The Ugly Goat » gift

Remembering what’s important at Christmas

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:37:07 +0000

This toddler, followed by a vulture, collapsed in the dirt on the way to a feeding clinic.
Luckily, the photographer chased away the vulture, and this particular little girl made it to the clinic. I shudder to think how many didn’t.

Ok folks, I do this every Christmas, and it’s that time again – me asking you to please make sure you remember charities at this time of year.
This is when many charities are most stressed, and when we so easily get caught up in our own purchases and forget just how much charities rely on donations to get by.

Oxfam Unwrapped is an Australian site I have used for a few years now, and, after seeing the photo above, have been reminded to purchase from again this year.
You can buy something for as little as $10.

Less than it’d cost to get some cake and coffee at a cafe.

Less than a movie ticket.

And it might save somebody’s life.

I can sacrifice an evening at the movies for that.

Oxfam Unwrapped America can be found here.
And Oxfam International is here.

Of course, this year I’m pimpin’ Oxfam, but you needn’t donate there if you don’t want to.
But just please remember to donate (if you can’t afford cash, consider goods or time) to the charity of YOUR choice.

There are a lot of people trying to do a lot of good out there, but they need a little bit of help from us, and can’t get by when we forget about them.

More with the spider and egg cups.

The Ugly Goat — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:54:54 +0000

So the doctor wasn’t happy with how the spider bite is healing. He gave Seth heavy duty antibiotics, some cream and took swabs for tests.
We’ll get the results Friday, so hopefully we should have a better idea of what we’re up against then.

The funny (yeah, hilarious) thing is that we’re still not sure what sort of spider bit him, or even when. Luckily necrosis is very rare, and while Seth’s wound isn’t healing, it’s not spreading either. Though it does look ugly.

Just hit me the other day that Christmas is pretty much here. And I’ve done almost NO Christmas shopping. Currently I’m working on making some little things as gifts for people, and need to find some nice (but fun) egg cups to complete the project.
And yet, nice egg cups seem to be hard to find!
Well, reasonably priced, nice egg cups within Australia at least.
These are like what I want, but they’re in the USA. I’ll have to keep hunting.

Happy Happy Happy

The Ugly Goat — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:40:43 +0000

I’m feeling kinda depressed today. Unmotivated with my art or work. It probably doesn’t help that I feel very tired…I feel like I’m slogging through thick molasses to get anything done.

That is, I WAS! Until I checked the post box!

This year I took advantage of Deviant Art’s free shipping worldwide offer, and ordered a bunch of little prints to use little gifts, gift tags, cards etc for people this Christmas. Had I had more money, I would’ve ordered much larger ones, but at least I got SOME, even if they are small.

And, since I was ordering and it was so cheap without paying shipping, I got a couple for me. My favourite being from artist Ravenari!

I’d have taken photos of the other things I ordered, but since they’re not all for me and some are going as gifts to people, I can’t or it’d spoil the surprise.

The above are poor quality pictures (really, my camera is dieing), but I’m VERY impressed with the quality of the prints from Deviant Art. To be honest, I was expecting slightly dodgy, but the colours are good, it’s crisp, it’s Kodak paper – all in all, a lot better than I was expecting.

So now I’m happy, and am going to go about hanging some of these up near my work space as inspiration.

Maple Syrup

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:55:44 +0000

When my dad came back from Canada recently, he bought me back a tin of dark maple syrup.

It’s a fair size tin – 540ml, but I don’t want to waste a drop of it. You CAN get real maple syrup over here, but it’s pretty damned expensive. Usually you get the weird arse fake stuff that’s maple flavoured and actually tastes more like old cork floor tiles than maple.

SO! In order to get the most out of my can of maple syrup, I have been planning very carefully (when I’m not getting distracted reading the french on the side of the side of the can) and think I have arrived at three recipes I can make using my one tin.
And they are:
Baked apples with maple syrup.
Mulled apple cider with maple syrup.
And a Maple Cheesecake.

I must say, I’m particularly curious about the Maple Cheesecake.
I’m not 100% certain yet though. I may swap out the mulled cider for drizzling a bit over my yoghurt, in an attempt to replicate the flavour of the Wallaby Maple Yoghurt I had while in California.

And since I bought that up, I’m very confused about Wallaby Yoghurt. They say it’s ‘Australian style’….we have a style of yoghurt? Funny, since we sure as hell don’t have any maple yoghurt here. I have NO IDEA what qualifies it as Australian-like, but apparently they felt so strongly that it was Australianesque that they named it ‘Wallaby’.
Very confusing.

Anyhow, I SHALL KEEP YOU UPDATED ON THE SYRUP FRONT.
I know you’ll be hanging on the edge of your seats.

My dad came home

The Ugly Goat — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:55:43 +0000

Well, another night burning the midnight oil, curled up in a ball around my wacom, Seth and the cat already in bed.

And since I’m here, I’ll take a break from the painting to write about my evening. My dad just got back after 4 months in Canada (my dad’s partner is Canadian. Her met her online. It should also be noted that I met Seth online, and Laurie met her partner online too. ‘Thank god for the internet’ should be the family motto. And @ should be the family crest.) and tonight was the first time we’ve seen him since he got home.
It’s funny how you don’t realise how much you’ll miss somebody until they’re away, and then once they get back it’s like they were never gone. I must’ve said “Oh, were you there when this happened? Or were you here?” about a hundred times.

So there were a lot of (mostly hilarious) stories to be told, and fabulous gift giving. It was like Christmas. And in the true spirit of my family, we gave and received some mighty odd and fantastic gifts.
Such as!
A leather poncho he bought from a Mohawk Indian, and fun long fuzzy green shirts with polar bears:

and this is WITH red-eye reduction…

A fabulous hat:

And to quote Laurie “Oh no! I’m wearing an Opeth hoodie! How embarrassing!” which should hopefully teach her a lesson or two about wearing other people’s clothes…

Weird little key lights:

As well as a big fat can each of REAL, dark maple syrup. Now I have to figure out what to use it on/in so as not to waste a drop. And a nifty little camera tripod each with extendy legs. And a black shirt with a small leaf logo for Seth, who wears black, black and on a day when he’s feeling really fun, almost black.

Then while my dad was away both father’s day and his birthday came and went, so we got him:
Pickled herring.
A bag of unshelled peanuts.
Half a kilo of goat milk feta.
A book about birdsville.

All beautifully wrapped in a plastic bag. We re-used it. It’s environmentally friendly. Yeah it is. Shutup.

You will note we are one big photogenic family.

And now everybody has gone home, the house is dark and quiet, I’ve got my fuzzy green shirt with (some upside down now, I notice, the poor buggers) polar bears on and left over freshly baked peanut butter cookies.

Time to get to work.

Good things from the postman!

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:14:54 +0000

The PO Box held wonderful things for me today:

The wonderful (and relatively new dreadhead) Meggy Bee sent me a bit of the custom dread soap she had made for herself! Huzzah!

My camera is a bit dodgy these days (won’t focus properly or…or do anything properly, actually) so the photo above doesn’t do this bar justice.
In person, it’s a deep rich olive green with gold mica sparkle across the top.
And smells fantastic.

I’m keen to give it a go, but I think I’ll use a knife to just lop part off to use.
That way I can keep the rest of the bar away from the bathroom and hopefully lose less of it down the drain. Plus it looks too good to just lather up and ruin. If I do it one small bit at a time it hurts less!

So thankyou thankyou thankyou Miss Meg! Can’t wait to use it!
But not today. It’s too cold. Shame.

The second parcel held my order from Planet Art on Etsy.

If, like me, you have stretched ears, this place is a MUST for getting jewellery. Not only is it super affordable (it seems generally the bigger your ears get, the pricier the jewellery. Not so here!) but it’s handmade, and extremely unique and inventive.
Today my parcel contained:

Beach Bum

and

ones similar, but not quite the same, as these.

Dread soap, earrings for stretched ears – it’s a little day in freak paradise over here!

The only bad news today?

Kitty McShitty has had to be locked up in her travel cage, because she doesn’t understand (or care, it seems) that leaping and jumping and twisting and galloping and lurching less than 24 hours after surgery is very, very bad for her stitches. She’s already torn them a little, and I fear she’ll pop them completely unless I keep her contained for the next couple of days.
Silly cat. And they said she’d be drowsy and quiet for a few days after surgery.
Quiet my arse! She’s quiet like fireworks are quiet.

A most excellent purchase

The Ugly Goat — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:26:29 +0000

I was at the German Club craft markets this Saturday just gone, and in my meandering about found the most wonderful thing and purchased it.
Meet this happy fellow:

See, turns out that supposedly drinking from plastic water bottles all the time is hazardous for your health because of an unfriendly character called Bisphenol-A (BPA). There’s a fair bit of disagreement on this, but as far as I understand it seems everybody agrees BPA is dangerous is large doses, but the smaller amounts we’re exposed to through plastics is where there starts to be disagreements. Those that think the smaller amounts we’re exposed to are harmful argue that is has effects on our brains, prostate glands, mammary glands….in short, it ain’t doing nobody no good.

Does this stop me from drinking out of plastic bottles containing BPA?
Not really.
But when I think about how much money I waste on plastic bottles (even when I re-use them say 10 times or so, before I accidentally misplace them while out) and how this constant plastic bottle production can’t be good for the environment and how, as much as I try to recycle, it sometimes just winds up as landfill anyway, it seems like opting for a reusable long term option is better for the environment AND my wallet.

So I got myself this stainless steel lovely made by Cheeki, complete with clip on the lid so I can’t misplace it. Which is also why I opted for the bright green: it makes it harder to misplace.

The best thing though is the shape of the mouth on it: it’s just the right size and shape.
And while I am aware of how odd that sounds, it makes it so much nicer to drink from than a plastic bottle.

I’m so happy with my purchase in fact that I’m buying my friends and family stainless steel water bottle like these to go with their Christmas gifts. I’m that obsessed. It borders on religious conversion.

So there you have it! My current obsession: stainless steel water bottles.
In fact, I intend to get more…’cause what happens when this one is in the dishwasher!?!
These for instance, for those of you in the USA, have some fantastic pictures on them. I’m rather fond of the goldfish, the shell and the dragonfly.

I’m going to bankrupt myself on these things, I can tell…

So go forth, buy some! Buy several! That way it’s not just me…hhmm.

Something special

The Ugly Goat — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:17:33 +0000

For some reason, it only dawned on me within the last two years that I like pearls.
Before that, I thought that were boring and shit for some strange reason. Then suddenly it hit me – I like seashells… pearls are seashells! ….Oh.

Then yesterday I was at my mum’s place, poking through her collection of jewellery she leaves scattered on her dresser (I’m easily distracted by shiny things – I’ve always said I’m not all there in the upstairs department) when I noticed a really beautiful pearl ring.
Turns out, she had gotten it out to give to me. It used to belong to my great grandmother, and since she’d given my sister a special family watch on a chain recently, she wanted to give me this ring.

Cop an eye full of THIS:

I love old things (my etsy favourites is usually crammed full of faux old stuff, prematurely given age spots or faded to look that little bit used) and the age spots and the darkening of the silver just make this thing for me.
My mum offered to have it cleaned up for me, but I like it just the way it is. It is, after all, a beautiful old ring. The old is what makes it so special – why clean it up so it might look like I purchased it yesterday?

Anyway, super thrilled with this ring. On top of it all, it’s exactly like what I’d buy if I were to buy jewellery for myself anyway, and it fits perfectly.
How excellent.