Snoskred Loves

Lone Star Shellharbour

2 Comments Posted on October 12, 2016October 11, 2016 by Snoskred

Loco cheesy land trout garlic bread & Amarillo cheese fries

We were so excited to hear Lone Star had opened at Shellharbour. Even though it is an hours drive away from us, we have many good memories of the old Lone Stars we used to visit years ago. We made a booking the day before our visit for the 6 of us. Lucky we did because the place was absolutely packed when we got there on a busy Saturday night.

We go to Shellharbour once a month or so but we had never been at night time. If this is the case for you, maybe you will wonder the same things we did – where do you park? Is the shopping centre open to walk through? You can park in the normal carpark near the food area which is open till 10:30pm, and part of the shopping centre near the restaurants is open – they have security gates locking off the non-open area. Kmart was open, as was Coles.

The atmosphere was brilliant. It was a little noisy. There is not much in the room to soak up the sound. The Old West theming of this restaurant is very well done with lots of wood and big wine barrel tables at the bar.

From the start our server Grace was constantly checking in with us, making sure we all had drinks and taking our order for entrees. We chose the Amarillo fries x1 and the hilariously named loco cheesy land trout (bacon) garlic bread x3.

While waiting for this to arrive I saw the garlic bread appear at another table and I began to be concerned we might have ordered too many as they are 2 slices in the serve but the slices are quite long.

We took a while to choose mains and Grace was very patient with us. In fact just as we finished ordering our mains, all the entrees arrived. The garlic bread was actually one of the best garlic breads we have eaten, ever. Smooshy bread, lots of flavour. We did not leave any behind. The Amarillo cheese fries were just as we remembered them, the ranch dipping sauce delicious.

Because we were late ordering our mains we did have a bit of a wait to receive them. We were right up the back of the restaurant near the food pass and it turned out this was a very interesting spot to be. There seemed to be a bit of confusion going on at the pass at times – I do not think that pass is big enough for a restaurant of this size when it is a busy night. All the other food going out past us looked great.

Our mains arrived and they were delicious. Absolutely no complaints, those who ordered steaks got them exactly how they wanted them, mostly medium or well done, they were cooked perfectly. I had the chicken which was yummy. I missed out on taking pics of two of the meals, sorry! ;)

We did not have any dessert intentions but Grace changed our minds by offering us a look at the dessert menus, and we ordered 4 to share between us. Raspberry cheesecake at the top, the chocolate brownie in the middle, and then pecan pie at the bottom. The pecan pie was served warm and was incredible, I had the cheesecake which was also great however once I tried the pie I had some order envy.

The bill was a little more $$ than we had expected, however two of our party were ordering some expensive beers. Food wise it worked out at less than $50 a head for entrees, mains, and dessert.

They still do the birthday clapping thing with the sparkler on the brownie, but the hourly boot scooting dancing was not seen. I kinda think that is a good thing in some ways. The staff have other things to be doing!

Oh, I nearly forgot, there was a magician named Jordan who visited our table, who did a card trick for us. We are still trying to work out how it was done. He was lovely.

The only negatives we experienced – no name badges for the staff, the wooden booths can be a bit uncomfortable for longer visits (BYO seat cushions!) and the plates for the mains are a bit too small and fancy and make eating a bit difficult because of the lip, especially with the ribs as they are longer than the lip of the plate.. I would say they are fine for entrees but a larger mostly flat plate would be better for mains in my opinion.

I was worried when I read the reviews before we went, however I did have a feeling that most of those complaints were due to teething issues as the restaurant was quite new and staff training issues. It seems they have heard the feedback and taken it all on board, because many of the previous complaints mentioned on the web did not appear for us – eg missing cutlery and napkins, not checking in about how the food was, checking we were ok for drinks, all of that stuff went great for us.

We loved it and we will be back, for sure

Here is the menu which is presently unavailable online. You can visit the Lone Star website here.

food, reviews

IKEA Haul 2016 – Part 2

2 Comments Posted on August 22, 2016August 17, 2016 by Snoskred

Our kitchen does not have a lot of storage. Fed up with trying to find homes for things, I decided we needed to get some kind of shelving to store all the casserole dishes and oven trays. We ended up with the $199 REGISSÖR. It is very tall and it has solved our storage issue nicely.

We picked up the $69 RÅSKOG which I have wanted for a while. It is actually perfectly sized to hold our large containers with cling wrap, aluminium foil, and baking paper. I’m using the second shelf to store antibacterial wipes. I was using the third level for plastic supermarket bags but the kitties put a stop to that concept by stealing them at sleeptime, making too much noise.

We also grabbed the $99 DETOLF for my lounge room area. This gives me yet another place I can safely use candles far from prying kitties.

Here it is with some of my collectibles inside. Part 1 of this post can be found here.

IKEA

IKEA Haul 2016 – Part 1

6 Comments Posted on August 15, 2016August 7, 2016 by Snoskred

When we dropped the parents off for their flight to Vancouver back in July, we made a visit to IKEA Tempe. The restaurant there is perfectly situated for plane geeks like us if the wind is right – planes fly right past the large picture windows on their way to land on the big runway.

When the planes aren’t landing, you can enjoy the hilarity of people trying to load things into their cars, in the carpark. It rarely goes well. Somehow people think their cars are a LOT bigger than they actually are. :)

This IKEA now has a cafe where you can get proper coffee, sandwiches, muffins, cakes and slices. I’m not sure if this is present at all IKEAs yet.

Of course the Swedish meatballs are always awesome. So what did we buy?

Candles are always going to end up in the trolley.

We needed some more KALAS cups. They hold 250ml, are microwave and dishwasher safe, and are plastic, thus Safe For Snoskred Use. We also got some more of the plastic bag sealers. These things are super handy!

Here you see some ziploc bags, tealight candles, a cake tin, and some LED light globes.

Chopping boards and glass containers that we use for lunches for The Other Half. He handles them for the most part, as I tend to break glass.

And finally, some very large mugs. My favourite IKEA mug (scroll down to the bottom of that post) is getting on in years and it gets used every single day. So we bought these ones, which are just as large, to give that poor mug a break from the constant daily use.

Coming up next Monday – we bought two cabinets and a trolley thing. :)

IKEA

It Cost Me $$

4 Comments Posted on August 8, 2016August 7, 2016 by Snoskred

A few weeks ago, one of the buttons on our Foxtel remote stopped working. The up button. On reflection it is not a surprise to me as that happens to be the most used button on our remote. I used it constantly it to flick through the channel guide without changing the channel.

When it stopped working, I had to switch to the down button. Unfortunately this means you miss out on all the channels above the one you are watching. So I have been typing in channel 176 and then flicking downwards.

Channel 176 is the TV Shopping Network. I’ve mentioned on the blog before that it is sometimes very entertaining to me to watch these people try and sell things. They do sometimes have deals worth buying, and I have mentioned those too. If you happen to own one of the products they are selling, sometimes you can learn an awful lot by tuning in, as I once did re Laura Star.

I do keep an eye on their website because there are sometimes excellent clearance deals but in general I do not visit the channel itself very often. For weeks now, I have ended up there several times a day, and the channel stays on while I continue my flick through.

One day I happened upon a Travelon show. Travelon is a brand of travel bags. They contain some pretty awesome security features. I wanted to get a new handbag for our upcoming trip and I love the lobster clasps, the carabiner, the cut proof straps.

First I did some googling and searching to see what deals were around on Travelon. I could not find anything around the prices TVSN had, nor could I find the items they had. I could find them on the main travelon website where they were priced higher than TVSN were offering them but in USD. Our dollar is so bad right now, it is not very cost effective to buy from the US at this time.

In my experience, sometimes TVSN sell out older stock, sometimes they do a deal with a company for exclusives, sometimes they just buy everything of an item so it cannot be found elsewhere. So I put in an order.

The shipping time on this was frankly UNBELIEVABLE. I ordered this on a Friday night. It arrived 2pm Monday. Someone posted it on Saturday morning! TVSN service is pretty amazing. The Travelon I ordered is brilliant. I am switching to cash free as much as possible and carrying as little as possible but that is a tale for another post. :)

Some of the items they sell are incredibly ridiculous. For example –

Do not get me wrong, I deeply love this kaftan, the colours are gorgeous and it has sparkles. It is everything about me wrapped into one kaftan package.

I’m sure in the world of Silk Kaftans this might be reasonably priced. A Camilla will set you back more $$ than this and will likely be less sparkly. There is no way I would ever pay this kind of money for one outfit, unless I was going to wear it everywhere forever, until it disintegrated. ;) If I wore it for 479 days, that would be $1 a day. Plus, silk is a fabric I would kill very quickly.

However someone is buying them, because I never see these on clearance at all. I often see Kelly’s Kloset kaftans on clearance, but never the Silk Islands. If you ever saw The Bold and The Beautiful, Katherine Kelly Lang plays Brooke on the show.

The shows with shoes always crack me up, because the shoe modeling is hilarious to watch. Overall, the channel is entertaining with occasional moments of usefulness. I’m loving my new little bag, it is super cute.

TVSN

Aldi Buys

3 Comments Posted on August 1, 2016August 1, 2016 by Snoskred

Many of you know I am a huge Aldi fan. I thought I would share with you some of my recent favourite purchases – some of which were special buys so if there are any left at your local store, they might be found for a discounted price.

First up, some regular items found on the shelves – the flavoured rice cakes. I love the Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar flavour, they do have another one which I think might be sour cream and chives. They are cheap and my go-to replacement for potato chips. Australian made, too!

The reed diffusers smell fantastic – they are not too overpowering which I sometimes find with the more “expensive” brands.

They also have candles in the same flavours from the same brand. And now, some special buys.

These pots are brilliant. Super light, beautiful to cook in, and we bought two of the smaller ones so I can make us separate casseroles now and still fit them both in the oven. I like mushrooms in my casseroles. The Other Half believes mushrooms are evil.

The rainboots I got are black and shiny and just gorgeous. My two older pairs are five years old and best saved for the truly grotty chook jobs now. Plus one of those pairs got stabbed by a cactus and I am always worried that water is going to leak through, if and when it does I will not have to go hunting the Shoalhaven for a new pair – for some reason gumboots are either very difficult to find here, or HUGELY up money. Like $30 for a pair!

And now a sad story of a fail on my part. I bought one set of these socks because I wanted to wash them, try them out and see if I liked them before buying more pairs. When I discovered that I loved them, I went back and they were all gone. I am not surprised because they were a great price and very comfortable.

I do not use very much sugar anymore, just in my coffee. I prefer the darker kinds of sugar as they have better flavour. I got three different flavours – rapadura, moscovado and panela. I already had coconut sugar, so I did not get that one.

I cannot resist a lip balm. I bought one blueberry flavoured one and found it to be fantastic, so on our next visit I got the pineapple one, and the visit after that I got the remaining two flavours – honey peach and mint.

These were $2.49 each and worth every cent. They will last me a long while.

Aldi

200 days of Lumosity

3 Comments Posted on June 24, 2016June 22, 2016 by Snoskred

I’m on a streak of 200 days of Lumosity, YAY! Here are my current stats with comparisons to last year –

Lumosity

Challenge Me, Fitbit?

6 Comments Posted on May 2, 2016April 26, 2016 by Snoskred

Recently Fitbit did an update and added a new box to the dashboard. The concept of this box is to try and get 250 steps an hour. I thought this was a great goal for me!

You can customise this to suit yourself, as well. I especially like it at night time as a reminder to get up and move because once I have done my exercise for the day and made dinner I can often “forget” to do anything more. I customised mine to involve 12 hours a day, and I set alarms for 45 minutes past the hour. When that alarm goes off, I get up!

250 steps is around 200 metres on my treadmill. This takes me about 2-3 minutes.

Fitbit

The Five Week Challenge – Week 2

4 Comments Posted on April 27, 2016April 25, 2016 by Snoskred

Another fitness week! This is more for my own records and to put all of this together in one place, so you can feel free to just skip past this post.

Friday April 15th –

Todays workout was in two parts and was different to the normal. I did 1k treadmill, 10 mins elliptical, 1k treadmill, 10 mins elliptical, then 1k treadmill. There were also some floor exercises for abs. YAY. Above is part 1.

This is my personal best for a 1km since getting back into exercising. 8:06 – sorry my treadmill quite uncooperative, with the photography! Above you see todays first km..

And here is part 2. 552 calories burned total.

Saturday April 16th –

Todays 6.5km walk brought to you by the Volkswagen Polo, plus Psycho Killer by Talking Heads which was the last song that played in the car before we got out, and thus, played in my head the entire 77 or so minutes.

Plus, I took a couple of pics, for you. Cloudy day, warm-ish, excellent for walking. YAY CLOUDS!

Sunday April 17th –

Todays workout brought to you by The Village People, specifically U can’t stop the music – Queen, specifically Don’t stop me now – plus my chicken Rosie who decided this music meant she should make a run for it into an offlimits area! This was a super tough workout involving circuits between the elliptical and the treadmill.

Monday April 18th –

Todays “rest day” slow walk brought to you by episodes 18 and 19 of The Good Wife which I am hate watching now, and Skye from Tinykittens, I am watching and waiting for her kittens to arrive. I got on again for another 16 minutes later, just to get some extra steps in and watch the last of episode 19.

Tuesday April 19th –

I don’t know why my iPhone hates me. Every time I think I will walk a little slower, it plays yet another tune of awesomeness that makes me speed up or even run. And today it made me have a personal best ever time! 7.45 for the first 1k, and then this great time for the 5k.

Wednesday April 20th –

Todays workout brought to you by umpteen annoying boy children at the pool, plus 5 annoying girls. I set a goal of burning 800 calories aqua jogging, and I very nearly did a u-turn in the carpark when I saw this busload of boy children being lectured by one of the adults. But then I thought, piffle, ain’t gonna let no noisy kids stand in the way of my exercise! :) YAY WINNING. There is two tracks – the above one for the jogging and one to follow for the cool down —

Thursday April 21st –

Todays workout brought to you by new water shoes! Yay 713 calories burned total. I’m showing you a different screen today.

Another highly active week. Weigh in at the end of this week was 83.2.

Week 1 is here.

2016 Goal, exercise, Fitbit

The Five Week Challenge – Week 1

6 Comments Posted on April 20, 2016April 18, 2016 by Snoskred

I’m involved with a fitness group on Facebook – long story best told another time. Recently the gauntlet was thrown down for a five week challenge – a freeform, choose your own challenge type of deal. After consulting my doctor, I picked –

500 calories burned or 5km walked

I thought I would do a weekly check in here on the blog, though we’re in week two of the challenge already now. So here are the things I did in week one, along with my comments! :)

Friday April 8th –

Tomorrow is already tomorrow, in Australia! Todays 5km on the treadmill. I will usually take a shot of the treadmill, or a screenshot of the Cardio Spark stuff from the pool, but I had done this before I knew about the challenge. Time was 52:54 – the extra time is water breaks while I pause the treadmill. I can’t drink and walk, lol. Todays walk was an interpretative dance set to episode 11 of Billions.

Saturday April 9th –

Here is my today walk. This is the first time we’ve been out to walk at Husky/Vincentia since February or so, was so nice! I SEEN dolphins, a beach mouse, beach birds, cyclists, children eating cheesecake, and a skateboarder gondolier!

Sunday April 10th –

Today’s “rest day” was brought to you by the season premiere of Deadliest Catch. As I wanted to go a bit slower for the rest day, I did some testing of my treadmill and discovered that the numbers do relate to km/hr. EG 4km/hr = 4.0, 5km/hr=5.0, 6km/hr=6.0

Monday April 11th –

Todays workout brought to you by Wahlburgers, TICDA and Sephyroth sending me a message that said “6k 59:55” plus, too legit to quit.

Tuesday April 12th –

Todays workout brought to you by – ep12 of Billions which is a show you should be watching if you are not already – Nutri Ninja which made a most awesome post workout shake YAY – and you all here, who make me want to push myself and documentation accordingly!

Wednesday April 13th –

Todays workout brought to you by – Deadliest Catch s12ep3 – Neelix over at Tinykittens who birthed some kittens today yay! – and the letter E, for exhausted. I really pushed – possibly slightly too far today. Tomorrow – Aqua Aerobics and I plan to burn 600 calories in the pool to allow for a slightly calorific dinner tomorrow.

Thursday April 14th –

Above you see the Cardio Spark track for Aqua Aerobics.

Above you see the Cardio Spark track for Aqua jogging. What I was doing was, running up and back the pool (50M total length of running) to get my heart rate up to 160 or so, then walking to cool it back down, then running again, etc.

Above you see the Cardio Spark tracks once Fitbit pulls them into itself. There was also a warmup while I waited for Aqua class to start, I burned 50 calories there, YAY.

Todays work out brought to you by swimming through a flabby armed spanking machine AKA Aqua Aerobics, school holidays where the kids have forgotten the pool exists THANK YOU JEEBUS, and Honey and Mustard Chicken which I wanted to make sure I had burned those calories before I even cook it, lol. 812 calories burned!

At the end of the week, we got a Fitbit Aria scale, and it gave me a number I had not seen thus far. 84kg. That is 11.2 lost since 1 January. Happy moments!

See you next week, for week 2! ;)

exercise, Fitbit

Fitbit – Part One

8 Comments Posted on January 29, 2016January 28, 2016 by Snoskred

Remember earlier this year when I posted about my main goal for 2016? I said I would write about the Fitbit once I had it a little longer. Today it is exactly one month since I got this nifty device and I am loving it.

There are a lot of different aspects to the Fitbit, so I am not even going to try and cover them all in the one post. I’ll start off by telling you a little bit about what the Fitbit is, then I will talk about some of the ways that the Fitbit has inspired me to get moving again, and then tell you what I love and do not love about it.

What Is Fitbit?

Fitbit is an activity tracking device. You wear it on your wrist. Depending on which model you choose, it can track other things as well. I wanted to keep an eye on my heart rate especially when exercising, so I chose the Fitbit Charge HR. It cost $124 to purchase in the Boxing Day sales.

Fitbit reports the data it gathers back to your smartphone and/or your computer. You have a dashboard, which contains many different fields, and you can move the fields around to get it looking how you want.

The wrist device itself has a very small LED display which you can tap to switch between the time, steps so far, heart rate, KMs for the day, and calories burned. You can set it so that a flick of your wrist shows you the current time. I deeply love that feature!

Fitbit Makes Me –

Park that bit further away.

When you know you have a daily goal of 10,000 steps, you begin to find opportunities to add them in to your day. There is this local meat place which has a carpark of evilness, so now I park in a street away from the carpark and walk there instead. I discovered that I MUCH prefer this to driving in and trying to find a park and negotiating every other person in the tiny and badly designed carpark.

Get on the treadmill.

I’ve had this treadmill sitting here next to me for over a year now. There were times when I was very disciplined and would get on it every day, and there were times when I ignored it totally. Now I am on it most days, even if only for 15 minutes to get those last few missing steps.

Get out and about.

I’d much rather walk out at Huskisson and Vincentia than on the treadmill. Since the start of 2016, I have managed to get down there on average twice a week, sometimes 3-4 times.

Be Less Rigid

In 2015, I would only get on the treadmill first thing in the morning, before my shower. This meant if I did not feel like exercise then, it would get skipped. Now, with Fitbit, I have all day to get my steps in. If I do not feel like it first thing in the morning, I’ll take a shower, do what I feel like, and get on the treadmill in the afternoon, then take a second shower if I need it. I’ve even exercised as late as 9:30 or 10pm, if I needed more steps.

What I Love About Fitbit –

Convenience –

It is so simple! Wearing this one item on my wrist gives me SO much information about myself and my health, from heart rate at different times of the day right up to how well I slept.

Reminder –

Fitbit is there on my wrist 24/7 reminding me to make better choices – whether it be move more or eat less.

Tap To Know –

Three quick taps at any time of day gets me my current heart rate. This is useful mid-treadmill when I want to see if I am pushing too hard.

Great Workout Tracking

Look at all the info Fitbit collected on my walk today!

Above is heart rate and which zones you are in during your work out. The very low dips – the first one is where I stretch after doing my slow warm up 2 mins, then there are 2 drink breaks in there.

Above shows calorie burn, and the impact of his exercise on my day.

Resting Heart Rate

Fitbit tracks my resting heart rate. You can see it has dropped significantly since I started my journey to fitness on 29 December. You can also see it went back up a little – I had a cold which I was fighting at that time.

What I Don’t Love About Fitbit –

Fitbit Can’t Go Swimming

I have always loved the pool – swimming and aqua aerobics are my first two choices of exercise, even above walking and kayaking. However Fitbit is unable to join me there – which means all the information I rely on when I exercise, like heart rate and calories burned is also unavailable to me.

Fitbit Needs Regular Cleaning

Not that cleaning is a problem for this germophobe, but whenever I do it clean it – usually once a day, twice if necessary – I worry that I might accidentally murder it. Fitbit is splash proof but not water proof.

Fitbit Needs To Be Placed Correctly

In order to measure your heart rate, Fitbit has to be in the right place. Sometimes I have had trouble putting it in the right place or I have bumped it slightly and there goes my heart rate measurements, sometimes for hours because I did not know it wasn’t measuring it. I wish it would beep or flash when it wasn’t picking up my heart rate so I could adjust it.

Fitbit Took Some Getting Used To

I found sleeping with it on extremely weird to begin with. However, I stuck with it and I got used to it, and I consider the data gained VERY useful – I’ll talk more about the data in another post.

Overall –

I love my Fitbit, and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to get moving. Just remember what I said about lessons learned in my Main Goal post.

exercise, Fitbit, health, Making Choices

500 calories burned *or* 5km walked