Still alive and kicking

I know it has been a long time since you guys heard from me. I promise I am still here, and I miss blogging like crazy. Unfortunately our house is a bit technologically impaired at the moment, so unless I can figure out how to turn a hamster and several coconut shells into a modem we are disconnected for a little while.

Well a lot has happened over the past two months, first was new years, (happy 2013 everyone!) I haven't made any resolutions this year, as I never manage to keep them for very long any way so I stopped making promises on 31st December a long time ago.

Then in January we took Miss K back to the optometrist to have my worst fears confirmed, and Miss K is now the proud owner of a shiny pair of blue glasses. Pictures will come soon I promise. Then we took her to the doctor to get an unexplained rash checked out and found out she has eczema. So we now have a very strict skin care regimen in place to make sure her skin stays healthy.

The other big thing I wanted to mention today is the huge milestone that this blog has just passed. It has been a year since I started this blog, and the journey so far has been a lot of fun.

Well lots more has happened, but I am meant to be visiting with my big sister at the moment, so I feel rude sitting in front of her computer instead of chatting so I have to head of and be social.

I should hopefully be back by the beginning of next month, so thank you all for your patience, and I promise I haven't forgotten any of you. Stay awesome till I come back.

It's all over red rover

Well here we are at the other end of Christmas, and my feet are certainly thankful for this. My lounge room looks like we were hit by a sand storm, Miss K is finally tucked up in bed and mum has gone off to my little sister's house to celebrate the end of another Christmas with a few drinks. (And then maybe a few more.)

Today was everything I could have hoped for and more. Miss K's reaction this morning when she got her first glimpse of the lounge room covered in toys and presents was absolutely priceless. And had it not been 6:45 in the morning, I'm sure I would have been even more ecstatic watching her joy. She spent the morning tearing paper off presents and trying to squeeze in as much play with all of her new toys as possible.

Digging in the new and still full sand pit

Meeting her new Elmo toy. He got carted around with us all day

Mum helping Miss K open another present. (Yes that's really what I look like at 7am)

Miss K "riding" her new bike

Brunch with Miss K's dad was more excitement, as he came with presents from him and Nonna as well as some friends of his back home. I got excited too because he bought McDonalds bagels with him, which are a rare treat for me.

On the way to lunch at my little brother's house Miss K actually fell asleep in the car, which did not fill me with much hope for her being able to stay happy for very long, but apparently all she needed was a 2 minute nap because she was full of energy for the next 4 hours. And then when we got home she only had an hour long nap before she was ready to get up and play again. I have no idea where she gets this much energy from but I'm thinking of finding a way to bottle it up to keep me going on long days.

Lunch was the same chaotic fun it is every time my whole family gets together. There were almost as many Nerf guns there as people thanks to my nephew, and no one escaped from the afternoon without at least one shot to the head. Mine came from mum when she got tired of listening to me explain something and popped a bullet off in my general direction. None of us realised it would get me right between the eyes until it met its target. Luckily Nerf bullets are only foam otherwise it could have been painful, but I couldn't complain because I was laughing too hard.

And then this evening after we had all had our nap and were feeling refreshed, mum went off to keep the party going while Miss K and I had dessert for dinner. (Because hey, it's Christmas.) 

But now the house is completely quiet and I have a new video game with thanks to Miss K (and Grandma) that has finally installed on my computer and is calling for me to play it.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful day filled with as much fun and laughter as I did, and I'll be back again soon once the effect of too much food has worn off and I can get the energy up to write again.

Santa Claus is coming...

I had to squeeze one more post in before Christmas was finally here.

The presents are all wrapped or set up and waiting to be played with. (except for the one I just remembered was still sitting in the family room waiting to be wrapped. Damn.)

Miss K's brand new Elmo bistro table 

The sand pit is finally full of sand

Almost all of the rest of the presents. 

Now all I have to do is crawl to my bed and fall asleep. Tomorrow is going to be a big day. After we've opened all our presents, we're going for brunch with Miss K's dad, then we've got lunch at my brother's place with the whole family, then I can finally come home and have a well deserved nap.

Merry Christmas all my awesome readers, have a great day tomorrow (or the day after for anyone behind us) and I'll see you on the other side.

It's beginning to look like a last minute rush

So is anyone else in denial that we only have two more sleeps until Christmas? My to-do list is slowly shrinking, but I still haven't wrapped a single present, and mum and I only just finishing decorating the lounge room this afternoon.

It's not Christmas at our house without some tinsel bunting

Miss K's contribution to the decorating is not touching this table

So this is technically an unfinished wall because we'll be stringing up some tinsel to make the baubles look like they're hanging on the wall, but you get the idea.

And I finally got a picture of the finished Christmas tree, it has had some rearranging done over the past few weeks as Miss K can't resist touching everything, so most days I find several ornaments sitting on the floor that need rescuing. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Santa vomit.

If you look very closely, you'll see a large white rectangle close to the bottom of the tree, that is actually an ornament that Miss K made with Grandma several days ago. She was so proud of it, and we have to show it to everyone when they first enter the house. Luckily we don't get a lot of new visitors around here otherwise I would get very tired of talking about it. Needless to say this will be saved and kept as a reminder of a time that is passing all too quickly.

In our house, no Christmas is complete until the toys come out. For the past few years mum has been collecting all kinds of irritating singing Christmas themed toys and Nutcrackers. Every year they take their place next to the tree to stand guard against potential thieves, and Miss K loves to spend her days racing the toys, or turning them all on at once and making them perform riff-offs. It's a guaranteed headache creator every time, but it keeps her entertained for so long I have learned to tune it all out.

We're doing all we can to keep the battery industry alive in Australia

Now we were very saddened this year to discover that apparently Nutcrackers have become uncool again. For several years the stores have been well stocked with these gorgeous toys, and mum always managed to find at least one that she felt needed to be added to the collection. Now we have to wait for the next time someone remembers these relics and decides to make them cool again to add further friends to our collection.

Won't someone think of the Nutcrackers???

Now yesterday I harnessed my inner handyman and built myself a marquee. Not from scratch of course, I'm not that good. But given that a lot of Miss K's toys are intended for outdoor use, I wanted somewhere safe and shaded for her to be able to play, even in the hottest days of summer, and given that my only experience in building has been flat pack furniture, I am pretty pleased with my efforts. Of course I built the marquee where our old pergola used to be, and the structure that was the roof is still in place. And yesterday I was surprised to find that it is less than 2.5 metres tall, as the marquee couldn't be erected to even it's shortest extension underneath it. Oops. But even crouching on the ground as it was yesterday, it was tall enough to fit Miss K and an inflatable pool underneath it, so we spent our afternoon having a swim.

I of course have to kneel to fit underneath it, but since it's not for me, that didn't really matter.

Luckily for us Nat was over this morning, so she helped me to move it, raise it up and tether it down with the tent pegs and rope provided. I am now very ashamed of our abilities to tie ropes and secure flimsy buildings, but luckily for me, I have a dad who is an absolute pro at putting up tents and tying ropes, so I'll get him in after Christmas to secure that sucker properly so it doesn't pull a Wizard of Oz on us and fly away to the Emerald City.

And of course what Christmas would be complete without a gingerbread house? My big sister bought a kit for her and my niece and nephew to put together and decorate, and she was kind enough to invite Miss K and myself to participate. Sadly I didn't get any good pictures of Miss K decorating the building, but the finished product is pretty impressive.

If you look closely enough, you can even see the "snowman" in the front that I got to decorate. Yay!

And I finally got a picture better than Miss K sitting on Santa's knee, and that's Miss K dressed as Santa. Now I have to add that this was actually her idea, but it wasn't her idea to pose for photos, which is why she has been stood on a table, in order to slow her down long enough to get a decent photo.

HO HO HO!!!

But of course chasing her around with a singing reindeer always gets good results too...

Well I've shared all of my new photos with you, and managed to put off getting anything productive done for yet another evening, so my work here is done. Tomorrow is now going to be a mad dash to get absolutely everything done before the clock strikes Christmas, but I shall try my hardest to check in with you guys before all of the celebrations have started (or finished).

So until next time, stay awesome my wonderful readers and I hope none of you are as poorly prepared for the next few days as I am. Of course if you are, you could always share this with me, the comments box is always open, and I'd love some confirmation I'm not alone in my lack of organisation skills. 

I just can't help myself

OK so I know it's still seven days until Christmas (eep) but I couldn't wait that long to start opening Miss K's presents up and having a look at them. I mean I need to know exactly how many batteries I have to buy (answer: a lot) or exactly how much sand that thing needs. What thing? I hear you ask, well just her brand new sand pit!

Ta Daaa!!!!

This is one of the best things about being a mum, the permission to play with kids toys again. Now todays "play" was really for research purposes, because nowhere in the packaging for this toy does it tell you exactly how much sand you need to fill it up. So I absolutely had to unpack it and put it together so I could know how much room is left after you add all of the moulded plastic shapes.

That's more moulded plastic than a room full of naked Ken dolls!

Plus there were no instructions to speak of so it is always a good idea to do a dry run of these things before the big day to save a lot of tears. Well that's my excuse any way and I'm sticking to it. 

Well my inner child has been satisfied for one night, so it's time to pack up all my toys like a good girl and go to sleep.

Stay awesome my lovely readers and be on your best behavior  because there's only seven more sleeps till Santa comes!!!

What a waste

Even from the other side of the world, the outpouring of grief for the victims and their families after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting can be heard and felt. Anything I wanted to write about this weekend somehow seems trivial compared to what these people are going through right now.

So instead of telling you guys any stories, or complaining about any of my first world problems, all I will say is from Miss K and myself, and probably from the rest of the people in Australia is that our thoughts and prayers are with you all as you deal with this terrible loss.

Losing weight with Photoshop

So as you may recall, yesterday I wrote a blog post highlighting my obvious mad "skillz" in Photoshop. I am of the opinion that Photoshop and other photo manipulation programs are an awesome tool for improving photos when used correctly. But one of the ways I find that they are poorly used is when they are used to blur the line between real and fake in advertising.

Advertisers have always used sneaky tools to make their images look appealing to the general public. Even in the days before they used photography, and the advertisements were drawn, the finished product was always slightly different to the models that they used. Once upon a time when I was an impressionable teenager I used to spend my down time reading Girlfriend and Dolly magazines (for any of my non-Australian readers, these are fashion magazines aimed at teenagers) and hating all the models that they used for their perfect blemish free and skinny bodies. It wasn't until years later that I realised that all of the photos they used had been manipulated in some way, and that even the models themselves didn't look like the finished product.

A quick Google search will turn up thousands of results of before and after shots of advertisements and paparazzi shots that have been manipulated in order to fit with what the advertiser or writer wants to tell you, and even better are the websites that have sprung up solely to point out when the manipulators have made huge glaring errors and then let the product be published without being fixed. Lots of three handed or one legged models, or rather ample celebrities who suddenly slimmed down overnight.

Well just to show you my wonderful audience (especially any teens out there who may not believe that those perfect pictures aren't real), I have taken it upon myself to use the same tricks that the advertisers and magazines use to manipulate a shot of myself. To understand the change, you need to see the before shot, so here it is.

Me before my digital transformation

Now this is how the photo came out of the camera. There have been no changes done to this shot, not even a colour balance fix. Note the ample figure, the double chin and the tuck shop lady arms. All will be gone in just a few seconds. Now in order to make the changes seem real I had to remove myself from the lovely brown background which was my lovely flat in 2008. Note the wonderful circa 1980's shag pile carpet back there. Can anyone else say classy??

Now using the same tools that the professionals use (liquify, smudge, dodge and burn) I have transformed myself from the person I was in 2008 to someone completely different. Prepare yourself for some real magic here...

Ta daaa!! Go ahead and scroll up just to make sure your eyes aren't deceiving you, I'll wait.

Now remember I am just an amateur, so my results aren't perfect. But I wasn't aiming for perfection, just the opportunity to prove a point. Personally I hate the after shot, but that is because I know the person in this picture is not me. My teeth aren't that white, my skin isn't that smooth and my arms aren't that skinny. To me this looks like a plastic reproduction of me, perhaps what would happen if Madam Tussaud decided to make a wax model of me. Also now I think I have a bobble head in this picture, which just makes me feel self conscious of the size of my head in real life... 

On top of removing a large portion of my arms, waist and stomach, I also decided to increase the size of my eyes, plump out my bottom lip slightly (because I have a crooked smile in real life), close the gap between my two front teeth and straighten up my nose. (Again crooked.) My skin has been airbrushed in order to even out the complexion (and also hide little errors I made during my weight loss phase) and the bags under my eyes have been smoothed out. I left in my smile lines because I happen to love them, but if this was a professional job they would have been removed too. I also tidied up my brow line too because I was horrified when I first looked at this photo to realised I was in desperate need of a pluck at the time. Real advertisers would also have extended my neck, because there is nothing sexier than a giraffe according to them.

So by all means, keep reading your fashion magazines and reading every billboard that you pass, but just remember that even the model that posed for those shots wishes her body was that perfect. And just to burst a further bubble for you, most of the times the scenery behind the model is also added after the photo is taken?? Don't believe me? Well that's probably because I was totally in Greece when this photo was taken...

See?

Well that's me done for another night, I'd love to hear your opinions on the advertising industry, or any compliments you may have for my wonderful manipulation skills or incredibly photogenic face. Or even just some reassurance that my head doesn't look huge in the after shot, because seriously, to me that thing just looks like it's about to jump out of my computer screen and laugh at me.