An Enjoyable Week

It has been an enjoyable week so far. Work has not been dragging along, because I actually have enough work to do (it's a miracle!).

Last night we went and saw some of Canberra's iconic buildings lit up for Enlighten, Canberra's annual festival. These architectural projections feature work by local artists. I think last year was the first year they did it, and I have to say that this year is even better. Here are some of my favourites:

 Renaissance art projections on the National Gallery

 A projection on the National Library

 This was a favourite - Political Cartoons on Old Parliament House. I definitely have to go and see their exhibition of 2011's best political cartoons this year!

Also Old Parliament house - this one looked better up close than far away. The detail was incredible!

Also exciting this week is that I received the prize I won from a blog competition on A Treasured Past. Tam has very similar tastes to me, loving everything vintage and beholding a story of times past. This is the gorgeous prize pack (including a handmade brooch - my fav item, and a handmade necklace):

Tam sells similar items at her Etsy store, and also resells some of her thrifted buys.

I'll leave you all with a yummy lunch photo, and the news that I will soon be starting a diet/exercise regime. This is very much out of necessity, as fewer and fewer of my clothes are fitting.

Alarm Clocks I Do Not Want

When I spent 5 months backpacking around Europe and South America, I became accustomed to the sound of my alarm clock, and became apt at sleeping through it. This drove my various dorm companions absolutely mad (and fair enough, I would want to kill me if I was someone else sleeping in the dorm too).

Here are some ingenious alarms that I would not want to wake up to. This list is for those who thought that nothing can be more annoying than the sound of your alarm when you're in a deep sleep and dreaming of happy times - alarms just got a whole lot worse. 

1. Dumbbell Alarm
It won't stop until you lift it a certain number of times. Exercise before I have even properly woken up? No thanks!

 

2. Shooter Alarm Clock
I often feel like shooting my alarm clock, but hitting the target might be a little difficult if you haven't had enough sleep. Until you hit the target, it won't stop beeping.

3. Bacon Alarm
If you like waking up to the smell of bacon, this one is for you. It will start cooking the meat 10 minutes before the scheduled wake up time. Unfortunately I don't think you could eat it, because the meat would be off after sitting there all night. And it might attract rodents. Just sayin'.

4. Flying Alarm Clock
The propellor jets off, and the alarm won't stop until you get up and retrieve it. Let's just hope it doesn't hit anyone in the eye.

5. Clocky
Meet Clocky, the little demon from hell. Press snooze and he will zoom off, and hide noisily until you find him again and incapacitate him.

 

6. Mosque Alarm
Quite possibly the tackiest alarm clock ever invented - if you want to wake up to a prayer call, get this ugly alarm clock! The only upside I can think of is it might be helpful if you want to piss of your neighbours.

7. Bomb Alarm Clock
I hope you know how to detinante a bomb. Only one of the four wires stop the countdown when cut; the other two are decoys and do nothing while one wire will immediately 'detonate' the alarm.

8. Memory Game Alarm
The only way to switch this off is to correctly press a random sequence, i.e. wake up and turn on your brain. You can buy various other alarms which require you to put together a puzzle before it will stop - I think I'd learn where physical puzzle pieces go well enough to do it in my sleep eventually though.

9. Police Siren Alarm
Any criminals you want to frighten? This flashing alarm sounds like a police siren. It would get extremely annoying too.

10. Tapping Alarm Clock
This annoying dude doesn't just make a sound, it starts tapping the table to wake you up. Because a normal alarm just isn't annoying enough.

 

11. Army Alarm
With this alarm, you'll wake up to a bugle call and have commands shouted at you.

12. Egg Laying Alarm
Kuku the alarm clock lays miniture eggs. It won't stop until you collect the eggs and put them all in the basket.

13. Money Shredding Alarm
This alarm clock shreds money until you turn it off. Use real money if you are stupid. In the same vein, the Snuz and Luz connects wirelessly to the internet and donates real money from your bank account to charity until you stop it. Uh oh.

14. Mosquito Alarm
There is nothing quite as annoying as the drone of a thousand mosquitos in your ear. Try waking up to this sound every morning. A psychopath must have invented this one.

15. The Tyrant
Last but not least is "the Tyrant". You plug your phone into it, and it will start randomly dialing numbers in your phone until you stop it. You will not be very popular if you have an earlier wakeup time than whoever it decides to call.

There is another alarm clock I one saw on the market which consisted of some symbols which were continually bashed together to wake you up. I haven't been able to find it this time - maybe every model has been destroyed ;-)

First Ever Giveaway Winner Announced

Thank you to everyone who entered my giveaway, and answered the question about which of my posts you like the most. I expected many of you to say the op shop buys ones, but I was happy to read that others enjoy my personal posts, cafe/restaurant reviews and random topical posts too. I am really enjoying blogging and getting to know other bloggers - it's so much fun!

The entrants were:

 And the winner is:

Janelle of Me and Mia!

I'll soon be in touch so that I can send you the prize! :-)

Bywong & Bungendore - Teahouse, Antiques and Puddles

The weather here continues to be shocking. It is supposed to rain heavily for the rest of the weekend before clearing up on Monday (fingers crossed!). We had pre-organised a daytrip, and despite the weather we went ahead with it. The choice for me was staying at home and feeling sorry for myself (with a sore throat etc) or getting out of the house and being distracted. A no brainer really.

Our first stop was the Scented Rose Gardens and Teahouse. This lovely little cafe is set in quaint manicured gardens, which would be lovely in the sun (especially in Spring when the flowers are in bloom). The blackboard menu in the cafe is short and simple, but you can be sure that there will be devonshire tea on it. It is located at 1725 Bungendore Road in Bywong, NSW and is worth a visit!

I had a toasted sandwich with homemade chutney, which was delicious:

I enjoyed this as much as I would have enjoyed a gourmet lunch :-)

Next we shared some delicious fresh scones which were served steaming hot with plenty of jam and cream:

Despite the pouring rain and warnings from the lovely owner that the garden had been subjected to a lot of rain damage, we decided to look at the gardens. One can see how lovely this venue would be in the sunshine:

We will definitely be back here when it re-opens after the winter in September (if we are still in Canberra that is).

We stopped at Bungendore on the way back to Canberra. This tourist town has quaint shops, galleries and cafes. Unfortunately it was not holding up well in the rain, with lots of road flooding... but we still managed to stop at the Wood Gallery and Antiques Shop.

These were my favourite items in the Wood Gallery - hand carved boxes with embroidery art on the inside:

 

They have everything from the traditional to the modern and unusual:

These birdies at the Village Antique Shop would be a perfect edition to the songbird chandelier DIY project that I blogged about:

The antiques shop has a huge range of furniture and vintage home decor items, both genuine vintage and reproductions or reworked items.

 

They even have a large outdoor area which we didn't explore owing to the weather. There is something quite spectacular about these vintage gates half submerged in water, don't you think?

 

As usual, linking up with Sophie and Apron Thrift Girl :)

To Do List: Here and Now

Things I really need to get around to doing…

1. Start exercising again, and regain some pride in my body and appearance. 
2. Get my teeth professionally cleaned. They feel gross, and I can see plaque on the backs… not to mention I haven’t been to a dentist in over two years, which probably isn’t great.
3. Follow up on the insurance claim I made after breaking my ankle through netball insurance. I bet they’re going to claim that they didn’t receive my documentation, so I’ll have to resend it all (and get some of it resigned…argh).
4. Finish my decluttering spree, which will include some market selling, ebay listing and op shop donating.
5. Reinvigorate myself outside of work – learn sewing, or another language (mandarin could be interesting)
6.  Plan a fun outing with friends on a weekend, or maybe even a weekend away. I have not been enthusiastic enough to make the effort lately, but I need to get back to it!
7.  Start cooking and eating healthily again. I think exercise needs to come first so I can get motivated to do this, as cooking is not my favourite passtime.
8. Get a haircut! This is much needed, and although I want to grow my hair long, I need to get the dead ends trimmed off and get it re-layered.
9. Get Photoshop or similar, so I can start making cool pictures for this blog (instead of relying on and being sorely limited by Microsoft Paint) 
10. Have a massive cleaning day, where I mop, vacuum, scrub and dust until the whole house gleams.

Rain rain go away

Today I woke up with a super sore throat. I think I'm getting sick, and I blame the colleague who I discussed in yesterdays post!!! To anyone reading this who is sick at work - don't be generous with your germs! Keep your cold to yourself, and stay home!

I hope everyone on the East is dry (and your property is safe!) with this crazy weather we're having. I don't think it has stopped raining for more than 10 minutes at a time over the last 48 hours, and it's set to continue (and be at its heaviest) for the next few days.

No one said that you can't be stylish while keeping dry:

I especially love the gumboots - very stylish for floodwear! I would have loved a pair when I lived in Glasgow and walked to university in the rain most days...

Brunch review: Zucherro, Manuka

We picked this cafe for a relaxing Sunday brunch because the cakes and tarts in the cabinet looked amazing. I doubt that they're made on site (the kitchen is teeny tiny, and I recognised a distinctively decorated mousse as the same one I had at Bittersweet Cafe in Kingston) but they showed good taste in sweets none the less. This was somewhat ironic because neither of us ended up having anything sweet, but I'd like to return and sample some in-cabinet deliciousness.

The Scoring

Menu variety/creativity: 7/10. Plenty of options, including a few sweet ones.

Taste: 6.5/10. I had Zucherro's beans, which was a pot of beans with chorizo and poached eggs on toast. The bean mix was flavoursome and tasty, and they poached the eggs properly (hooray!).

Coffee: 4/10. A little disappointing, although the coffee itself tasted okay, I don't think whoever made it knows how to froth milk.

Setting/location: 6/10. Nice on a sunny day to sit outside, and there is some undercover seating too... but no indoor seating, so unless they have outdoor heating in winter this would be a no-go.

Service: 3/10. This is unfortunate, because it’s where this place really fell down. We waited for 1 hour and 15 minutes for 2 breakfast dishes, which I do not deem to be acceptable. They did apologise for the delay but didn’t offer any explanation, so I can only assume that their cook is incompetent and that these sorts of delays are the norm there. They were not unusually busy and seemed to have plenty of waiters on duty, if they had been doing their job. The staff, although friendly, were more interested in having fun than serving customers – when I had to go and ask for water (it wasn’t brought to our table as we requested), I stood around waiting to be served while the staff laughed and joked and ignored me. The only lady who was doing work had to eventually yell at the young waiters to come and serve me. The same thing happened when I returned to ask where the restrooms were. Maybe the manager was absent and the staff were taking advantage of it? Who knows…

 Verdict: I wouldn't return for brunch, but the cakes (or tarts) looked yummy so I'd like to come here for afternoon tea. The coffee wasn't great but it also wasn't so bad that I'd avoid the place.

 Here are the meals: