A lovely blog/online shop to check out

Hello to my faithful three bloggy friends

Don't have time/energy for a proper post tonight but wanted to share the link to this lovely blog. Alarna Zinn is a designer from Queenslander who does beautiful greeting cards etc who was featured in Qweekend magazine today. Her blog is beautiful to look at if you want to check it out.

So here it is..... So good to see someone with a commitment to good old fashioned beautiful cards to send in the mail or pop in a present....

Mothers' Day

I had a lovely Mothers' Day this year. The fun started the Friday before the big day. The grade one children at school put on Mothers' Day breakfast in the morning and waited on all the mums which was lovely. They gave us menus and brought us our selection and all had such happy, shiny, proud little faces that I almost cried. We have a hilarious deputy principal who made a speech, concluding with "Happy Mothers' Day to all the mothers. May you get the power tools you so richly deserve". Here's a photo of E and me before we left home for the breakfast. I took an hour and a half off work as I really didn't want to miss this.

On the actual Sunday of Mothers' Day, my mother likes to have her two daughters (but no grandchildren!) go to breakfast with her and my Dad in a swanky city hotel at 7am - yes.... a bit of an effort. However, breakfast in the hotel got cancelled this year in favour of a family picnic in the local park in the afternoon. Much more my style. That then got cancelled as well as the cousins had tickets to the football without my sister realising the game was on Mothers' Day. Anyway.... the upshot is I got to stay home with my OWN family most of the day and enjoy being pampered. I had an early start (I'm talking 5am - pitch dark and quite chilly) with the little girl waking up but a few hours later I went back to bed and that was bliss. Presents and cards had already been given on the Friday afternoon as it was all too exciting for little people to wait until the actual day to show me what they had made at school/family daycare. But....I was brought the yummiest breakfast in bed by my big girl (wearing a folded teatowel over her arm like a posh waitress). She (and Daddy and the little girl) had made me cinnamon toast, cut up fruit and yoghurt and a cup of hot chocolate. More bliss. I think I read my book for a little while too. Extra bliss!

In the afternoon, I wanted some fresh air and sunshine for the family so we set off to a local park where we haven't been before. We played our first game of soccer with some convenient trees for goalposts and gave the playground a good workout. Here are the girls at the top of the slide. Nothing like simple pleasures for Mothers' Day. (Chocolate peppermint fudge is good too!)

Happy Mothers' Day everybody!

Stuff I'm into at the moment....courtesy of Tammie

OK...I've run out of interesting things to say about my life and my family and our latest infectious virus. (I know, CT, I can't beat your virus!!! It's not that often we see Mexico on the news here). So I am taking a leaf out of Tammie's book and making a list of stuff that I am into right now. I have found that most of my favourite things at the moment are incredibly daggy. But that's ok. Now that I am forty-something, I feel entitled to enjoy whatever daggy stuff I want and under no obligation whatsoever to endeavour to be cool in the least. So here goes.....

Brisbane in the autumn - as you can see from the photo above, the sky is incredibly blue at the moment. The weather is gorgeous - warm sunny days and crisp nights that are just right for snuggling under the doona. A husband would be nice but at this point in our lives, we have a child each in bed at night - me in G's room and E and Daddy in our room. I guess there's always the single bed in E's room that cost a few hundred dollars on sale at a swanky children's shop that she never sleeps in.....

Easy peasy quiche. This is my mum's recipe and it is my current way to use up leftovers on the weekend, make my coeliac husband happy, save money by taking a wedge to work to have cold for lunch etc etc. Here's the recipe....

Combine half a cup of flour (SR I think - I use gluten free), quarter cup of oil (I use olive), half a cup or so of grated cheese, ground pepper and some salt, and four eggs. (I beat the eggs and milk first as that's what I do when I make pancakes). Add about half a cup of milk. (I use soy milk as I'm a bit allergic to dairy - but I can't resist having the grated cheese).

Then chop up roughly and throw in some of your favourite things eg semi sundried tomatoes, feta cheese, ham or bacon etc. Then examine the leftovers in your crisper and throw them in eg mushrooms, bits of brocoli, thin slices of zucchini, chopped shallots etc. I reckon it always looks prettier with something green in it.

Add a bit more milk if the mixture seems too thick. It should be sort of batter-y.

Pour into a buttered dish and bake in a moderate oven (180 c) for 40 minutes or until browned and cooked inside when you poke with a skewer. A non stick dish is good as the pan is always a bugger to clean afterwards. Sometimes I put it in a lasagne dish with non-stick paper underneath and just lift it out by the sides when it is cooked.

Great for picnics, too.

Scrapbooking - My dear friend Helen (who died the day before I had G and was responsible for my doing honours at uni, getting my first job as a historian, meeting my husband) was the person who first said to me "You should try scrapbooking". I had no idea what she was talking about but the first time I went into a scrapbooking shop and saw all those beatiful pieces of paper and cardstock and lettering and ribbons and stickers etc etc I was hooked. What other hobby allows you to buy something stunningly beautiful for a dollar? It's got all the things about quilting that I like - choosing colours, patterns, shapes, themes, emotions and stitching it all together - for a fraction of the cost and effort. And you get to stick photos of things you love on top. And you can do a page or two in an hour while your children are asleep. Here's a few of my favourite pieces of paper from my stash - just waiting for the right photos and an hour or two of my time.

Occasionally, I treat myself to a class for fun with my neighbour and this is what I made last time. (see photo below). We sprayed the background paper with templates and sparkly liquid glitter. It was great fun and like being back at kindy - making a mess and having a good time creating something. If you are into it, check out the online scrapbooking shop called Scrap Therapy. It's worth looking at just to see how pretty the graphics are - all 1950s gingham. I decided to start buying stuff on line as it is so hard to browse in peace with a two year old and a six year old in tow.

Scrapbooking is definitely good therapy and saved my bacon after both a traumatic miscarriage and a severe bout of postnatal depression/anxiety attacks. The only thing that took my mind off my irrational fears about how to get G to sleep as a baby was pondering "Should I use the pink checked paper or buy some green striped stuff" etc.

State of Play. This is a great British drama series that Scott bought on DVD after watching it on TV and loving it. I can barely stay up for an hour after tea at night but was riveted to this. We watched an hour every night and couldn't wait for the next installment. I love love love James McEvoy and he is so sweet and young in this. And if I were a lesbian, I'd be completely in love with Kelly McDonald. She is just so gorgeous - that face and that accent!! I can't get the slightest bit interested in the new film version with Helen Mirren and revolting old Russell Crowe. The series also has Bill Nighy who is just classic and John Simm, the guy from The Lakes (which we loved) and Life on Mars (which I have never seen)

Last but not least.....ABBA... Santa brought an ABBA cd for the big girl after she heard Mama Mia at the junior school disco and loved it. Now we listen to it in the car all the time. I'd forgotten what great pop songs some of them are. The funniest thing is that Greta calls the song "Rock Me" Rockmelon instead which cracks me up. So we love driving along, with ABBA blaring, singing nice and loud. When in the car by myself (doesn't happen much apart from driving to and from G's daycare lady and the railway station on the two days a week I go to work), I usually have on the Garden State soundtrack, KD's "Songs of the 49th parallel", the soundtrack to "Once", the album of various chicks doing covers of Neil Finn and Crowded House songs ("She Will Have Her Way", Missy Higgins, or Enya if I am feeling stressed. Also....Scott recently gave me a copy of Dire Strait's "Making Movies" which makes me feel nostalgic for my youth. I will always always love hearing "Romeo and Juliet".

OK....that's me at the moment. Enjoying dagdom immensely. Must go and put the big girl to bed. Love to you all.

A day away from the every day

On Saturday, I said to my other half (sometimes known as "Mr Greedy"), "We've done nothing for a few months except scrimp and save, do chores and survive two vomiting viruses. Let's go somewhere nice tomorrow, like Seaworld". (For those of you overseas, this is a marine fun park place about an hour's drive away at the Gold Coast).So....the next day, we packed our picnic lunch, our sunscreen and hats, and all the other things you need to take kids out for the day and off we set. After paying the exhorbitantly high price of entry for three of us (G was free), we went in. All the rides and entertainment was then free, which was great as the girls wanted to go on their favourite things (eg the carousel) over and over again.

We couldn't find E's togs when we were packing the car, so put her in spare shorts and vintage crochet top (a recent welcome gift from my buddy, Le) so she could have a splash in the waterplay part. She just loved it - ran around the squirty thing in the centre getting squirted about a million times, laughing her head off the whole time. I love to see her running around as she is such an indoor girl. Every so often, I looked up at the sunshine falling down on us and called her over for a bit more sunscreen.

The starfish in the rockpool were a huge hit for both girls who just loved being able to get up and touch them (and a range of other squidgy and hairy things). I found the nearby shark/fish/coral reef tank thingy like a meditation - so surreal watching the sea creatures swim past the huge glass window. It reminded me of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef at the Whitsundays in my youth - an experience that was the closest I ever got to a psychodelic trip, being not the druggie type of girl.

E. has outgrown Sesame Street but was completely entranced with meeting the Cookie monster.

By the end of the day, I must have been a bit tired and emotional, as the dolphin show (which I have seen several times) made me all weepy. I just felt overcome with how beautiful and graceful they were and that they can be bothered at all with we humans, let alone soar through the air to bring us joy. I know it is sort of just a silly trick but I found watching them really moving. The best part was before the show when we were walking to our seats and a beautiful dolphin swam up quite close to us and just floated in front of me, looking at me peacefully before moving away again. I took a second photo after the one above but he/she was already half submerged.

Today we are back to the day to day stuff - packing the school bag, finding the school hat, buying the bread and bananas. Man.... it was good to have a day that was just fun.

Just day to day stuff

Nothing earth shattering to write - just the minutiae (spelling?) of day to day life. I thought I would share this little playdough girl that E. made the other day. I forget sometimes that you don't really ever grow out of playdough. I still quite like playing with it myself. This was extra nice playdough that we made with glitter in it, so I felt like a very superior class of mother for about a whole hour!

I couldn't find the little girl one day this week and finally located her (when a little voice said "I'm here, Mummy") lying inside the knot in the couch cover that I use to try and keep our couch free from vegemite, toothpaste and other child related stains. She somehow squeezed her naked self (and "Baby"- the one in the orange dress) into the folds created by the knot so that she was sort of cradled a few inches above the hard wooden floor. She's a strange child sometimes! Now it is one of her favourite spots to go and hang out. Probably reminds her of all the hours she spent in a sling as a baby while I walked around the block trying to get her to sleep.

Here is the big girl modelling her new Seed hoodie dress and VERY long socks that I bought her on ebay. She insisted on taking one ponytail out for the photo shoot as she likes to have her hair in all sorts of weird styles. I wanted to send a photo of her in the dress to the nice woman on Ebay who sold it to me, but of course, I can't be bothered now, so I'm posting it here instead. I think it was about 30 degrees celsius when it arrived in the mail as autumn has not properly arrived yet. I had to talk her out of wearing it to a party as she would have melted.

You can see a glimpse of our little 1950s house in this photo. It came with a lovely daggy old wall unit that the last owners said we could keep. Now, I couldn't live without it as it holds our CD collection, all my vases in the bottom cupboards, the telephone books (that we don't need now that the internet is here), my stationery box with staplers, scissors, stamps etc, a little square basket for each member of the family to throw itty bitty things in (like keys, gift vouchers, head lice combs - that sort of thing), the boxes of ribbons and wrapping paper, drawers full of batteries/screwdrivers/a torch etc - yep....you get the idea. I can stop now I think. Oh yes...the rolls of Christmas paper live right up the top where I can't reach them unless I get a chair. My whole life would grind to a halt if I didn't have this wall unit.

I think my blog is turning into a stream of consciousness therapy session. It's very therapeutic to just spew out my thoughts without having to organise them, arrange topic sentences, check facts, ensure flow, and keep to a word limit (which is what I need to do when writing history stuff at work). Therapeutic for me...perhaps a little bit too much information for you guys!

Big news here is that my brother is getting married soon in East Timor so I am gearing up to hop on a plane and visit a foreign country for the first time in many years. Yep..I'd really better get my passport organised or I won't be going anywhere. I have yet to meet the girl he is marrying so it's all very very exciting. (If you read this, Big Brother, don't be cross. I don't think I've given away too many family secrets). We don't want to take the children to East Timor so they will stay home with the Daddy and I will enjoy a little adventure with my "old" family. I think the girls will be fine without me as they are totally besotted with their father. I am trying to stretch the two nights into three as otherwise, I will blink and miss the whole thing.

Time for bed. I have to go the dentist tomorrow for a filling. Even though this will be unpleasant and involve a very long needle, I am looking forward to it in some weird way as a little bit of "me" time. That indicates just how much I need a "proper" holiday without having to breastfeed anyone at 1am or walk up and down the beach with them in a sling to get them to have a nap.

Indulging myself by posting more photos of children

Dear Bloggy friends,

I haven't had much time lately for blogging or downloading photos from the camera but have just managed to get organised and so am inflicting my favourite latest photos on you. Sorry!

This photo of G and Kipper blowing bubbles cracks me up. He tried to catch every bubble she blew until I was worried that he would be sick from eating too much. ( I say this because once, while babysitting a friend's toddler, he sucked some bubble mixture up a bubble pipe and I felt compelled (as a registered nurse) to ring the Poisons Info line for advice. While I was on the phone, the toddler vomited it all up and survived to tell the tale, but I was psychologically scarred for life. The gorgeous boy's mum then died suddenly when he was about 7, but that's a whole other story and too sad to get into).

Photo of G wearing her beloved "heart heart" shirt and E's swimming cap, which for some reason she loves. (This photo belongs to a bit further down the page but didn't want to move down there).


Above is E. in the rain on Easter Sunday morning - quite early as you can see from the lack of sunshine. I would have thought that as it was raining, the Easter Bunny would have hidden the eggs for the customary hunt inside the house...but no....
Below is the little girl, also with an easter bucket, but, sadly, sans umbrella. I'm sure that one day both my children will die of pneumonia from being allowed (by their marshmallow father) to play in the rain without umbrellas. G. is wearing gumboots though so that's ok then, isn't it?
Next we have the girls wearing their easter bonnets. I know, they don't really look like bonnets at all, but E needed a hat for the school Easter parade and I thought a cone shaped hat would be the easiest type to make. I thought it would be cheaper than buying a hat to decorate but then I spent around $17 at the Hypermarket buying tissue paper, cardboard, lace, ribbons, etc. When finished the hats also had a swathe of white tulle hanging from the pointy bits making them look more princessy than Eastery but that was ok. I had to miss the Easter Parade this year which broke my heart a little bit. Last year, I was still on maternity leave and watched my little Prep girl marching with her class in the parade (in bunny ears, I think). Little G. ran up to her big sister and joined the parade and I was so touched by the whole thing that I got all teary. I was also really touched that the school made a big deal of donating lots of easter eggs etc to the Salvation Army to take to shelters/hospitals and a Salvation Army lady was at the school parade to accept them all. I love that E is at a school with lots of community spirit.

Here are the girls with umbrellas again. It's been SO wet here lately. (It's been raining on Le's blog too, I notice). We went to my sister's for a cuppa a week or two ago to celebrate my Dad's birthday. It was gorgeous sitting on her front deck, with the children playing (in and out of the rain), just chatting and relaxing, as families do. I finally managed to get G into this pretty dress that a friend sent her for Christmas from Malaysia. She usually wants only to wear her "heart heart shirt" and "orange pants" which are disgustingly old, faded and stained and make her look like a complete ragamuffin. I've just added a photos of said shirt but it has appeared at the top of the post and doesn't want to be relocated down here.

That's it for now except to say thank you, to Tammie, for the tip about centre-ing the photos to make them a bit more well behaved. It's working....most of the time.

PS We did have some discussions about the true meaning of Easter at our house. I wouldn't call myself a Christian but I sort of feel that the Judaeo-Christian (?spelling) mythology and literature is part of our background so we do talk about the bible sometimes and that Jesus was a good guy. Anyway...E must have had an RE lesson about Easter at school because she informed me that Jesus died at Easter but then came back to life "in a big fridge". Maybe they thought tomb was too scary a word!

A date with the Daddy

It's a rainy old day in Brisbane today but I had a date with my husband to go to the movies. Such a treat and something we only manage to do once every couple of months. We have a lovely 17 year old babysitter whom our children love and it's a great feeling to drive off seeing their happy excited little faces at having Olivia come over and "play" with them.

We wanted to see Kate Winslet in The Reader but it has nearly finished its run so we had to trek into the city to see it. It was great but fairly sombre so we left feeling a wee bit serious. Then it was time for a browse in the lovely city shops in Queens Plaza and I tried on a little winter black dress and some boots but did not buy them. Of course, we came home with something for the girls rather than us - some beautiful new PJs from Peter Alexander. G normally wears E's handmedowns so this time she got a new pair of her own.

We were on our way to Paddington for a snack and a browse in the bookshops when the babysitter rang to say G was sick! C'est la vie! Home we went. She's ok but we couldn't quite enjoy ourselves knowing she had an upset little tummy.

Time to run a warm bath for a little one. See you all soon.