ALDI: Men’s Professional Grooming Kit $19.99

• 5-in-1 men’s grooming kit includes: rechargeable shaver, large trimmer attachment for styling precision, nose/ear hair and eyebrow trimmer, 2 hair clipper attachments with 8 locking lengths for styling options

While browsing through ALDI today tossed this onto the trolley. Been trimming the beard for nearly fifty years with a pair of barbers scissors so thought why not give it a go, can always return no questions asked. After unpacking and putting the shopping away unpacked the package to have a quick look. It appears to be quite well made, flicked the switch on the shaver and the battery has charge so ET the wife (ex hairdresser) attached one of the clippers and gave it a test run around the lower part of my neck. No pulling no pain so that’s a good start! Instruction say to charge initially for 16 – 18 hours so doing that now.

More to come…

Chook run cleanup

Beautiful day so decided to rake out the hay from the main chook run and the adjoining annex area and replenish with cleaner hay that comes of the floors of the two storage sheds down at the horse agistment. We purchase 10 or 12 bails every few months and its surprising how much ends up on the floor which usually gets swept out and dumped. Now that we are retirees I find myself looking for ways to be a bit more thrifty so I bag the hay (empty horse feed bags) and bring it home for the chook run. The finer stuff contains a lot of grass seed, just throw it around where the grass is struggling to grow in the backyard and the chooks will come along and scratch it in and before long – green grass!

Raking out the two areas fills the green bin.

Garden is coming to life

A

First time for everything

Exciting day for us backyard chook lovers, our two Pekins decided to lay their first eggs – together!

Got home from tending the horses and doing a bit of shopping and as usual straight down to the chook run to let the girls out. Checked inside their shed and found a surprise in each box – eggs!

My last tax return

I retired in July 2010 and a couple of week ago we went to see the accountants with all the usual paperwork to do my last tax return. Arrived home today after tending to the horses and a bit of shopping and the first thing is to check the mail box. These days we don’t like to see anything in there but today was a pleasant surprise, a nice healthy cheque from the ATO!

So that’s it, for me personally no more tax returns  – hooray.

But wait…tax returns have not disappeared completely, we have our own SMSF that requires an annual tax return around Feb of each year. Never mind next time around the tax return will be very straight forward, no contributions or any other stuff just a pension paid out from monthly interest earned on a term deposit with a regional bank. I don’t think we will need an actuary report will will reduce costs even further.

Murder in the backyard

Went to the kitchen to make a cuppa and noticed some activity in the backyard, two HUGH crows standing in a pile of feathers – OMG. Immediately our chooks came to mind, where are they? raced downstairs and out into the yard whereupon the crows soared away their powerful wings threshing the air. I looked around for the chooks and spotted them huddled together under the bay leaf tree near the back fence – relief!

The murder victim is the very common spotted turtle dove, remains are to the right and below centre of picture.

ALDI: Electric Knife 12.99

• 180W motor
• Low noise
• Dual safety switches
• Blade release button
• 2 sets of stainless steel blades (standard and frozen foods)

Never owned one of these so we thought lets give this one a go – mistake.
Wasn’t expecting much for 12 bucks, reasonable to expect it would handle a small Sunday roast.
Well…after several attempts neither of us could cut even one slice of the roast, so returned.