And so it begins

During dinner tonight, my youngest son started making snorting sounds. I looked up to discover that he'd shoved a piece of penne up his nose.

I'm not sure if I was more grossed out by having to yank pasta from his nose, or the fact that he immediately snatched the freed piece from my hand and ate it.

Today: penne. Tomorrow: crayons, Legos, spare change, insects and unidentifiable yet suspiciously elderly pieces of food.

It's my party

A while back, I joined this awesome site as a way to find new blogs to read. Totally worked - as my Google Reader can attest - and today they're featuring yours truly as the blog of the day. Pretty cool, eh?

For all the newbies: feel free to snoop around, test out the furniture, help yourself to a drink, sneak a peek into the medicine cabinet...you get the idea. Enjoy!

Time suck

Apologies for my infrequent posts lately. I blame two things: exam finals, and pinterest.

Yes, I've been sucked into the black hole that is pinterest. I know it's the Trendiest Thing On Earth right now, but how can you hate on a site that 1) is genuinely awesome if you're a visual person like me and b) makes you aware of the existence of stuff like this:

And these:

Radiators from here.

And this:

 Rude little black book from here.

And these:

Oxford ballet flats from here.

And this:

Photo from here, octopus shower curtain from here.

And this:

Typology wallpaper (yep, it's just vinyl wallpaper) from here.

How could I have lived without knowing these things existed, I ask you???

S'more-apalooza

What you are about to see happened in March. And yes, I am ashamed it's taken me this long to post this. Sorry. 

Remember the last s'more sampler? It was so much fun that Elise and I decided to do it again, this time roping buddies Kylie (a s'more virgin) and Lucinda (a new s'more devotee) into the sugarfest.

The S'more Pop

Lisa's Rating: 8.5
Kylie's Rating: 10
Elise's Rating: 10
Lucinda's Rating: 10
Notes: For our first s'more, we decided to begin with the s'more version of an appetizer. I was the only one who didn't absolutely fall in love with these (the marshmallow to cracker ratio was a bit high in my opinion) but they were still pretty kickass, plus fun to make!

The Classic

Lisa's Rating: Who are we kidding? No need for individual ratings - we all gave it 10. It's classic for a reason.
Notes: Not needed.

The Lucinda Special

Lisa's Rating: 7.5
Kylie's Rating: 8.5
Elise's Rating: 8
Lucinda's Rating: 7.5
Notes: Lucinda was intrigued by our stunning failure of an attempt to create an alcoholic s'more (for those playing along at home, that would be The Flaming Captain Morgan S'more), and decided to try her hand at it. Instead of soaking or injecting the marshmallows with booze, she made a brandy chocolate spread. The brandy flavor was sweet and subtle, and the end result was pretty good!

The Coffee Bean

Lisa's Rating: 9
Kylie's Rating: abstained (not a coffee fan)
Elise's Rating: 9
Lucinda's Rating: 9
Notes: You can't see it, but inside each of those marshmallows are two chocolate covered coffee beans. The rest is a traditional s'more, although at the last minute (for reasons of Why The Hell Not?), we decided to swipe the marshmallows in Elise's chocolate fountain instead of using regular chocolate. The finished product was AWESOME. The only reason it didn't get a 10 from those of us who ate it was because the coffee flavor wasn't quite strong enough - we agreed that each marshmallow really needed three beans - but otherwise it was fab.

The More Bacon The Merrier

Lisa's Rating: 0.5
Kylie's Rating: 1
Elise's Rating: 2
Lucinda's Rating: 2
Notes: The bacon s'more we made at S'more-gasboard was so delicious that we decided to be really ballsy this time and take it one step further: replace the graham crackers with Sao crackers to make it more of a traditional bacon-and-cracker combo. The result was an almost inedible s'more. The others mustered up at least an entire skimpy point each solely on the basis that the s'more still contained chocolate ("And that must be a good thing. Right? Right???") but since I'm not much of a chocolate fiend, this didn't garner more than half a point from me. And I thought even THAT was generous. This s'more will haunt my nightmares. Blech.

The Peanut Butter Cup

Lisa's Rating: 7.5
Kylie's Rating: 8
Elise's Rating: 7
Lucinda's Rating: 8
Notes: Considering my love of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I expected for this to be my winner of the day. But tasty as it was, something was off. Was it the thickness or texture of the cup? The peanut butter to chocolate ratio? I couldn't decide, and neither could anyone else - all we knew was that even though it was delicious, it just wasn't the amazing experience we were all hoping for.

By the way, if you ever set up a chocolate fountain outside, here's a pro tip: avoid the windy areas.

Elise's shed will never be the same again.

I'm famous!

Check it out - I'm totally famous! I expect the paparazzi to start breaking my door down any day now:

OK, maybe not actually breaking it down. But a fun interview on BlogExpat should at least get them hiding in the bushes, right? 

The Dish

So. It's been a while. It turns out that - spoiler alert! - working full time, studying for your Masters degree and having young kids is REALLY EFFING HARD. But anyway...

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to go here:

So that we could see this:

If you're a space nerd (or a proud Aussie), you might remember it from these times:

Or if you're a movie nerd, you might recognize it from this:

All I can say is...

...that is one awesome big ass telescope.