No Nose Smiley :)

Can you believe another venture has begun? I've now started up candlekoala.com as I've had an interest in soy candles for a while was searching for it and decided to go with starting up making and marketing candles from home. The great thing is that this opportunity has a trail of income from associates and affiliates signed up who also buy from the same supplier. So it works out to be a win win win situation! Anyway it's exciting and now I'm doing candles for Belle Fleur Lavender as well as will be doing them for Chocolate Koala ! I also received the final samples from my supplier for chocolate packaging, so now I feel I can go out to the market and start selling my chocolates! So hopefully May I'll get our first sales of the Chocolate Koala brand. Also made it to be a finalist in the Reed Gift Awards ! But didn't have the final packaging design so was a bit disappointed they didn't make it in time for final judging but hopefully the products will ...

I think I've found a new hobby! Painting ceramics. Jackie Devine has been wonderful. She's based in Hornsby which means its a short trip for me and is a wonderful teacher letting me do my own thing. She pours ceramics and cleans it up so that it's ready for me to paint... not that I'm really designing anything as I'm pretty handy with the tracing paper and carbon paper now! The results of my first two pieces of work: The two pieces above were painted on bisque, which is pre fired so it's not as delicate as greenware. I also did another piece which is for Suzy and Scott to commemorate their wedding... (date to be determined). Here I thought it'd take ages to paint so thought I'd get in early... but lo and behold I managed to paint in one sitting! So now I've painted it and it's been glazed (thanks Jackie!) and fired and sitting here waiting for them to set a date at least. I was going to put the date on it... but being impatient, it's ...

So it's been a while since I've posted... not for any other reason other than I've been busy. We've continued looking for property going out to Oberon last weekend... http://www.oberonaustralia.com/ . The climate is definitely a lot better than other places and they even have a couple of snowfalls per year... which would be nice. But Oberon is a bit further than Howes Valley and it seems to take a fair while to get back via the M4 as the Great Western Highway has all sorts of slow(ish) speed zones and traffic lights! It's ok once you get onto the M4 on the way home... But we've decided we didn't like the town enough, and Oberon itself is still around 30 to 40 mins to Lithgow or Bathurst (the next major towns). We believe it's a growing area so in that way it would have been good, but I think Will and I just like the obscure... so we're still mulling on the Howes Valley property. This Sunday we met up with an Excavator out of Putty who knows the a...

After months of speculation, finally we have photo evidence that Nikki really *is* going out with a real person and not a figment of her imagination. Unfortunately at the time of snapping the photo, someone managed to get a book in the way! Anyway we're sure that it's just a matter of time before someone gets a decent look at "Dan the man"!

We've been looking for acreage with the intention of purchasing early so we can eventually build a smallish house with all the bits we want in the house rather than taking what we can get... We've looked down in Braidwood, up in Wollombi and in Putty. Braidwood was a bit far from where we live now, so although well located probably not quite what we are after... Wollombi is great as it's only over an hour from our place, is the gateway to the Hunter Valley and if we want to build holiday cabins with the chocolate business on the side the tourist thing may work... We just need to keep an eye on it in case something good pops up as the properties we have seen are way too unsuitable. Putty is gorgeous. Only an hour from Windsor (but makes it two hours from us) lush etc, again just need to find something suitable. We've now gone a bit further than Putty and are looking at a particular property in Howes Valley. No power, possible phone line, no ADSL (the exchange hasn...

oooh! these houses are CUTE. How do they get that weathered look? Too bad that I don't think it'll work in the Australian climate... Read more at www.storybookhomes.biz/

Just had to post these photos, that were forwarded to me... sooooo cute! Apparently photos were taken in Adelaide end of January sometime (2006) during a heatwave.