My reading lately

I have read some books recently (in the last 3 months...) that I would love to recommend:
1) Curly Girl - Lorraine Massey. She is a hair dresser who has created a method of looking after curly hair. As a result I have made some changes to my hair care, and am hoping my hair will appreciate it and stop being quite so unmanageable.
2) Overwhelmed - Work, Love and Play when no one has the time - Brigid Schulte
Part documentary, part self discovery. Brigid looks at "time pressure and modern life" according to the inside cover. She looks at the family, and work and leisure, and how no one feels like we have any quality time any more.
At the end she has a section of practical suggestions in the area of "Work", "Love"(family, roles, etc) and "Play" (which relates to having hobbies, remember them?)
One thing she mentioned was being aware of unconscious bias - on roles in the family. She mentioned gatekeeping by mothers which prevents fathers from having more than a 'helper' role with babies. And for work she mentioned chunking time - and committing to building up the muscle to sit there and concentrate on work/one thing, without checking emails every 5 mins. I know I have the Twitch - to check news websites when I'm frustrated with my work, instead of looking out the window, stretching and getting a glass of water.
And when I was looking for strategies for decluttering, I found The Minimalists - two american guys who have (they mention often) left their thing centric life and their 6 figure salary and found peace in minimalising, and are now, I guess, preachers of the lifestyle.
3) All That Remains - Joshua Fields Millburn - written as a series of dated essays over the two year period that he started being minimalistic. I don't always enjoy the writing style, especially the "conversations" that sound a bit preachy, but as an exploration of the idea of not organising 'stuff', but simply not owning it, the book is quite intriguing, and the length is such that you can read once, then go back and reread sections. A compelling argument for not owning as much is that it frees up time and money to spend with your family, because you're not having to clean, organise and look after all your stuff.

Lemon Grass - Thai Restaurant

We took the opportunity to go out to dinner while we had grandparents around to babysit, and went to this restaurant. We have not had proper Thai for so long... so long. I could have happily ordered the entire menu.
What we ended up getting:
Spring Rolls and some sort of steamed pork dumpling for starters (entree)
Panang curry and Duck salad (bits of duck deep fried and put on a bed of greens of some sort with a hot chilli sauce? The duck was cold, and awesome.) for entree (mains), with steamed rice.
I had a Lemon Grass Mojito (with Bacardi light rum, mint, ginger, lime juice, and I think that was all) and Steve had a Thai beer of some sort.
My only reservations - I reserved a table for 7.30 pm, and when we arrived at 7.30 pm, the place was packed with the early diners, and no table was reserved. We got drinks and sat outside until a table came free, which was about 15 mins.
It is a small restaurant, although they have opened a second restaurant somewhere else, probably not more than cafe size. They have tables outside, and a pretty generous veggie patch where they evidently grow their own herbs and possibly other stuff. Service was quick and knowledgable.
We were very happy. I had to restrain myself from closing my eyes and mmming after every mouthful! In fact, that is why the photo is half way through, because I forgot.

Ikea dinnerware set review

We bought two of the Ikea Fargrik dinnerware sets - one in white, the other in turquoise, as you have probably noticed in previous posts. The white set is now starting to get lines on it - as shown in the photo above. Whenever cutlery scrapes on the bowl/plate, little grey lines appear. It is especially bad in bowls where little people scrape and scrape for that last skerrick of ice cream.
I have seen this before - hubby's work in Sydney got this set in their kitchen, and I assumed it was due to the high usage. But we have been using our set like a normal family of four, since April, when we moved, and it started marking about the end of July - ie, about three months.
Interestingly enough, the turquoise set is not marking - the glaze seems thicker, shinier and more durable?
My conclusion is, don't buy this set in white... It was only $19.95, but I would sort of expect a bit more durability.

Good Packing Decisions V

I did think it was overkill, to take two strollers... Not in keeping with the effort to live a bit simply, with minimal 'stuff'. However, we were allowed one stroller per child under 5 for free, so we took both our jogging stroller, and this little simpler stroller - bought from Aldi for $50. I am very glad we took the effort! We even had an inquiry in NYC about whether it was a good travel stroller.
I think this is a good review of those strollers too - we hesitated to buy it the first time we saw it. Wanted to see what the more established stores had. But we have not regretted this decision one moment. I just regret not getting it earlier, as I lugged the other heavier stroller up three steps at childcare while very pregnant many times, all the while wishing we had a lighter version!
When using the little buses, and all, having a stroller that can be folded up and carried while also carrying the two year old is very handy. Lots of the shops and restaurants here are not sized to fit strollers, so it is nice to just fold it up in a corner out of the way. I have noticed one rivet getting a touch wonky, on one of the things that fold up, so it may be on its way out, but it has gotten solid use ever since the snow melted and I worked out the bus service. We have successfully taken it on the metro in NYC and Washington DC (and pretty soon, Philadelphia!).
Summary: Sturdy enough to take the four year old, or load down with bags. Small enough to fold up in stores and on buses. Cheap enough to not be a major investment requiring careful thought. Very handy water bottle hole and zippered pocket between the handles. Light enough to carry distances without really exerting yourself. Wheels are not hard plastic, they're not rubber either, something in between that is really sturdy and tough and quiet.
The storage is hard to get into, especially when the stroller is laid back with a child sleeping in it (but you don't lose things overboard either). The buckle strap coming up from between the legs seems a little on the short side, especially with cloth nappies.

Ikea potty review

I oscillated over whether to get this potty, to the point that we ended up with one because we weren't getting back to Ikea, not because I was overjoyed with having one. It looked too small - I honestly thought the baby's bottom was bigger (and, who knows, maybe it was a couple of months ago?!). But here we are, toilet training, with an Ikea potty, and it seems fine.
We also looked in Babies R Us, but it was the week that potties were 25% off, unbeknownst to us, unfortunately, so there wasn't much to look at, although we did note they all looked that small.
I don't like that this potty doesn't have a high back. We have had some interesting tumbles because the baby overshot. But otherwise, it does the job so far and is a nice cheap potty (because, who does manage to resell those expensive potties?!).

Copco kettle review

We got a cheap kettle from Bed Bath and Beyond to heat water on the gas stove. There were lots of kettles to choose from, and we bought the $20 one, figuring we're only here for two years, etc etc. The sad thing is, after a month, the handle in the lid (the one you pull off to put the water into the kettle) had started getting loose, and the screw rusting. We looked for our receipt but couldn't find it, so are living with it, but it is frustrating.
My advice, if buying a cheap kettle, is either keep the receipt, or don't pull off the lid to put water into the kettle. I'm filling it from the spout now.

Ikea towels review - Bandsjon

Among the towels that we got were these really cool stripey towels, type Bandsjon.

Things I like:
They are bright and cheerful, and not plain!
They have a little loop half way along the long edge so you can hang the towels up on a hook, which isn't so useful for drying a hole bath towel, but good for the hand towel.
The bath towel size (one down from the bath sheet size) is plenty big enough even for my tall husband.
The bath mat is nice and thick and absorbent.

Things I don't like:
The 'matching' bath mat doesn't have all the stripey colours that the towels have. So it sort of matches, but not quite, in my book.
They were more expensive than the other plain colours that we got. So, I am slightly disappointed that they have collected/made pills in the dryer. This might be due to what I put in the drying loads, I'm not really sure, but the result is, there are white fluff bits on the coloured stripes. They look a lot older than they are as a result.

Ikea dustpan and brush review

This was 99c (plus 6% sales tax!). However, it has been consigned to the childrens play kitchen, because the dirt won't go in the dustpan. Just won't go in. We have tried several different operators, and it isn't an operational problem. We think it is the funky coloured strip at the front, it is either too sloped, or not slippery enough? I guess another reason could be that the brush is somehow defective.
Anyway, I'm not recommending this one. We bought a slightly more expensive one, from a different store, and it works better.

Ikea potato peeler review

Not sure if this will impact anyone's life, but I have a unique opportunity to review quite a lot of Ikea products. So I thought in the quiet moments, I'd start with the obvious stuff.
The Ikea potato peeler has a nice big handle, and the blade is sharp (I've used it twice, so I don't know about how it will last). The weird thing that I think will be an issue, is the hole in the bottom of the nice big handle, so it fills with washing up water! You can see it in this photo. I have to remember to drain the handle, and I do wonder about the inside growing mould or something equally disgusting. On the other hand, I think it was 99c, so possibly good value for money.