New baby, new bathroom. That's fair, right?

Our bathroom renovations have begun! 

Yes, two weeks out from when I'm due to give birth. (For anyone who didn't know, we are expecting baby number two at the end of the month). Clearly, the decision to renovate now was Paul's. He seems to get a sudden, extreme version of the nesting bug and undertakes fairly major projects in my final days of pregnancy. 

Last time it was our front porch. I left for hospital with the existing one having been demolished and returned to a brand new one. And this time it's the bathroom. Which, to be fair, has been in desperate need of work since we moved in. 

I hope it doesn't mean I have to keep popping out babies to get the rest of the house done.

The existing, pokey facilities (note the absence of an actual bath in the 'bathroom'):

Rosie currently has her "wish wash", as she calls it, in the
(also dated) laundry sink.
Which is getting a bit cramped.

Here is our handiwork so far, in pictures:

We've basically just removed the wall linings of some of the space.

And baby number two, at 38 weeks.

Do you - or your partner - have a habit of embarking on rather large projects at ill-advised times?

Going bush and facebook shame

Those of you who see my facebook feed may have noticed a recent status update - about camping - with no punctuation and no capital letters. None, I tell you! How embarrassment.

This is because I committed the cardinal sin of fiddling around on my facebook page, getting distracted (I'd like to blame the toddler but it more likely was the fact that my coffee was ready, or the mail was delivered) and leaving it open without logging off. My husband (who never met a rule of the English language he couldn't disregard) came along, assumed it was his page, and posted the offending update.

Now, he never logs out of his facebook page, which has me constantly shaking my head. I've 'liked' any number of things - mummy blogs, nappy sites, feminist writers etc - on his behalf, thinking I was logged in. But this time it was the other way around. Thank god he put up something so innocuous - though omitting full stops remains a grave offence, in my book.

Typing and facebook felonies aside, we did indeed have a 'good camping trip out to the block'.

To clarify, 'the block' is a parcel of land less than an hour from home on which we have a prospecting lease. I don't go much for the prospecting, but I do appreciate having somewhere peaceful to escape to for short camping trips, or even shorter day visits. It's not an actual camping site, just a patch of bush, so we don't have to share it with anyone.

I've always loved camping. And since reading up on this primal lifestyle thing I'm an even bigger fan. Turns out being out in the fresh air, away from crowds, being in sync with the sun, getting a bit dirty, staring into a fire, all the usual camping business, is how we're designed to live.

While out there Paul, the prospector, obviously did some prospecting. In his slippers. Including a stint on the edge of a dam:

This is why, despite repeated requests to do so, I did not buy him a pair of uggs of pure wool and costing upwards of $150. I knew something like this would be their fate and the $12 Kmart jobs were the best option.

He also did a bit on dry land with his 'helper'.

Who also helped with the sieving of product.

We saw a rainbow. And an echidna, emus and a baby goanna that popped out of a log once it was on the fire. Luckily it didn't fall into the flames, and the Prospector got it to safety.
Then we came home and I revelled in my flushing toilet and comfy bed. This is the 21st century, after all.

Conversation off the menu

Life is always more romantic in cartoon-world.
Image from Dreamstime

They say communication is the key to a healthy relationship. Yet it seems verbal communication, at least, can vary in importance, depending on your relationship stage. 
For example, one couple on our street recently jetted off on a child-free holiday (lucky devils). Value of conversation during holiday: pretty high, I imagine. 
While they're away their 18-year-old daughter has the place to herself. And every time I've stickybeaked happened to be going by I've noticed her boyfriend's car in the drive (lucky young devils). Value of conversation there: a secondary consideration, surely. 
While they are all, presumably, revelling in their rare together-aloneness, I've had a couple of days of revelling in plain aloneness. Well, relative aloneness - I've Rosie, of course, and my mum is visiting. But with my husband away for a few days, my nights have been pleasantly peaceful. And I've spent pretty much zero time in the kitchen. Bonus!
Can you tell we're the ones with the married-for-a-decade-and-now-there's-a-baby relationship? No young love here, folks. Nor second-honeymoon romance yet, either. Value of conversation to us: meh, we can talk later. 
Which is just as well when it comes to things like anniversaries. Of which our 11th is approaching. I have vague plans to celebrate with dinner and a movie. Because we do enjoy each other's company. Really. 
Not that you'd think so if you spotted us out at a nice restaurant. We'd be the couple barely looking at each other and - yep - speaking even less. Even though it's the perfect place for meaningful discussion. 
This is due to my husband loving his food and being an avid people watcher. Deploying the 'men can't multitask' argument, he claims tucking into a seafood buffet while eyeballing other diners is as much as he can handle. 
I've long since accepted that eating out means eating in silence. And why complain, really? After all, I still get to enjoy the novelty of wearing nice shoes and having someone else cook dinner. I can talk to him the other 364 nights of the year. 

Is conversation important in your house? Do you get it when you go out?

Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for I Blog on Tuesdays. Thanks Jess. 

Win friends and influence people with caramel slice

I'm told my caramel slice is wickedly good. My husband loves the stuff, as does almost everyone else who has a sample. I'm not a fan myself - I do have sweet tooth, but this is one treat that is just too rich for me. 
It is so popular (not that I'm the kind to brag, of course) that people often request the recipe. To the point where I'm a bit jack of typing/writing it out. So I thought I'd put it up here and can simply point future request-ers to it. Genius or what!
Note: This is not strictly 'my' caramel slice. I just follow a recipe from a well-known cookbook, which I won't mention here and hope the copyright police don't get cranky.

So, you will need:

Base
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 cup brown sugar
125g butter, melted

Caramel filling
1/3 cup golden syrup
125g butter, melted
2 x 400g cans sweetened condensed milk (I generally use the Nestle stuff but on one occasion it was sold out so tried no-name cans and the caramel was just as caramel-like) 

Chocolate topping
185g dark chocolate (Decent chocolate is preferable here)
3 teaspoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 180C. 
Place flour, coconut, sugar and butter in a bowl and mix well. Press the mixture into a 20cm x 30cm slice tin lined with non-stick baking paper and bake for 15-18 min or until brown. 

Crunchy, golden baked base.

To make caramel filling place the golden syrup, butter and condensed milk in a saucepan over low heat and stir for seven minutes or until the caramel has thickened slightly. 
This 'slightly' business is a bit vague. I just make sure everything has been mixed together and on the heat for at least seven minutes and decide that's good enough.

Pour the caramel over the cooked base and bake for 20 min or until the caramel is golden. 

Refrigerate until cold. 

Unbaked caramel. Which becomes...

Rich, golden gooey baked caramel.

To make the chocolate topping, place the chocolate and oil in a saucepan over low heat and stir until melted. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before spreading over the slice. 

Refrigerate until firm and cut into slices. 

The chocolate tends to crack when I cut it, but I found doing it when the chocolate was still a little soft, while being somewhat messy, did result in an intact topping.
Or you can just leave it whole so your husband can lop off massive chunks whenever the urge to scoff a piece takes him.
I forgot to take a photo of the finished slice, which I made more than a week ago so of course it has been polished off by now. You will just have to use your imagination. 

Do you have a fail-safe recipe that always impresses everyone?

Wordless Wednesday - Nugget necklace

It's Wednesday, so once again I'm joining in with (the currently road-tripping) Trish from My Little Drummer Boys for Wordless Wednesday. And, once again, it's not entirely wordless.

Mr Desert Rambler actually did some desert rambling a little while ago, when he headed off for a prospecting trip. And got rained in and had to spend an entire week miles from anywhere - fancy that happening in the desert! (And yes, I will post about his adventure, some time). Anyway, much to my surprise, he prospected up these items:

He was overjoyed. Because the biggest piece was his first ever real find, it was very special to him. So he wanted it to be worn by someone very special to him. Me. I was touched. Cue the purchase a gold chain (on sale, thank god!), taking nugget no.1 to the nugget people to be fitted to a hook, and me being 'encouraged' to affix it around my neck at every opportunity. So, the finished product:

Do you have an item of jewellery of significant personal value? Have you ever had a man advise you on accessories?

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This week I'm grateful for ... getting out of the kitchen

I don't actually hate cooking. Just cooking every day.
Image source: www.cafepress.com

This week I'm grateful for not having to cook dinner. The husband, Paul, and I try to take it in turns but recently (as in for-the-past-six-months recently) I was getting home a lot earlier so kind of fell into doing it all the time.
But now we happen to be on exactly the same roster, and Paul has got his butt back in the kitchen. And - bonus! - to play a bit of catch-up and get his dinner duty fortnights synchronised with his on-call roster he'll be there for One. Whole. Month.
He's just finished his first fortnight and for this blissful period whenever he has asked:
* "What should we have for dinner tonight?" I've been able to answer with an uninterested yet gleeful "I don't care. You're cooking!"
* "Do we have any soy sauce?" With "I don't know. You check. You're cooking!"
* "So we'd better write out a shopping list tonight." with "Probably. You work out what to buy though and write it. You're cooking!"
* "Do you think I should make enough rissoles (the man has anointed himself the high priest of rissoles thanks to his popular 'secret recipe') for us to have leftovers tomorrow?" With "If you like. I don't care. YOU'RE COOKING! AHAA HA HA HA!"
It has indeed been a wonderful time. And we're only halfway through. Aah. 

This post is part of the lovely 'I'm Grateful For' link-up by hosted by Maxabella Loves.