Whacky Wednesday

I recently found some whacked out inventions that I wanted to share with you:




Wake 'n Bacon

An alarm clock that wakes you up with the smell and sizzle of cooking bacon. This clock gently wakes you up with the mouthwatering aroma of a real strip of bacon, just like waking up on a Sunday morning to the smell of Mum cooking breakfast.Yummerz.






Moo Mixer


Everyone loves Milo (or chocolate milk to you foreigners) but it can be a pain to constantly stir it up with a spoon. Well, this new automatic chocolate milk mixer cup makes it alot easier to enjoy your favorite drink. The cup does all the work for you. Just pour in the milk and chocolate and watch the mixer do the job you...and the cup is dead cute.




Stylin' Stacking Chairs


I love this!  Its a table and chair set that can be used indoors or outdoors as a patio set.  Its stylish and its convenient.  It doesn't take up much space.  Hell, you could put it in your trailer and take it camping.  You'd be the Hip 'n Happening campers on the block.






And of course how can I forget to reminder you that its Whacky Wednesdays at Steers tomorrow.

Two for the Price of One.


Taste it here!
Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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Primary School Reunion Brunch

I had a Primary School reunion brunch today in Pretoria and it was awesome to see primary school friends that I haven't seen in 30 years!

We chatted from 11am until 4pm.  I didn't realised the time at all...the best of all was that my best friend from Standard 4 (Grade 6) was there and she'd brought a file of letters and silly things we shared back then as the Crazy Three Club.

Tania gave me a letter that she'd written me nearly 30 years ago when I moved from Pretoria to Johannesburg.  Its a letter that I had not seen and a letter that she'd not sent.  I was very emotional reading it, know she'd kept it all these years and to know that I meant that much to her...

Sooo many warm memories came rushing back when I looked into the eyes of my best friend from 30 years ago.  I remember stealing her mum's ciggies and trying to smoke them as youngsters.  I remember her mum who used to send us to bed with a candle each - teaching us how to use the hot candle wax to make a little pool of wax to stand the candle up.  To hug her again was wonderful!  That kinship was bubbling way down deep.

It was an awesome catch-up day and unfortunately I left my camera's memory card in my laptop even though I'd charged the camera batteries and made sure they were in the camera.  So, I'm relying on everyone else who had a camera there to send me the photos.

All in all a brilliant day!!!



Hanging on for dear life!



Looking at Tania's old photo albums!!!



 Kaylin next to one of the HUGE bottles of wine at the restaurant



Tania's 30 year old letter
 
Some of the Crazy Three Memorabilia

Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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GrandParents Day

Grandparents Day this year had an Easter Theme and all the grannies and grandpas wore their easter bonnets proudly while watching their grand children put on a mini concert outside in the court yard of the school.

Kaylin, as always, didn't perform at all.  It was all tears the minutes she spotted us among the crowds.  I didn't mind because I enjoyed watching the other classes put on their show.  Each class did a song and a poem either about Grand parents and / or easter.  It was very special.

What made it even more special was that Kaylin's Ouma and Oupa Grootjie (Great Grannie and Grandpa) were visiting from Pietermartizburg and got to come and watch the show.  Oupa Grootjie Johan got a prize for being the Oldest Grandpa in attendance.  The oldest Granny there was 96!  There were prizes for youngest Granny (42) and the youngest Grandpa (41). 

They even had an Easter Bonnet Parade and prizes for the best Easter Bonnet.  Loads of drinks and snacks were served afterwards and the grand parents got to see the children's classes and receive a little hand-made craft gift that all the little ones had made.  This year it was a little potted herb in a gorgeous little hand-made Easter crate.  Very special indeed.

Here are some of the memories.








Kaylin's Class



Kaylin in action



The Principal singing the school song



Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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Lights Out!

Join me today, Saturday 27 March 2010, by switching your lights off  for Earth Hour at 8:30pm.  You could have a romantic candlelit dinner for an hour and make stand against Climate Change.



It may not make much of a difference by myself, but if we all stand together and do it, we CAN make a statement.

I'll take pictures tonight! 

Follow WWF on Twitter



Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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2010 National Cleveage Day

Do you bit for 2010 National Cleveage Day

and "support" Breast Cancer Awareness
 



Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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1-2-3 Blog Myself

Christie tagged me with this awesome Page 123 game.  I needed to chose 3 favourite books I have read, I go to page 123 and move down 5 sentences and write out 5 sentences! (more or less).  I enjoyed doing this one.


Patrick Süskind's first novel, Perfume (Das Parfum) tells the horrific story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an orphan born in Paris in 1738. When Grenouille's abandoned body is found in the garbage, he is taken to an orphanage, where everyone who comes into contact with him finds something about him to be revulsive. What they are unaware of is that Grenouille's body does not have any aroma, a distinction which is so subtle that nobody can place their finger on it, but which colors Grenouille's entire life. Grenouille's strange relationship to odors is further highlighted by his own extremely sharp sense of smell, caused, perhaps, by the lack of necessity to sense past his own smell.


Pg 123 Reads:

Even by the light of day, the region was so dismal and dreary that the poorest shepherd in this poverty-stricken province would not have drive his animals here.  And by night, by the bleaching of the moon, it was such a god-forsaken wilderness.  It seemed not of this world.  Even Lebrun, the bandit of the avergne, thought pursued from all sides, had preferred to fight his way through to the Cevennes and there be captured, drawn and quartered rather than to hide out on the Plomb du Chantal, where certainly no one would have sought or found him.


Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America is a book by travel writer Bill Bryson, chronicling his 13,978 mile trip around the United States in the autumn of 1987 and spring 1988.  He begins his journey, made almost entirely by car, in his childhood hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, heading from there towards the Mississippi River, often reminiscing about his childhood in Iowa. The journey was made after his father's death, and so is in part a collection of memories of his father in Des Moines while he was growing up.


Pg 123 Reads:

No one knows why they might have done this, but fifty years later when European explorers arrived in Tennessee, the Cherokee Indians told them that there was group of pale people living in the hills already.  People who wore clothes and had long beards.  These people, according to a contemporary account, "had a bell which they rang before they ate their meals and had a strange habit of bowing their heads and saying something in a low voice before they ate".  No one ever found this mysterious community.  But in a remote and neglected corner of the Applalachians, high up in the clinch Mountains about the town of Sneedville in north-eastern Tennessee, there still live some curious people called Melungeons who have been there for as long as anyone can remember.


Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits chronicles the lives of three generations of the Trueba family of Chile.

The story starts, however, with the del Valle family, focusing on Clara and Rosa, mainly. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary of her life. Using her powers, Clara predicts a death in the family. Shortly after this, Clara's green-haired sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is accidentally poisoned and dies as a result. Clara accidentally watches her sister's autopsy and afterwards, terrified, stops speaking, believing her words caused her sister's death.

Pg 123 Reads:

Dr Cuevas, whom Clara no longer feared, calculated that the birth would be some time around the middle of October.  It was already the beginning of November and Clara was still swinging her enormous belly around, in a state of semi-somnambulance, ever more distracted, more exhausted, and more asthmatic, indifferent to everyone around her, even her husband.  From time to time, she didn't even recognise him and would ask "May I help you?"  when she noticed him stand by her side.  Once the doctor had ruled out the possibiltiy of a miscalculation in the date and it was evident to all that Clara had not the slightest intention of giving birth the normal way, he proceeded to open her belly and extract little Blanca, who proved to be an uglier, hairier child than usual.

I now need to tag five other book lovers to do the same.  Here are my choices:
 
1.  Brian Miller
2.  Otin
3.  TechnoBabe
4.  Jeanette
5.  G-Man aka Mr KnowitAll
 
I can't wait to see what books y'all feature.  Enjoy it as much as I did.Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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Being Politically Incorrect

I usually don't like to get involved in local politics and it really does not matter which side of the political fence you sit on.  Even if you are perched neatly on the top and never get involved (like moi), when freedom of speech and the freedom of the press is threatened we should all sit up and pay attention!  T

There is nothing I detest more than being censored and someone telling me to shut up. 

I believe everyone has a voice and everyone should have the right to verbally express their views without being compromised or censored.  So, I stood up tall (all five foot of me) and joined this campaign that Chris Roper and Sipho Hlongwane are tweeting about on (hashtag) #SpeakZA..


Blogs 4 Free Press
Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC Youth League spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa. We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic
safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.

The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.
We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the Youth League President.

We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.
Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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Step Away From the Chocolate

You know me, I'm always looking for new ways to help with my weight maintenance and weight loss.  Don't you wish your figure WLD (while lying down) remained the same when you stood up? Don't you wish you could walk naked with your butt up against the wall all the time?  This way no one sees the hail damage!  Och.... my eternal battle with weight.  Why can't I be like those skinny lassies that can eat ANYTHING and stay skinny or at least puke it out.  I hate barfing so I don't think I could become bulimic, I love my chocolate too much so I can't become anorexic....I guess I'll have to rely on diet pills.

Here's my latest.  I started this morning and hopefully I can get rid of a few kilos on top of exercising.






Nu-Evo2 DuoTone is a natural lifestyle management supplement that works with a dual action. Life, today, is extremely fast paced and taking care of our health is often way down the list of priorities. Limited time makes it difficult to maintain a balanced, healthy eating and exercise programme.





Nu-Evo2 DuoTone is a natural lifestyle management supplement that works with a dual action. Life, today, is extremely fast paced and taking care of our health is often way down the list of priorities. Limited time makes it difficult to maintain a balanced, healthy eating and exercise programme.

The result may be a sluggish metabolism and gaining a few unwanted kilograms that we battle to lose. Nu-Evo2 DuoTone is an innovative, natural, tried and tested weight management supplement for men and women who need to kick-start their metabolism, improve digestion and lose a few kilograms.


Nu-Evo2 FSD Complex - Weekender is a calorie control system, developed through research by Omega Pharma NV Laboratory, using the unique FSD complex. This system assists you to manage changes to your usual dietary routine, enabling you to enjoy business meals or meals with family and friends without guilt! Nu-Evo2 FSD Complex - Weekender is essentially a new generation fat trapper, with more fat trapping ability than other conventional fat trappers.
Nu-Evo2 FSD Complex - Weekender contains the FSD complex which is a unique combination of active ingredients namely Liposan Ultra, Zinc and Inulin.

Liposan Ultra (crustacean shell extract) binds fat from food and prevents absorption and storage thereof. Liposan Ultra was shown to be more effective than conventional fat trappers in clinical tests. Zinc plays a role in lipid metabolism (in the assimilation of sugars). Inulin, a fibre extracted from the endive root, helps improve digestion.

Nu-Evo2 FSD Complex - Weekender can be used for short periods of time (for example for one or two weeks or over festive or holiday periods) or only on days where an increase in fatty food intake is expected.

Wish me Luck!!! 



Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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Great Book Giveaway

This week I'm giving away some awesome books! 


Amongst them is Marian Keyes, Ann Gadd and Caroline Leaf.


The reason I am doing this, is that I have many books I have been lucky enough to be gifted with and, I have either got two copies of, or I have never read them.  Shamefull, I know.


I've decided to give my blogger readers a chance to win them.


All you have to do is :


1.  Become a Follower
2.  Leave a cooky comment
3.  For giveaway entry, you can make a post on your own blog with a link to my blog post giveaway.


And....if you've read one of these fantastic books, let me know what you thought about it. 


Simple as that....

Books are Rockin'!
Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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Weekend Fun

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you R800 to drop that towel.” After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob.


After a few seconds, Bob hands her R800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks,…

“Who was that?”

“It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies.

“Great!” the husband says, “Did he say anything about the R800 he owes me?”


Moral of the story:
If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.


This weekend was all about celebrations.  A little too much wine and enjoying with friends.




KK doing her Al Bundy impersonation.  Yes, this is really how she sleeps..






Gillian



We went for a braai at Nikki and Keith yesterday.
 


The girls jumping on the couch



KK after swimming



KK with our Pickles



Meggie with her Pickles



Megan and Kaylin posing for a photo



The regular Megan and Kaylin



Swimming with Wade and Wesley in their pool

Pickles



Wade



Wesley



Wesley and Megan playing a game

Source URL: http://giantstepstalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/
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