their partners and I have no idea how they do it, other than the fact that they are deeply committed to their relationships and I have so much respect and admiration for you guys (you know who you are.)

So if you’re around I’d love to see you! I haven’t scheduled any posts while I’m away but I’m hoping to have a bit of time to blog while I’m there. We’ll see how that goes…

Happiness is…..

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Sitting at the computer, dunking home-made crunchy oatmeal cookies (with chocolate chips and craisins) into my cup of tea, catching up on my google reader and watching my 4 month old try and crawl while waiting for Hubs to get home after his night away.

Mmmmm…. crunchy cookies….