Dizzy-Dee's deliciously delightful, dainty and dangerous, daring and dazzling dark dungeon…

We moved into our current home almost two years ago!! I cannot believe that its been such a long time already, but time flies! When we moved in there were hardly any children around, and the complex was relatively quiet. Nice. The only people who had a baby back then was our next door neighbors, and she was such a quiet baby – I don’t recall ever hearing her cry.

Now, two years later she’s a toddler, nearly 3 years old – and she’s at that “terrible-two’s” stage where she screams at the top of her voice when things don’t go her way, and sometimes just because she can. I can understand this, and I even have a bit of sympathy for the parents.

However, I do not enjoy being woken up on a SUNDAY morning before 7am by this screaming little girl. She carried on screaming and crying until I eventually pulled myself out of bed, and went to check if she wasn’t perhaps trapped underneath something, or if her parents had maybe tied her to a pole – she didn’t even blink when she saw me looking at her, and it was only once I started asking her what the matter was when her mother came to take her inside the house. *sigh*

Now, besides this little one and her quite obvious two year old type mood swings, we also seem to have gotten a whole cricket team of primary school boys who play cricket right in our driveway.

I feel too bad to chase them away, but today I had to close the windows because they were just too noisy!!

I don’t want to be an old hag, but sometimes it feels like I’m living ON school grounds, and all the yelling is going to most definitely drive me nuts!!

Up till now I have managed to remain patient, but I’m slowly but surely starting to get irritated. I know, I know… Its not nice, and I’m trying really hard to put myself in their shoes. Growing up in a complex cannot be easy – heck, I grew up in a huge garden, and had all that space to myself!!

How do you feel about noisy or even intrusive kids? Is it one’s right to have peace and quiet? Or is it more important to just let them be kids?

Making your own pizza base is usually quite a challenge – especially if you’re not too keen on all the hard work
I got this recipe from my mother in law, and modified it a bit upon a colleague’s advice…. Preparation should take you about 10minutes, and baking should take at longest 20 minutes.

2 cups flour
1 cup semolina
6 table spoons oil
3 table spoon sugar
3 tea spoon salt
1.25 cup milk & water mix – but check consistency to be the same as that of play dough (always a bit more milk than water)

Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees Celsius
Knead until all flour has been mixed with other ingredients, then flatten in a greased and / or floured baking tray.
You can spread the dough out with your fingers to give it a homemade look, or use a rolling pin to flatten smoothly.
If you wish to make rounded pizza, you can cut out pieces of dough by place a dinner plate on top of the dough as a guide, and then cutting with a sharp knife along the edge.
Place the dough, in which ever shape you prefer in the oven, and bake for 15 – 20 depending on the thickness of your pizza
Place a small piece of dough with the same thickness alongside your pizza base while baking, and use this to check if the pizza base is cooked through after 15 minutes
While your pizza base is baking, you can prepare the toppings for your pizza.
Once the pizza base is cooked through, add the toppings you desire, and bake until the cheese has melted
Note: All meats should be cooked prior to making to avoid the pizza from drying out
Note 2: Flour used for pizza base should not be self rising – though it might not do any harm I haven’t used self rising flour on this recipe, and cannot guarantee the success thereof. Normal or all purpose flour should work perfectly.

You can also convert this into a pita / Naan bread by not adding toppings.
Its quite tasty if you add butter & garlic or mixed herbs right after being taken out of the oven, then returning to the oven for a quick 2 minute grill.

Tip – if you would like the base to be a bit crispier, increase the oven temperature slightly (180 at most), and decrease baking time.

Photos to follow soon!!

Someone asked me if it is possible to fax from the internet to a normal landline fax number. I have never done this, and haven’t been able to find a service offering of the sort.

Do you know of a service like this? Obviously I need it to work to South African numbers, and preferably the service should be free

Let me know if you’re aware of something like this please?

I found a very interesting concept today: A printer which prints in pencil – and its got a built in eraser too!

If you’re interested to read more about this concept, read more at Yanko Design

Wow I had a hectic week, and I am so thankful that its weekend!!  I was SO pleasantly surprised when my husband came home with a bouquet of lovely roses on Friday!!  How romantic

Today its Sunday, and nearly time for the new week… I must admit I am not too excited about the new week, and would definitely not have complained if the weekend was a day longer!!

I am sooo looking forward to our beach holiday, but March is still some time away…  I know time will pass quickly, but can it ever pass fast enough if you’re heading for a holiday?

I thought the worm smoking a hookah pipe in Alice in Wonderland was interestingly far fetched, but I heard today that there’s a guy in Taiwan with a pet snake, which actually smokes cigarettes!?!

The owner of the snake smokes a packet or two cigarette per day, and the snake apparently went after a stub which the guy dropped on the floor, and took a drag!? Now the snake smokes one cigarette in the morning, and one at night.  This whole (very entertaining) story according to 5fm, on my way home this afternoon.

This is the picture which is suppose to prove it – I know its conveniently small!!  But its all that I could find.  Not sure if this is real – what do you think?  I think its BS!

What the heck is up with this day? As if it wasn’t enough that I wrote a post about how horrid it was, Wordpress just “swallowed” my post?!

I had such a long post explaining in detail how I was doing my make up this morning, talking to my husband, pointing in the air with my liquid eyeliner in one hand when the bottom decided to break off and spill all over my camel colored bedroom carpet, but then Wordpress decided that its a good time to just make my post disappear.

Well yes, I am probably overreacting, and being a drama queen, but you probably have not had liquid eyeliner on a carpet.

Okay, so lets try this again one last time, else I promise I will go straight to bed! So my liquid eyeliner bottle broke this morning – it must have had a weak spot, and my pointing was just too rigorous for it, so it broke. The bottom end holding the liquid went flying through the air, and ended up on the carpet. As if this wasn’t enough, I was also in a hurry because we had a lunch appointment!!

My husband scrubbed the stain for a while, but due to the “long lasting” effect of the eyeliner, it didn’t really want to come out of the carpet. Usually women buy make up because it lasts well and doesn’t fade during the day – I might have to rethink this. Reapplying make up is definitely worth it if it spares me from cleaning such a stain again!

We got back this afternoon, and I started cleaning the stain (again), and about 4 buckets of water later (which looked like ink every time I emptied it), and half a bottle Vanish stain remover, it appears to be clean. I’m not sure whether that which is left is just because the carpet looks darker when its wet, or if its still some of the eyeliner which is stuck there.

Honestly I don’t care right now. I will have to wash the carpets some time later in any case.

Amongst all of this, we also found that the Tropical fruit juice leaked in the car Now, I know its probably not as bad as milk, but fruit juice smells like puke if its spilt in a car. My husband cleaned this up (while I was cleaning the bedroom carpet – lol), and we just hope that the smell is not going to stick.

To top all of this off I’ve had a terrible headache since yesterday morning, and I cannot get rid of it!! Think I may go and lie down for a while to see if that helps.

Good things that happened this weekend? Luckily there was plenty of that too. My nephew came to visit us!! We watched up with him, and we went to play Adventure Golf! So I cannot complain too much!

Hope your weekend was nice too, enjoy the last little bit of it!

Okay so I got the message: Everyone is tired of staring at Kleenex boxes!
I have been so busy, and completely demotivated to blog I’ve been struggling to setup a blog at 000Webhost for a friend. After spending hours uploading the Wordpress install files & themes it couldn’t establish a database connection. I then tried the second domain, and after everything was beautifully for a few hours they disabled the account, and its now under review! How crazy is that? There was not even any content on there except a test post?

I went through the exact same process as I had for two other blogs, and they work perfectly fine, but this one I just can get right.

Then tonight, I read in a 000Webhost forum thread that they may have disabled the account because I exceeded the FTP quota? Not too sure how I could have uploaded more than 2000 files, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt. Wouldn’t it be good policy to inform me of this? I guess not, since they’re providing this service free of charge, they don’t owe any one an excuse or explanation. *sigh*

Like they say, nothing in life is free – in this case it’s free, but I’m not sure its worth the hassle?

I LOVE good packaging designs, and Kleenex fruity tissue box design is an excellent example of brilliant design.

I’d love to have one of these, pity I haven’t seen them in the shops yet! Aren’t they cute?

On January 12th, while we were all blissfully oblivious and entangled in our own lives, the people in Haiti were struck with the worst earthquake in two hundred years. So strange to imagine that its real, and though I heard about it on the news, the reality didn’t kick in until I saw photos at Boston.com.

Some of these pictures are a little too close to the bone, but I think its a good wake-up call all the same. Not that there is anything we could do to prepare ourselves for such a tragedy. However it made me realize again that we have to appreciate our loved ones, spend time with them and be thankful for the special times we share. You never know when its the last time you see that person.