Staying Cool on a Hot Hot Day

Environmentalists please look away. I know that this is a waste of water but it was so hot! It was so much fun!!! It reminded me of the fantastic days of home made slip and slides and running under the sprinkler for hours. Beautiful hot summer days, where it was so exciting when your friends Mum came out of the house with a tray full of cut up watermelon when you were exhausted from making wirlpools in the above ground pool.

DIY Washing Powder Review

In my earlier post I said that I was going to try using the DIY Washing Powder for awhile. The recipe is from the Debt Free Cashed Up and Laughing blog and I thought I would let you know how it's going. The washing powder is a success, it's saving us about $13 a fortnight but you know every cent counts when you have to tighten your belt. The washing powder does leave behind particularly bad tomato stains and you might have to use a little elbow grease and some soap for those, but everything else comes out a treat.

If you're looking for the ingredients they are readily available at my local grocery store. The borax is in the cleaning section on the bottom shelf and the washing soda is in the laundry section.

I also made and trialled the dishwashing machine powder and it was CRAP! You heard it here :)

Australia Day Makes Me Sad

I feel too guilty about the sadness suffered by the indigenous people of Australia to be able to celebrate the happiness that I feel about being an Australian on Australia Day. This seems like a sad state of affairs. Not to mention that Australia Day has been taken over by feral redneck nationalist inbred scum as some kind of rallying point for pointless racism and cruelty. It gives me the worst type of cultural cringe.

Australia Day is held on January 26th which commemorates the arrival of the first fleet. The percentage of Australians that have a link to the First Fleet is minimal. At the time of the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006 census 23.8% of Australian citizens were born overseas. Then there is the 2.5% of Australians who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (ATSI), for which the day that Cook landed in Botany Bay is hardly something to be celebrated as it commenced an era of illness, removal from land, violence and death.

My neighbour who is Aboriginal said to me on the morning of Australia day, when he was lending me his whipper snipper that he 'only became an Australian in '67' which is the year that Australians resoundingly voted to include Aboriginal people in the census. He was very quiet and subdued. I want my fellow Australians regardless of race to be able to be happy and celebrate what a great country we live in. At the very least I think we could move Australia Day, move it to another day where we could all rejoice about the country which we are sharing regardless of improvements that we could make and leave January 26th as a day of remembrance or a day for reconciliation where we acknowledge the wrong done and being done to our indigenous population

If you take ethnicity out of the picture and you just paid attention to the statistics of the huge gap between ATSI Australians and the rest of the Australian population I'm sure that there would be much more of an outcry about the situation. Indigenous Australians die much younger than the rest of us, infant mortality is much higher and they constitute a disproportionate amount of those in jail... Elizabeth McKenzie Hatton wrote "The position of the remnant of the original owners of this land... is a blot on State and Church alike. The fact that certain aborigines are camped under petrol tins and without certain knowledge of where their next meal is coming from is a reflection of our boastful civilisation. We may claim that we are not responsible for the actions of the original British invaders who violated their homes, shot, poisoned, burned and mutilated the natives; but we can not claim immunity from the conditions existing at the present time, and what should not be tolerated for one moment longer than it will take to rectify matters." Those words were written in 1926!!!! but they could have been written yesterday for the relevance that they have to our current position.

I hope that in my lifetime I find it possible to celebrate Australia Day again because I love my country and I want to be proud of it.

P.S. I sent a more concise version of this to Julia Gillard :) and I think that the attack on her person on Australia Day was really reprehensible and didn't achieve anything for the cause.

Our Happy Rainbow Christmas

We had a beautiful bright Christmas full of happiness. Our house was full of friends and family which is a recipe for joy. Matt and I got matching tie dyed shirts from our neices which I LOVE LOVE LOVE and I will be wearing on high rotation. We spent the New Year with many friends under the giant oak tree in our backyard, with candles hanging from the branches. It was magical. I send my best wishes for your friends and families to have a fantastic 2012 full of all the good things and none of the bad things.

Christmas is 'spensive!

So Christmas is expensive and Matt and I are poor :) the point is that we have no where near the income that we did BC (before child) and we don't care because our life is so much richer and happier with her in it. So to be able to afford presents, pay bills, eat etc we have to cut back on other costs. I'm trialling some make your own washing powder that I got the recipe for on the Debt Free, Cashed Up and Laughing blog. Two dollars makes enough washing powder for 90 washes and it works, so they say. All the ingredients were available in my local Coles and I've used it on two loads so far. I think that it may have deglittered one of Lucy's tshirts so it really does seriously clean but it's probably not a good idea for your delicates. I used it on a load of poopy washers that we used to wipe Lucy's bum and they came out crystal clean and smelling delicately like soap with no poopy overtones (yes I sniffed them, so what :) it's a scientific test). They also have a recipe for dishwashing powder which I might try if this continues to go well. So check it out if you're interested in tightening your financial belt to make your pay go further.

Epicly Cute

Christmas Conundrum

**This post is rated C for Controversial if you are very religious feel free to read on but I won't be held responsible for any offence taken. **

It's that time of year and this time Matt and I are sharing the season with our little light Lucia. She was here last Christmas but she was only 3.5 months old and I don't remember Christmas (sleep deprived and first time parent addled) and I'm pretty sure she doesn't. This year we have to decide how we start to talk to Lucy about Christmas. As athiests (Matthew born and bred and myself an avid convert ;)) I don't really want to peddle the 'Jesus is the Reason for the Season' vibe that I was brought up with. I don't even really like the Santa hoo-ha, why do we raise our kids lying through the teeth to them about all these supernatural beings that bring shit, why don't we just say 'hey here's some money for losing a tooth, what an awesome milestone'. However I love the pomp and circumstance that goes with Christmas, the foods, the decos and the presents. I like the smoke and mirrors, the ambience, the tradition, just like I enjoy eating sushi because I like mixing the wasabi into the soy sauce and nibbling pickled ginger and I still have a warm place in my heart for choirs singing sacred music. Just because I believe that Christmas is about some imaginary dude doesn't mean that I can't appreciate it's beauty. I don't want Lucy to miss out on something that other kids are experiencing and I don't want her to destroy anyone elses Christmas dream either! So where lies the middle ground. Not the biggest problem facing the world today I know but still one that I think about a lot at this time of year. However... there are presents under the tree from Santa this year and I guess we have a couple more years to iron it out before we have to decide one way or another. Any suggestions would be considered with due respect.

Until then, check out my freaking delicous Christmas fruit cake liberally doused with Cointreau which I got from a magazine that was lying around at work and our first real live Christmas tree which we got a bit discounted because it was a bit spesh (more round than Christmas tree shape) but I wanted to bring it home and give it some love because Matt and I like to embrace the slightly outside the square things in life.