Today I recieved my first letter. Apart from a card from my mother. i've always loved recieving mail. Thankyou so much to the sender.

I hate finishing books. If a book is well written and the characters well developed it feels like you have just had the carpet pulled out from beneath the feet and your new friends have disappeared. Sure you don't actually feature doing anything in the book but these marvellous new friends don't move forward and do new things. Sometimes it's not about the characters its more the whole history has ended.

Gaby didnt like the foil star I made.. he wanted to put the flower on the top.. Nut.

I also went and bought a Christmas tree:)

i finally finished the massive quilt. It was difficult to complete because the sewing through the large size took ages.Now i'm beginning a small knee quilt for Pam and Wade for Christmas. It's really nice, Gaby takes me to the quilting store and helps choose colours. I had a whole stack of materials I liked put out. But i had put some blue material out with some blacks. I couldnt tell the difference. Which makes me really question my eyes and colour sence.
I watched the new harry potter. i'm hooked on it. such a great series.

yes, I have a stack of pictures to put up. But to get them all from Gaby's computer is a hasstle... So I'll put up a couple from the other night that are still on the camera. I cooked a practice turkey from a Nigela Lawson recipe. Turned out pretty decently.
The other is of the tablecloth I just finished. It's for Christmas. Yay for Christmas.

Recently for the first time Gaby had three days off. It was completely last minute and it was due to the Muslim holiday. It was mandatory that all workers have it off. Adonis kindly bought us a night away at a hotel to thank us for taking care of him. The hotel was 3.5 hours away. Two hours past A.D. We had dinner in the Italian restaurant there.. which was called Zatoon and means olive in Arabic. Cannot say how different it is when you get to spend two days with your husband. It has been difficult only seeing him at night for a couple of hours after work. Six days a week of work is crazy.

Morning

I have to commend Kate on her magnificent picture of a pickle on Twitter. It has truely made my morning. Never have I laid eyes on such a tremendous pickle. Congratulations.

It's Friday morning. Normally by this time every other day i'm out doing housework. But. Due to it being Gaby's day off. I'm more or less just going to sit in bed until he wakes up.
When we go back to Melbourne... things I must do:
-Redo the vegetable patch.
I MISS THE GARDEN. THE FISH. ..WORMS...
-Clean out my cuboard so Gaby and I can both share it.
-Pull up the rest of the old carpet
-Help Gaby with the internet line
-Get a new car(maybe)
-Go camping down the great ocean rd.(im not sure how this will work. might have to bike it because of the car situation)
-Make some artwork.
-Finish the mural at the nursery.... if they want me to.
-find jobs... well. this is the most concerning bit at the moment. I'm hoping the nursery might have some work. Or that Gaby and I can clean together like mum and dad. sometime.. till we plan whats to come in the future. Who wants to be a responsible adult. No one.
Enjoy being unresponsible as long as you can youngins.

My parents arnt going to be the worst people to live with. Just some days i'm sure we are going to argue and they will be nagging about buying a house and the reality of marriage. Lets face it I would be happy living with parents of Gaby's or mind for the rest of my life. I guess we cant leave washing lying around.(can at my house) or leave the bed unmade or change the whole house around.. but i couldnt do that if we got a place anyway... at my house the garden is basically my own.. i can change and govern it how i like.
ooo i want to get a new gate near the garage so that way when I want to talk to sharon and show her the garden, I CAN actually open the thing properly.

ok i spent another 8 hours making koussa three days ago.

today i made rishta.. which is a soup... its so great tasting.. Gaby loves it. Adonis likes it so much he told Suzie. She makes it too. both of them had a bet about it containing celery.. Gaby said it should Adon said it shouldnt. Suzie confirmed it doesnt.

i'm looking forward to coming home and having a garden again. I dont know how its going to be living back at home again though... we are thinking of living with my parents for a while.. then working out what we want to do. It's hard having his parents in one state and mine in another.. but its better than being in another country altogether.
My car also sold today.. I'm sad to see it go. But it will be good to get a car for our family.. when we start one. It was getting old anyway.. can you tell. im sad its going....

Rishta

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 medium onions, chopped
1-1/2 tsp dried basil
1 Tbs ground coriander seed
1 cup brown or green lentils, picked over and washed
1 Tbs bouillion powder (I like Vogue Veggie Base)
1 bay leaf
8 cups water
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 lb baby spinach or chopped spinach, fresh or frozen, or other greens such as chard
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup fusilli noodles
3 Squeezed Lemons

What have I learnt this year?

How to be a housewife -PART ONE

You would think this job is easy.
I've learnt to do the ironing.
I've learnt to vacume the floor every day or it gets filthy.
I've learnt to do the washing
I've learnt to cook with out machinary.
I've learnt to cook lebanese food.
I've learnt basic quilting.
I've learnt to live without real life friends.
I'm learning to be a wife.
I'm learning how to create art regardless of what is going on.
I've learnt I need to make things to stay sane.

o.k yesterday i was the housewife. I vacuumed, ironed and made dinner.

It took 6 hours to make dinner thanks to the Koussa (marrows-small zucchini) taking a very very very long time to scrape out. On the upside the husband gave me a massage before bed. His quite apt at that. I took some photos of scraping... and the cooking. The taste of the food redeems the hours of preperation. I can imagine lebanese woman sitting around chatting while they do this. Must cut the meat into small squares too for the stuffing mix which is also time consuming. Lucky I had downloaded an old movie and had some supersizers to view. Supersizers is a series of food throughout the ages. I highly recommend it for interest sake. The commentators are amusing. It is available here for free to watch

http://thedocumentarycenter.blogspot.com/

It's been a while since i wrote anything. I recently had my birthday. Husband and family bought a massive kitchen device. A kenwood Major Titanium so now im making stacks of cakes. Cakes cakes and more cakes. Oh and mince... it does lots of different things and i'm very happy with it.
It's not the best for tiny quantities.. however i barely ever make small things.
The family came for my birthday-Brent. Very exciting and fun.

U2 December Melbourne

Fair enough that Jay-Z is the fourth best rapper in the world. How come U2 continually gives us rap/hip hop opening acts in Australia. The rest of the world get Snow Patrol, The Fray, Florence and the Machine as opening acts. Last time no one listened to Kanye West. Why would you pair your music up with another similar act? I'm not there to pay my $600 thank goodness to go see the concert.

Today I started making corned beef. Well actually i started last night soaking it in water and salt. Today i began the witches brew. Ok i realized after i put everything in the pot the meat wasn't supposed to be there. So after removing that the pot was boiled for about 10 minutes. It smelt delightful. Like a pot of Christmas.

Ziad born last night

Tonight we are going to see Tiesto. It starts really late 10pm. It is about an hours drive to get there.. It's not in Dubai its in Abu Dhabi. Pam had her baby last night. Gaby is now an Uncle! It's the first baby from both of our sides.

Today's lesson

Ok today i tried out the next method of peicing together the bits of fabric. I'm still not the most exact at this. But it is a lot quicker than sewing every square individually.

Some of the squares did not match up perfectly and had to be redone... and some not redone.

I also have put a photo of the very bright baltik fabric that we are currently using as our table cloth.

Beginnings...

I've decided to write on a seperate page for this Dubai stint.
So here it goes.....
Today I started quilting.

Husband bought some great tools for me to begin making things. He is really excited about it. Which makes me feel like its something worth trying to pursue.

I also made some gingerbread the other day... so I've included some pictures. I found some great little Japanese cutters for the gingerbread.