Category — Life

We recently took the kids for a mini holiday to one of my favourite places within sensible driving range.  I LOVE the river.  As soon as I get up there I feel calm.

We squeezed in quite a lot, and I even read a book. First stop was the races:

We had a lovely (although slightly slanty) picnic:

And the girls got some practice in (I used to love doing this with my dad – such a brilliant memory – for me anyway – it probably wasn’t quite as much fun for him until I’d had enough practice……):

And then there was the Golden Cow, the pedicure and massage,  a wicked kids playground, golf for the bloke, the very little cooking, the pool, the very yummy dinner and the just going slow for a few days…..  Lovely…..

….and I got very envious of mag / book collection at friend’s house recently. Bought these on Monday:

My smallest (soon to be middlesized) assistant chose this fabric from that haven tessuti to make this dress:

Am booked in to do this market (more to come on this when I finish my contract at the end of the month) so busy getting things together for this. Dress is on the post Nov 15 todo list (unless it proves irresistible before then….)

Anyone got any hot tips for using these dishdelishous japanese books / patterns?

- you are finding it hard to find a comfortable sleeping position
- you are up every two hours to go to the toilet
- any sudden changes in direction could result in knocking your stomach into a door since you forget  you need a bigger turning circle
- the facility for remembering simple words and familiar names is temporarily unavailable
- you sit down on the couch to rest for 5 minutes and wake up 2 hours later
- you walk to work and your stockings fall dragging your knickers with them.
- to combat above, you wear your knickers outside your stockings for the trip home
- any Tom, Dick and Harriett rubs your tummy saying – “Oh, I just have to” (Which incidently I don’t mind but it does happen a lot)
- every second person says to you – “are you sure there’s only one in there??” or “you can’t have long to go”…..
- sitting at your sewing machine, you wonder why your janome isn’t feeding the material through properly and realise that its caught between your boob and your bump!!!! (the material that is, not the sewing machine…)

My mum had an op shop party for her birthday – everyone had to come dressed in gear from the op shop. We found the most excellent pink parachute trackie for Damage to wear – so beastie boys batting for the other team. We also found an anchor for him to wear on a chain around his neck. The kids started calling him Pirate Piggy – love it. Will have to find a photo. Anyway, also secured some great vintage sheets and these shoes for me to wear:

Gotta love the country oppie.

Planning Queen has been nominated for the nuffnang Asia Pac blog awards.  You can help her win by voting online.  It’s easy - find out more here. 

Congratulations Queen of the Plan – and good luck!!!

I just bought tickets for the side show

It’s on December 11. We are due the 15th. Do you think that’s cutting it a bit fine?? We have had one induced 11 days over and one 15 days early. Could go either way couldn’t it?? Watch this space – I might be scalping closer to the date…….. In the meantime, i can look forward to seeing some fun musica.  If you are new to kitty, daisy & Lewis, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxW3Ed7GrhQ

After our rough start to the weekend, it ended up lovely with not much planned.   A bit of ballet, the market and lots of lovely hanging around. We laid low – I squeezed in a bit of sewing – the sky for my mum’s penguin quilt, and we ate simple but yummy food:
Friday night – ham & vege soup with Laurent’s olive bread mmmmm
Sat – borek’s from the market, then antipasto and insalata caprese – I LOVE tomato, Boccocini and Basil – I could live on it.
Strawberries were cheap at the market so we had some soaked in cointreau and sugar on some meringues for dessert.
Sun – french toast for brekky, for dinner we had corn cobs and potato rostis, with vanilla milk puddings and strawberries for dessert. 

The seasons are a changing eh?

Anyway, I used this donna hay recipe to make the vanilla puddings.  Simple to make - I had an apprentice.

Donna Hay’s Vanilla Milk Puddings

1 tablespoon gelatine

3 cups milk

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

1/3 cup castor sugar

1/3 icing sugar, sifted

150g raspberries

150g blueberries

Sprinkle the gelatie over ¼ cup of the milk. Set aside for 5 minutes. Place the remaining milk, vanilla, sugar and gelatine in a saucepan and heat for 5 minutes. Remove the vanilla bean and pour the mixture into 6 x ½ cup capacity ramekins or moulds.  Refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

Combine the icing sugar, lemon juice, raspberries and blueberries. Set aside for 10 minutes. T o serve, unmould the puddings onto plates and spoon over the berry mixture.

Serves 6

You can use sliced strawberries like us, and add cointreau to the berries’ bath.

I was challenged earlier in the week when I arrived at kinder pick up on Thursday.  The fill in teacher had brought in snails for everyone to draw and to plonk onto black card to watch the trails.  Cute (ish).  But when I arrived, it was evident we had someone who was OBSESSED with them.  She had been drawing them all morning and playing with them constantly.  She had even built a house (weetbix box) complete with grass and a lovely lace bed.  “Can I take one home mum?”  My immediate reaction was an understanding and sympathetic “no – we can get one from the garden if we really want to”.  We “relocate” stacks and they eat our veges – I had never entertained a snail for a pet.  Well, I have never seen anyone so sad.  She was devasted – she knew all about how to look after them: to give them grass or white paper to eat; and to flick water on them to keep them moist.  When the tears started, I reconsidered.  Do I give in to the tears, what’s wrong with a snail, why can’t she just have one, who am i to determine what is considered a pet? etc etc.  Anyway, Daisy the baby snail came home with us.  She had the big responsibility now of a pet and she was loving it.  We took Daisy to creche the next day to show her friends there.  When I arrived for creche pick up – there was a sad story waiting.  One of the 3 year olds at creche had stolen Daisy from her weetbix house in Dusty’s locker and stepped on that sad snail several times.  Dusty walked in just as it was happening.  My heart sank.  Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of Daisy, I was so sad someone so little could be sooo mean. 

So the search is on for a pet.  Not sure if the timing’s right for a dog but we are on the hunt for something to scratch that itch as it were.  And we have been having lots of discussions about how not to be mean and how to be respectful of other people’s things. And what we do when people do mean things to us.

I took the potential tiger in our house to the footy for the last qtr a few weekends ago.  We inherited some tickets this week so we set off to see how far through a whole match we could get.  We lasted just into the last quarter.  And, I can’t believe I am saying this, I was ok with having the excuse to leave.  Usually I would stay until the final siren – win or lose.  But 100 points down, and in the middle of a very large flock of stinky pies supporters (actually they were all quite nice as far as collingwood fans go), I was content to pack up our bags when the little one said ‘let’s go home’ for the 10th time.

Sad to see they couldn’t dig deeper for Joel – he deserves a grander send-off.  Did you know they have a mobile TAB van at the MCG – what is the world coming too?   I have such fond memories of Dad taking me to the local footy, pestering him for money to buy a drink or a hotdog, and scouring the crowds for cans to squash onto our feet and clunk around in.  Probably with boys from the central school who I would later in life have massive crushes on but was never brazen enough to do anything about……..

that’s what the last few weeks feel like. buzzing on by. Did get to a few brown owl meets, a couple of ivanhoe quiltoffs, a perle 8 but mostly hanging with the fam. Took Sadia to the last qtr at the MCG to watch the tiges not quite lose to Melb (if you want to dip your foot in at the footy, the ‘g lets you in for free for the last qtr – great option for certain 3 yr olds who don’t concentrate on far away games for that long. We got to sing our song – which she loved.  The other kid is totally converted to dad’s poos and wees so I have to fly the black and yellow flag – I refuse to be outnumbered).  

We also went to Peter and the Wolf played by the Heidleberg Symphony:

Someone had a practice exam – freaky man – it’s ok anti-over schedulers, she only does ballet, she LOVES it and she can opt out whenever she wants.

I got a new neice – two weeks early:

and she got a quickie quilt – which looks like its still on the camera so that will get aired sometime in the next 100 years (I wonder what blogging will look like in 100 years?  perhaps we can just think things and it will go on our blog – that could be very very dangerous….and really quite messy in my case…)

xoxoxo