The story of Purim is this: Mordecai is a bloke who does the King of Persia a favour, and then sits at the city gate. The king’s new Prime-minister, Haman has a bit of a problem with Mordecai because he won’t bown down to him when he walks past. This is because Mordecai is jewish, and yeah, he will only bow down to God. So Haman has this plot to kill Mordecai, which turns into a plot to kill ALL the jews in Persia. Esther is Mordecai’s cousin, and she is the Queen. She’s also jewish.

Haman manges to get the king to agree with his idea to kill them all (not knowing Esther is jewish) and Haman then casts lots to see when the murdering will be done. Mordecai and Esther find out about this plan, and they urge all the Jews to fast and pray for three days, and at the end of the thrid day Esther plans to seek an audience with the King.

Esther has a bit of a feast with the King and invites Haman and Mordecai. The two do not get along… but Esther invites everyone back for a second banquet the next weekend. So they have the next banquet and Esther tells the King that she is jewish, and that Haman is going to kill all her people (including her). Because the decree has already been made he can’t back out on it, but he lets Esther and Mordecai write a new decree, and they make it so that the Jews can fight back. Lots of people die, and Haman is executed by the king. Mordecai because the second in charge now, and creates an annual rememberance of the time the event, so that everyone can remember when the Jews were saved from annihalation.

WOAH. So, that is what Purim is all about. Traditionally the things you do are dress up in fancy dress, give each other gifts, gamble and drink. We did pretty well all of it except our gambling was without money (we played poker), and our drinking was minimal- everyone had to drive home!

It was a really, really fun night, and everyone got really dressed up! We did a ’secret santa’ (for lack of a better word/phrase), and lots of chocolate went around!

Sometimes I just need to buy something (anything). Does anyone else feel this way?

Luckily when I got the urge on Monday I had some Uni supplies I needed to get. *phew*. I also took the opportunity to get some things that I just liked. But that’s what spending money is FOR! Mind you, I bought two magazines on Monday, and haven’t actually looked through either one yet! I just have no time.

But back onto the subject of NEEDING to buy things…  for a while there it was pretty bad, and when I was younger (read: 12-20) it was more serious then it is now. ALL my money left my hands every week on movies, mostly on  CDs and food. This would have been okay if my pocket money was like $5, but it wasn’t, it was quite a bit more then that, and I was meant to spend it on new clothes and anything else I might actually NEED. You can imagine that during some of that time I was working full time, so yeah, that’s a fair amount of spending money! BUT I learnt my lesson, and felt a lot of buyer’s remorse.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I have been pretty crap with money always, and it only really stopped because I got married and Luke would get angry if I spent the money that was OURS. He’s never actually GOT angry at me (though I’ll tell you, it has been the other way ’round before!), I’m just pretty certain in my head that he WOULD get angry at me if I did.

I have been in trouble with my husband before. He has this crazy way of looking at you and not saying anything that makes you feel so quilty for what you’ve done. And he only brings it out on VERY special occasions, like when you’ve done something really stupidly selfish and wrong, so that kinda makes it worse, because it doesn’t just happen for anything, only the really bad things you did…

I’ve sort of made him sound like a bit of a bully, but he’s not. OBVIOUSLY you know that, because I already tell you all the super amazing things he does. And this is actually whole ‘getting angry at me ‘ thing is a positive thing too- because sometimes, we just have to face the facts, and the facts are that I am crap with money. There I said it. I imagine this is the feeling one has when they admit their problem at a support group. Without Luke I would have so many scrapbooking and craft supplies that I would have no money for food or to pay the gas bill… And I wouldn’t be going to EUROPE in October either!

I haven’t told you that exciting news officially yet, have I?! Our flights and tour are booked, and we’re leaving after Carmen’s wedding (on the Monday). I shall let you know more details closer to the date!

So yeah, I still get the urge to spend things, and sometimes I do, but I make sure it’s with my personal finances, not the joint moneys… I would really love to hear from you in the comments if you suffer the same types of urges! Do you let them run free, free to be wild, or do you keep them under tight control with systems and rules, and restrictions? OR are you just super with money -what is your secret!?!

Just a little reminder that if you haven’t gone and answered the 8 quick questions about my blog, it’s still up there waiting just for you- so far I’m thinking that I only have a couple of people who read my blog, and that’s making me a bit sad.

I honestly really appreciate you taking the time to answer the questions, plus you go in the draw to win a secret prize as well!

Ingredients:

1 kg ripe tomatos, cut in half

1 400g tin tomatoes in juice,

drained 2 tbsp tomato paste

1 litre liquid chicken stock

2 tbsp sweet chillli sauce

1 onion, chopped roughly

2 tsp minced galic

3 tsp sugar

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp dried oregano

How To:

1. Turn on slow cooker on high and preheat.

2. place onion and olive oil in a microwave safe dish and cook on high 2 minutes.

3. place all ingredients excluding tomato into slow cooker and stir to combine. add halved tomatoes and cover, cook on high for 2-3 hours or until tomatoes are soft.

4. Puree soup in a blender and season with freshly cracked salt and pepper. If desired garnish with a dollop of sour cream and parsley

This week for My Place and Yours Danielle’s asked us to think pink!

Here are the pink things around my house…

We don’t have HEAPS of pink, but when I started looking around I was amazed at how much more then these things there was! Considering it’s just me and Luke (and Pepper) I wouldn’t have thought we would have a huge amount of pink… I will admit though, I am quite partial to it!

What pink thinks do you have around your place?

I really want to know what YOU think. This blog is, after all, a place where you (hopefully) come back too, and I want it to be about things you want to read. The survey is here, and everyone who fills it out for me will be in the draw to win a secret prize! It’s not long, only a few questions, most of which are multiple choice!!

Now, back to our regular programming…

Last weekend we went and saw Alice in Wonderland for Luke’s birthday. We gave it 4/5 stars, which is pretty good for us!

To celebrate I thought I’d share with you some ‘Mad Hatter’ inspired photos I took last year…

By the way, this looks really bland, but it’s NOT! It’s really, really, yummy.

Really creamy and flavoursome!

Ingredients:

1 X 3 second spray Always Fresh Simply Canola Spray

1 medium onion, finely chopped

750 g mushroom, chopped

2 clove garlic, crushed

1 tbs (s) soy sauce

4 whole chicken stock cube, make 4 cups stock

240 g Potato, boiled, peeled and chopped

1 cup (s) skim milk powder

Process:

Coat a medium saucepan with cooking oil spray and gently cook the onion, covering with a lid if necessary, over a low-medium heat until soft. (It may help to add a little of the stock when softening the onion.)

Add the mushrooms and garlic and cook, tossing constantly, for 3-4 minutes or until soft. Add the soy sauce, stock and potatoes and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Stir the skim milk powder through.

Using a stick blender or food processor, blend the soup until smooth. Season to taste with salt and black pepper and ladle into 4 warm bowls to serve.

Prep Time: 10 mins

Cook Time: 30 mins

If you’re on weight watchers, this recipe is from them, and it’s 1 point per serve.

Yumm!

Happy Birthday Luke, I hope you enjoyed your day. xox

Saturday 6/3/10. We went and saw Alice in wonderland in the morning, after opening some presents. We had a coffee and wandered around the shops, and then went up to Montville to Poet’s cafe for lunch. Can you guess what we had from the pictures?!

Dinner was with friends at a Korean resturaunt in the Valley in Brisbane. So good. Pool afterwards.

The Tuesday before we’d gone out to dinner with Luke’s family, and on the Sunday night we went to Lefty’s at Maroochydore with my family to have a joint celebration for my mum and Luke (mum’s b’day is Tuesday). Sunday after church we also popped ’round to his mum’s for some cake- the only cake we had with all those celebrations!! He didn’t want a big deal of it, and I can’t really eat cake, so I just didn’t make any this year!

I’ll take you on a little photo journey…



Do you like my headband?!

So I’m now a Uni girl, which means I’m spending countless hours in front of the computer (read: ALL Day at work, plus ALL night at home minus the time it takes to cook/eat dinner). Oh course, it is tempting, when the eyes are getting bleary, to click that magic little Photo Booth button at the bottom of the page and play for a while. This inevitably means I need to touch up the photos a bit in iPhoto, and then join a few together in photoshop…. Bad, I know. :-S

This is part of My Place & Yours over at Hello Owl…

So, here it is, this week in the Carbis household:

M: Creamy Mushroom Soup

T: Slow Cooked Tomato Soup

W: Pasta

Th: Chicken sald with chilli cream dressing

F: Risotto

S: Warm lentil, roast pumpkin and goats cheese salad

S: Ricotta & spinach chicken with polenta & tomatoes

I’ll be putting a few of the recipes up as well…

It’s on my (many) Uni assignements. Yep, I’m right into my first week of Uni (well, finished first week actually), and I’m REALLY enjoying it! I’ve ressurected an old blog from the last time I was at Uni, and in there I’ll be putting all my lecture notes (a lot of the words and notes are straight from the lecture- not necessarily my own), and tasks I have to do which look kinda like this:

Random, right? This is the sound of a hole punch… I also drew the sound of a glove, an elephant purse, and a lindt chocolate wrapper.

Anyway, for more of these crazy (and not so crazy things you can check me out over at Teaching Talia.

Also, I am SO excited because last night I made THIS:

People who follow me on twitter are probably SO sick of hearing about this button. Lol. I’ve been tweeting about it heaps!

Basically I had to draw the little Uluru and trees etc. and then embroider it and then put it into the button press and make it into a button. It’s about 1.5cm wide.

One point FIVE centimeters. Do you know how tiny that is to embroider?!?!