The Party is (Almost) Over

So...it's been a month since I showed my face round here and it's high time to get back into some semblance of a routine, both online and in my actual life. The break has been lovely though, since we've celebrated Christmas, ushered in a New Year and Mr. P and I have enjoyed an overseas holiday in my rather prolonged absence. So what's been going on here at Maison Pyjamas?

A few days before Christmas I managed to play nice with some gingerbread and put together this Christmas Tree under the watchful tutelage of the Gingerbread Ninja, Ms. Tazzie. And while it looks a little like the Leaning Tower of Pisa - it is still holding together even now and has given me hope that perhaps I can do an annual Gingerbread Christmas Tree or even cookies since my interest in icing cookies was definitely piqued by this project and Tazz's +++ confidence in me. It was like having my own personal gingerbread cheerleader (but without the pom poms)

Christmas Day itself was a very relaxed affair. We had lunch at a local hotel, and then headed off to my brother and sister in laws for the afternoon where we played a spirited game of pictionary, which served to reinforce my belief  that nobody in my husbands family can draw for sh**. This was my sister in laws rendition of Darth Vader (which nobody guessed correctly although one bright spark did suggest "Bondage Hamburglar" ) 

Then it was off to my parents house to spend time with my family where the only game we played was drinking cocktails and taking incriminating up to the minute videos to put on Facebook for perpetuity. My sister and I were being really silly and the family photo album inherited some more really bad pictures like this one, in which I can't appear to make up my mind whether I'm going to mimic a chipmunk or a pirate. I think Sister of Pyjamas was going for a demented Jack Sparrow look which she nailed perfectly.

I  made huge amounts of  jam from apricots that were hanging over our side of the fence from the neighbours house and since it was unlikely that 20 year old male uni students were about to go Nigella and make their own jam I gave them a few jars as payment for providing me with the apricots. Everyone was happy.

Very little sewing has taken place since I finished work 6 weeks ago.  I'm mid way through quilting two tops and am hoping to finish at least one this week, and then we'll see about the other. I've taken laziness to a whole new level during this break! Normally this would have me feeling like a slacker but I'm too relaxed to feel any guilt. 

I saved the best stuff for last - Mr. P and I have just come back from Langkawi, Malaysia which is seriously one of the most magical places on earth. Rather than wax lyrical about the beauty of this island , I'm going to let my pictures mostly do the talking. We saw in New Year on Pantai Kok beach, did a fish spa, went on a terrifying cable car ride, and I have decided that while wild monkeys look cute in theory , when they are up close and personal (with the possibility they might jump at you to bite you) they are decidedly less so. 

Plenty of cocktails, retail therapy,( I added to my extensive shoe and handbag collections big time) relaxing and eating also took place. I have noticed that in previous holiday snaps I tend to take about a bajillion pictures of food so I deliberately concentrated on scenery this time around. And yes- thats really me up there on that horse. 

This week is all about getting ready to start my new job next week, catching up on the washing from our holiday and getting some sewing done.  After spending the last 13 years slapping around in casual clothes for work I need to organise some sort of decent wardrobe of clothes that doesn't focus on jeans and cargo pants as a staple for workwear. Shoot me now.

Being A Lady of Leisure

I've been on holidays for 12 days and have spent it doing pretty much whatever I wanted, which so far has involved a fair amount of sweet stuff all. Usually I'm trying to pack 30 hours of stuff into a 24 hour day so being able to move at a snails pace if I choose has been seriously refreshing. This being (temporarily) unemployed thing is working out pretty well.

The first thing I did was go on holidays for a week. And drink cocktails with Little Miss Sunshine. In Queensland. That's really far away from where I live. 

Dessert and cocktails in one glass is very special (or a sign of alcoholism..or laziness - I'm not sure which) so this one gets its own photo. Citron vodka and a pine-lime ice cream combo. I highly recommend it. 

I had high hopes that LMS would have given up on the idea of trying to get me to eat vegetables and salads and my first meal was very heartening in this regard ....yes..chocolate is a meal. And there's fruit in there so this is actually healthy. 

However it was all downhill from there . I was force fed REAL healthy food. Every time this occured I had a (not so) subtle whinge about how my body was going into shock from lack of Maccas...

And eventually I turned my captors over to the dark side. 

Stockholm syndrome in reverse. Those psychology classes really paid off...

I had the amazing pleasure of meeting one of my long time blog friends, Michelle from Rag-Tag Stitchin' for brunch and she is about ten times as awesome in person as she is in emails and on her blog. This was one of my favourite parts of the week because it was just so much fun. 

See that gingerbread house? That's living at my house now. Hand made by Michelle herself. Look at those little gingerbread man buttons! That pattern is for quilt labels and is one of Michelle's too. And the hanging plaque was made by one of Michelle's super talented friends. I was thrilled and blown away by this little parcel of goodies. Thankyou Michelle. 

We went to the farmers market on Sunday at o'dark o'clock - seriously who leaves the house at this time of the morning for FUN? Freaking crazy people - that's who. 

And since I was still half asleep I can't recall much of what we saw but I'd woken sufficiently by the time we got round to these so I took a picture...

Queensland is an awesome place - or it would be if not for the sucky humidity which made my hair look like this for my entire stay ...

So once I got home I decided the time was right for a bit of a change. I've left the purple behind and gone for something more grown up. 

  

And finally - Drumroll please ....a couple of you suggested that my big exciting news might be that I was pregnant. Come on people - I'm 48 - that's not very likely and if I was I certainly wouldn't be celebrating it. So without further ado or stuffing around,  the second thing I've done since being on holidays was to buy my dream car, which screams mid life crisis but I don't care. I was too busy being a sensible sole parent when I should have been buying one of these and now I don't have to be sensible anymore.  

That is all -  you can go back to doing what you were doing now. I'm going for a drive....

Trở về nhà một lần nữa (Back Home Again)

While it's exciting to head off into the great wide world, Dorothy had it right when she said "There's no place like home". Sadly I forgot to pack my magic sparkly red shoes and so we had to come home from our two weeks in Vietnam the traditional way - through three airports in the space of 24 hours. 

Important news first. My hair straightener made a single appearance in the two weeks we were away. I walked around Vietnam with ala natural hair because with the humidity over there it's pointless to straighten it. Within 5 minutes of going outside your hair  looks like one giant brillo pad. My hairstyle du jour became a constant ugly pony tail that served to accentuate my triple chin. Don't laugh-  I'm seriously contemplating a diet and some exercise which shows I've probably gone temporarily insane.

Nothing can prepare you for the sheer volume of traffic,  the noise, the level of activity , the smells, and eighty eight million people speaking in a language I only understood three words of . I pondered googling the phrase for "fat stupid western chick " because I'm fairly confident that I got called that a lot. 

Hilarious events- Mr. P thinking the lady with the basket of cats was selling them for food and wanting to buy all 8 of them to rescue them. She was actually selling them to people so the cats could catch house mice.  

Mr. P refusing to have a massage because he was afraid his clothes would get stolen and he'd have to walk back to our hotel naked. My 5 hours of spa treatments were absolute bliss for under 80 bucks.

Getting lost in Saigon approximately 432 times. Is there anywhere in the world harder to negotiate than a city where every single street seem to be named Hang -something and Bu- something. That was not the time to discover Mr. P was absolutely crap at reading maps. 

I loved the food and didn't have any close calls with nuts. I had a list of things I wanted to eat while I was there that I happily munched my way through ...bahn mi, bun cha, pork skewers on a stick eaten in the street. I almost cried with happiness though when I saw lamingtons in a bakery in Hanoi and bought one just to have something that didn't come accompanied by rice or noodles.  Mr. P dragged me into the Vietnamese version of McDonalds (Lotteria) our last night in Hanoi and was bitterly disappointed by the fact the hamburger had chutney and no cheese and the fried chicken was honey and soy flavoured. 

The single best thing we did in Saigon was a street food tour. It was amazing to eat where the locals eat. I have to say though after two solid weeks of Vietnamese food I was hanging out for a lamb roast. 

Vietnamese clothes are made to fit people the approximate diameter of a corn cob. Since I am not in that fortunate class I didn't do any clothes shopping. I did however lay in a supply of hand fans for when menopause proper hits in a couple of years time. My hot flushes are going to be a classy affair. 

Halong Bay was glorious. Totally unspoilt and very relaxing. That part of our trip just wasn't long enough. 

 Saigon was brash and sassy and in your face. And huge. And hot. And there were street sellers and cyclo drivers everywhere trying to rip you off. 

L to R top- view from the Sky Deck , and Ho Chi Minh Square
Lto R bottom - the footpath after rain and the reunification palace

Presidential Palace, Fountain near Hoan Kiem Lake, Unicorn, Detailed steps, Ngoc Son Temple, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, and Temple of Literature.

I adored Hanoi. Beautiful old streets and French and Chinese inspired architecture. A lovely friendly old city. We had a favourite pork stick lady there and she greeted us like old friends every time we rolled up to eat at her street stall, and we found a bar in the second story of a building near our hotel where we could just watch the world go by while sipping cocktails at night. I love a country where beer is the same price as water and a cocktail costs less a cup of coffee back home.

Back to real life tomorrow...work beckons so I can pay for a bathroom renovation and start planning the next trip. But it's good to be home- I think I hear some quilting calling my name. 

Mr. P Glams it Up

I think some of the differences between men and women are genetically imprinted by those pesky XY or XX chromosomes.  Examples that spring immediately to mind include the love men have for just about any sport,  their unnatural relationship with anything that has wheels , and their aversion to shopping  of any description.

Fed up with Mr. P looking like the King of the Dag people, we set off Saturday morning ostensibly to buy me new undies, but I was hatching a plan in my head to convince him to get some new clothes. Call me crazy, but I think wearing  a T-shirt in Vietnam that proclaims “Man Whore” across the front  is going to get you all the wrong sort of attention.  Mr. P’s  T-shirt  collection is especially vile and he has needed new jeans for at least a year. He tells me he  attempted to find new jeans six weeks ago without my assistance and couldn’t find anything he liked. That’s because last time he went jeans shopping it was the 1979 and bell bottoms were  all the rage.  I strongly suspect that his attempt to find jeans in August  entailed running past the front of the 23 jeans retailers at our local shopping mall and calling that trip done.

I essentially shoved him into Jeans West on Saturday morning , grabbed a sexy young thing to flatter and assist him (men never say no to a young pretty thing) and said “My husband needs two new pairs of jeans”. Fifteen minutes later he was done. See? That wasn’t all that hard.

Next stop – shirts – shirts that dont have crummy slogan writing on them. The only reason I'm making that damn T-shirt quilt is so I have an excuse to cut up some of his shitty old T-shirts that he simply won’t part with. It's win win. I dont have to worry about him being seen in public with those awful shirts anymore and he gets a quilt out of it. This part of the shopping experience entailed me throwing about 100 T-shirts at him and muttering  “Try this on” and then barking “It fits , it doesn’t have anything offensive on it –you’re getting it“.

More success. And not one of them looks bogan. This will set him up until at least 2023 when we have to do another decennium clothes shopping assault. Im sure that in about a month these will have Pho stains on them that I cant get out but for now my husband has a decent wardrobe.

I've been doing last minute details for our holiday and decided I want to do a day spa. For about 75 bucks I'm getting 4 hours of pampering. Sadly, it appears that the only kind of massage Mr. P can get is one with a happy finish so he misses out. Sucks to be a bloke.