Now who would need to buy takeaway containers right? I mean almost every household would have some, courtesy of your local takeaways but mind you, some takeaways do charge you like 30 – 50 cents extra if you use their containers. What a rip off.

I never imagined I’d buy these containers *LOL*. I bought them because I had ran out of free ones which I washed and reuse to put my baked cookies in to give to friends and neighbours. So I bought a 50 pack at G&L Supermarket’s warehouse which had many sizes and types of containers available at reasonable prices. Here is a photo of the takeaway containers available in packs of 50 or per carton. Base and lids are sold separately.

The cost:

Base (50pcs) = 4.95
Lids (50pcs) = 3.10
——————-
Total = 8.05
——————-

Actual cost per container (with lid) = AU$0.16 cents

Now I don’t have to worry about running out of containers to pack my cookies in to be given away

Sometimes when you don’t face the situation, one would not have any idea how much certain things cost. Take for example, I have not the slightest clue as to how much incontinence products may cost per month for a user, until I know of someone close who had to use them.

I must say that they don’t come cheap. Come to think of it, when a person gets sick, not only is he/she not in the best physical or emotional health but it breaks the piggy bank too. Such is life.

I have fallen back to the stage where my entries have become nothing but wordy, dull and boring. Gone where the days where every single post would be accompanied with a photo or more. What happened? I guess as time goes by, I tired out.

I mean I still continued snapping photos on topics of interests but they just sit on my computer for ages. I guess I am just so lazy to resize them before I upload them here. One day I’m gonna clear the backlog of photos – I hope

I think it has been two consecutive years that we did not mail out Christmas greeting cards to families. I used to send out photo cards during Christmas season when DD turned one and two. After that, laziness got the better of me and I stopped doing it.

Hopefully this year I will be able to send some to both sides of the families especially the ones across the Tasman as some of them would never fail to send us a greeting card each year. I feel bad for not reciprocating. I hope they understand that with a toddler, sometimes you just don’t get to do things the right way ?

The title sounds gross but it’s a fact. Yesterday I Googled for a solution on this. The most common recommended solution was to use some sort of acid based cleaning agents which I will try to avoid if possible.

I am ashamed that I have only begun cleaning the toilets well after DD turned 3 yo as prior to that, we were awfully busy juggling the ongoing building works of our home, trying to settle in fully and taking care of a very demanding child. Thus the negligence on cleaning the toilet weekly.

Then I stumbled on a thread where a lady said she used a pumice stone and it worked for her. As I had already tried White King bleach, Easy Off Bam, Harpic and a few other cleaning agents which name I couldn’t remember, I decided to give pumice stone a try since the logic of pumice scrubbing off the stain sounds promising to me.

So I first squirt some Jif onto the stains then scrub the stains with a wet pumice stone. Voila it worked! It took me about 20 minutes to get all the stains off. I hope this formula will help those who are also trying to figure out how to rid those stubborn brown stains on the toilet ring without breaking the bank account.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any photo of the “before” cleaning as I doubted that it actually worked! I have used Photoshop to “stain” it like how it was before I managed to get it all off.

Before (edited with Photoshop to include stains)

After (unedited photo)

The solution, a pumice stone (if you don’t know what it is, please Google)
and Jif

Yup we’re at it again. Went to pick up some price lists and brochures at Clarendon Homes, Beechwood Homes, Allworth Homes and Westminster Homes. While we were there, we took the opportunity to check out some of the display houses again.

I really love how they usually mount the plasma or lcd tvs onto the wall, therefore clearing the surface of the tv stands and you could put framed photos, vases or other decors on it instead.

Anyway, we came home and sat down looking at the price lists. Looks like most builders have increased their prices since the time we were looked at them close to 4 years ago.

For so many years, I haven’t sat down to watch the Academy Awards live on TV. Today I happened to chance on it when I turned on the TV while having my early lunch. I was just in time when the awards ceremony began with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin appearing on stage. It felt nice to be able to watch TV without DD disturbing me (she was in preschool, hehe) but unfortunately I couldn’t stay awake to watch the rest of the show.

I took a nap instead! Almost overslept to pick DD up. Guess I’ll have to watch the rerun of the Oscars tonight

It’s almost the end of February already. The up side of it is that Summer is coming to an end, yay! No more unbearable and unbelievably hot days. The down side of it is of course, it simply means time flies … soon it will be Easter, then the mid year financial year end sale and then, Christmas and then … time to look for insurance quotes again, yikes!

The cycle is the same every year. However, I do believe from next year onwards we would not be as stressful due to DD having grown up more and get less clingy and dependent on us. It will also mean we will get to travel more, double yay to that. If things work the way we hope it will that is

To all those who still have the priviledge of having the vendor grate fresh coconut meat for you, well count your blessings. For those of us who have left our home countries, we have to DIY when it comes to getting freshly grated coconut, otherwise we’d have to settle for frozen grated coconut (I’ll cover this topic in another post) available at local Asian grocers.

Anyway I hate it each time I bought an old coconut by mistake because I don’t know how to choose one. Well, in the past the sundry shopkeeper in Malaysia would usually grate it with the grating machine before selling it to us, so there is no worrying about getting bad old coconut that’s off.

I have bought bad coconuts from Coles and fresh fruit vegie stores before and I absolutely hate it, wasted my money because you can’t use the coconut at all.

Thankfully this week’s episode of Poh’s Kitchen gives very good tips on how to choose a good coconut. You’ll need to watch the video itself. In this video you will also see the kind of different coconut graters that the Chef and the fruit vendor used. Please click here

Basically, the coconut needs to have a lot of water in it (no water means the coconut is old) and make sure the 3 eyes on the coconut looks good.

Bills, bills, bills! There are 3 bills sitting on my folder waiting to be paid before their due dates. The thing I dread getting in the mail is bills for home and car insurance. Yikes, they cost a bomb but could not be avoided. And to think that many households now owns at least 3 cars, gosh.

I just ensure that we set aside the required amount for these large bills so we don’t have to feel the pinch when the bills arrive in the mail.

How do you budget for your household expenses and utility bills? I know of some friends who keeps a record of expenses down to a tee, no joke!

Let’s go for some free family fun at The Ponds, on Sunday, March 14 between 2.30pm to 5.30pm. Watch Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags, Captin Feathersword and host Fairy Clare live!

According to The Ponds website:

“In addition to the Land Boat Races, this year’s Family Fun Day will include a 30 minute show Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags, Captin Feathersword and host Fairy Clare, stalls, face painting, jumping castle, water bumper boats, train ride and a free sausage sizzle.”

Free sausage sizzle?  Yumm

It won’t be too long before I hit retirement age and yes I must admit, time and again, I did get curious about all the eye wrinkle treatment beauty products in the market.

I am not using any at the moment (not that I don’t need it but this Aunty is too stingy to splurge on this “want”) but I did try samples that were given. Umm, frankly I couldn’t tell the difference because I have really small puffy eyes which appear tired and angry all the time but I’m not, it’s just how they are.  Those who have eyes like mine would know what I mean.

What bothers me more is my acne. I don’t really care that it makes me look horrible to still have acne at this age but it is the discomfort and sometimes feeling sore from the acne that irks me all the time ?

Can anyone defy ageing? Certainly not. Well I mean yeah in terms of looks like how celebrities make use of plastic surgery, botox and such to look youthful.

But when it comes to health, I doubt there is anything that could make your body in tip top condition like when you were 10 or 20 years ago? I dread the day when I will experience health symptoms that come with age. I do wonder at times if I would need to take joint supplements and many other vitamins just to keep myself intact! Nowdays if I sit on the floor for more than 10 minutes I find it rather difficult to stand straight up immediately; or when I stoop to pull weeds at my garden, it will take me a minute to straighten up properly - ouch my old back!

It is a scarey thought but first, I need to lower my cholesterol level and get back to shape.

Yeah I wish I could say that but it’s not me.  I often like to read about how families manage to pay off their mortgages within a targeted time frame. The most recent article I read was of a family who paid off a AU$165k mortgage within 4 years. That’s a very good achievement!

Sure, the family had to sacrifice a lot in terms of “wants” items and survived only on things that they really needed. But it is all worth it after 4 years. Most of us know that when you have kids, 4 years can pass by swiftly and you’re like, “huh? Has it been 4 years already?”. So why not put up with a tight budget and get it over with? Easy to say but it all really depends on each family’s financial situation.

You can read the full article here

Sometimes both DH and I had to get out of bed several times at any hour between 2.00am to 3.30am. Our DD no longer sleep through the night on a daily basis. She has to get up and make one of us take her to the bathroom eventhough the bathroom is just next to her room. Other times she wakes up for no reason and came running into our room.

There was once when I counted the number of times she woke me up for the most trivial things between 1.40am to 2.30am. I woke up a total of 12 times!!

I hope anyone who sees dark eye circles on DH or myself would understand what caused them, haha. If them don’t, well wait till they have kids