A Busy Year Ahead. 01/30/2010
 It is amazing what you can learn on line these days. I spend a fair amount of time each day referencing things that interest me on the internet, even chat forums give me leads on things that interest me and I refer to reading those forums I enjoy as ‘reading my morning paper’. This then leads on into a series of news items that interest me. With the range of interests I have because of having had, a varied creative and health related career, lots of travel and being in my senior, years. I am never struggling for a topic to blog about. I have ghost written articles for a Doctor that have been published in Medical Publications and I am thinking that something along the lines of medical assistant training school would be a useful course if I kept up medical research writing. Right now I am amazed at the amount of education you can do on line, last year I did a bone health program, I am currently doing better blogging training and another on fitness. I love that I can do these courses in my own time, file the lessons away when I have lots of writing or art I want to do a and focus on them when I fell like doing some study. My art and my art fridge magnet sales is my relaxing creative work I love to mix in with my writing. I can tell this is going to be a busy year for me. I love my time spent writing, creating art, touring, studies and exercise. Sometimes I have a little difficulty trying to explain that with all my personal interests and carer and home duties, I don’t have a lot of spare time on my hands for visiting and visitors, just the same I hope to meet lots of friends, on our tour, and share a cuppa in the caravan annex. I hope I meet youJ. The fridge magnets from my art, I show here will be available to purchase from me while we are on tour. They can also be ordered through the contact page of this web site. Be sure to add the date and the post title to your paypal instructions to the seller so I know which set of four magnets you would like. Free postage or shipping on orders of four.    Decorating To Suit The Dog. 01/29/2010
 Our car is being serviced, today, and I used the toilet at the Toyota show room and the ladies room, was as large as my lounge room and contained a two-meter high vase of flowers placed on the spacious floor, in one large empty space. On a spacious wall, was one large work of art, opposite that, a vanity unit and about 8 meters in from the door way was the one single toilet, looking rather strange, like the single throne in the oversized for its use, room. I found myself thinking of how toilet design has changed from the dunny out back, I knew in the 1950’s. The toilet here in our summer studio home is one of the old-fashioned single flush toilets, no longer considered favorable given Victoria’s dwindling water supply. The old single flush toilets give a 10 litre flush of water, very wasteful if it had not been modified, to use less. This can easily be done by putting a brick, in the water tank. Our summer home toilet, works on gray irrigation run off water so we are not wasting clean drinking water when we flush. Our entire bathroom laundry system and garden watering system, operates from the gray irrigation run off and straight from the lake, untreated water, conserving the drinking water for kitchen use only. With that and solar power for both the water heating in our summer home and all power other than for the computer, in the caravan, we are trying to be very environmentally friendly. Back to the use of water and changes in toilet designs, the Australian, duel system toilets, help save Australia’s precious water supplies, by operating on a 3 litre per half flush and 6 liter per full flush. The full flush, being slightly more than that, used by the efficient, Toto toilets in the US. It uses one and a third litres less than the full flush in the Australian duel system toilet. It does this more efficiently that the regular Australian standard, toilet, by maximizing cleaning action, with two nozzles rather than rim holes, water is more efficiently used for a better bowl wash and a more powerful flush. I assume this efficient cleaning action would be incorporated into the newest toilet designs available in Australia and I have friends in Australia who have just purchased a toilet that has an automatically self-closing lid. I have to smileJ, and remember, with not so fond images of the honeysuckle covered little shed out the back with the thunder box and the newspaper on the hook that I can remember from my child hood. That is one aspect of the past, I am very happy to leave behind. There was nothing romantic about the old back yard ‘dunny’ or the risk of leaches and red back spiders under the seat. Modern ensuit set up caravansJ, make outback and anywhere travel, more luxurious these days with their spotlessly clean odourless efficient flushing toilets, and the home toilet is often a room of sheer luxury. What a difference.  2 Comments Heritage Listed, Art Gallery, Building. 01/23/2010
 Reg and I are loving our down sized life, It suits this phase of our life together as Reg prepares to enter his 70th year and is interested purely in eco therapy, enjoying well earned retirement. Our downsized hobby business, gallery caravan and downsized art works, fridge magnet art is not where I thought I would be when we set up our Buninyong Gallery to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. We bought a two story dwelling on the Midland Highway at Buninyong for what became a successful, award winning gallery for eleven happy years of our life. We had to have wired in fire alarms and panic alarms installed with the home security systems, before the council would grant the permits for us to change the premises from the child minding centre and family home it had been, to an art gallery and home for an empty nest couple. I did think it was funny at the time that the bi laws insisted on greater security to protect a building containing art than it had required for a building full of little children. Lol J Well who can explain council bi laws? Before we left Buninyong, the council classified our gallery and home, which was built around 1970, as ‘Heritage listed’. Now that in itself was a joke as most of the building were less than 20 years old and it was of unremarkable design. The Heritage Listed laws dictated that not even the colour of the paint work could be changed without a written permit from council, (at a cost of course ), they even had the audacity to state that the paint used, should be Haymes Paint. . With councils looking over your shoulder and over dictating what you can do, can you blame us for preferring the casual lifestyle with an address, ‘Highways of Australia’? You can order the four fridge magnets that feature images of my art work, that I have used to illustrate this post, through the contact page of this web site. FREE Postage or shipping.    Craft Market or Beakfast in Bed? 01/23/2010
 I used to sell my fridge magnet arts at markets until a fellow stall holder side swiped my pride and joy, our Toyota, Land cruiser, Work Mate, Troop Carrier, I affectionately call ‘troopy’ and after the insurance quotes, I have for now decided to live with the damage and keep my, no claim bonus. I enjoy my early morning coffee and water drinks than be starting work at the crack of dawn.    Four Week Wii Personal Challenge. 01/22/2010
 To Order, Click Link Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want - Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible To Order, Click Link-> Jamie's 30-minute Meals This time last night, I was struggling with Reg, dyslexia J, lol and dementia combined trying to figure out how to set up our new Nintendo Wii console and Wii Balance board. Our first mistake was thinking we could set it up on an old TV set. The writing was, too blurred, for me to read and we ended up, kicking my husband out of his favourite lounge chair, stopping him from watching his favourite Australian Open tennis game and installing the Wii on to our only modern wide screen TV. It worked perfectly. I set up the Biggest Loser Wii program and did an upper body work out, followed by a yoga, work out. I can hardly wait until Reg has finished watching the tennis tonight so I can get back on the balance board and do a full body workout, I can see I am going to become a Wii addictJ. While I wait for my turn to use the TV screen I have been writing in my other blogs and organizing the new fridge magnets I am adding to the range I sell from this web site and from our caravan and I have been doing a little web surfing looking for add ons for my current Wii bundle. I went into Amazon books and found a link to where I can order my Wii Dumbbells with Adjustable Weights. I am currently doing a four-week Wii challenge, as a great way to stay fit and active, working out in the evening after a day of more sedentary, creative work making these fridge magnet arts and writing. I will make a set of adjustable Wii dumbbells my reward for when I have completed this initial four-week course. I will be blogging in more detail, regularly about my Wii exercising in my gray-nomad blog. See sidebar link.  Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater, give her sperm she will make a baby, give her a house she will give you a home, give her groceries she will give you a meal, give her a smile she will give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what she is given. So if you give her any trouble, be ready to receive a ton of crap.    Safe Art Materials for Children. 01/20/2010
 Pastels are one of the easiest art mediums to work with but because of the binding of pigment into talc and binders they are amongst the most toxic of art materials and they are not something I would recommend for use in a clean healthy home environment. In 2000, a leading manufacturer of children’s oil crayons and artist’s pastels, were found to have asbestos in many of the products. This was confirmed by independent studies. A family home is a place where our children create and learn. It is vital that we keep this place safe for kids. Some play items contain hazardous materials. In particular, art supplies can pose a threat to your child's health. Existing government regulations can only protect from known dangers. Many products sneak in from countries where the words ‘non toxic’ on the label has very little significance within the country of manufacture. Companies often base their companies in India and China where mal practice lawsuits bring pathetically low compensation payout for poisoning. A mesothelioma lawyer would have a good result in a genuine compensation claim against companies based in the US, Europe or Australia and this is a guide to me, to only believe the words ‘Non Toxic’, on a label, if it is manufactured and owned by a company based in a country where human life has a high financial value. Where it is in a manufacturer’s financial interest to use cheap though dangerous products to manufacture goods, there will always be a risk that they will do this. Talc is sometimes contaminated with asbestos.. In 2000, tests in a certified asbestos-testing laboratory found the tremolite form of amphibole asbestos in three out of eight major brands of children's crayons (oil pastels) that are made partly from talc. Overall, 32 different types of crayons from these brands contained more than trace amounts of asbestos, and eight others contained trace amounts Tests by the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration found asbestos in all four talc samples that it tested in 2000  Georgia by Kathy Shell This is Georgia, my art work in pastels, reproduced as a small flexible fridge magnet. I will have 25 of these ready for purchase early in Feb. 2010. I found Georgia a delightful subject that lent itself to the soft artist's pastel. treatment. What is the colour of your bra? 01/12/2010
 For two days, many of my friends were updating the Facebook Status with a colour name, and nothing else, leavin the men, guessing what it was all about.    |
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