Happy...

After what seemed like an interminable week at work last week, where I hurtled along at about 200 kilometres per hour, I was determined on the weekend to do only things that fit one of three criteria. Everything I did had to be either fun, exciting or it had to make me happy.

I started my weekend by leaving work 15 minutes early so I could get to the post office to get a parcel that was waiting. 

You can call it ridiculous that a woman of my age gets excited about Hershey's syrup. I don't care. It's the simple things that make life worth living and Hershey's is one of them. That and the sweet and sour mix that also came in the same box so I can make cocktails...

This is a Fruity Toad and while it may look like watered down wee it was actually really good...I think Sweet and Sour mix has magical properties.... 

I made some red velvet cupcakes 

I pottered around doing some sewing when I felt like it. These two blocks are destined to head off to Little Island Quilting  to be made into quilts for Mexican street kids. It doesn't take long to whack a couple of blocks together. Check out the post here if you want to know more or you want to help out. 

I dreamed of new projects and as soon as I finish the Seville Quilt I've decided I'm starting this one. I even raced out to buy the paper templates so I cant chicken out. 

This beautiful quilt was made by Hilda at Every Stitch. I was so inspired! 

We moved forward on the guest room re-do. I have officially vowed never to paint the walls dark colours ever again. It took 4 coats of white to cover up the previous colour. But it's done and while I'm freaking right out about having such pale walls I think it'll all come together and look fabulous in the end...

Before and After...

New (to me ) furniture has arrived, and re-painting and re-purposing has begun. 

Vile stool before (this was seriously one of the worst upholstering jobs I've ever seen ) 

After shot of the same stool once I'd had my way with it. 

And the piece de resistance - an antique dressing table which Mr. P has the pleasure of re-painting (in pretty much the same colour it is now- but it'll look fabulous with a new coat or two of paint) 

I pottered about in the kitchen...or sent Mr. P out to forage for food, and dint fuss about calories. 

And all in all I just did what made me happy. It was the perfect way to spend a long weekend. I think this is how weekends are meant to be. 

Talking Turkey

Last week I started thinking about how ripped off Australia is because we don't have a Thanksgiving Day. Given we are a country built on enforced labour (thank you England for using us as the world's biggest prison)perhaps people had no reason to feel thankful in the fledgling years of our great nation. I imagine that the heat, the flies, the idea of being sentenced to 7 years servitude for flogging a loaf of bread, the 5 month boat ride and deadly snakes and spiders made people quite pissy to be here. 

The Northern Hemisphere can keep Halloween, and Groundhog Day and Darwin Day (Who even knew there was a day for Charles Darwin? If you did- you're a total geek) but I think Thanksgiving is a very cool idea.

The more I thought about it - the more it seemed to me that I was just going to have to create Aussie Thanksgiving Day. My email in box hasn't exactly been flooded with invitations to anyone else's Thanksgiving shindigs (hint hint for subsequent years people) so it was obvious if I wanted turkey I was just going to have to pony up and cook one myself.  

Decision made, I went forth to find one of a suitable size. I think my US friends are pulling my leg when they talk about cooking 20 pound turkeys because I certainly couldn't find one. This leads me to believe:

a) That 20 pound turkeys are an urban myth

b) The US send all their anorexic turkeys Down Under because what the hell would we know - we don't celebrate Thanksgiving 

c) That Australia is the world capital of midget turkeys. 

The biggest turkey I could find was 11 pounds which is basically a chicken on illegal steroids. But I had to work with what I had, because Thea wouldn't fed ex me one of the 20 pounders. Just a tip- when you guys are bragging about your 20 pound turkeys don't mention the price you paid. You risk bodily injury. I can buy beluga caviar cheaper here than a turkey. 

But find a turkey I did, and then began the slow laborious process of watching it defrost for three days in my fridge, taking up the entire bottom shelf, which is normally where I chill my wine. Talk about a sacrifice.  I mean really, who takes meat out of the freezer on Tuesday night when they're going to eat it Friday? I was all for taking it out of the freezer Thursday night and letting it defrost on the sink until I was going to cook it but internet opinion repeatedly told me that was the fastest way to cooking up a dose of food poisoning.

So I spent the next three days researching how to cook bloody turkey (ironically the object of which is not to have any blood coming out of your turkey at all) The internet wasn't at all helpful because apparently some people out there cook their turkeys for 13 minutes a pound and some cook it for 40 minutes per pound. I guess some people like their turkey rare? 

Eventually (just after I started to weep uncontrollably and consider whether the local chicken shop would cook my turkey for me if I begged and cried loud enough) I found instructions on the actual turkey wrapping.....who would have thought to look there?

This Thanksgiving business is hard work. In between popping off to the hairdresser, I spent pretty much all day in the kitchen, peeling spuds, trimming the ends off beans and cutting carrots, wrapping corn in foil, and stuffing a cob loaf with cheese and butter. We wont talk about how much butter I actually used during the course of the day but I will say cows all over Australia were working overtime. Naturally I only used calorie free butter so it's all good.

My intention was to show you my entire Thanksgiving meal but somewhere along the way I forgot to take photos of everything (I'm blaming turkey stress). I did manage to take a picture of my dwarf turkey and it doesn't look all that appetising. If looking up a turkey's butt will stress you, look away now.

It looked far prettier all plated up and nobody died of whatever malady you contract from badly cooked turkey. My vegetables were also sublime. I served up mashed potatoes instead of roasted ones. And green , orange and yellow ones too. I now know why you all serve mashed spuds with Thanksgiving dinner- its because you don't have room in your oven for anything besides turkey. 

Gratuitous tablescape shot to divert your attention from the fact I didn't get pictures of anything else. 

And finally the piece de resistance. My triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream, cherry ripes, wafers, ganache and chocolate honeycomb.  Yes- I put all of that on one cake. 

This cake came together far too easily. I should have known something was going to give. When I poured the layer of ganache over the top before I put the honeycomb on top, it all pissed out the sides of the cake and my cake ended up floating in rather large puddle of chocolate that came an inch up the sides.  I did contemplate leaving it there and pretending an intentional moat was part of the plan but ended up sopping up all that chocolate with 327 paper towels instead. Do you know how hard it is to lift a 5 pound cake with an egg flip so you can wipe underneath?

I vote Thanksgiving should be a bi annual event. Who's with me?

Call me "Domestic Goddess"

This weekend I finally saw the bottom of my dirty laundry hamper. I consider this to be one of my most successful achievements for the week. When you get to Friday and have to wear a dress to work because you don't have any clean/ironed jeans left it's definitely time to crank up the washing machine. Especially when you own 20 pairs of jeans. 

I also undertook any number of other boring, mundane but necessary chores this weekend,  like dusting cobwebs from my ceiling cornices because it was starting to look like I was getting in with some early Halloween decorating here. I washed cushion covers, and dusted skirting boards and cleaned blinds and moved furniture to vacuum. I feel so virtuous! 

In truth I cleaned properly for the first time in so long Im embarrassed to publicly put a time frame on it. But I'm full of ulterior motives.  

Little Miss Sunshine bought something recently that I thought was frankly the best invention ever and within days I had rushed off to buy one for myself. 

But since my house was such a filth pit, Sadie was having trouble picking up the three inches of dog hair masquerading as shag pile carpet  as she scooted round the house vacuuming her little heart out. Bless her. This is as close to a maid as I'm ever going to get. Now that the house is clean I'll be cracking the whip and expecting her to be earning her keep while I'm out working.

You may recall the coffee sack cushion I made in February. (by the way that chair is still waiting to be re-upholstered- just the thought of doing it scares me)  In my cushion cover washing frenzy this weekend I discovered what an awesome job my washing machine does.  Ummmm yeah - where did the writing go? Now it's just a plain Hessian cushion which isn't half as trendy as having a coffee sack cushion.

I decided to play round in the kitchen today to get rid of some stuff we had lurking in both the fridge and the freezer. I'm on a waste not want not kick at the moment.

Scrambled eggs (It was supposed to be an omelette but it kind of got stuck to the bottom of the pan )

Broccoli and Potato soup 

Lamb Rogan Josh 

Lemon and vanilla coconut cake. 

Not one skerrick of sewing has been done for a week. There I said it out loud. Kick me out of the crafty club. I may just get to it this week. If my machine decides to play nice. 

The Hangover and the I Phone

Yesterday Miss P and I had planned to have a cooking day. Since she didn't get out of bed until nearly lunchtime o'clock and I didn't get my act together to do my grocery shopping until about 1.00pm the idea kind of fell by the way side. By the time I got home, packed the grocery shopping away and made lunches and a menu plan for this week I was shattered. Miss P didn't have a shower until tea time so the whole day was pretty much written off. I traded cooking for quilting instead.  I ended up spending most of the night playing logo quiz with Miss P and planning our attack for an early start on Sunday for Cookfest 2012. 


Mr. P went out last night to celebrate the 40th birthday of twin friends of his. I  elected to stay home because I've met one of the twins once when he came to clean my windows and have never met the other.  My  logical thought process around situations like this are that I have a more significant relationship with the dude who serves me at the supermarket each week and I wouldn't go to his birthday party either.  I don't think Mr. P really gets my attitude to social gatherings because frankly that man would go to the opening of an envelope. 

I offered to drive Mr. P and one of his mates to the celebration but they insisted on taking a taxi so I didn't have to go out in the cold.  Their thoughtfulness was rendered completely pointless 15 minutes later since I got an emergency phone call from Mr. P asking me to come out in the cold to deliver his wallet because he'd left it at home. Yes folks-  it's hard to buy drinks at the pub with no money. Especially if you don't have boobs. 


I think it was creeping close to daylight before Mr. P actually made it home. He came through the door to the delight of the dogs who were sharing the bed with me. Indy tap danced all over the bed in glee(and when 100 pounds of dog is happy and using your bed as trampoline you're bound to get woken up) and Lola, who is definitely short sighted, barked and snarled until she recognised it was Mr. P.  All this kerfuffle was accompanied by the  sounds of Mr. P attempting to be quiet by shouting "Be Quiet-Don't wake Mummy" for at least 3 minutes at the top of his lungs. He then stomped off to the lounge (I'm pretty sure he thought he was tiptoeing )in a vain attempt to pretend he had nothing to do with all the noise and immediately passed out in his chair. He finally made it to bed about 1/4 past 7 and then started making "I'm going to chuck " noises in his sleep. I gave up and got out of bed. 


I decided to spend a couple of hours quilting while I waited for Miss P to rise from the dead. A couple of hours turned into 4 and by that time it was almost lunch'o'clock again. 


At this point I decided brunch was in order and Miss P finally surfaced, serenaded by the smell of cooking bacon. Mr. P staggered out of bed. He took one look at the frying bacon and headed for the toilet. Once he was done he decided it was the perfect time for romance and attempted to kiss me. Blerk- no thanks. He stomped back to bed feeling very sorry for himself after telling me he couldn't recall what time he got home, how he got home, or how he sustained the graze on his wrist. His genius deduction was that he fell over. Move over Sherlock Holmes, there's a new super sleuth in town! Have I ever mentioned that my husband used to be a P.I?


Over brunch Miss P and I planned who would do what with the cooking. I obviously wasn't listening too well because here's how it actually went down.

I collected all the ingredients 

I mixed all the ingredients 

Miss P played with her I Phone 

I cut up a chicken and told Miss P to watch because she was doing the next one 

Miss P ignored me and played with her I Phone some more. 

Miss P had a whinge about how she hates cutting chicken ...

I cut some more chicken 

I put some of the chicken bones in a pot to make some stock 

And drowned the chicken pieces I had just cut in marinade 

While Miss P played with her I Phone a bit more 

I washed the dishes by hand if you don't mind, since the dishwasher was full of dishes getting clean.

while Miss P went and hid in the toilet for a while 

Then I started collecting the ingredients to made Indian meatballs (which are made from the flavours of India not actual Indians ) 

At this point, Mr. P surfaced again to watch the football. Doesn't he look refreshed and healthy and not at all hung over (cough , cough ) 

And then I literally bullied Miss P into helping by confiscating her I Phone and threatening to lose her sim card in the toilet.

Mr. P saw all of 10 minutes of the football before he crashed like a 12 month old baby who has been at Playgroup all morning.

I went shopping for essentials . As of tomorrow Loz and I are going to torture ourselves by not shopping for at least the next month. I had to buy a cow and a bread making machine and some seeds so I can have fresh vegetables. I have no idea what Mr. P or Miss P  did in my absence. I'm assuming it involved something to do with I Phones and snoring.

When I came home I made up some chicken and vegetable soup 

While Miss P straightened her hair 

and then I rolled up the meatballs and cooked them 

 while Miss P put on her makeup.

And all the while Mr. P napped in bed 

Then I cleaned up the soup and meatball mess so I have room to cook chicken masala for dinner and then drive Miss P home. 

Lessons learned in the last 48 hours :

"Lets do some cooking together Mum" really means "How about you cook my meals for the week Mum while I talk on my I Phone and make myself beautiful"

"I promise I wont do anything stupid " really means "Im coming home so drunk I'll be lucky to be able to tell the cab driver where I live". ( I suspect the cab driver snuck a peek at his drivers licence to find out) 

All I want right now is a shower and a hair wash because I've looked like this all day ....