Category: Photos

A drinking game – Castle

/ Renae / Leave a comment
Okay. Drinking is not a game. It’s serious business. And we conducted this experiment purely for educational and research purposes. We lined up all the South African booze alcoholic liquids we could get our hands on acquire within the constraints of our budget. The plan was for the 4 of us to try each one (and yes, share our germs) and then have a photo taken of our initial reaction. Now, granted, some of these drinks we had already tried, but there were a few surprises! I’ll (try to) blog about 1 drink each day. Are you ready?

Drink 1: Castle Lager.
And the results:
First up, Clayton

“Nice”

Next, Anne had a go
Not a fan
Now for Wifey’s turn
Yeah, I’ve had better
And Hubs?
ontemplative? Or satisfied…
So for Castle, we seemed to have 2 yes, 1 no and a maybe. It really was quite a bitter beer, and after drinking a few Savannas beforehand, my palate wasn’t quite ready for the shock! More fun to come tomorrow!

The Wedding of 2009

/ Renae / Leave a comment

This is really quite overdue, but I figure, it’s better late than never! Hubs and I attended my cousin’s wedding last October and it was just delightful. We headed over to Kturtle and Khicken’s place to get ready in the afternoon, after a few home brewskies, and headed to West End for the service.

It was just divine. I had a little cry as I watched my “baby cousin” who, along with her twin, are the sisters I always wanted. The service was really lovely and personal, and I had a little cry when they were making their promises to each other.

Here’s A&A, the happy couple, after the service
Kturtle, Khicken, Dad, Mum, Wifey, Hubs (red was the order of the day!)
A&E – Another happy (and stunning) couple!
And another…
And another!!
Pro Photo. Aren’t they just gorgeous!

And then it was off to the reception! Via the Spring Hill Hotel with the cousins, that is. I thought to myself, “I’ll just have a champagne or 2 and that will do me” but what I’d forgotten was that we were with my brother and his Kturtle so the drinks were flowing freely. Oh boy. We finally made it to the reception, in a jovial mood and were ready to par-tay!

The speeches were really special, and when Crolly recited a poem he had written, to his bride, there was not a dry eye in the house. And don’t get me STARTED on his rendition of “The Horses” by Daryl Braithwaite. “That’s the way it’s gonna beeeeeee little darlin'”. Oh my goodness. SO MUCH FUN!!!

And of course, you can’t have all the cousins together, without getting a cousin shot!

I’m so happy for you guys, and I know you have embarked on an amazing journey together that you will share whole-heartedly. So much love to you both.

Boston Legal meets The Muppetts

/ Renae / Leave a comment

So we’re onto season 4 of Boston Legal and again, it’s taking me a while to get into it. It happens every season. I get attached to characters, the stories are going great guns, everything is making sense and I’m in my groove. Then we start a new season and all of a sudden old characters have disappeared with a vague explanation like “since Denise is on extended leave” or sometimes they just vanish with NO explanation at ALL! Like Claire! Do you know how annoying that is?? It’s like the character didn’t even exist!

But I can’t help but adore the show. I’m addicted. We finished Season 3 last week and didn’t have Season 4 straight away I kinda panicked a little! But it’s okay, we’re onto Season 4 now, which brings me to the point of this post.

Saffron Burrows aka Lorraine Weller. Now don’t get me wrong. I liked Saf in Circle of Friends, and I liked her in Troy. But in Boston Legal, all she does is walk around looking all leggy and necky and dopey.

She reminds me of Janice from The Muppett Show. Seriously.
She has no substance! Or if she does, I’m yet to see it. She’s just on the show for the sex appeal, and really I’m okay with that. I mean, you can’t watch BL without being okay with a bit of sexism in the script. I don’t know how they get away with it, but I think it’s partly due to the fact that they’re so damn blatant about it. But Saffron’s character takes it too far. She’s just too much snooty and not enough depth. 
I don’t know how many more snooty huffy drippy looks I can take from this woman!!!

South African Animals

/ Renae / Leave a comment

I’m going to mainly let the photos speak for themselves in this post. These animals were mostly seen at Kruger park, and a couple of other game parks we visited. You could get so close!! Scary!

Cheeky Zebra (you can just imagine it going “heeeyyeeee” kinda like The Fonz)
 
 
Cheeky Monkey (and baby!) (this is one of my favourite photos!!)
Gorgeous Giraffes (we think they were canoodling!)
 
A divine dragonfly looking like a Wright Brothers Plane
Impossible impala (what?… I’m running out of words. Can you do better?)
Ossie Ostrich (?)
A red-billed hornbill (aka Zazu from The Lion King)
And while we’re talking about The Lion King, here’s Pride Rock!! (okay, so it’s not as impressive as the one Mufasa comanded from, but there were lions nearby, so clearly it was Pride Rock.)
(“aaaaayazenyaaaaah mudiwi’ chadiwa” “hummmmm”) 
(YOU try spelling it…)
“When he was a young warthog.”
“When I was a young wart hoogggggggggggggggg”
“Very nice”
“Thank you”
(damn these things were cuuuuuuute)
Plenty more animals to come!!! Stay tuned…

Sunset on a yacht

/ Renae / Leave a comment

(I’m going to blog about South Africa again very very soon! I PROMISE!!)

But first, let me tell you what Hubs and I got up to a few Tuesdays ago! Our friend’s Dad has a yacht and we were invited to a day/evening out! 4 of the boys met at Brighton where the yacht is moored and sailed in the bay, had a swim (i.e. were dragged along) in the bay and then met us at Docklands, where 5 of us joined them for the return voyage. I always get excited about sailing, and it’s not til we get out a ways that I remember I get sea-sick. I wasn’t too bad on this journey though – I stayed above deck and managed to not chuck.

The whole evening was just lovely. The weather was gorgeous (though, not enough wind on the return trip) and the company, as always, fabulous.

“Damn, I think we lost Hubs. Can you seen him?”
“Yeah, I can see his dreads, right there!”

“I hope he tied the rope nice and tight!!”
Nathan and Cal looking hot, and enjoying the view
Hubs and Wifey trying to do the same…
…and looking like clowns…
Enjoying the great company (and nibblies!)
Stunning sunset
(I couldn’t decide between the 2 photos)
The sunset reflected on the Eureka Tower, and nothing else – it was incredible!
Thanks so much for a wonderful day out guys! I can tick “sailing in Port Phillip Bay” off my “things to do before leaving Melbourne” list.

Special time with Ouma

/ Renae / 3 Comments

One of my highlights of our trip to South Africa, was meeting Hubs’ Ouma. She is one of the most amazing women I’ve ever had the privelege to meet, and now I’m related to her! We spent many hours drinking coffee, eating rusks and listening to her stories as she showed us some photos. She has had an extraordinary life and remembers the finest details in her stories – we couldn’t get enough!

 
 These are the memories that will last a lifetime – precious moments spent with precious people who we adore, and we are so blessed to have so many of them in our lives.

Let there be cake!!

/ Renae / 4 Comments

A friend of ours, Sophie G-C, celebrated her birthday yesterday, and Hubs and I hosted a little par-tay at our place. I wanted to make a cake instead of buying one, so I was going to do something similar to the one I made for Hubs for his “21st” last year, ie, a big chocolate cake with lots of sprinkles in the shape of an “S”. But NOOOOO (said in a whiny voice) Hubs had to come up with something even BETTER. He said I should make a Superman cake instead! That way the “S” could stand for Sophie!

I looked up some pictures (thanks Google!) and found a couple of REALLY impressive ones, as well as a few amateur ones and had a feeling mine was going to look a little dodgy, but, I wanted to give it a go. I made my square cake, rotated it 45 degrees, chopped the top off, printed out a template, dyed some icing some Super great colours and iced to my heart’s content. And I gotta say, I was SUPER chuffed with the end product:

Not bad hey? Maybe I take after Mum even more than I thought! Here is the work in progress: (I started with a template, cut the yellow bits out and put the template on the cake. I filled in the yellow bits, took the paper off and was left with the red bits to fill in. I used red writing icing to trace around the yellow bits before adding the red icing):
And then it was just a matter of whipping the blue icing around it. Piece of cake! ha ha ha ha ha ha. Punny!
And here it is, fully ablaze! (you can see my signature choc-dipped strawberries in the background!)
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Sophieeeeeeeeeeeeee
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Hope you had a great time Sophie!!!

A creature of habit

/ Renae / 1 Comment

When I find something I like, I stick to it. Take Hubs for example – no way I’m letting HIM go 🙂

Though, I refer mainly to other non-Hubs-related things, such as the fact that I ate the same lunch every day for 6 months (corn thins with herb tuna and fresh baby spinach leaves), and that I have been eating the same breakfast for almost a year (1 crumbled wheat-bix with 1/3 cup bran, soy milk, natural yoghurt and honey) and that I buy the same conditioner, moisturiser and lipstick brand every time.

Oh, and there’s also this:

I’ve bought the same diary the last 6 years. I can’t help myself! It’s compact, has a nice layout and it comes in PURPLE!! But this year I’ve branched out into something bigger. And it was purple too!

Then I realised it was TOO big and didn’t fit properly in my “new” (2nd hand $10) handbag very well, so I took the cover off and now have a much more user-friendly sized diary. I do like having a bigger diary I must admit. I feel more mature or something. Whatevs.