RELOCATION

Hey guys,

I am terrible at blogging, so I have started afresh over at www.sixkilosofpumpkin.blogspot.com

x

Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon

I have had a rather splendid weekend, topped off by the fact that I am now finished for the semester! Until exams in two weeks. BUT for now, I am quite fine!

I went to see The Room last night at a midnight screening. It was simultaneously the best and worst two hours of my life, and I strongly encourage you all to go and see it. With plastic spoons in hand.





That was essentially the highlight of my weekend. Really. "OH HI MARK"

Day Zero

OH HEY GUYS. Long time no see etc etc I am lazy.

So I made a Day Zero project, for I am rockin'. The project pretty much says make 101 goals to complete in 1001 days. I am 8 days in and I've completed 2% and am far too lazy to check if this is on task. This is my list, because you will notice blogging features on there and it would be quite a ridiculous blog post to announce I have made a list and not include it, no?

1. Collect and read every Popular Penguin book
2. Send a secret to PostSecret
3. Complete a 365 day photo challenge
4. Listen to every album on my iPod
5. Make my own pasta
6. Answer the "50 Questions that will Free Your Mind"
7. Be able to list 101 goals
8. Volunteer
9. Host a tea party
10. Host a dinner party
11. Go on a photo adventure
12. Have a picnic
13. Go a week without Facebook
14. Do the 100 Strangers photo challenge
15. Finish the Indie Rock Colouring Book
16. List 10 items in my Etsy store
17. Buy another camera
18. Take a class at Sugar Blue
19. Get a massage
20. Make profiteroles
21. Buy fruit and veges at a growers market
22. Do a grocery shop only buying things on sale
23. Complete the 21 day diet
24. Buy and fill a recipe card box
25. Handwash my clothes
26. Buy a thermos from my tea
27. See Sydney from a 727 at night
28. Visit Thomas more
29. Give Vegemite another chance
30. Amass 25 teapots
31. Visit Sian
32. Find a personally inspiring quote and work it into a piece of art or home decor
33. Photograph a landscape from the same location capturing every season
34. Help someone do something they thought they couldn't
35. See James
36. Learn to sew
37. Become fluent in French
38. Blog twice a week for two months
39. Watch 101 new films.
40. Complete the 100 snapshots challenge
41. Subscribe to Frankie
42. Donate $1 to charity for every task I do not complete
43. Do 10 things from Instructables
44. Take a spontaneous trip
45. Jam with Levi
46. Read 101 comics
47. Fly somewhere by myself
48. If I posted it, you wouldn't get the reference
49. See snow
50. Do Musical theatre kareoke
51. Choose an actor and watch all of his films
52. Save $3000
53. Try every type of T2 tea
54. Organise sheet music
55. Read Yes Man and Youth in Revolt
56. Collect the "Introducing..." series
57. Go to a club that isn't Amps
58. Start things.
59. Get an environmentally friendly water bottle
60. Drink 2L of water every day for a month
61. Buy something yellow
62. Get my sister an awesome 21st present
63. Document completing each task somehow
64. Get a distinction in every subject one semester
65. See the Vintage Reds
66. Raise $100 for charity
67. Have an Ikea day
68. Dye my hair
69. Try acupuncture
70. Go to a quiz night
71. Go to the dentist
72. Go one week without eating or drinking out
73. Take a first aid course
74. Save all my coinage for a month
75. Get a new belt for my piano buckle
76. Get up at 6:30am every day for 14 days
77. Get properly fitted for a bra
78. Get a facial
79. Visit my interstate relatives
80. Learn to play 5 songs on guitar
81. Pay for someone else's coffee/parking
82. Take another ballet class
83. Go to the zoo
84. Go for high tea
85. See 12 new theatre shows
86. Complete PvZ
87. Become what Levi deems an acceptable level at gaming
88. Dress up as Bowie
89. Get more Pilgrim charms
90. Perform in a panto
91. Have a movie marathon
92. Make a wish at 11:11 on November 11, 2011.
93. Clean out my closet
94. Play the sims
95. Go on a date
96. Throw someone a surprise party
97. Compliment a stranger
98. Have a Ghibli marathon
99. Make tempura vegetables
100. Get recipes from 20 different people
101. ... This is awkward, but I had to retype the list and I can't find what I missed for 101.

AND ITS CHEESEBURGER TIME SO I'LL FINISH THIS LATER, YO.

In which Emily remembers to blog

Hello! I am being very lazy/swamped with assessments/playing too much Plants vs. Zombies and Robot Unicorn Attack. So! This is what I have been doing since my last

- Playing croquet at a picnic.

- Having a birthday! That was fun. Even better was my birthday cake.

- Reading comics. I am such a comic noob, but Brad got me this for my birthday and I really loved it:

- Procrastinating hand washing. I have a huge pile of handwash-only clothes, and I am FAR too unmotivated to do it. Sadly, they're all favourite clothes so my wardrobe is sad without them :(

- Getting back into beanies/beret things! Often with hilarious results, I tucked all my hair into a red sequinned one and my housemates forced me to take it off because I looked so silly.

A bit of laughter for your day

Hope you're all rugged up and staying warm today! I saw this on Sarah Wilson's blog and it made me laugh.

Simplicity

After my horrendously decadent birthday list, I thought I would make another, better list! My list obsession is coming back out :D So, here is my list of simple, happy things that I have enjoyed lately. Some might even say, things that I love on this fine Thursday! :o

- Skyping my lovely cousin who I don't speak to nearly enough

- Finally "getting" these songs I'm learning on piano

- Tennessee Williams. Always.

- Starting my day with a pot of tea and two slices of bread (untoasted!) with Nutella

- Impromptu How I Met Your Mother, talking over 3 cups of tea, staying up until 1am catchups

- Sleeping in! (sadly, this did not follow the aforementioned 1am catchup...)

- Job interviews! Even if I don't get the jobs, its nice to know things must be picking up

- thxthxthx and the gorgeous thankyou notes

one of my favourite thxthxthx posts

Wishlist!

I'll admit, this post has been slowly simmering on the backburner for a while. I'll start it, get distracted, save it, go shopping, come home, read some more blogs, find more stuff I want, and the list is getting slowly longer. Therefore, it's no longer a birthday list per se, but a wishlist of things I hope to one day own. Let us proceed.

1. Books!

How many times can I say this - POPULAR PENGUINS. Seriously, guys. Get into that. I only have five and that is a very minute percentage of the series.

Speaking of series, (what a smooth segue!) the INTRODUCING... series are fantastic. I have Philosophy and Psychology, and I think it would be splendid to have more.

And this book, I really want to learn to make a coathanger wine rack or whatever business they're recycling:



The Book of Awesome sounds amazing. I've read a bit of the site, and as much as Jimmy Macbook has a special place in my heart, its much more fantastical to curl up in bed with a pot of tea and a book. Rather than, you know, a macbook.

2. A(n?) MOR teapot candle

Mum and I saw these while we were shopping for a present for her nurse last month and it pains me that I didn't buy it right then and there.

3. T2 Teas

Unless you want to venture down to Tealicious House in Dunsborough, T2 teas are the next best thing. Especially in their limited-edition canisters. I only have Gorgeous Geisha in that canister, and I adore the Turkish Apple tea, and... oh, why do I even bother to elaborate? Any tea is glorious. As long as it has a canister for me to store it in :D

4. Tea accessories

I now have three teapots! But I would still like more. What is even more pressing than a new teapot, however, is a milk jug. I long for a darling little milk jug to put out with my teas so its not a dainty teapot and teacup and big plastic 2L milk bottle.

5. Anything from Modcloth. Seriously.

But these are some of the things I love:

Eight A Day water bottle

Storytime Clock



All the Better to Brew You With cup

6. The Gala Darling podcasts

I love Gala Darling. She is fantastic, and humorous, and I think her podcasts would be an excellent addition to my life. However, I don

Let's be honest, I'm going a little overboard on my list. So I'll cease it here, although remind you about these aprons that I love, and hopefully you've had a splendid time looking :D

Practical theories: The Law of Attraction

I've been busying my time on my study break not studying, but reading blogs. It started with food blogs, then I got onto Gala Darling's brilliant site again, and a link from that onto Sarah Wilson's blog... its all happening, and I'm enjoying it.

I'm going to admit, I'm pretty skeptical about all those new-agey, The Secret-toting ideologies. I read about three pages of The Secret and thought, this is just what everyone's parents have been telling them for years about the power of positive thinking. Unless someone I know can vouch for something like that, I'm not going to believe it. So, in order to get rid of my inner skeptic, I'm going to try to work out if these theories can actually be applied to my life. Let us proceed with

The "law of attraction" hoopla

The theory: Thoughts attract like thoughts. If you think happy thoughts, happy things will happen. If you're negative, negative things happen. You get the idea.

Practicalities: We actually developed this theory when I was fifteen about one of the girls in my group, who was just really depressing and whingey and horrible. We called it a "vortex of doom", that when she was upset everyone else got sucked in to feeling upset as well. Which maybe is a different theory about associating yourself with people. I digress. Generally, I haven't had this apply to actual events, but I think tangible things.

First example: Capers. I used to work at a splendid little Italian cafe, and the exported Italian staff would cook for us. One of the baristas made risotto with capers one night, and I had no idea what they were. Then I saw them in the supermaket. Then they were in another dish I had when I went out. It was like, as soon as I had capers, they were EVERYWHERE.

The same thing happened with Vampire Weekend, although over a longer period of time. The first time I went out on the town, in May last year, one of the "eight great songs they played at Amps" (more on this later) was A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. Of course, after half a bottle of wine with dinner, I couldn't remember the song the next day. Although I did remember the other seven.

ANYWAY - I got to Reading Festival in August, and Alice dragged us to Vampire Weekend amidst protests that we didn't even know who they were. Of course, they played A-Punk, and I realised - THIS WAS THE EIGHTH GREAT SONG! Then, recovering at the house two days later with a cold, it was on the advertisment for 500 Days of Summer. And The Inbetweeners, I believe. Once I knew what the song was, it was everywhere.

I was there! I saw him in that shirt!

Verdict: The jury's still out. I'm not sure if its just that when you're positive, you see the positives in everything whereas when you're negative, you ignore other possibilities. And my Vampire Weekend capers (See what I did there?!) could just be coincidence.

What do you think, fellas? Exponents of the theory? Or think its a load of hogwash?

Tiger Food: Three cheese risotto

I was all prepared to post my birthday list (what's more fun than listing things you want? NOT A LOT), then I had another lazy day and had a nap and made an insanely good (and so simple!) risotto last night that I feel everyone needs the recipe for.

I've been going through food blogs bookmarking recipes I like, and I've been craving risotto for about two weeks since I found some arborio rice in the cupboard. I am also very lazy, as I've outlined in the past two posts having done nothing with my weekend! So this recipe from Not Quite Nigella was very excellent to cure my risotto need. I used a 4L box of stock, but it seemed a bit too runny. This is probably because I didn't read the recipe properly. However, it was still delicious last night for dinner and today for lunch!

*******EDIT******** I made this again last night, and I was right! It was a 1L box of stock that said 4 Cups on the front, so I got confused and assumed thats why I got it wrong. The first time I added 0.5 cups of hot water to make up the 4.5 cups, so I omitted that this time, but it was still a bit runny. I'm not going to do it with less stock, though, because its so convenient using a whole box of stock at once.

Not Quite Nigella's Three Cheese Risotto

1.5 cups Arborio rice
4.5 cups stock
1.5 cups grated cheese (we used cheddar, marinated feta and parmesan)

Put the oven to 180 degrees. Heat the stock on the stovetop.

Meanwhile, rinse the rise and put in an oven dish. Add the cheese and any seasonings (normally I'd use herbs, but there was a lot of garlic at the bottom of the feta dish so that went right in there). Pour the stock over the rice.

Cover with foil and put in the oven for 20 minutes.

Serve! (I added extra grated parmesan and pepper, but that is because I'll add them to any dish I can.)

Lazy Saturday

Considering I haven't blogged for almost a month (almost certainly a procrastination win, although I have been busy dominating uni assignments - hello, 72%, 80% and 85% for the three I've been given back already), I thought I'd add that to my list of things to do today.

I am currently simultaneously putting off doing two more essays, reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (which was a Christmas present... goodness me, I need to catch up on my books), listening to the new Vampire Weekend album, reading food blogs and garnering the energy to get up and make a cup of tea. Or a pot of tea, thats always fancier and I am not wanting for teapots at the moment! In the sense that I have enough, not the sense that I don't want more. In fact, I ordered this bad boy from Modcloth only two days ago.


Isn't he adorable?!


I've also had a fairly productive cooking weekend, considering I'm now learning to get into the swing of 'broke uni student food' since my savings started dwindling quite a bit. We made a version of this on Thursday night:


Mushroom Bouyiourdi from Closet Cooking

It ended up being more like a hot cheese, onion and mushroom dip, but it was still pretty splendid. Somehow we've eaten half a kilo block of cheese since Thursday night, I think that was a major component of that. And possibly things like the following conversation:

Me: I'm hungry. Do you want anything?
Levi: Um, maybe, what are you having?
Me: Hmmm. I think a block of cheese. Want some?
Levi: I'll just have some chocolate, thanks.

I also discovered these on Not Quite Nigella, and now it is on my birthday list. Oh yes, three weeks on Monday, list coming soon! Not that I expect anyone will actually buy me anything, but I like pretty things and I like lists and that works out quite well.


'Josephine' apron kit by Jessie Steele

Unwrapped Markets

Look at all the goodies I got from the Unwrapped markets on Saturday!



I've been looking for these brooches since I stole my friend's red one a few months ago! So I got the green one to mix things up. Also, Tara got the red one so hopefully we can trade sometimes! By Kearnsie



Boris the Hippo by My Girl Gwendoline.



The first edition of the MadeIt recipe zine. Because, you know, I'm a bit obsessive about cooking and the like.

Happy things for Friday!

• A new, stupidly expensive but gorgeous haircut

• Consequently playing with Photo Booth taking pictures of my new haircut

• 

• Starting the day with a lovely, almost two hour Skype date

• My first job interview since I moved up! And whipping out this outfit again
  

• Making a start on this Behavioural Science essay and feeling a bit less desperate about only having three weeks to write it

• The news report in the background about this lady! DJ Ruth Flowers

• This song. Repeat repeat repeat.

Vegetable Couscous with parmesan and black pepper

That's really a fancy name for "Ohhhh I can't be bothered, what do we have in the house?" food.

This is pretty easy to cook.

Firstly, make up the couscous for however many people you are cooking for. 1/2 cup of dry couscous is enough for one person, and you need equal parts water and couscous. Put the water, some olive oil and salt in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Once its boiled, stir and take off the heat, adding the couscous and leaving it for two minutes.

Meanwhile (probably best to start while the water is boiling), put some chopped vegetables in a container and cover with water. Put the lid on and put in the microwave - I think about 10 minutes is normal but basically just until they're soft. I used zucchini and beans.

Back to the couscous - after the two minutes, add some butter and maybe more oil if its sticking, and put on a low heat. Separate the couscous with a fork so its all fluffy. At this stage, I grate some parmesan in so it melts into the couscous. Also because I love parmesan :D You only need to keep the couscous on the stove top for about three minutes.

Combine the couscous and vegetables in a bowl (I also put some chopped cherry tomatoes in at the end, but in hindsight maybe feta would be good as well?), grate some more parmesan over the top and add some cracked pepper. Yummy food in about 15 minutes!

Things that have been happening

Lots of cooking, and buying things for the flat.
Getting my synth and amp and all that jazz moved up. My room looks a lot smaller with a huge amp in the corner but I'm happy.
Spent a week in Rottnest with the basic day pattern of wake up, spend about an hour on breakfast and reading and cups of tea, going to the beach, coming home for lunch, having a nap and then chilling before dinner.
Uni orientation! I start tomorrow. WOOO.
7 hours straight of Project Runway with pasta and green tea and icecream straight from the tub.
Saying every day I'm going to cut my nails and always forgetting.
Not getting a job! I've applied for at least thirty so far. Gosh.
Loving the necklace I got for Christmas from Etsy, as (kind of badly) shown here WITH NEW HAIR

Tiger Food: Spinach Eggs on Doorstopper Toast

Morning! This is my new favourite breakfast. It made two gigantic serves, so you could probably use it for four people. In fact, four people ate it because I couldn't finish mine. The original recipe was in the Australian Women's Weekly cookbook "The Fast Egg".

This was actually made pretty much entirely from leftovers of the Carbonara we made the night before - it used up the leftover eggs, facon, mushroom and the loaf that we used to make garlic bread. ECONOMICAL, GUYS. Also good because I've just moved out of home and I can't really afford to waste food.

SPINACH EGGS ON DOORSTOPPER TOAST

Stuff you need:
A loaf of awesome bread. We had a Pane di Casa, but Sourdough would be equally spectacular
3 eggs
Milk
Spinach leaves
Some sort of sliced ham or similar - we used facon because I made it for the Boy but I think the recipe I looked at used pancetta
Mushrooms

1. Cut the bread to your desired thickness of bread. Doorstopper slices are the way to go, but a lot of people like thinner bread so however you roll, homies.


Om nom nom bread

2. Break the ends off the spinach leaves and wilt them in the pan. Put a bit of butter or olive oil in the pan and wait until they've just changed colour (so about thirty seconds) and that makes them a bit less crunchy but not actually mushy. Put them on a plate and whack that in the oven to keep warm.


Pre-wilted spinach

3. Chop up the mushrooms and fry them, and fry the whole slices of your selected ham. I sliced half of the facon and left half whole because I'm silly and forgot I wasn't making carbonara and in fact didn't have to slice the facon. Put those bad boys in the oven as well.

4. Toast your bread. In the toaster, in the pan, under the grill, whatever works for you! Then keep that warm as well.

5. SCRAMBLE THOSE EGGS. I would give you directions for this but I'm not entirely sure how we did it, so... ask your mum how to.

6. Put it all together! We did the toast, then a whole piece of facon, then the eggs, then the vegetables. Serve with your selected breakfast beverage.


Yummy breakfast!

Food porn!

So, hi everyone, I've moved in with Tara (yesterday) and today is my first full day of unemployed, arts student life. Although I took a resume to the cafe down the road so hopefully that will change! I digress. As a result, I've watched a lot of daytime TV today.

I am a sucker for cooking shows. Nigella is a perennial favourite, I didn't really get into MasterChef until the repeats were on during my lunch break at work, but any reality TV show incorporating food is a win in my books. Thus, I enjoyed the repeat of My Kitchen Rules today and THANK GOODNESS, its on tonight as well!

So! Here are some lovely recipes and cooking sites and that to lust after. I'm planning to try and post recipes of mine soon, but I haven't had to cook dinner here yet :D


Roasted Butternut Squash with Caramelised Onion, Gorgonzola and Crispy Fried Sage from Closet Cooking. That website is amazing, by the way. And my inner vegetarian loves a good vege meal.


The Lime Cheesecake that made me feel all hungry-like from My Kitchen Rules. I had a really good lime cheesecake on the weekend at Grandma's and I really need to either get the recipe or find out where she bought it. Cheesecake crust, along with apple crumble topping, is one of my absolute weaknesses.


Chestnut Gnocchi from Not Quite Nigella. I love, love love love, gnocchi, but I've never been able to make it very well. When I worked at the Italian cafe, the chef made me gnocchi in butter with fried bread and herbs for lunch one day and it was quite possibly the greatest thing I've ever eaten.



An actual Nigella recipe - Orange French Toast. I'm not the biggest fan of OJ (too much pulp! *shudder*) but this sounds yummy.

Any food websites you like? Recipes? General love of food?

Reblog: Tetris Philosophy

Possibly the best thing I've read all week, and not just because it says I'm wise :D

You can find the original article at Levi's Last Word on Tumblr.

A very wise girl said to me today: (and i miss-qoute this) “I like Tetris because it all fits together” and this simple statement sparked a deep philosophical debate in my head in which our lives are a living game of Tetris.

1. The pieces falling down are the events and plans we have to do in our lives: easy pieces such as lines, mean easy tasks such as driving to the shops, hard shapes like those annoying z’s means harder activities such as…someone hitting our car on the way to shops.
2. Depending on the difficulty of the game we play depends on whether we see what is comeing up or not. e.g. on an easy level the nice little Tetris gods tell us we have a nice square comeing up, which is like a rostered shift at work, but then when on a higher difficutly the tetris gods pick fun at us, and throw in the unexpected Z’s and T’s of the reall life world…e.g. Sudden need to use mental mathmatics!!!!
3. Now we get on to the clearing of lines! (hold on to your hats kiddos this is where shit gets heavy!) Clearing lines is the goal of both tetris and life, well metaphorical lines in lifes case. When all is going well and we plan ahead or deal with the unexpected Z’s of life, somehow depsite our foolish nature we manage to clear a line. Through planning and clever thought we are able to complete the herculean tasks that we must face everyday and shove that T inbetween the I and the Square, and ultimately come out with a blank slate, A tabula rasa of every day. We have succeeded in completing our everyday tasks and come out with more room to grow and build our next adventure of our Tetris/life.
4. But life isnt so simple…oh no! We all love Tetris, Tetris would never betray us, it wants us to come out on top and always have an empty screen, WRONG! Tetris likes to fuck with us, give use shaped that wont fit in with your planning no matter how well you have planned. It gives you a line when you need a square, just when you though you couldn't go wrong with a line it happens. Shitopia! Theres gaps everywhere, unfinished lines all over the place, you life is going to hell, nothing is going right, You’ve lost an arm, you rent out Spanglish because you couldnt find Taxi Driver, and get so pissed off about wasting your time watching a film about a confused American try to pound a Spanish Nanny it emotionally cripples you and you end up abusing your boss at work, These my friends…are the times when Tetris betrays us and we just cant organise our 4 blocked friends together. These are the shit times in our life!
5. But, every so often a miracle happens. Tetris pulls out a Jesus on us and everything works out well. Everything seems more aerodynamic and streamline, shapes are fitting in which you thought they could never fit in before, AND BANG! You have tetris, 4 lines gone at once. Pure bliss, this is rare and hard to accomplish but when you pull it off, its worth it. Bonuses fly through the roof, you cant control the endorphin high you get, you cant lose now your unstopable, you just finished work half an hour early and get to go home and sneak in an extra episode of How I Met Your Mother before you have to go out. These moments, are the Tetris’ of life, and its what we live and play for!

FOTOS

I finally picked up the elusive cross-processed Fisheye film today. I have two grievances about this - 1. They said they'd call when it was done, because I dropped it in when they were waiting on a new part for the machine so couldn't give me a date. I actually went in to see if the machine was fixed and my photos have been there for a week.
2. It cost $29.75 for one set of prints and a disc. Even with cross-processing, I'm sure that is horrendously expensive. Well, it was only $18.90 at the other camera place for prints and a disc, and you're using the same chemicals in cross-processing.

I don't know, its quite apparent from these that I'm horrendously bad at holding my hand still while taking pic-chaz. Regardless, this is my first attempt at using my fisheye!

Shoes Shoes Shoes Shoes!

WHAT DOUBLE POST HOW UNCHARACTERTISTIC.

I was all enjoying my Friday night now the horror of work is over, because I got dehydrated and burnt both my hands on what was essentially BOILING WATER WITH FLAVOUR and not herbal tea at all which then spilt, and there's a gigantor spider in my house (somewhere...), and I dropped Roger the iPhone on the concrete :(

AND THEN, I found this. Greatest thing ever.

Lookbook Love

Because its been far too long.

And I also really want the Postal Service shirt she has.