A treasure chair of goodies

I can be quite a messy person at times(well my mother would probably say all of the time) and I tend to leave any new things I've bought lying around the house, so my mother usually piles it all up and dumps it on my dining chair in the hope that I'll move it when meal time comes around but usually I just pile it all on the floor next to the chair(Sorry Mum!). A couple weeks ago this is what my dining chair looked like(minus the outdoor part), full of beautiful knick-knacks, including: a new Pyjama top and the accompanying adorable little price tag as well as a birthday present for a friend, something recycled, something reusable and something with a dash of blue. That assortment on the chair sums up how I'd like my own house to be in the future, full of beautiful, eco-friendly, kitsch and quirky pieces that will make my house, feel like a home.

That photo was one of the last pictures take with my treasured Pentax Optio S10 digital camera which conked out on me after only a year and a half of use. In the hope it might be fixable we took it to a camera repair shop but it was going to cost more than it was worth to have it mended, luckily though the man serving me was able to offer me a similar Pentax camera that has some new extra features and a slick exterior for the cost price of only $220. One hundred dollars cheaper than the current retail price, only problem is they have to get it shipped over and it's already been two weeks since I ordered it and I've yet to receive the camera.

On another note, remember this summer to-do list I wrote in November? Well unfortunately I didn't finish everything on the list but I am on my way to completing some of the other tasks: I'm about to start piano lessons this week, I've chosen the article I'm going to write, I've written about half of the song, I bought the fabric to make the piece of clothing and purchased some yarn for crocheting. So the list is still a work in progress. Rest assured I didn't spend my summer days doing nothing though, I've been preparing for school and catching up on note-taking and study from '09.

Back to organising everything for the start of a new school year then. Best wishes for anyone else starting back!


P.S. I also want to give a huge thankyou to Blaize for sending this award my way!



P.P.S With my new-found typing skills I touch-typed this whole post!

Can you spot the cat?

Milly The Cat

For the past two weeks we've been caring for an adorable little cat(for a friend of mine while her and her family took a trip to Bali), called Max, who is a girl cat. Being the feminine person that I am I couldn’t fathom calling such a sweet little cat … Max, so I changed her name to Milly as in Maxamillion(Who I think was some Roman/Greek god…? I only recognised it, as it was used in a film I watched recently). She’s been such a pleasure to have around and has really livened up the house, I’m really hoping we can get a cat of our own this year so I’m hopeful this ‘experience’ will persuade my mother.

Even though Milly is very girlie she can be quite mischievous at times, she scampers round the house, skidding on the slippery tiles(and has bashed into the glass back door a couple of times) and I’m pretty sure she's jumped onto almost every surface possible in the house, including:

The linens in the cupboard.



The top of the television cabinet, where she’s knocked down all the Christmas cards on numerous occasions.



The bookshelf and nearly the air conditioning unit.



The sinks.



Plus the piano, washing machine, dining table, kitchen bench(where she liked to drink water out of our glasses, when we had our backs turned), shower and the kitchen hot plates while one was turned on!(Luckily she didn’t touch the hot one and some aluminium foil along the edge stopped her from returning).

Did I mention she’s an indoor cat? So of course we took her for a daily walk with her leash and collar. She looked forward to going outside so much so she would whine and meow in the mornings until we took her out but she tried to do a runner a couple of times as she was able to slink out of the collar. She wanted to chase after bees; something that wouldn’t have ended well.



We did have a bit of a mini disaster occur when I went to go put out the washing once. You see, we have a fairly large gap at the bottom of our flyscreen door(from when we used to have rabbits that nibbled their way outside) and while the cat had been vacationing with us I always made sure the glass door was shut, as I didn’t want to risk her escaping but on this occasion I only left the flyscreen door closed and I started to have a mini heart attack when I noticed it open as I was about to come back inside. My first thought was that the cat had escaped as she’d been following me round the house all day and was desperate to go outside. Before I went into a full-on heart attack I went to go look for her inside the house as I was probably overreacting but even with my mother’s help looking in every nook and cranny we couldn’t find Milly. Back came the mini panic attack as I searched the whole garden, driving the neighbour’s crazy calling out “Miiiiiilllly!”(after a while I was starting to think I was pronouncing it wrong as I’d said it so many times). I peered over the back fences of a couple of the surrounding neighbour’s gardens but no such luck. I was really starting to doubt I’d ever see her again, we have 6 neighbouring gardens that surround our backyard so she could have been in any one of them plus she wouldn’t really recognise anything as she was in a new neighbourhood. Next I went round asking the neighbours to look out for a ginger cat that may or may not respond to either Milly or Max(I got some strange looks there) but no-one had seen her. I was deciding whether or not to cry as I walked back into our house, about to phone the local ranger in case anyone called in saying they’d found a cat, when my mother yelled out saying she’d found her! Milly was fast asleep laying on top of a row on magazines on a bookshelf that was hidden by a sheet(my mother seems to have a phobia of dust and covers everything up). I was so relieved I wouldn’t have to tell my friend I’d lost her cat; one of the happiest moments of my life.

But other than that minor hiccup everything went smoothly, except for my feet which kept getting scratched by the monster under the bed.

2010

Hope you all had a lovely New Year and Christmas Day, I feel so giddy about it being the start of a new decade(I'm ignoring the fact that technically the new decade starts in 2011).

2010.
Wow.
It's finally here.

Shame it's not really how the 2000s were depicted in those old futuristic films/tv shows(Think "The Jetsons") But perhaps that was a little too far fetched, I doubt even the 3000's will be like that. I think the closest thing to how I expected the 2000's to be is IKEA. Seems silly how a furniture store could be so advanced but it truly is. I feel they have revolutionised the way people shop and it makes sense. They make the process of shopping simpler and as a 'reward' for shopping there you get cheaper products. And it's the tiniest of details that all add up.

The flat packaging- they save on the decreased cardboard, giving you cheaper prices plus the DIY element of putting the furniture together saves you even more. Not to the mention the adorable and simple picture instructions.

(credit: greenbang)

The provided shopping lists, pencils and measuring tapes. Why didn't people think of them before?

(credit: unilinkbus)

The supplied shopping bags and no plastic bag policy; the store short cuts, making it ten times easier to manouvere round the shop; the beautiful children's creche; the "As-Is" section where you buy disouncted IKEA furniture that has been used or that has slight faults(I used to think it read "A5-15" when I was little and could never figure out what an earth it meant); the fact that they have everchanging showrooms where you can test everything out and see how it really looks plus the market hall where you can buy everything you see.

My favourite part of IKEA though would have to be the restaurant, I love how you serve yourself and the array of foods they have available for you to choose from(Did you notice how they even have jars of baby food available?) for just a couple of dollars. They also sell vegetarian and organic food, which gets a big thumbs up from me. Plus they encourage everyone to put away their own trays, which I whole-heartedly support. I really hate when people leave all their leftovers on the tables when it would take them less than 60 seconds to put it away. The cleaners already have plenty to do with cleaning away spills/dropped food and clearing away all the china/glass, plates and cups.

(credit: fredtexas)

And just to top it all off, you can buy the food they sell at the restaurant and cook it at home yourself. Next time I'm wanting to buy their organic pasta sauce, which for the quantity is far cheaper than the organic versions in the supermarkets.

(credit: ikea)

What I'm trying to get at is that I expected the noughties and the tens(anyone got a better name for the new decade?) to be a bit more innovative, simple and more eco-conscious. I guess I'll be visiting IKEA more often. Perhaps even on an ikea bike?

Several days ago my mum and I visited IKEA just to eat lunch there. That's just how awesome we think it is.