The second lot.

Not too much else has been happening.

Work was asking if people wanted to move interstate, so I stuck my hand up for a move to our Melbourne Office.

With the wedding and other things, we didn't want to move immediately, which my work was happy with. And then I started looking at the lay of how things were progressing. People who I know were wanting to move and were given moving dates were still showing up in the Canberra Office.

The Federal Budget came and went, and my Department had even less money to operate with. Projects that were supposed to be moving were delayed. And one day Taph asked me the words I was dreading. "How many people could I name, that had successfully moved". And I could only come up with three names. That's not to say that people who I didn't know had successfully moved. In an office of between 1,000 and 4,000 people* that is possible, but I could only put my finger on three people, and two of them were a very iffy story.

Then one day, a friend had Taph and I door-knocking for the Salvos Red Shield appeal. It's hard to say what came over us. We had finished door knocking for an area, and were walking back to the car, when we passed an agent setting up for an open house. 

Well, one thing lead to another, and a week later this was the result.

After five years of weekend cohabitation, we now are moving in together, and with our own little mortgage.

* Sorry I have to be vague, as I don't really want to post here what agency I work for

Mad Hatter - move over.

After Christmas, I was in the Vinnies at Dickson, when I spotted a teapot in my pattern.

So I had to get it. But there were many reasons why i should.

1. It was in my pattern and to leave it behind would be wrong.

2. It had $5 on it, and they were having a half price on Bric-a-brak sale, so it only cost me $2.50.

This presents me with a problem. I now have four teapots, and one coffee pot.

Is this too many, I hear you all ask? I say not, and Taph, says it’s no coincidence that they are in Hat Boxes.

It’s been a while

Hi all, it’s been a while since I have posted, so I figured I should start posting again.

You are all asking, what has been happening.

Well I have been away.

As I said in an earlier post, I went to New Zealand.

And saw some rugby games and met many interesting people.

The sole Georgian fan at Invercargill

Two Canadian Fans at Napier

The argentine prisioneros del rugby

I won’t bore you with too many photos. Just those above.

Good Karma

I had an interesting week. On Sunday Taph and I were in the queue at the local Aldi getting our groceries.

A lady asked is she could jump ahead of us as she needed to buy one of the Aldi trolley tokens. Following my free range money challenge, I have managed to collect 15 of these little buggers tokens, so I offered her one, and suggested she pay it forward.

Later that evening, Taph reminded me that my parents wedding anniversary was coming up, and what was I going to get them. At the time I had no idea, so I said, I don’t know, however, something would turn up.

The next day I was in Salvos at Belconnen, when I spied this vase on their shelf.

This vase, along with another vase I had picked up earlier were both Johnson Brothers Summer Chintz patten, and would match thier dinner setting. I figured these would be great presents for their anniversary.

Later, when I mentioned this find to Taph that she said that Karma had decided to repay my previous good dead in full.

And the toy car? Dad collects the old matchbox toy cars, and I just gave it to him. .

Hot pies at the footy.

It is possible to have a hot pie at the footy and not have to sell your first born child in the process. It is real easy, you take it yourself.

Recently, my father went away for a holiday, and he passed on his Raiders season tickets to me. So Taph and I went to the footy.

We took a couple of pies with us. We cooked them in the oven until they were nice and hot, wrapped them in foil, then in a couple of towels, and then put them in an insulated bag.

The guards at the footy usually don’t care about what food you bring, unless it is yummy, in which case they joke about wanting some. This is because they are usually checking for people trying to smuggle in alcohol.
So at half time, our pies were still warmer then the ones we would have gotten from the surly teenagers working at the food stalls at the footy.

And even better, the Raiders won the game.

Oh My God Moments

In my search for a new dinner setting I have had several "Oh My God, Oh My God" Moments when i have found items in my search for the new dinner set, but i have had two recent events that are worth putting up here.

The first was while up in Sydney with Taph. In the vinnies at Summer Hill, i spied this little collection of Johnson Brothers china on the shelf. And even better it was half price. There were four cups, eight saucers and six dinner plates. I left four Cups and Saucers as part of a "catch and release" program, and took the Plates and the other four Saucers.

Then a couple of weeks later on another visit to Salvos in Mitchell i suffered a major OMG moment. On at Table, just inside the door, was a Johnson Brother Setting for eight (including the Dinner plate, Breakfast plates, Side (or salad) plates, Cereal Bowls Cups and Saucers, Teapot, Sugar dish, Milk Jug and a Gravy dish and Gravy Plate. These were all new, still with barcodes stuck on them and most also had boxes (like i said it was a major OMG moment).

it was not for sale until the following morning when it would be sold to the first person who was able to get to the counter and say i want to buy these, and according to the shop assistant, it had caused a considerate interest.

I made a quick phone call to my Father (whatever used we do before we all had mobile phones) and he and mum came out to have a look at it too. Their decision was they were not going to try and get it, but if Taph and I decided to use our bulk to Jostle, or even Maori sidestep, the other buyers in the mad rush to the counter, then they would take them.

I felt it would be fun to go and see how much interest there was in these pieces, but ended up sleeping in and having a leisurely breakfast instead.

Stop Press: I found some pieces in my patten that came up on E-bay, I decided that i should scale back the search to a watching brief (if i found any bits in op shops i would get them but otherwise i had enough) however the search for matching bits would continued. On a recent visit to Vinnies in Woden, Taph found a Johnsen Regency Platter.

Once i pay off some debts I will be buying some bits from the US sellers on E-bay.

Another Trip to Sydney.

Taph and i made a recent visit to Sydney.
As we were leaving on the Sunday, we were surprised as we noticed that a Vinnies was open. This we felt this shop was worth a visit. when we went in it got even better as they had a half price end of summer sale.

They also had a advert saying that a number of vinnies would be open and also having this half price, end of summer sale. So we programmed Susan and set of with the goal of visiting as many as we could before closing time.

We did ok, and were able to visit four shops before they closed. My main find, well you will have to wait for the next blog post to see what that is

Taph felt it funny that the last time we were in Sydney we also stumbled onto a stack of vinnies having a half price sale, and this time we stumbled onto some other stores having a half price sale. We are hoping this patten holds on our future visits to Sydney.

Starting a rumour

Recently the War Memorial had an open day at their Mitchell annex. We had been trying to go for several year and this was the first time we had a free afternoon coincide with an open day there.

Most people go out their and take photos of the big stuff they have there. However Taph and I were drawn towards some of the smaller stuff instead.

We spent a little time next to the Furphy water cart and tried to start some rumours. None stuck and a few old timers thought we were there as part of the show.

The Little Japanese Tank saw us doing a lot of Lt Gruber impersonations.

The Salvos van at the war memorial made us think how badly paid our serving forces are, if they need to use a salvos soup kitchen to keep them fed.

However it took every ounce of self control to prevent Taph form picking the old sewing machine up and making a break for it. But she was able to resist the temptation that this sewing machine caused, and we made our way outside.

Most of these pictures were lifted from the Riotact, as many of my pictures did not work.

http://the-riotact.com/?p=8443

http://the-riotact.com/?p=6611

F.I.G. J.A.M.

Taph and I know the location of a fig tree that hides in plain sight, so recently, over a few days, when the figs were ripe, we collected the fruit from it.


In all we got about six kilos of ripe figs from this tree, so Taph and I spent the weekend turning this into Fig Jam, and a very nice Fig and Goat Cheese Tart that we had for dinner on Sunday.
In all it cost us around $10 for the spices (gee, vanilla beans are expensive from the supermarkets. Does anyone know of a cheaper option), but we have a good supply of Fig Jam. We are also open to swaps, so let us know if you have some homemade condiments to swap.

There are more to tomatoes than dried.

When we found our stash of Tomatoes, we did dry some of them, but we still had too many for my little food dehydrator to handle.

So we went for the old standard preserve of tomatoes. Sauce and Chutney.

And did we have some tomatoes for the sauce and pickles. All up we produced over three litres of Sauce and six litres of Chutney. All this and a dehydrator full of tomatoes that were scrumped to start with.

What more could you ask for?

Scrumped-tious

In living our lives as frugally as possible, I thought I had set a reasonably low bar, but a couple of Saturday’s ago Taph and I got a gold medal in the 100 metre limbo.

You see, we got food, in bulk,

From the TIP.

It may sound bad, but we did not go dumpster diving. Well it is good to know how much further you can go.

But in our case it is not as bad as it sounds. You see, on Saturday we were going to the R shop, at the Mitchell Waste Transfer station, and I saw a couple of Cherry Tomato plants, just growing wild in the middle of the roundabout there.

After I parked the car, and walked back I noticed several more. In all there were about 10 tomato plants growing wild.

We picked what was ripe, and got the hell out of there, as we were scrumping.

Then we faced the problem of what to do with our ill-gotten gains. We have plenty of tomato chutney and relish from last year. The Fowlers jars are too large for cherry tomatoes, so the best option was to dry them as semi-dried tomatoes with garlic in olive oil. Taph says she has plans to use them in pizza bases.

A search of the Fyshwick markets found us some Australian grown garlic at $15.99 a kilo (we could have bought imported garlic cheaper, but this way we support Australian producers and contribute fewer carbon miles to our Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

We will feel very smug as we eat this first part of our scrumped gains.

Johnson Challenge update

Taph has to get the best girlfriend award. She was in Salvos in Tuggeranong last week and she picked up a set of Johnson Brothers Regency White. This addition to my collection now gives me a table setting for 15 and i have the following pieces:

• Dinner plates 27 cm 15
• Dinner Plates 22 cm 4
• Side plates 17 cm 17
• Side plates 18.5cm 4
• Cereal bowls 17
• Soup plates 3
• Soup Touraine 1
• Saucers 24
• Tea cups 25
• Coffee mugs 16
• Teapot 1
• Sugar bowl 2
• Milk jug 1

Of course the search continues for some other bits, like the serving platters etc, but the main search can now be scaled back into a watching brief.

No need to wine, there was plenty to go round

On Sunday Taph and myself headed off to Dan Murphies for their Shiraz expo. There were nearly 70 different reds on offer and I gave it a good attempt at trying them all. The high-light of the tasting was the 2004 Penfolds Grange, but my pick was the Wirra Wirra Woodhenge shiraz. But it was too much for our budgets, however we were tempted to buy a mixed case of Grant Burge Winemakers and the Kirrihill Clare Valley Shiraz .

We heard rumours that Stuart MacGill (from the Uncorked TV show) was there, but we could not find him and kinnear him, so we had to settle with a bottle of Grange instead.

M-Yass or MY-Ass

I saw a photo of this sign on the net several years ago. You would have thought Macas would have fixed it by now, seems as how it has that double-entendre thing going, but it is still next to the road between Goulburn and Yass.

When Taph and I saw it on our recent Goulburn – Yass opp shopping trip, and we could not resist taking this photo.

And for the record, MY Ass is not open 24 hours.

Second Hand Sunday

The ACT government gave me a wonderful birthday present. “Second Hand Sunday”. All I had to do was drive around Canberra and collect the presents that people left out for me.

And what a wonderful day it was too. I picked up a number of CDs (and after listening to some of them I can see why they were being given away).
A barrel vacuum cleaner .
A carry tray with some gardening tools

Taph also picked up some stuff too
11 eleven champagne flutes1 Bodum plunger

And we picked up some stuff that we thought other people might be interested in. We got:
A CD rack (for TSS)
A large collection of plastic pots (which I passed on to a friend who I work with).
Two camp stretchers (for Taph’s brother). An antique sewing machine (for Taph’s sewing machine collecting friend)Baby toys for puppies (for Taph’s friend the Westie breeder)
Magazines for Taph’s mum
Golf buggy for transformation into a beach-going oxygen bottle carrier (For a friend who is on oxygen)

TOF, jam and wine maker

TSS has a grapevine that has grown over her fence. Earlier in the year i asked her not to prune it, as we could grab the grapes that grow on it, combine them with my grapes, and if all goes well, we should be able to make a few bottles of wine.

My graphs failed. The ants turned them into raisins. It had been so dry they were pricking the skins and drinking the juice. I tried to take some photos, but as none of my cameras have a macro lens, this is the best photo I could get.

However TSS had more success with her grapes (apart from what the possums ate), so last weekend Taph, TSS and myself spent a little while in her back yard harvesting the grapes.

There was no mention of these being used for Grape jam.

No, these grapes were squashed (the traditional way) and are currently fermenting in the bathroom.

The only question is what to call this drop. Chateau TOF is one idea. TOF Juniors Creek is another. Pure Old Panthers is already taken, and besides, i do not follow the Penrith Panthers. Besides, Pure Old Brumbies or Pure Old Raiders, just does not have the same ring.

We did not do any Dame Edna impersonations

On Sunday morning Taph and I went for a drive through North Watson, and we found this little possum sitting, in a daze on the front step of a house that was being built.

We decided to try and move him, but our attempt with towels did not work so well. Taph was left with a couple of scratch and bite marks. I was sporting a several horrible gashes on the hand. We finally managed to secure him in a towel, and took him over to some trees near by. He took one look at the trees and went and curled up in the towel again.

At his point we figured, Vet, but how should we get him there. Without a box to put him in it was going to be a risky trip, but wrapping him up tightly in a towel, we set off (we figured if we keep the windows open if he starts to get agitated, we could throw him out the window.

The trip to the vet's was uneventful, but when we pulled up in the car park, he went out the window and under the car.

With help from the Staff at the Vet's, we tried to get him out from under the car, but he bolted up the nearest tree. The vet staff said they would keep an eye on him throughout the day. They also said that if we were able to catch him, then something was up with him.





This other possum is just one I found and photographed one day in Commonwealth Park. I went into these toilets and while doing my business I felt some one was watching me. I turned around to find it was this fellow.

So do not be confused, They may look cute, but possums are vicious creatures and perverts to boot.

How to tell if he loves you?

How to tell if he loves you? Well that is simple, he buys you wool. You see, i work across the road from a major shopping centre, and during some lunch breaks, i go for a wander through certain shops at this mall.




Some times, i am looking for nothing special, other times i have a focus and a specific mission. While on these shopping forays, Taph has given me "Standing Orders" that if i spy a perticilar make / brand wool for under a specific price, then i have to grab it.



Well in K-Mart i spied a few balls of "Holiday" 8 ply wool blend marked down to 80c a ball. A quick phone call to Taph confirmed the buy option on these. Well i grabbed the balls i originally spied, and then noticed a few other balls in other colours. And then other balls in other spots.



It was only when i got to the checkout i realised i had a shopping trolley full of wool balls, and it was only after going through the checkout i realised the size of the stash. All 116 balls worth, but at 80 cents a ball, it was not all that expensive.


As i was leaving a little old lady asked how much the balls were?


"80 cents each" was my reply.


"is there any left" she asked.


I said back to her, "I think i found it all", but she still disappeared back into the shop.

Things to do with fallen fruit

Taph and TSS invited me to join them on the great apricot adventure of 2008. The problem was that there had been a major storm the day before and this had caused a great number of apricots to fall from the tree and start to rot on the ground.

Taph and TSS were happy to leave these on the ground, and just rake them up for compost, but I could see a much better use for them.



If we were to collect them, ferment them in a beer brewing kit, and then use a pressure cooker to form part of a still (just do not tell the customs and excise department), attach some copper tube as a condenser to the pressure release nozzle and I could make my own brandy, and then use the left overs as compost.

I even found this pressure cooker at Salvos, Mitchell, and the only wanted $8 for it. Just think, for an outlay of under $10, I could make my own brandy and vodka. I left it behind as i did not think the rubber seal was in the best condition.

That is the easy part. The hard part would be keeping the still at a constant 78 degrees. Actually after spending a night doing jam, i am so sick of apricots in my house that i have now given up on this and we have used them as compost.