Great morning at the park

It was nice and warm and sunny. I had a nice chat with the mums and the kids had fun playing together.

Last day of holidays

Ben goes back to school tomorrow. So yesterday I asked what he would like to do for his last day of holidays...he asked to go to a park in the morning and then watch a movie in the afternoon (that means a movie DVD at home). So that's what we're doing. A couple of his friends are going to meet us at the park too.

Hedgehog rescue...again

On Saturday evening, we had to rescue another hedgehog from the bird netting that is over our strawberry patch (here's the one we rescued last time). So I had to cut another hole in our bird netting (which actually right next to where the previous entrapment had occurred). And then had the painfully slow task of trying to untangle the netting from the spikes, legs and head of the hedgehog (because every time you touch it or pull on the netting, it would curl itself into a tight ball which meant I would have to put it down and wait for it to relax and uncurl enough so I could gain access again). This hedgehog was a lot bigger than the last one and was perfectly healthy (the other one had mange and was fly blown), so after I'd got all the netting off, I took it down to the gully which is further down our street and let it go.

Culinary milestone

I cooked my first whole salt water fish last week. It was a whole snapper and it was delicious. This is only the second whole fish I have cooked - the first was a rainbow trout in Brisbane last September. I usually just buy fillets of fish as it is quicker to serve and I don't need to stress as much about there being bones in the kid's fish.

We also had an impromptu fish anatomy lesson as the kids (Joanna especially) were very interested in the carcass of the fish - eyes, teeth, tongue, brain..

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Furniture construction

Because we couldn't paint the house over Christmas/New Year because of the wet weather, Peter made a shelving unit for Ben's room. After it was all put together, Ben helped Peter put the undercoat of paint on. And that is as far as it has got for now, as the fine weather has meant we have been concentrating on outside the house jobs - cleaning and oil the deck and painting the house.

1 week to go

Ben start school 1 week from today. The holidays haven't been quite as trying as I thought they might have been - and we survived the hump week (Christmas/New Year week). I do feel like I could do with a 'holiday' now (which I know is normal). And it is going to be strange having only Naomi with me in the mornings.

Hardware heartbreak

My relationship with hardware stores is going through a rough patch at the moment. I still need to purchase stuff from them, but I'm don't feel like I'm getting the service I should.

• 'Price guarantee' - if you haven't noticed both Bunning's and Mitre 10's 'price guarantee' is only valid if you find it at a 'cheaper' price. If you find it for the same price, they won't beat it by the 15%, which means you will find both stores selling the same item at exactly the same price (including mimicking each others sale prices) so they don't have to give you the extra 15%off. eg. the waterblaster we purchased last week. So I rang both stores to see if they would give me an incentive to buy from their store...Mitre 10 refused; Bunnings said (after a quick 'hold' time while they checked) that they would give me the 15% off as an incentive to buy from them even though it technically didn't qualify for the 'price guarantee'. But when I went to purchase it, the checkout girl wasn't going to give me the discount as it was the 'same price', I relayed my telephone conversation from that morning and then got grilled about who I spoke to (I couldn't remember his name)...Anyway she rang someone who authorised it, so I got the cheaper price. BUT...when it broke and so returned it and it was getting exchanged for the exact same thing, the checkout woman (different one to the first time) was going to charge me the full price and make me pay the '15%' that I had got discounted for the initial purchase.
• Customer service - went to Mitre 10 to get some oil to oil the nice clean deck with. Right from the start the guy who served me in the aisle was talking to me like I didn't know what I was doing and what we had done/were planning to do was all wrong (which it was not). Not to mention his overbearing helpfulness - every time I escaped him and went to another part of his section to get something else on my list, up he would pop and ask if I needed help, when all I wanted to do was to be left alone to consider the different product options myself and make a decision. He did give some good advice on paint brushes without just trying to sell me the most expensive ones. But my experience would have been much more pleasant if he'd had the ability to be available when I needed advice, but given me the space I wanted to make my own decision.

It has got me thinking about how having 2 mega hardware chains dominating the market is not very helpful. Although you may get a larger range of stuff, you end up being viewed in terms of profit margins so customer service and satisfaction suffer. And their seemly 'cheaper' prices aren't actually that cheap as there is no competition to stimulate real price beating. Unfortunately most of the smaller and independent hardware stores no longer exist, so I have no choice but to purchase from the 'mega chains'.

I have to visit the hardware store again - we need more decking oil, as it soaked up the first tin like a sponge. My aim is to get in and out of there as quickly as possible...no lingering to browse like I sometimes do - my heart is hardened to you O hardware store.

Finally started...

With summer having arrived so late this year (if it's really arrived yet...), we haven't got around to starting our big summer job - painting the outside of our house.  With fine weather forecast, we bought ourselves a water blaster to clean the house before starting the big job of scraping loose paint and sanding.  And... what did we do first, we cleaned the deck of course!  The steps are half done in that photo - it's amazing, our deck is actually brown, not grey!

We did also blast one side of the house, and I've managed to scrape and sand most of it - it should be painted next weekend.

We did also manage to burn out the water blaster.  According to the instruction booklet, it's suitable for "cleaning buildings".  According to the helpful man at Bunnings, it's not.  If you use it for more than about half an hour at a time, it's likely to burn out.  So, we got given a replacement seen as it had failed within a day.  And I guess we'll have to treat it carefully and hope it lasts for the rest of the house...

A good day...

After being in need of adult conversation on Wednesday, yesterday I got to talk to some adults and not have to talk so much to the kids. Ben had a friend over to play in the morning, which meant the mums got to talk for a bit and Ben had someone else to talk to and then we had friends from Auckland come to visit in the afternoon and stay for dinner, so the kids (ours and theirs) went off and played all afternoon and the adults got to chat.

I'm in need of some adult conversation

I am finding myself continually checking my reader and (Peter's) facebook for anything new to read of happening in the adult world!

Picking songs is hard

Especially when the kids don't know that many to start with. I feel like I have to introduce at least 3 new songs a term to get good coverage of the themes in the lesson material.

Kids church writing

I think I'm getting quicker. Nearly finished formatting. Still need to choose songs.

Just need to keep going...

New gadget

New gadget, a photo by peterjwaldeck on Flickr.

This is our new stickvac. Our old dustbuster has been needing replacing for a while - it's suction has got very weak and the battery only lasts for a few minutes. I had been considering options for a while, but the best solution was too expensive. Until...I found it on sale for $100 off, a 40% discount.

I also not only chose this particular stickvac, but also chose the 'green' version which is made of 70% recycled plastic.

Wherefore art thou, summer?

Summer still hasn't fully arrived. I'm sitting here with my polar fleece robe on. Yesterdays sun with cool breeze felt decidedly like Spring weather. At least the weather is going to be dry for a while now, so that will make it feel a bit more summery (January/February are usually fairly dry months here).

Last day of holidays

Kind of...Joanna starts morning kindy tomorrow. Ben still has two and a half weeks until school starts.

Getting better every year

The first year we tried to grow garlic...it didn't even germinate.

The second year we tried to grow garlic...we harvested about 10 very small bulbs.

The third year we tried to grow garlic (this year)...we harvested 26 large bulbs of garlic (the same size range as the bulbs you buy at the supermarket).

Now this isn't a totally random result, there are factors that we have control over that we have changed/adjusted each year.

The first year we used garlic bought at the supermarket as our seed garlic - this shouldn't have made a difference as we bought NZ grown garlic which doesn't get treated with the same chemicals as the imported stuff (the imported stuff is sprayed with a chemical to specifically not let in germinate), but the general advice is to buy 'seed garlic' from the garden shop.

So the second year I used garlic I'd bought at the farmer's market (so I was able to check directly with the grower that it hadn't been sprayed). But after we planted them, we didn't pay much attention to them, so they didn't get watered much and I don't think I fertilised them at all. I also realised that I didn't plant it in the best location - it was a bit shady and got almost smothered by the potato plants.

So this year, our third year, I planted them in a nice sunny location, made sure that I watered them regularly and also fertilised regularly. I also had planted a greater number of seed garlic (as each clove of seed garlic produces 1 new whole bulb).

So maybe I'll get to have my whole roasted bulb of garlic this year!

How to become a 'green thumb'

You would all be familiar with the term 'green thumb' to describe a person who is good at gardening. Well the way to get a green thumb isn't all that difficult...all you need to do is remove some of the leaves off your tomato plants. Every time I do this I get green thumbs and fingers (I do it without gloves on because I find it too fiddley/delicate of a task to do with gloves on) and when I come in and wash my hands it turns the soap an antiseptic yellow colour for about 5 minutes of washing and scrubbing with a nail brush to get them clean!

Motivated by profits = bad environmental practices

I know this is nothing new, but I've just had an annoying experience of this today.

Item - Vacuum cleaner

Issue - a small thin ring of plastic that connects the cleaner head to the neck bend that attaches to the main wand is broken

Solution provided by the store - instead of just being able to replace the small ring for the cost of $5 (I know the cost as they sell replacement of exactly the same thing, just a bigger size for the hose attachment points), I have to buy a whole new 'head', at a cost of $39 or $49.

Reverse psychology

I've heard/read about the parenting technique where if your toddler is having a whingy cry, you mimic the behaviour to show them how ridiculous it is, so they stop. Well I think Ben has discovered this technique all by himself...I just observed Naomi have a whine at Ben, and Ben mimicking the behaviour back at her and...she stopped it.

Strange day

It has been raining all weekend and the forecast was for it to continue all this week...But when we wake up this morning there is sun and blue sky! I had psyched myself up for a week of kids being inside and had planned to go shopping this morning, just to be able to get them out of the house for a bit. Instead, I got them to get themselves dressed and jobs done quickly this morning and sent them outside to play (while the non-rainy weather lasts - there are still threatening grey clouds floating about the sky). They are having fun, but it has put me out of sorts a bit as the jobs I thought I was going to do this morning (ie. shopping) aren't getting done (as I don't want to waste fine weather being inside a shopping centre, I want to save it for one of the forecast rainy days) and I'm having to find different jobs to do at home.

Trying to get into the spirit of hot summer weather

I made up a bulk batch of sugar syrup this afternoon to make into various flavoured ice blocks. But it hasn't really felt hot enough for ice blocks yet (I had to put a light weight jacket on while sitting reading after lunch today as I was feeling a little cool). I do have memories of enjoying a nice cool ice block after walking home from school at the start of first term last year, so they should get eaten then, it they last...

Christmas packed up for another year

Prompted by a certain young boy starting to destroy decorations with his knight spear.

Potato Economics

As Peter posted yesterday, we harvested our first crop of the potatoes for the season. Although he included a photo to show how much, I thought it was a bit hard to really see how many we got (especially when you don't know the size of the box we had them in). So in the process of packing them away I've done some sorting and weighing, and have included the relevant statistics below:

Total Yield = 6.814kg

Broken down by quality:
3.369kg of perfect potatoes
2.934kg of damaged potatoes (ie. got damaged when forking them out of the soil or split while they were growing) - still edible, we will just have to eat them first as they will spoil quickly
0.511 of potatoes we won't eat (1 potato that is inedible and then 8 potatoes we are going to use as seed potatoes for another crop - these would otherwise have been included with the perfect potatoes)

We paid $6 for the 1kg of seed potatoes, so the crop has worked out at $0.89/kg (if you add on the cost of some fertiliser and water that we used to help them grow, probably works out at about $1/kg). And they are guaranteed to taste better than potatoes you buy from the supermarket! (we know from the taste difference we experienced last year)

First spuds...

We had a crop of fast growing potatoes that are supposed to mature within 60-90 days this year - the plants had died back a few weeks ago, and we got around to digging them out today.  According to Mel's trusty calendar, it had been 87 days in the ground for them.  This is what we got out, from 7 seed potatoes - I reckon they're pretty impressive!

We also pulled out a couple of heads of garlic to see how they were looking - we'll probably pull the rest out pretty soon seen as they're looking pretty good.