Hello, 2013!!!

Wow.

I cannot believe that we have entered the world that is 2013!! It feels like just a couple years ago that we moved from the 90's into the 00's - and here we are, 13 years into this century, already. How time flies!! (and how I feel old when it feels like we just exited the 90's...goodness me!)

My new year's day was a perfect mix of a few of my favourite things: family, friends, and food. I started off the day by sleeping in (sleep is also one of my favourite things at the moment). It felt so good to wake up slowly and not have to rush anywhere!


My brother had some fun with Andre's and my new camera

My sister got out her recipe book, chose a lunch recipe, and then came to every family member with a little notebook and pen, and got our orders for lunch. She made toast with canned spaghetti and ham and cheese for us. Thanks, Amy!!


My awesome sister making lunch

I also had a productive morning in the kitchen!! Andre helped me (okay, so he actually did most of the work...he's good like that ;-) hehe) make tabouleh salad. I had tabouleh for the first time, a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it, and then on the weekend we bought a huge packet of fresh parsley for $0.50c - so, I figured that was the perfect time to try making tabouleh myself!

I bought some bulgur wheat to use in the salad, but then when I searched for a recipe yesterday morning, one with quinoa popped up in Google...and I had the perfect amount of quinoa left...so I went for the non-traditional tabouleh recipe! It turned out wonderfully!

The recipe that I used can be found here. I replaced the green onions with about 1/3 of a red onion, and I didn't put carrot into my salad. It is still really good, though! I brought the whole container to work, so this will be my lunch for the rest of the week.



My Tabouleh Salad - deliciousness!

I also had some fun making another new recipe, which I will share very very soon. Hint: if you think chocolate, you're on the right track ;-)

After lunch, Andre and I went to Semaphore beach with some friends. It was so lovely down there! The water was comfortably warm [most of the time], and the sunshine was beautiful! We spent over an hour in the water, and then (as all good beach-goers do) had fish and chips.


Our butterfish and prawns



=D Love this guy!



My new hat :-)

Remembering to treasure the memories and actually get photos of ourselves. Never mind our partially wet shorts. *cough, cough*

Happy 2013, my friends! I hope you were able to enjoy the first day of the new year as much as I did mine!

What did you do on new year's day this year?

~Rachel

House-sitting!

As the title suggests, I am currently house-sitting :D

I started on Saturday July 10, and I'll be going back home tomorrow - Thursday July 22. So, I will have had nearly two weeks of house-sitting. It's awesome!

I began at Gawler East, in a beautiful, huge, two-storey house - by myself (although I had Kim sleepover on my first two nights there). I had to look after two cats and one massive, active dog. Remind me never to buy a huge dog if I live in a small house-yard. It's pointless, really. I took the dog for runs nearly every day, to try and expel some of his energy, but unfortunately each day I'd come home from work and find the newly laid lawn dug up :(
I [miraculously] had a few nights at home!!! This very rarely happens! I enjoyed watching TV, which was especially momentous because they had Foxtel :P

On Thursday July 15, I moved houses, to Blakeview. I have house-sat at this place before, with Elyse, over New Year's in the summer school holidays (2009-2010). They have two cats, about six birds, one rabbit and two guinea pigs, so there's a fair few things to take care of! Julia and Elyse are staying with me, so for the most part we all just do a bit, and it's not too bad.

I've really been enjoying the extra independence having my own house brings - although, it is really hard to coordinate everything around work. Things like cooking proper meals, doing the washing and feeding the animals. That's certainly a challenge!!

I mentioned to a lady at work that I'm house-sitting, and she asked how often I do it. She said that she's getting married next year, and she has two dogs, and doesn't really want to send them to kennels or anything (she's getting married in Fiji!). She asked if I'd be interested in looking after her place... Of course I said yes :) It's a long time away, but still!! - The more contacts, the better!
She also gave me the telephone number of friends of hers who are going away for about two months, from August or so, this year. She said they're looking for a house-sitter, and they live in Gawler East as well, so it's nice and close, too.

I went to the shops one day to buy some groceries, and was talking to the girl at the check-out. She was saying how she'd been working all day, and she was tired, etc... Then I told her I was house-sitting and everything, and she became really interested and wanted to know how to find places to house-sit! As she asked me, I realized (and told her) that I really just house-sat once, and then as you mention to people that you're house-sitting at that time, they think of you later on when they're going away; or the people you house-sat for tell their friends... It's really just word of mouth! Pretty cool, really!

So, if you want to get into house-sitting... It just takes one time to get your career started! ;)

~Rachel