Christmas

Hope you all have a Wonderful Christmas and New Year

Cakes R Us

Last week was week Five of our icing classes, only one week to go. We iced our fruit cakes with plastic icing, working quickly and smoothing and polishing it as we worked. We sliced around the edge carefully with our special tools pressing and smoothing and the end results were quite good. Next we put our spray of flowers and ribbons on: we were delighted with the result – our cakes look quite professional.
I plan to take mine to my son’s house for Christmas lunch. I don’t know if I’ll let them eat it; we may just have to look and admire.
We have had a lot of fun decorating the cakes and are considering continuing next term, especially now we have purchased such a lot of equipment.
Like many hobbies it is expensive but the right tools are essential for a professional look.

Reflections on 23 Things

This has really been such fun over the past months and so rewarding. The most fun I’ve had has been with with My Blog and Twitter although I’ve started to add friends in Facebook recently and this is something I’ll spend more time on in the future. Today I added two friends (I had to block one as I’d misspelt the name). I think Facebook will really be useful when my sister-in -law in Athens gets a computer, to share photos and family news.

I was really surprised how knowledge increased my confidence. Now instead of thinking ‘I haven’t been taught about that, I’ll leave it’, I now think ‘I can do that and I’ll try this and this as well.
The language of blogs, widgets, tweets, downloading, uploading no longer phases me. My Igoogle page is now full with twitter gadget and RSS feeds and I flick across to view my gmail, amazing! Initially when I thought about this course my contract was vague and lightweight. I had no idea what I would learn but my expectations have been far exceeded. The opportunity to learn all these applications is wonderful. Socially too, the fun we have had trying them out had been quite a bonding experience with fellow 23 thing members.

Gaming is something I’ll probably do for least time although I found our session interesting. Not really having a lot of leisure time I’ll probably use my time on my favs like Twitter and my Blog. My Librarything I want to get back to, and keep an inventory of my Bookclub books. It’s fun to look at other peoples lists too. Like many other’s online, I am also a bit of a voyeur- it’s always interesting to see what others write and read.
Another thing I want to do more of is the podcasting, so much is available! Looks like a task for the holidays tho, when I have time to play. Google wave also falls into this category of things to play with when I have more time to learn more of the features.

I find I.M. a bit of a distraction, but it is a fun way to talk immediately with colleagues, I am still getting used to it. With the new email system in place for students which has this facility, I now have a head start.When I look at my first tentative blogs and my outline about life long learning I realise how much I’ve learnt. I am so pleased to have done the course and had the chance to learn about the 23 Things. I would recommend it to all my colleagues as the benefits in skills and confidence are enormous. I will definitely continue to Blog and Tweet after the course is over.

In life we are always learning; its just usually not so much fun-Thankyou.

Something reflective

Games People Play

Today we tried gaming.
The Impossible Quiz lived up to it’s name – I am currently stuck on No. 42, It’s a bit frustrating and seems to know you’ll keep coming back for more.
I then played Runescape but I didn’t arm myself very well, although I killed the goblin. I didn’t have much luck finding the meat in Lord Whatsisname’s bag and distracting the dragon – Alas (but my outfit was quite fetching). Games are fun; I know now why I have such problems getting my children out of their rooms to do chores as they are often in another realm.
Some games appeal to me much more than others.
That Impossible Quiz however will not beat me. I’ll be back!

Cake Decorating Part Two

Cake decorating continues on Wednesday nights.
We have now assembled our buds, leaves and roses into a spray with ribbon and next week we ice our fruitcakes,which we’ve made.
We ice them with plastic icing and decorate them with our spray of roses. Should look fantastic!

Fear and Loathing in Facebook

I, like many, have some concerns about Facebook yet with the privacy instructions I’m sure I can protect myself from would – be predators and safely be out there. I may not be putting on a big, clear photo however. I’ve actually belonged to Facebook for several months as my English tutorial group thought it would be a good way to share our stories and poems, but I was a bit shy and didn’t participate fully. I don’t think I will be able to commit 24/7 as my son does, but I’m sure this isn’t a prerequisite, and since I now have 1 friend I’ll definitely be exploring my options and checking out the Facebook features. So I won’t be poking my kids and seeing if I can be their friend, how sad and needy is that.
I intend to go on regularly and check it out – don’t know if it appeals to me as much as Twitter or blogging but definitely worth a look.
I think I’ll use it more when my relatives in Greece get a computer then facebook would be a great way to communicate and show family photos.

Googlewave will get better to use when more of my contacts have it as well because it is so interactive and fun.

Cake Decorating

My older daughter persuaded me to go to cake decorating class with her. After only 3 classes we are able to create roses and leaves and are well on the way to creating arum lilies.
In the first class we puchased cutters and wire etc and were shown how to cut out and put together buds, small roses and larger roses. We are creating a bouquet to decorate our fruit cake in week five. So far we are amazed at our progress and I believe we could confidently decorate even a wedding cake by the end of this course.
Here are some photos – we made the white mexican paste rosebuds first then put petals on and then coloured them. The colours are soft peach and soft pink however as we excitedly squeezed our food colouring into our jars for dipping the nozzle spurted out and we added lots of colour as you can see. We didn’t mind however as the roses turned out well and they are our first pratice ones, they are edible and bright. Looks like roses on the christmas cakes this year for a change.

Leave Britney Alone

My daughter and her friends went to see the Britney Spears concert, she paid $50:00 for a ticket to the second show at the Burswood Dome in the standing section. She said Britney didn’t sing much, or wear much, but she and her friends enjoyed the show and had a fun night. I downloaded her video clips taken on the night on her phone, she bluetoothed them to my laptop and I loaded them onto my USB and then onto youtube to upload to my blog! So enjoy a quick glimpse of the show. It sounded fun – Leave Britney alone!

Queensland | Slideshow at imageloop.com

Queensland | Slideshow at imageloop.com.
CLICK on the link to see my slideshow.

I did a brilliant swirling slideshow with bees swooping out of photos but had trouble linking I have now managed to link but the slideshow is now a more sedate affair. See last post. I had these issues because my photos were Jpeg and the site I was going to use for my presentation didn’t accept jpegs. Now I know I can change the photos to tiff files which would have worked. Live and learn.

Slidecasting

This is slidecasting. I want to learn to use it again to upload a powerpoint presentation.