The environmentally concious tai-tai

Friends have been curious to know how I keep myself occupied now that I’m officially
a tai-tai. Answer = gym woh, housewife duties (washing clothes, dishes
etc), catchin up with friends and of late "mission impossible".

Yep – since the eve of CNY I’ve been spring cleaning – or rather throwing out the boxes and clutter of accumulated junk from before and since
we’ve shifted to Chinatown 3 yrs ago. It’s pathetic how the husband and
I have hoarded so much crap – e.g. bills, old files & lesson plans,
unwanted gifts, design flyers, stickers etc, books, clothes that are passe, too big or too small, boxes & manuals of ipods & mobiles, usb wires, argghhhhhhh… the list in infinite.

So, over a week I’ve been diligently clearing out the spareroom and have thrown out at least 20 garbage bags – and it still seems cluttered.

So after this laborious awakening and some environ-evangelism
from my friend Sharon recently whilst in Perth I’ve decided it’s time I
try to do my bit to REDUCE the overflowing LANDFILL!!!!!!

MY RECYCLE/REUSE/REDUCE TIPS!!!!

1. Dump your bottles, newspapers etc into the appropriate recycling bin
2. Reuse envelopes – write to-do lists for the day on the back, dispose things inside them
3. Use old newspapers to clean mirrors/glass surfaces
4. Re-feed used A4 paper through printer OR for doodling/writing on
5. Reuse old socks/t-shirts as rags
6. Pack a green bag or spare bag or existing plastic bags when grocery shopping
7. Say NO to plastic bags/paper bags where possible
8. Gymmers – use a machine washable plastic drawstring bag to stash dirty/clean clothes instead of taking the clear plastic bags
9. Be innovative with packaging – reuse as gift boxes – e.g use a Darlie toothpaste box to contain a gift or message
10. Give away unwanted gifts, clothes, electrical goods etc – think
    of friends/family to give to OR leave at the lift landing for someone
    else to appreciate OR get a stall at a flea market
11. Use depleted tissue boxes to store plastic bags
12. Gimme your bread tags – Ill transform them to earrings
13. Reuse old wrapping paper/cards/Zouk Flyers – creatively transform them and make em original & spanking new!
14. Got old but working-condition handphones, cameras, pdas etc – go to somewhere like Pearl centre and get cash for it!
15. Reuse CNY containers etc – for storing stationery/foodstuff
16. Reuse tin boxes – use for storing too or for presenting baked cookies/muffins, use lids as a magnetic board
17. Don’t buy, borrow! – Share your things with friends/family – be it household stuff, clothes, books. Or go to the library and borrow books/Dvds
18. Save money – don ‘t buy, yup next time you’re about to purchase
    an indulgent ‘WANT" see if you can wait a week or fortnight, if you
    pass this test, chances are you don’t really need it!

Any more tips??? Pls add

Freo glass pendants

Jen lent me her toolbox of beads, wire and pliers for me to experiment with. After picking up a few glass pebbles from Freo the other day, I felt inspired to make some pendants and these are my creations. Am pretty pleased with the end results… I’ve always loved glass pebbles and have always thought they had such simplistic beauty and I’ve always believed they’d have great potential as pendants

Lemon Bakes

melting moments.

lemon zest cupcakes.

Serena’s back from her 6 week travels to Europe-Sth America-NYC. It’s good spending time with the lil’ sis. Anyways we decided to bake today and successfully made melting moments & lemon zest cupcakes.

………

Recipe for Melting Moments
(Women’s Weekly The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits)

250 g butter
1/3 cup of icing sugar
1 1/2 cups of plain flour
1/2 cup of corn flour

LEMON CREAM
60g butter
1/2 cup of icing sugar
1 tspn of grated lemon rind
3 tspns of lemon juice

Cream butter & sugar until light & fluffly
Add sifted flour, mix well
Put mixture into piping bag fitted with fluted tube
Pipe rosettes onto lightly greased oven trays
Bake into moderate oven 10-12min until pale golden brown
Cool onto rack

Lemon cream
Beat butter until smooth
Gradually add sifted icing sugar
Beat until light & creamy
Beat in lemon rind & juice

Join biscuits with lemon cream

Makes 30 complete biscuits

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Recipe for Cupcakes
(The Children’s Step by Step Cook Book)

125 g softened butter
1/2 cup of caster sugar
2 med sized eggs
1 cup self-raising flour

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C
Line cake trays with paper cake-cases or lightly grease tray
Cut up butter & mix with sugar till light & creamy
Beat eggs in bowl with fork
Add egg to butter mixture
Add flour a little at a time & fold in
Spoon cake mixture into trays
Bake cakes sml – 10 min, lge – 20min
Cool on rack

*** I used the lemon cream ingredients for the icing & topped off with lemon rind

Makes about 20-30 cakes depending on size of trays

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P.s  my sister’s friends food blog

Babes, beer, beach, wine & cheese

3 babes.

the 3 Mercedes Pals.

Last Thurs, we met up w Nat & Tach & their babes – Skye & Taneesha @ Kings Park. Nav impressed us ladies, as the babes seemed smitten with him – playing sand and walkies with them

We met up with Trenn too and her 10mth old babe – Mimm – she’s equally gorgeous – big bright eyes and very friendly!!!

Farewell Freo!

On the eve before Nav left, we had fish n’ chips at Circerellos, Freo then proceeded to Little Creatures for locally-inhouse brewed beer. The boy was a happy larry, Jen & I were content with lemon lime bitters

Serenity a few hrs before the shark sighting.

Sunkissed n lovin it.

Spent the weekend with Jen, and first stop was Cottosloe beach for a walk along the sand, swim then brekkie. We reached about 8ish and it was already crawling with joggers, walkers, swimmers, surfers and dogs alike. Despite visiting many beaches on this trip, this was the first time I actually swam – Aussie waters are generally icy cold, so with much co-ercing I braved the cold and waves and found myself totally refreshed.

As mentioned in the subheading above – there were sightings of a shark at Cott beach 11.30am a few hrs after we left!!!! Thank God we were there much earlier!!!!!

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In the evening we watched The Lady Aoi @ the Playhouse Theatre. It was rather Ring-ish, very sexual & tense – thankfully it was only 50mins!!!!!!

a dehydrated Bells Rapid.

the reason I’m now heavier

Yesterday we drove up the Swan Valley it was our lil’ road trip, but thanks to the rather new Roe Highway we reached in less than half an hour!!!!!

It was a pleasant day of visiting a winery – purchasing some white desert wine & chilli cheese, sampling melt-in-ya-mouth chocolate from none-other than the Margaret River Chocolate Factory, walking through the drought inflicted Bells Rapid and rewarding ourselves with fresh scones with boysenberry jam & apricot marmalade and fresh cream.

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So, with all the indulging I’m sad to say I’ve officially put on 2kg *bawls* so I have to cut down on the sugary/dairy temptations and try to workout harder at the gym. Speaking of which, I’ve started doing combat again – yep I need to generate more sweat baby!

Till then,
the lady of leisure signing off……….