Better Homes and Gardens Expo 2011

Well yesterday hubby, bub and I all drove down to Sydney Showground at Homebush to see the 2011 Better Homes and Gardens Expo. This is the first year I've been and I was quite excited as a friend went last year and raved about it and all in all we had a pretty good day (bar the crappy overcast weather all day, boo!)

The event was split into three different sections, the Gardening & Pet Zone, the Home Dome & Craft Zone and the Food & Lifestyle Zone. Being the crappy weather that it was we decided to do the Gardening & Pet Zone first as it was the only outdoor section so we wanted to get through it before any rain could start.

I found this section my favourite, there were so many stalls on gardening, garden ornaments, plants, vegetables, and pet products. It was just such a shame that we are in a bit of a financial hole at the moment due to having bub six months ago and the fact that I've only been able to go back to work two days a week so far so it was a lot of looking and dreaming and not much buying unfortunately. But, the main things that caught my eye were the following:

* The Italian Gardener - This guy had some of the most unusual fruit and vegetable seeds I have ever seen. Since I have my vegetable garden in the process of being completed and will be filling it with soil soon to start planting I am so going to order some seeds from this site just to play with things I have never heard of before.
* Fruit Salad Trees - I think these are just totally awesome. One tree can have up to 8 different fruits on one tree. I would love to see one of these trees in full bloom with all the fruits hanging off of it as I think it would just be the coolest thing. Being that we planted an orange tree the weekend we moved into our house almost four years ago which has refused to produce one single orange for us so far I want one of these trees to compensate.

Next was the Food & Lifestyle Zone. This was of course hubby's favourite section as he will taste test absolutely anything and everything just because it's there. The highlight for me was the white and milk chocolate covered strawberry skewer we bought to share, oh so yummy! We also ended up buying some Saucilicious Sweet Tequila Chilli Lime Sauce (totally yum!) and some Captain Coffee mixed chocolate coated coffee beans (so addictive!)

I was also lucky enough to get a quick 5 minute makeover by a representative from Ere Perez Natural Cosmetics. I usually steer clear of these things as I get a little embarrassed when getting made up by someone else (I even struggled on my wedding day) but this time I thought 'what the heck' and took up the makeover offer. Hey, at least it meant I didn't have to do my makeup for our night out with friends :-) The representative used the following products on me:
* Natural Calendula Tinted Face Dust in Medium
* Tinted Rice Powder in Bronze Tones and My Blush
* Natural Mascara in Clear (on my totally ungroomed brows)
* Natural Chamomile Eye Colour in Without Clothes, From Beginning to End and Very Important
* Natural Rosehip Oil Lipbar in Life
Overall I was very impressed with how my face looked afterwards as she made my eyes look great and showed me that using a bronzer is not a scary as I thought it would be on my fair skin. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos as I'm just not confident enough to have close-up facial photos all over the internet. You'll just have to believe me when I say it looked good :-)

After a short intermission and some lunch (Turkish Gozleme anyone?) we then headed to the Home Dome & Craft Zone to finish off our afternoon.

I was totally captivated by the Cat Condo which is a really cool tall-boy like structure that has roll out draws where you put your cat's food bowls and litter tray so they are hidden away and their bed can sit on top. The draws have an internal staircase so your cat can walk throughout it at their leisure and given the fact that our two cats will hop into any open draw they see at home I just love this concept. Hubby and I are in the process of trying to work out a way to turn an old set of draws into a similar structure (which is more in our price range) so that our pussy cats can have their own little space like this.

After finally getting dragged away from the cat condo by hubby, I couldn't help but stop at the Pure Animal Wellbeing stall as I have had a lot of exposure to these products when working part time as a vet nurse and use them personally on my two beagles. They had a great special on their Sensitive Skin shampoo and conditioner so I just had to buy some and then I also got three decent size samples given to me as well. Awesome!

Finally we came to the end of the day and given that we had a spare hour before we really needed to head home to meet up with some friends I managed to talk hubby into taking me to Ikea for the first time to just 'have a quick look around'. Well, huh! There is no such thing as having a quick look around Ikea we discovered as once you are in you have no choice but to follow the path through the whole store to get out. I felt like a fish swimming up a stream and it took us an hour just to get from the beginning to the end, and that was with very minimal stopping to look at any of their products! Needless to say I am now hooked in this store and can't wait to update some of our furniture and homewares as soon as our budget allows. Unfortunately I think poor hubby is a little scarred by the experience and may have to be heavily convinced to ever take me back again.

Well, that was my great day out with my little family yesterday. Hopefully next year we'll be in a better position financially and I can spend up a storm at the 2012 Better Home and Gardens Expo and get all the things I drooled over this year :-)