How I lived without internet for 47 days

When I decided to give up all non-essential internet for the 47 calendar days that is Lent I  thought it would be difficult but that I would manage it. I knew I relied very heavily on the internet - for entertainment and the generally making-of-my-life-easier. But I didn't realise how much I relied on it. The first night of my internet fast I dreamt about checking my Facebook page. I found myself questioning my decision when I had to stand in the queue at the cinemas to buy my ticket instead of having it ready from ordering online.

I had visions of breaking my internet habit quickly and using my free time to read copious amounts of high brow literature, finish several embroidery projects, bake fresh bread every day, finally commit to running regularly and starting to meditate. What really happened wasn't as serene and self-empowering. The first week I replaced the internet with junk food, downing an entire packet of chocolate biscuits and a large packet of chips the first day at work when the internet wasn't so easy to ignore.

Once I got past the junk food phase I replaced the internet with television where I watched hours of The Block and My Kitchen Rules. I also watched the entire seven seasons of Buffy resulting in the Facebook dreams being replaced by Buffy dreams and I got the songs from Once More With Feeling stuck in my head for a fortnight.

This suggested to me that I may have a bit of problem disconnecting from technology and that by replacing the internet with television I may have missed the whole point of what I was trying to achieve so I set up some new rules. I had five weeks left of Lent at this stage and so decided to wean myself off television one hour at a time. The first week I was allowed five hours a day, the next week four a day and so on until I would, theoretically, be down to one hour a day by the last week of Lent.

This proved to be more difficult than I suspected.

It was fine during the working week, but the first Saturday was a nightmare and I had the horrifying realisation that I was using all this technology to quite the voices in my head. You know the ones... They spend all their time second guessing you and bring up all the things you've done wrong in your life. There weren't any dreams about Facebook or Buffy that night, instead I kept waking up anxious about work, money, uni, life in general. I had about three hours sleep that night. The next day I re-wrote the rules again and gave myself a Sunday reprieve. Once a week I allowed myself as much TV as I wanted. I also let go of the idea of getting rid of technology all-together as it was literally sending me mad without.

Instead I officially crossed the line from youth market to adult and spent the remainder of my Lent listing to an awful lot of ABC Radio National. I started to bring up current affairs topics I heard when listening to Amanda Vanstone (maybe the sleepless anxious nights or Buffy induced ear-worms weren't so bad).

There were a couple of slips along the way. I had a couple of sneaky Google searches (one to double check how long Lent actually went for in case I got it wrong... I didn't). I listened to some old podcasts on my ipod during a early morning flight. And I checked my email a little more frequently than was allowed by my predetermined rules. But am proud to say I didn't access social media once and didn't watch any on-demand tv.

I did miss a lot of things happening in the world. Mostly things happening in my friends lives. A visit with The Hungry Babushka interstate made this plainly obvious when not a conversation went by where the phrase, 'did you hear... oh yeah, you're not on Facebook' came up. For all it's intrusiveness this website is clearly essential to my social life and without it I felt very cut off from my friends. I also discovered too late there was a Ted X conference at my university so I missed the registration. And that for the first time in my degree three of my classes decided to integrate social networking as teaching tools.

But I think this has been a good experiment. I'm very glad I did it. I did manage to finish a very large, very dull high brow novel (Czech actually, which I think gives me bonus points). I did bake a couple of batches of bagels and a batch of biscuits. I did one week of running before it started to rain for a month and I caught the flu. I've actually got a fairly good head start on my uni assignments. And I can comfortably walk away from my computer without feeling the need to compulsively check Facebook, Pinterest and my blog analytics.

It seems important to remember how easy our lives are. With so much to entertain us, and inform us, and aid in our communication. So many shortcuts to make our lives easier. 'Struggling' without social media for a couple of weeks is not very high up on the list of difficulties I could be facing.

This has given me an idea for a future project, but I am going to file that one away for a later date. In the meantime, I am very glad to have my internet back, but may still try to not use it quite as much as I was.

So how did everyone else go? What did you give up for lent? Were you successful? Do you feel different?

An atheist's approach to Lent

This time last year I was contemplating whether I would participate in the 40 days fasting that is Lent. I had read lots of blog articles and Facebook posts about what people were going to give up and I was seriously considering whether I would do the same.

In the end I didn't take part as I thought, being an atheist, it would be hypocritical to do so. I wouldn't be forgoing something to bring myself closer to god, using it to pray, or as a penance for my sins throughout the year. If I participated it would be just to see if I could and that seemed a bit shallow.

Then I heard Alain de Button talk about his book Religion for Atheists and he raised the point that perhaps those of us non-religious-types can co-opt religious traditions simply for bettering ourselves. This wasn't a new perspective to me as I'd argued this point myself while I was trying to make my to-Lent or not-to-Lent decision. As I listened to the points he made I found myself nodding my head and regretting the decision not to take part in Lent.

While the tradition of Lent in Catholicism focuses on prayer & penance why could I not take these 40 days that were already marked in the calendar and use them to make myself a better person. For me Lent would be about discipline, bringing myself closer to the values I hold (even questioning those values), living, and ultimately appreciating, my life in the present moment.

This year I am taking part. I am going to give up the internet for 40 days. This is going to be hard, but I wanted to find something that would be hard, would challenge me and hopefully have me coming out the other side as a different person (even if it is only that I spend my nights reading instead of on Youtube).

I do have to build in some strict rules as I currently work in web design so the Internet is my job. I'm also about to go back to uni in two weeks so I will have to use the internet to access my course information. But aside from my paying work and essential university internet I will be turning it off.

The Rules

1. No Facebook 
At all. Not for work, not to check my news feeds. Not at all.

2. No Pinterest, Instagram, Blogging or other social media. 
This means I can't view it (on any computer or mobile device) and I can't post to it.

3. Essential Internet Only
Work internet will be restricted to the hours when I am working and will be limited to only websites I am working on. I cannot access the internet in my breaks or sneak a look at non-work internet while at the computer.

Uni internet will be restricted to UQ websites only - Our course listings and library database. The only exception is sites that have been given to us in class that we must access for assessment.

4. Restricted Email hours + Internet Banking
Emails can only be accessed for 1 hour a day for essential correspondence (bills, university notices, online shop orders). All internet banking must be done in this hour.

5. No Online TV
Iview, Youtube and all on-demand TV is banned.

6. No Podcasts
This is going to be the hardest. My Podcast playlist on itunes will not be accessed. I will not listen to them at work or on my ipod. No streaming of them on Stitcher either.

Reading back this sounds like it is going to be a very difficult 40 days - It's only when I started to catalogue what I won't be able to do under the 'No Internet' heading that I realised just how much time I invest in this thing. But I am determined to get through it, and honestly, I can't see how spending a few weeks without the internet could leave me worse off.


I haven't yet read Religion for Atheists - perhaps I'll read it over the next 40 days, I'm pretty confident that I will get a lot of reading done.

If you haven't come across Alain de Button before I recommend watching this talk... he's an interesting man with interesting ideas.

Is anyone else planning to give up something for Lent (for whatever reason, religious or reasons similar to mine)? 

Let me know in the comments... I still have a few days to read them :)

Edit - completely forgot to add Lent is from 13 February - 30 March this year

Brisbane Staycation - Palace, Garuva & the banks of the River

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all had a lovely night last night, that the day (and year) is looking bright and full of promise and that you aren't feeling too under the weather.

I've had a bad run of New Year's Eves so I tend to avoid them. This year I decided I wanted to do something that was fun, but not too filled with aspirations so as to inevitably fall flat. I think I found the perfect itinerary to the evening and certainly enjoyed myself.

Palace Cinemas & Hitchcock

The night started with a premier screening of Hitchcock at the Palace cinemas on James St. We arrived to a glass of champagne and a very long queue of people waiting to go into the cinema. Instead of joining the end of the queue we collected our wine and scoured through the upcoming film brochures only to discover that Quentin Tarantino has a new movie coming out in a couple of weeks - the perfect start to 2013!

As the queue filed into the cinema we joined the end and felt like celebrities with our glass of champagne in the cinema (all movies should include this). Hitchcock was a great movie. Biopics can sometimes leave me feeling a bit... blah, but this one was very well done. Combining the story of Hitchcock's marriage with his production of Psycho made for a very interesting view. The scenes where they shot Psycho were so perfect to the original you could tell they must have watched it over and over again. Now I feel like I want to watch it again. The film was also bookended by two Hitchcock monologues straight out of Alfred Hitchcock presents that were so compelling I felt like I was ready for a sequel. Made with much love for the great Hitchcock, I'm very glad I got to see it.

4 stars

Garuva

This is my second visit to Garuva. The first being quite some years ago and back then the food wasn't that great, though the atmosphere was really what made it. So I approached this visit with trepidation.

Garuva is one of those places in Brisbane where everyone likes to think they are the only one who know about it, but it's been around for so long that everyone has already been there. 

The unsigned restaurant is hidden away down a little lane-way filled with green lights and ferns. You are met by large Balinese doors that open up to a softly lit room filled with muslin curtains that wrap around each low table. You sit on cushions nestled inside these curtains and though the restaurant can be very full you still get a sense of intimacy.

I had the Cajun chicken and a very delicious lime cocktail. The food was much better than I remember which is a good sign. As the evening wore on the other diners started to leave for their next New Years' destination  and the restaurant took on an ethereal air. You could see silhouettes skitting through the curtains and this is where the magic of Garuva happens. I would recommend this restaurant on a mid-week night when it isn't so busy and sitting amongst the curtains in the hushed dark is much more atmospheric.

Banks of the Brisbane River

We left Garuva at about 10pm with plans of finding a bar to grab a drink at and see in midnight. However, Garuva is in Fortitude Valley which meant all the bars were loud, obnoxious and filled with 18 year olds. We decided to head over to South Brisbane and find a spot to watch the fireworks then head home and enjoy a wine there. South Bank is always ram packed on fireworks nights like New Years, but I had the idea that most people would be on the Parklands side of the Queen Victoria Bridge as that is where the fireworks display is focused. 

We took up position in front of the art gallery which was surprisingly quiet and had a great view down to the river. The display included a giant laser countdown on the casino hotel so we could see everything and when the fireworks went of we had a great view. Our position meant we missed some of the smaller fireworks, but it was worth it to avoid the body-jam in South Bank.

I apologise for not taking a better photo, but I decided to watch the fireworks instead of documenting them.

We were lucky to beat the rush to public transport and walked straight onto a train which got us back home with our wine and a deck of cards in half and hour.

Easily my best New Years ever.

Wishing you all the best for 2013

x Debbie

Visit the Palace Cinemas

Visit Garuva

Visit South Bank parklands

Christmas on Instagram wrap-up

It's been five days since the big day, but I feel like I've only just stopped today. Only, now I feel like I should be getting stuck into the pile of projects I want to get done before I go back to work in two weeks. I did have plans on trekking off to Bunnings today but instead I've spent the day eating chocolates and watching Youtube videos. Oh well.

I took many photos on the lead up to Christmas Day, but was too busy drinking on the day to take more (oops). We had a lovely lunch, I made a lovely rum punch and we laughed ourselves stupid - everything a Christmas should be.

I feel sad that I only get to wear this shirt for a couple of weeks every year.

Despite every intention of sleeping in on Christmas eve it wasn't to be. I was a awake at 4.30 to watch the sun rise which turned out to be worth the early rise.

Christmas Eve starting with a cup of tea and a book.

2 batches of Ginger cookies, a batch of rum balls, a batch of chocolate biscuits, 2 batches of mince pies, 2 cherries pies and 2 bottles of bubbly made for a great day of baking with mum

Mum's chocolate biscuits - she's been making these as long as I can remember

My Cherry Pie (deeeelicious)

Grandma's knitted Mrs and Santa Claus

The Pizza Oven gets fired up for the first time

Lamb Souvlaki ready to go in the oven

Our very Australian Christmas tree 

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas filled with family and laughter :) x Debbie

You can follow me on Instagram here. Post your feed below if you want to share

Christmas on Instagram

With only 3 more sleeps until Christmas my list of things to do appears to have gotten bigger. While I've got all the presents wrapped and the cards written, there's a long list of baking and cleaning to go before I can settle down with a glass of wine and know that everything is done.

I had planned on doing a couple of diy tutorials before Christmas but that is looking like an overly ambitious project that will result in me being stressed out. So instead I'm going to be documenting my Christmas preparations on Instagram.

Preparations for some last minute Christmas gifts

I made this Nightmare Before Christmas tree and Jack years ago. I keep saying I'm going to make the sleigh each year but have never got around to it... maybe next year

My favourite bauble taking pride of place on my kitchen dresser

Follow my Christmas on Instagram and share your Instagram details in the comments if you are posting your Christmas as well!

Christmas DIY Overload

I think everybody gets stressed at Christmas time. Some people are stressed because they have all the family coming for lunch and spend the weeks leading up to the big day cleaning every surface and preparing menus and desserts. Some people stress about how much Christmas is going to cost - another gift to buy, all that petrol driving from one place to another. Everything adding up. Some people stress because of the time commitments that seem to be endless - work parties, friend get together's, your family, their family, the other relatives that couldn't make it the first date.

A very ambitious plan

My stress comes from too much DIY. I'm doing my best to live my life without buying so much stuff, and that includes gifts for others. I'm aiming to upcycle, recycle and create from eco friendly resources as many Christmas gifts as possible. We generate so much stuff in this life and after an experiment I did a couple of years ago that involved not buying a single item of new clothing I just don't feel comfortable buying more stuff any more.

I've got a list of all the gifts I want to make and have been doing my best to cross them off. But right now, I am getting a great big dose of reality that there just isn't enough time. There isn't enough time to bake what I want to bake, to sew what I want to sew, to make the wrapping paper I want to use.

I realised this morning that I'm not enjoying the process any more, so it's time to let go. I've taken a good hard look at my Christmas list and have crossed off the more ambitious gift ideas and instead am going to go to the Bris Style Markets tomorrow night. I figure if I can't do it myself, I'm more than happy to support other talented creators.

What's your biggest Christmas stress at the moment? Time for an offload.

Crochet Coathangers - a new Xmas Tradition

For as long as I can remember my grandmother has been crocheting coathangers for Christmas. Every lady in the family gets one of her special coathangers and a crochet hand towel.

I've been collecting these in my cupboard and in my 29 years on this planet have just about replaced all my tatty old coathangers with Grandma's.

But this year my grandmother's health has gone downhill. She's suffered a series of strokes and while she is still with us, the strokes have brought on the symptoms of dementia. This has made it really hard for Grandma to keep up her knitting and crocheting and sadly last years coathangers will be the last ones.

My mother and I were feeling upset by this. It's strange the things that throw mortality up in your face. Not the wrinkles or the greying hair, but the loss of something that was so fundamental to our family Christmases. We decided that these traditions were too strong to let go of so we have been taking over the making of Grandma's Christmas crochet's.

My mother has been busily creating hand towels and I have taken on the duty of the crochet coathanger. This was no light burden. My aunts adore my grandmothers coathangers, and it is the first thing they look for in the Christmas goody bag they receive.

It was a difficult decision as to whether I should replicate Grandma's coathanger or if I should adapt it to be my own. This year I went with a new adapted version as I didn't want Grandma to think I was replacing her (her illness has made her particularly sensitive to these things). But I think it's going to be an ongoing development of ideas until I find the perfect coathanger to carry on the tradition.

So I've spent my nights (and mornings, and lunch breaks) busily crocheting away and have a handful ready for Christmas. And while I've been doing this on my own in my own apartment away from my Grandma I've spent the time reflecting back on the memories I have with her - this strong capable woman who most definitely has been the Matriarch of our family. Funny how a coathanger can have so much meaning stitched into it.

Links
Mollie Makes - Crochet Coathanger pattern
Crochet with Raymond

Pinterest Road Test - DIY Clay Decorations

Clay Christmas Decorations from The Woodside Kitchen

The Woodside Kitchen's
original clay decorations

I've been looking for a good bake at home clay recipe for a while. The last time I made salt clay, my dog ate the decorations right off the tree. So finding one that didn't appear edible was a good thing, and corn flour and bicarb soda does not sound appealing to me. 

So first things first ingredients...

The Woodside Kitchen gave the ingredients as Cornstarch, Baking Soda and Water, but there was a lot of discussion in the comments about the decorations cracking or staying rubbery which comes down to some different names for ingredients depending on where you are. What you want to use is:

1/2 cup of Corn Flour
1 cup of Bicarb Soda (or Baking Soda - basically needs to be sodium bicarbinate)

3/4 cup of water

Ensure you are using the correct ingredients otherwise you will not get a hard clay decoration or you may get cracking.

 The mixing together is very easy. Just put it all in a saucepan, stir together then heat over low-medium heat.

There were some questions about whether you could do this in the microwave... I did not test this, but if you are going to give it a go only heat it in small increments (20-30 seconds) at a time, and stir in between. If you try this, please let me know.

It's done when it becomes stiff and silky (like smooth mash potatoes to borrow The Woodside Kitchen's term)

Scoop it out into a clean bowl and cover with a damp cloth until it cools slightly so you can knead it.

I left it for about 15 minutes and it was still warm when I kneaded it (I was impatient) but you can wait longer, especially if you are giving it to your kids to knead and want to make sure they don't burn themselves. The damp cloth will stop it from drying out in the meantime.

Sprinkle some more cornflour on the bench or breadboard (easier cleanup) and knead out as you would any dough. Mine was quite sticky so used more cornflour to keep it doughy. The kneading and rolling out is lots of fun (and cleanup is very easy) so feel free to let your kids have fun.

 

Roll out to 1cm high then cut with cookie cutters, or mould into whatever shape you want. I also did coin size disks that I intend to paint up and stick magnets on the back. I'm also replacing my tree star that my dog ate ;) which I moulded by hand.

Lay your decorations out on a tray with some baking paper. I skipped putting corn flour on the paper and regretted it - they all stuck and I had to sand the paper off, so don't forget that!

If you are planning to hang these on your tree, remember to poke a hole in them for your ribbon (I used a chopstick). I also pressed little circles around the edges, but you could do anything to decorate, or keep them plain for painting.

Pop them in the oven to bake. Here's another point that comes up when sourcing recipes the world over... The Woodfire Kitchen says 1 hour at 175', but I suspect this is Fahrenheit (which would be 80'c) As I cooked mine for only 1/2 hour at 175' and they were rock hard I suspect this is the case. I'll test again at 80'c and see how they go. If you beat me to it, please post in the comments!

The Woodfire Kitchen recommends flipping them over half way and this would stop any bubbling or cracking - and give a nice even finish. As I said, mine were rock hard 1/2 hour in so I just took them out. I had some bubbles and a few small cracks, but nothing worth worrying about.

One thing I did do was give them all a quick sand to clean up the edges and take off any imperfections, which I think made all the difference.

Now time for painting!

I gave them 2 coats of white acrylic then painted some lovely Scandinavian designs in red. You could also finish them all off with a coat of lacquer to give them a nice gloss finish.

Overall a pretty easy project, but I'm glad I did a quick Google search to confirm ingredients before I started as they could have gone very wrong without that clarification.

Have you tried this project? Let me know how you went.

Road Test Results

Ease - I'd put this as low-medium difficulty. There was some confusion about the ingredients but with a quick Google search I got to the bottom of these

Time - A bit time consuming. All up about 6 hours as you have to wait for baking time and drying time between each coat of paint. But this is up to you as to how much effort you put in.

Ability - Beginners can do this project quite easily. However if you aren't used to painting details keep this to a minimum. Try block colours or even use stamps.
Cost - Cheap as free. I had cornflour and bicarb in my cupboard. But even if you had to buy the supplies you could get away with this project for around $5.

Cleanup - easy, the uncooked clay dissolves in water so can easily be cleaned up. I would tip any extra on a patch of garden you don't mind much about though as it may clog up your sink.

Links

Original Inspiration - The Woodside Kitchen
Pinterest Inspiration Pin - Cornstarch & Baking Soda Clay Christmas Decorations

Happy December | Snowflake Curtain DIY

Happy December everyone!

We are now officially on the count-down to Christmas. I can tell because Pinterest is full of Christmas cookies and elf on the shelf ideas, the shops are starting to go mental and the temperature in Brisbane has gone through the roof.

With only four weeks until Christmas I'm on a mad rush to get all my presents in order and because I love handmade and am a poor uni student there is a lot of crafting going on in my house at the moment. So I'm going to share some of my projects over the coming weeks. I'm also introducing a new section called 'Pinterest Road Test' where I take some of the most popular Pinterest DIYs and put them under my DIY scrutiny... should be fun!

So to kick things off I'm starting with one of the decorating idea I found on the pinning site...

Snowflake Curtain

This project was inspired by Bugs and Fishes. This pin is going crazy at the moment, and was too beautiful not to use, even though snowflakes are about the furthest thing away from Christmas in Brisbane.

I'm sure you remember making snowflakes as a kid. I never seemed to got the hang of it so they always fell apart. Luckily I have a bit more manual dexterity these days, so cutting out snowflakes wasn't as traumatic as I remember it.

I started by following some design patterns I found online (here), but after a about a dozen I just went for it with my own designs. 

This project is a little time consuming but it was something that could be done easily while watching TV so didn't feel like a major time commitment. I think I might make this a regular Christmas task and add more every year, as I can imagine that the more you have the better the effect.

Road Test Results

Ease - This is a super easy project that can be easily replicated. 

Ability - You don't need any special skills or ability, this is a child friendly Pin!
Cost - Dirt cheap. I didn't spend any money, just used some paper I had lying around the house

Links

Original Inspiration - Bugs & Fishes
Snowflake Patterns - Marcel's Kids Crafts

Pinterest Inspiration Pin - Easy peasy snowflake curtain