Saturday Allsorts

I signed up for my first ever Friday Night Sew in hosted by Handmade by Heidi  and it happened last night. Everyone in the Pyjamas household was briefed on the sew in rules ..ie I am unavailable between 7 pm and 11 pm unless someone dies  or requires serious  medical attention. If you disturb me you better make sure you have your running shoes on and the phone number for medical attention because you'll need it by the time I'm finished with you.  Everyone played the game -well mostly. I did wander out of my sewing room at one point and Little P and I played a game of chasey around the ottoman in the lounge and another game of "lets turn the floor lamp on and off for around 20 minutes" because that's heaps of fun. Have I mentioned in the last 5 minutes   how blessedly cute my grandson is? No ? Well he is. I love that he's learning he can influence his environment  and the people in it. That kid said Na- Na about a thousand times yesterday and pointed at bananas because he learned earlier in the day if you ask - you  will receive. Genius I tell you - that child is a genius and everything he does is one step closer towards the germination of an amazing human being.

Any-hoo. Focus. Sew In. I decided to start something new because I simply don't have enough on my plate at the moment.   For all my bitching about Christmas in July at work this week , I was inspired to start a Christmas quilt , mainly because I have approximately 187 yards of Christmas fabric in my stash and have never done a Christmas quilt before. Not being completely insane, (yet)  I decided to keep this one simple. I'm planning a second Christmas quilt this year that'll be more complicated but for now, I'm about a bee's whisker away from a complete meltdown. KISS (Keeping it simple stupid ) is the way to go.

So at 8 pm last night, I started with this pile of Robert Kaufman Sparkle All the Way Jelly Roll bits. Yes I was late to the sew in.  Have you ever noticed jelly rolls look sublime when they arrive but kind of look like spilled guts once they're unrolled?  They don't look nearly as pretty. They really are a case in point for clever marketing because if they slopped bits of random fabric strips in a baggie nobody would buy them.

And hey Presto by 11 pm last night I had this...lots of strips for a Christmas stacked coin quilt.

In other fabulously gossipy news this week, the delectable Jenni over at Baa Me Kniits had a giveaway recently for this lovely shawl and I won. Whooooooooo Hooooooooooo. I'm so going to parade this lovely at work and make everyone jealous. Thanks again Jenni. (and to her son who drew my name !)

Elizabeth over at Such a Sew and Sew  is having a giveaway  to celebrate her 200th post. You can win this abbey bag made by  Elizabeth  herself.  Don't you just love the fabric and cute little pin cushion?  Pop on over and have a gander about  how to enter and to congratulate her on the 200 posts thingy, which is actually a really big deal.

And I had a cook-a-thon this morning because it will be the last time I do one in my old kitchen since this time next week , it will no longer exist.  Plus we will need to eat while we are waiting for the new kitchen to go in, but we'll pretty much only have a microwave so I made enough spaghetti sauce for three meals, beef koftas for two meals, and enough curry for three meals. Then I made 7 dozen party sausage rolls for Little P's birthday party tomorrow. 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm Rendang

Little P's sausage rolls

Yesterday , I primed the meat safe (again) and today Mr. P decided I wasn't painting fast enough or well enough or something and took over doing the top coat. (has anyone else ever noticed every picture of Mr. P is on an angle? )

I've decided you can all suffer through the kitchen re-do with me in real time from here on in. So much is starting to happen that I  want  to spread the misery as far as possible   to share it with you in infinite detail. This week I contacted 5 tilers, two of whom actually turned up to quote me for a 40 square metre tiling job. The kitchen installer contacted me today and came out to do his final measure and walk us through the process. He confirmed they would be arriving early next Friday morning  to take out the old kitchen (and they'll even remove the sink splashback tiles for us while they're doing it.) The plumber will be coming next Friday as well to start installing the new plumbing for the dishwasher and to cap our old tap connections and put the new ones in since we're moving the taps...whooooooooo hooooooooo, it's actually happening! That's progress.

Have a fabulous weekend. My Saturday night will be spent looking at what other particpants got up to for Friday Sew In and I'll be partying tomorrow with the one year old crowd and all of the Pyjama's family.

Slack Tea Thursday

OK, first off today I was exposed to the ridiculous-ness that is Christmas in July...I think this is some weird arse Aussie invention specifically so we can experience  what it's like to eat traditional Christmas fare when it's cold outside like all you Northern hemisphere people do when it's actually the real Christmas. As if once a year isn't stressful enough.   It's also a time to do secret freaking Santa, (I don't even do that at real Christmas ) and eat a lot of food that is usually reserved for one day of the year.  I do wonder what Christians think of this extra Christmas- are they offended by us making this special event into an eat fest? If you are offended I would like to point out I didn't eat much in silent protest and thought about having an asthma attack before dessert so I retired to my office and did some actual work once the threat of imminent death had passed.

Anyway  we all had to bring a plate - and I baked a ham. That's my usual Christmas thing. I sustained injuries carving it with the shitty blunt work  knives , but nobody is dead from eating the baked ham (yet ) so it was a rip roaring success.  Here is a picture of my injured hand . I know that wrinkles and spots aren't injuries, I was talking about the bandaid-ed fingers...but totally off topic when did my hands get to look like little sausages ? Don't email to tell me that my hands look like kid hands- everyone tells me that (and in fact I do fit into kid gloves...not the goat kind - the little person kind )

Anyway . after getting home sometime well after my usual time, I couldn't make a decision about dinner, or whether I was even really hungry. It's getting to be slim pickin's here as we try to get rid of our pantry contents before I am cupboardless next week. OT again,  I'm actually finding it really hard to think at the moment. It's like my brain only has just so much space and it's already full of other crap .. really important details, some of which are threatening to leak out and be lost.  So when I opened the fridge I decided to have the first thing I saw. Thank Goodness we didn't have pickled herring or goats eyeballs in there.

*****BORING ALERT*****

Crumpets with Vegemite and chocolate milk.

I was hoping the food fairies might have snuck in and left me Vodka and lobster but no such luck...sigh.

A teeny tiny brag ...Little Pyjamas  turned one year old yesterday and got lots of presents. Little P - my birthday wish for you was that you have a happy life and end up a well rounded human being. And develop a sense of humour kid,  because being part of this family you' re going to need it. Bella and Grandpa love you so much! 

Little P's Party is on Sunday. I'll post pics then, because MOP and DOP  (Mum  and Dad  of Pyjamas )   will be there as well as SOP, and BILOP. (and all the other OP's) Wow I hope I can remember how to make sausage rolls before then because apparently I need to make about 100 of them...

Snowball Night-Week 6 and 7 and Other Projects.

Since I was computer-less last Monday, I'm doing a two for one post this week and doubling up to tell you about  some other sewing I've been doing. I  am  amazed at the fact I can fit all this  stuff in, maintain a blog, work,  run our household, and renovate a kitchen all at once!  And we even have clean underpants to wear occasionally - I am truly superwoman. And so are all of you. Unless you're a man - in which case you're superman. Obviously.

When we last checked my snowball progress, I had 74 snowballs left to get done and a mother load of squaring up to do.  In the last two weeks I've managed to do 15 more snowballs and give my rotary cutter a workout squaring about 50 snowballs up. I was kind of hoping to get more done but that's the way life is from time to time.

 And this is what a stack of snowball blocks looks like...109 of them to be precise.

And this is what the guardian of the snowballs looks like.

I also managed to get this pretty quilt top together for the Spread the Cheer project. Cot quilts come together fast which is very cool.  Considering this was my first attempt at triangle piecing I'm pretty happy with the way it's coming together. I'm less pleased with my blurry photo..but meh ...

And the unpicker and I got jiggy  while I fixed some mistakes from my aborted attempt at spray basting on Little P's quilt and the subsequent two lines of quilting I managed to do  before the glue decided that it didnt want to stick. Back to the drawing board on this one , with some taping to the floor and pin basting. I've always pinned on my kitchen floor but since I dont have one at the moment I'm going to have to find an alternative. Finding a clean space at the moment is also a challenge.

I decided to make Indy and Lola a new quilt and started with the idea of wonky blocks from my scrap stash. I got this far and decided it wasn't wonky enough, and that it just looked a bit cobbled together. I'm putting this one on the backburner for a while until I sort it out in my head. It just looks wrong. Maybe I should just go for a string quilt instead. Log Cabin and I have never had a warm and cordial relationship.

I've set goals for all my WIP's and if I don't wind up dead from stress, you should be seeing lots of quilting finishes between now and the end of August. It's  really important for me to have a pleasurable  creative outlet at the moment that I can disappear off  and do for a while every now and then.  And on that note  I've decided to put Translation Tuesdays on hold for a while until things are a bit more settled here too. I just need to be real about what's manageable for me  at the moment.

Happy Creating !

Look Away Now- Kitchen Update-Nothing to See Here

Forgive me bloggers- it has been two weeks since my last confession update.

We have been doing lots of final organisation-y kind of things and a little work. Things seem to be moving slowly but I guess that's because we haven't done any of the "Oh my goodness what a difference that made" work yet. Replacing your ceilings and pulling up tile doesn't give you the "Wow" factor I'm looking forward to seeing  at the end of this project. Assuming we ever finish. I'm expecting at this point to do an unveil for you all around Christmas. And so , because I don't have anything much to show you, I'm going to show you some of the colours we've picked out.

Walls

Bench tops

Kitchen cabinetry in this colour and style but I picked nicer handles. And I'm not having glass doors because I dont want to have to clean them.

We met with the kitchen designer (sounds impressive doesn't it ) last weekend and were informed that because we have requested some non standard stuff our kitchen components will take at least a week longer to be done than usual.   So we're now looking at an install date of around August 9th which is only 3 weeks away. The old kitchen is being ripped out in 12 days, so we can tile before the new cabinets go in.  Living here is going to be just like camping, which is not usually something I say "Oh goody" at the prospect of. Yeah I'm a princess. If I don't have a place to plug in my GHD as far as I'm concerned you're in the stone age.  So,  if you live close by you might like to take pity on us and invite us over for dinner. Or you  can save the favour for when we do the bathroom and need a shower. Those of you who don't live close- you can send  me dinners via mail.

With the exception of the ceilings and floors and the continual mess,  the kitchen doesn't look all that different at this point. The new ceilings are in. Mr. P did a load of boring putty-ing (I'm sure there is a technical name for this I'm just not interested)  on the ceilings to cover the seams.   This is one of those necessary evil type things. I'll get excited when we have cornices again and the ceiling is painted. And my light fittings are in. And the kitchen is finished.

I have ceilings ! Ugly ceilings...

There are currently  no lights in my kitchen because we are completely changing the configuration of the lighting for this area, which naturally can't go in until we have finished the ceilings   so we've been using a 500 watt halogen to see.  It's awesome because  I get to work on my tan, kill the environment with power usage and stay warm all at the same time. It's like having the Australian summer inside in the middle of winter.   The risk of blindness if I look directly at it is just an added thrill.

We have ordered our floor tiles. I went with an off white Italian ceramic. There are those among you who will tell me I am crazy for going with off white because it will show up all the dirt. Let me tell you it doesn't matter what we get it will show up the dirt, because we have two dogs the size of Shetland ponies who never learned to wipe their feet and I want off white. If you had lived with disgusting chocolate brown floor tiles for the last 8 years you'd want white too.  And just to freak you all right out white tile haters , we got enough to do the entry, hallway and computer room as well. This is them. Rustic and textured.

And this is what we pulled up...(I'm selling them cheap if you're interested)

And this is what my kitchen floors look like right now. Pretty isn't it? I have no idea why it's green. There are floor boards under that muck somewhere. Quick- cover it up with white tile.  I am seriously considering getting someone in to do the tiling at this stage and bugger the cost.

I have no splash back because I pulled it out already and I haven't decided what to replace it with. And I have no range hood either. This is the gorgeousness that is currently my cooking area.

I have ignored all the sanding I have to get done. I started doing something totally unrelated to the kitchen telling myself it's stripping and painting  practice before I tackle those  chairs, and the dresser  ...and the table. I have changed my mind over what to do with the table about 30 times and think I've finally settled on something but I'm not going to say what it is so I can change my mind again later and not look flighty. This is what I have been working on today. I have realised I despise painting which is unfortunate because I have stacks of it left to do.

And after two coats of primer I have this...(Miss Mustard Seed said I had to keep this piece and she knows what she's talking about so I'm making something pretty out of it )

I have worried about whether everything is going to come together. Will the walls match the floors? Will it be too much white ? Am I crazy for trying to match two different styles in one space? Will warm white REALLY go with stark white ? This has been my crazy thought process this week. I am driving myself and everyone around me INSANE. Poor Mr. P. I think he's thinking about the "till death us do part" bit of our marriage vows  a lot this week and not in  a good way.  

I am at a point where I think this is never going to be done, my life will never be normal again, my house will never be clean again , and I will never know where my plates and Tupperware have disappeared to . Conversely I am cacking my daks that I won't have things done before the installers  get here. When I mention the bathroom reno in 6 months can someone slap me in the side of the head and point me towards all my  posts about the kitchen.

Yours sincerely,

Princess whiny-arse.

P.S. I completely get that in the grand scheme of things this is so not a big deal compared to famine, terminal illness and world poverty. However I am a Virgo and we like order and cleanliness and predictability and control and I don't have any of those things at the moment. And Patty, I know you're reading this and all I can say is you'd better bring some good wine and some Valium next weekend. I need both of them.

Fabric Love and Quilty Things

Anyone who is obsessed with fabric understands that as soon as fabric arrives you're planning to cut it for the next quilt-even if you have five  quilts on the go already. New fabric  arrived this week in my PO box and I'm itching to start something new,  but I think I'd better finish one of my WIP's first. ( I give that resolution about a week because I already have several quilty visions running through my head )

 

More Christmas Fabric  to go with the layer cake that arrived last month. This is Robert Kaufman -Sparkly Christmas. It's just so funky and happy. Not sure how to do the layer cake and fat quarter pack justice in a Christmas quilt but I have an idea of what to do with those jelly roll bits.

I love fat quarter packs they always look so pretty  all stacked up.

I went mad on Hallmark Evergreen Ornaments fat quarter bundles. I bought two. At this point I am seriously questioning whether I have a Christmas obsession. You should see my stack of Christmas fabric (it's hidden in the sewing studio away from Mr. P. I love calling my sewing studio a studio rather than a room. It just sounds so much more crafty and like I actually know what I'm doing in there)  

And I bought matching stuff to do a backing and I even bought contrasting fabric  for the binding . Wow! I was on fire the day I ordered this ..usually I worry about the backing later and then curse the fact I can't find anything that works. I'm looking for some Hushabye at the moment due to this disorganised approach to quilting and fabric purchasing.

And oh my goodness....

I'm completely kicking my own arse that I didn't buy three of these Rumba fat Quarter packs  instead of one. I LOVE this fabric. I'm imagining this as simple squares with chocolate sashing. I really wish I knew how much I would love it when I saw it in person.  How freaking cute are these birds?

I'm biting the bullet and joining in the Friday Night Sew In hosted by Handmade by Heidi next Friday night, July 23rd.  Click on the picture in my sidebar if you want to play too. I've never done a sew in before. Should be fun!

 

And here is s snippet of what I've been up to in the sewing studio the  last couple of weeks...yes that's a crafty  mess.  All will be revealed in a forthcoming post! 

 

I am seriously glad it's Friday.

Slack Tea Thursday

I'm not going to make a big song and dance about Slack Tea Thursday this week. There's always a back story to Slack Tea Thursday but tonight I'm going to use as few words as possible. Stop laughing immediately.

Arrived home from work at 5.30pm. This was entree....left over cold lamb chops from last night's dinner.

Off to the Plaza to buy Little P's birthday presents, and dropped into Macca's on the way back home. I had a voucher..so it was slack, fast  AND free.

I added Slack Tea Thursday to my work team meeting agenda today.  Nobody batted an eyelash and immediately launched into suggestions. Technically we were  finished and we didn't have to minute that part of the meeting. Probably just as well.... 

A random collection of randomness, randomly speaking

Wow! You're all still here! It's so wonderful to be back in the land of the computer people.

Have I mentioned lately how much I adore my computer ? And how disconnected I've felt from the world the last few days.  Playing endless games of solitaire (and whooping the computer's arse might I add ) does not thrill me as much as blogging. Can you say "New Modem" because that's what Temperamental Tessie needed.  Who knew modems were like car batteries and didn't last forever ?  We just replaced the car battery as well because Casa de Pyjamas appears to be possessed by the "breakdown" gremlins at the moment.  

My life just keeps on giving me the giggles. Mr. P never quite recovered from his germ ridden lurgy last week and has spent the last two days either at work being a hero or in bed sleeping off the lurgy so he can go to work the next day and be a hero again. The irony in  all of this is that Mr. P was told a month ago he is being let go in about 10 weeks due to a company restructure so I'm not quite sure why he's pushing himself so hard. Or where our next meal is coming from. I'll worry about that when I have to. In the meantime I'm stocking up on packet pasta, toothpaste and soap. (It's important to be clean and have fresh minty breath for job interviews)

I ended up with Mr. P's lurgy and spent most of last weekend sick which kinda put a crimp in the kitchen reno plan. Me and my boogies are just like that (insert image of crossed fingers to denote closeness and affection ) I sound  like one of those barking seals at Seaworld, which would be wildly attractive if I was trying to hook up with a walrus, except they're just not my type.

Mr. P and I managed to pull up all the kitchen floor tiles last weekend despite illness.  I must admit to feeling great satisfaction at smashing the old floor tiles apart after 8 years of being sick of looking at them and hating them more every time I had to mop the floor.  I'm really hoping whatever that green stuff is that is making our kitchen floor boards  look exactly the colour and texture of an 8 ball table top isn't mould. More on the kitchen reno over the weekend.

It's sooooooooooo good to be back!

My Internet sucks....

I'm  posting to let you know we had bad storms here Friday night and our internet has been playing up ever since . In fact if I get this posted it'll be a miracle since I've managed to connect to the internet for roughly 60 minutes in three minute allotments in the last 48 hours. My email is being unreliable as well, so until it's all fixed I decided to save myself the frustration and go on a blogless/internet-less/computerless holiday. Maybe it's the modem , maybe it's our connection. I'm sure Mr. P will fix it if I nag long and loud enough.

I'll see you when I return from exile.

This is killing me because I have a million things to tell you. I've been so busy and creative and renovate-y!

Yay! I got an extra three minutes to fix my typos and punctuation errors! This is utterly ridiculous.

Slack Tea Thursday

I have an excellent tale for you this evening. It has all the ingredients essential for Slack Tea Thursday. There is drama. There is a twist and there is slackness. I have decided to give you a two-fer and tell it from two different perspectives and you can decide which is the more amusing re-telling of this evening's tea events.  

Mrs. P's Slack Tea Thursday story

Mr. P awoke this morning swearing he was suffering from bubonic plague. Being an ex nurse I am always decidedly unsympathetic when people make such declarations, because I have nursed people through worse things than bubonic plague. As far as I am concerned if you have enough breath to speak and your head is still attached, you're alright Jack.    I told Mr. P  it was much more likely to be a 24 hour virus because his tongue and face were not yet black, swollen  and gross and I lithely skipped off to work after throwing a box of tissues in his general direction and issuing stern instructions  not to chuck in my side of the bed.  I must confess  I  did have  a shower this morning in  Dettol hand wash and  hoped Mr. P would be considerate enough to die in bed if he was of a mind to pop off this mortal coil since there is no way I could move him if he keeled over on the floor in my absence. But such thoughts and actions I did keep to myself not being completely lacking in social niceties.

At some point Mr. P  dragged himself from his sick bed and called me at work to croak "It's your slack tea thingy tonight isn't it- is it breaking the rules  if I make you something for dinner?". "Go for it " I said figuring that if I'm not cooking it - that's still pretty slack while worrying also a little about his germy bits touching my food. But, who am I to turn down a free meal with the added bonus of potential scarlet fever or Ebola chucked in ? I figured I could always feed whatever he made  surreptitiously to the dogs under the table  or use a nice disinfectant gravy to kill any germified bits of the meal.

So home I trot after a long day at the salt mines. (If you're new here I don't actually work in a salt mine that was a figure of speech, but I do trot because I'm one of those annoying high energy people)   Mr. P had this going in the crock pot (which incidentally would have yielded the  added bonus of a long cooking time to kill any germs that fell in during preparation)

Mr. P doesn't do a lot of cooking unless it involves blackening dead carcasses on the barbecue ( he calls it creole - I call it murder) - so he didn't realise that this would need about 6 hours to cook. It is called a slow cooker for a reason.  So when I skipped home tonight after an awesomely fabulous day of counting salt grains  expecting Lobster Thermidore and a Croquembouche and saw this casserole I said sweetly to Mr. P "Darling. Love. light of my life what time did you put this on today?" and he said 2.30pm, I said "That won't be ready until about 9.00pm tonight, sweetie, angel, pudding pie". And he scoffed at me !

Now you can do a lot of things to a Pyjama Girl but scoffing at my wisdom and knowledge isn't advisable if you want to live to breathe another day.  But being wise and knowing it is sometimes better to keep one's own counsel ,  and because I also did not wish to look like an ungrateful cow, I said nothing and just kept reading my emails, planning a vegemite and toast raid later.

30 minutes later I received my just reward when Mr. P came to me and sheepishly said "I'll just go down to the shop and buy you something for dinner" after surreptitiously poking the potatoes and finding they had the consistency of marbles.  

So, ultimately I had a 1/4 chicken and chip pack with gravy  for tea, which did not fuss me in the slightest.

And  I figure that's still slack because I didn't have to move my ever diminishing arse from the computer chair (have I mentioned I have lost 15 pounds since January? )

And Mr. P being the kind , thoughtful and generous husband that he is , purchased dessert for me as well... Mint Lindt. It's no less than I deserve. And if I start to get fat again, I don't have to accept personal responsibility,  I can just blame Mr. P.

Mr. P's Slack Tea Thursday Tale
Woke up feeling crap.  Cooked Mrs. P  dinner.  Screwed it up. Bought takeaway as penance and chocolate to suck up. The end.

Translation Tuesday -Dedicated to Bridging (or Widening) the Cultural Divide

QIMP's Guide to Speaking Aussie

In the interests of making myself understood in my posts , I usually censor what I write. I try really hard not to use too many Australian-isms. However I did a post recently where clearly my “I must censor my Australian-ness” was turned off and judging by your comments it threw a bunch of you.   And apparently Google doesn’t provide a translator function for “ Australian. “ Bummer.  Are our languages really that different? I mean after all we’re all speaking English right?

Many of you will have learnt Aussie English from Crocodile Dundee, and Steve Irwin. A hot tip here , nobody I know runs around using phrases like “Crikey”, “Strewth” and “Thats not a knife – this is a knife “ in everyday conversation. And not many people wear those naff little leather vests and hats with crocodile teeth in them either (Aussie clothing is another post and I’m still working on that one ) Thinking all Australian's are represented by crocodile wranglers , real or fictional, is like us thinking you all live like The Sopranos (particularly if you live in New Jersey ) , or that all Americans talk in Gangsta rap and that your lives are like an episode of Eastenders.

Australians are a plain speaking people. Many of us don’t use two words where only one will do. We like to give people nicknames. If your name is David, Michael or Steven you’ll be known as Dav-o, Mick or Stev-o. Tracey will be Trace, Amanda will be Mandy, and Karen will be Kazza. That’s just the way this country rolls. When introduced to an Australian you’ll never know what their actual name is. Accept it – move on. Use the nickname. My husband had to use my real name when we got married to make it legal and I’d only heard him call me by my birth name twice before that. I’m sure he's  still wondering exactly who he married.

We are really big on shortening words here. I think that’s because our country is so bloody hot most of the time  the longer your mouth is open to speak, the faster you become dehydrated. Therefore ,university becomes uni. Service station becomes servo and afternoon becomes arvo. Yeah- basically we’re lazy and trying to conserve our saliva.

So if you'll throw another prawn on the barbie, and chuck me some cackleberries , I'll pull up a stump and do some translations for ya. Afterwards we'll go for a drive to the back of beyond and grab some moo juice.

On  Common Household Items

Bogroll- toilet paper

Idiot box - television (because watching television turns you into an idiot)

Geography

All of the following terms are used to describe something that is a long way away, or in a very remote place, which in Australia is pretty much anywhere that isn't a capital city. Or somewhere that's further than 250 kilometres up the road.

Woop Woop , Beyond the black stump, Middle of nowhere , The Never Never

On gambling

Scratchy - instant lottery ticket.

One armed bandit- slot machine (because they used to have one arm you pull to make it work and they steal your money)

Chook Raffle- Chook raffles are most often run in pubs, in the afternoon after work. For about a buck you get a ticket and you can win a chicken, or a meat tray or something you can take home to placate your wife. Along with your beer breath.

On Occupations

Wharfie - dock-worker.

Firie - member of the fire brigade.

Sparkie - electrician.

Postie - postman.

Dishpig - person that washes the dishes in a restaurant

Ambo- Paramedic

Police Officer- Cop, and police station is known as the Copshop.

Garbo - garbage collector (They get paid very well in this country )

To insult somebody

Calling someone "About as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike / tits on a bull " implies they are pretty much incompetent.

Fruit loop - someone who is thought to be not the full quid

He's a six pack short of a carton - used to brand someone crazy

He has kangaroos loose in the top paddock - as above

Not the full quid - means the person is stupid

Sandwich short of a picnic - crazy

Dag - a nerd (but usually said affectionately)

To be "up yourself" is to think you're better than you actually are.

If elastic was sense he wouldn’t have enough to make a budgies garter...he's stupid

Wow ! There are so many ways to insult people in Australia !

On Transport and Driving

Service Station- Gas station

Gas- Petrol

Ute - The Australian version of a pickup truck

Shank's Pony - to walk somewhere

Pedal to the metal - driving fast
Prang - a vehicular accident

SUV - 4 wheel drives.

Chuck a u-ey- Turn around 180 degrees.

Yank tank - Large American car.

On drinking alcohol

Turps, hit the - go on a drinking binge.

Grog - booze, alcohol.

Blotto/Legless  - very drunk.

Bottlo- the liquor shop

Beer O clock -in Australia it's always Beer O Clock !

To crack a tinnie- open a beer

On being sick /ill/hungover

Spewing - vomitting

Heave - to vomit.

Crook -To be sick (not necessarily alcohol related )

Chuck, chunder, spew , do a Technicolour yawn, upchuck or to drive the porcelain bus all indicate vomitting

Chuckin'  a sickie - take a day off work (usually used when you pretend to be sick and do something pleasurable like go to the beach or the cricket  for the day instead )

On illegal activity

Five-finger discount -  shoplifting.

Shonky-dubious, or not the genuine article

Crook - slang for a criminal type or someone who duds you

On emotion

Spewin' - very angry.

Dummy spit -  to get very angry and lose it totally

Doing your block-Losing your cool.

On swearing

Words the rest of the world thinks are swear words aren't swear words here. Seriously. None of the phrases below are swears here. Actually if I listed all the things that aren't swears here you'd probably fall asleep halfway through ...

Bloody Oath - I'm telling you the truth

Give it a rest - Shut up

Pig's arse! -: I don't agree with you

Piece of piss - an  easy task.

To be Up shit creek without a paddle  means you're having a problem or you're really  stuck.

 

I hope you feel more confident about visiting our country now you know the lingo. Now, for practice I want you all to write a post using 10  Aussie words  because it would be kinda cool not to run every single post you all  write through Google Translator.

P.S. It took me about 45 minutes to spell check this post because Blogger didn't recognise about 90% of it....

Snowball Quilt Along - Week 5

Just call me Your Royal Slackness......

After my snowball frenzy of last week, this week all I managed was to  square up about 15  of the snowballs I made last week. And eat a bag of snowballs in the process. Marshmallow snowballs....not fabric snowballs.

I feel I should make excuses for under-performing but isn't that the beauty of this quilt along...no guilt? Do what you can- when you can. So I'm not going  blather on about my long work hours, having no ceiling and spending time with my sister. My sewing machine has been totally neglected this week aside from one small project I started.

I'll see you all next week (hopefully with some actual progress!) . I'm off to give my sewing machine some attention.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is the sound you make when you have no ceilings and the only thing between you and the freezing outdoors in an inch of Monier tile. In the dead of winter! I have a new appreciation for the homeless because it was about as cold in my house last night as they have to endure night after night. I'm not joking.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh is the sound you make when you discover everything in your house is covered in an inch of dust and other stuff that fell out of your roof when the ceilings came down, including an unexploded fire cracker,  approximately 250 kilograms of dirt,  and  leaves from the deciduous tree outside that you didn't know was deciduous because all the leaves have been dropping into your roof cavity for the last 30 years.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh is the sound you make when you can't find your kettle to make a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and you sooooooo cannot function without coffee,  and then surprisingly realise  your bathroom is now a kitchen.  Actually to be accurate, I don't verbalise before my first cup of coffee...so I just thought "Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh" very quietly.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh is the sound you make when you discover your patio looks like a demolition site and you didn't have the presence of mind to order a mini skip to cart it all away. Now you're gonna have to lift it twice. After you order the mini skip...

Arghhhhhhhhhh is the sound you make when you discover your lounge room is now also  your dining room, except you can't prepare any food because you no longer have a kitchen. Or any electricity. And you don't actually know where your plates are living these days. On the up side your bedroom is relatively untouched so at least you can find clean underpants.  (That's my positive thought for today taken care of)

Four weeks and counting....at this point I think this is the worst of it, so I'm entitled to lose my marbles slightly. 

P.S. Yippeeeeeee will be the sound I'm making tonight when I can legitimately claim we have to get takeaway for dinner because I can't find a damn thing to cook in. I can probably spin that excuse out for the next month ..at least.

Slack Tea Thursday

I know this looks schmick, and like something you'd serve up at a high class dinner party (please don't call me delusional  to my face -it's rude and hurts my feelings)  but it was dead easy. And fast. And therefore slack.

Tonight I took these ingredients and  turned them into something magical. Ignore my grotty bench tops and let the food speak for itself.

I started to prepare this complicated recipe 

And in slightly less time than it takes to make two minute noodles (which is actually false advertising because two minute noodles take wayyyyyy longer than two minutes  to cook)

I was eating dinner....

Do you like my  napkin? Draining Paper. It's all class in the Pyjamas household.

And I even had time to do dessert...

For the un-initiated - that's a Finger Bun. They are delicious. I bet everyone wishes they were me right now.

Later, for supper I'm going to challenge myself to eat this entire pack of snowballs. Unaided.  

Yeah I caved in and bought some. I can only resist the voices in my head for so long. I'm on a roll today. I have managed to eat a milky way bar and a pack of salt and vinegar chips as well. What more damage can I do with a couple of snowballs ...right?

P.S. Are the  word verification words on comments getting harder or am I getting dumber?

P.P.S. I'll let you in on a secret. I planned to make enough of these to share with you  all, and went to Foodland (brilliant name for a shop don't you think?)  after I finished work to get more marinated feta. I decided to try a different brand . Bad Mistake. I got it home and popped the lid and that feta had the consistency of chalk. Blerk. Life is too short to eat bad feta and I don't want you all gossiping about me behind my back, so I  sent it off to Boy's Night with Mr. P as snacks along with a box of Jatz I found in the back of the pantry and some metwurst we bought while doing our shopping last night that I don't like either.  Score - now he thinks I'm wife of the Year because I said " I've made an antipasto platter for you for Boys Night" .  I hope he's lost my blog address because if he hasn't - I just outted myself.

And if I seem a little crazy tonight - it's because I'm on a dairy high. Can someone email me in an hour to make sure I'm not dead of a  snowball overdose....