Month of Vege = FAIL

So this picture kinda sums up how the first two days of Month 0 Vege travelled for us.

It all started when my kind and caring husband decided he would be proactive and cook up a giant pot of bolognaise sauce.  A big big pot of MEAT.  This was wonderful except he cooked it two days before Month o Vege, which meant we were eating leftovers well into Day 1 of MOV.  FAIL.

Then of course on Saturday we went to the Spanish Festival - and who can pass up all the wonderful delights of Chorizo and Chimichurri and the smells of Completos??!  I mean, I'M ONLY HUMAN PEOPLE.

Yesterday I ate veggie pizza for dinner (WIN), followed by 2 slices of Salami pizza (FAIL). 

But today I am eating tuna salad for lunch (WIN) followed by mushroom risotto for dinner (DOUBLE WIN).

Yesterday I also ate about 4 scones with cream, half a piece of pavlova and am now contemplating leftover cookies, so the healthy factor isn't exactly kicking in.  I am hoping this will be counteracted by running around with kids for a whole weekend. (WIN!)

3 days till the Month of Vege

The countdown is on.   MONTH O' VEGE approaches!


For a few reasons, my husband and I are going to eat vegetarian for one month.  Okay, well fishatarian.  We thought in the lead up to Christmas it would be a good idea to detox... also we want to be really healthy... also, its cheap-ish.


But the MAIN reason is because we want to CHALLENGE ourselves to try new and exciting recipes!


There are a few rules for the month of veg.:
1. New recipes all the time, well, MOST of the time.
2. Fish is allowed.  Sea creatures in general are allowed.
3. We will not be those people who say 'no sorry, i'm a vegetarian' when out to dinner at someone house.  If it is offered, we will accept gratefully. 
4.  If I nearly pass out from tiredness, I will chomp a steak.  Sorry moocow, you're my dinner.


I foresee some problems:
I am the person with a badge that says "Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder."
One of my favourite smells is bacon frying in the morning.
My uncle once said of me "You're just a carnivore, aren't you?  What is that, your FOURTH chop today?"


Overall though I am looking forward to eggplant, mushroom, chickpeas, spinach and all things green and great.  I will keep you posted on how it goes!

Once wed that, punks!

When preparing my wedding I was pretty much on this site everyday looking at preeetty things.  And I will confess I still like to look at it - it has pretty dresses and flowers and homemadey craft stuff that I always wish I was more bothered to do.


I thought that seeing as I had taken so much inspiration from it, I would submit my own wedding in the hopes of being published on said cute site, and getting some promo out there for my great photographer.  However, after submitting as per the site requirements, I have heard NOTHING which means they are NOT going to put my wedding up.


Well poo to them.  Sure, I didn't make my own dress out of a coathanger and a shoe, and my bonbonierre wasn't hand-knitted using vintage fabric my grandmother wore to the inauguration of the Queen - but my wedding was still, in my biased opinion, a blogabble occasion.  


So, in the spirit of "Stuff you, Stuff!" I am going to declare my cool vintageyness myself:


1. I, and my wedding designer colleagues, namely delia, have successfully decorated not one but TWO weddings using 100 YEAR OLD MEDICAL GAUZE.  That has to be in all-caps because I am shouting at you BECAUSE ITS AWESOME.  Apparently medical gauze that your grandma had stuffed in her back shed from the war years makes for a quite whimsical, off-white flowing decor that just perfectly hangs in folds and pleats.  It also goes very well with ivy that you pulled off someone's back fence.




2. My dedicated friend sewed together 30 METRES OF BUNTING made out of random material.




3. My now husband, then fiancee, SCREENPRINTED all of our invites.  Admittedly at the time this was a painful process for me, but it actually received more compliments than the prettiness of my dress.  It also stood us in good stead with our designer friends, branding us 'folky,' 'indie,' 'talented,' 'progressive,' 'regressive' and 'rad, man'.  This has given me good leverage at parties, especially those that have people with square glasses, tight jeans and asymmetrical haircuts.




4.  And finally:

Otherwise Pandemonium

I must thank my dear Delia for lending me her $2 copy of Otherwise Pandemonium by Nick Hornby.

It has reignited my hope in short stories.  Both stories, Otherwise Pandemonium and Not a Star hang together well, balanced and poised.  I am torn between giving you the synopsis and thus stealing away the joy of suprise for you if you want to read it, and going on a blustering play-by-play call of the synopsis and outcomes.   It will be suffice to say that both stories have something to do with a video tape, something to do with sex (not in a gross weird way, in a quirky funny make you laugh way) and lots to  with coming to terms with unexpected situations. You must buy, borrow, steal and read.  






 Because of Nick Hornby's writing finesse, I am much excited about Friday's album release of:

It's a collaboration between Hornby and Ben Folds - Hornby has written all the lyrics and folds has put it to boppy Benny piano music.  

The new background, BTW, is in celebration of the start of spring.  Picnics, bike rides and playgrounds!

A weekend away

I haven't blogged since July or something just totally terrible so I thought I could be sneaky and blog one now.

Woodend, woodend, woodend.  Your cherry blossoms and gums, sweeping plains and half full dam (not half empty, note).  The sound of frogs, kookaburras and bonfire.  Riding on a lawn mower which was a lazy way of doing work, and a lot more fun.  Like riding a golf cart, it defeats the purpose of exercise but gets things done.  Eating too much bacon - so much that I'm wondering if we ate a whole pig.  Then a whole chicken all to myself at the Holgate brewery and their amazing tasty tasty parma. 

Also I read two delightful books 'Awkward Family Photos' and 'The Book of Awesome' which are taken from this blog and this one.  Laugh away!!

These are the days of our lives

I keep checking my blog, expecting that there will be a new post.  Until I realised that I should be the one posting.  Then I wrack my brain for something to post about, and nothing comes.

I had a pretty bad morning.  I do this thing that when I am over tired, I feel nauseous and dizzy and want to puke.  It's the reason that I can never do all-nighters.  I get to about 5am and want to spew, so I have to sleep.  Yeah, I know it's lame, and makes me sound tres uncool, but I've gotten to a nice point in my life where being cool just isn't high on my list of priorities.  Anyway, this morning I didn't sleep well, so of course, I woke up dizzy.  Showers and breakfast were not helpful.  I have been a zombie most of the day.

This is how you can tell how my day is going.  I don't order coffees all the time, but when I do, my local coffee man at Yummies can always tell how I am feeling based on what I order:

1. Cappuccinno with extra, extra froth = Great, good, excellent, I love the world kind of day.  I love froth.  Love it.  Coffee man makes my small coffee in a medium sized container so her can fill the rest with froth.  

2. Small latte = An average day.  I need caffeine, and I need perking up.

3. Chai, sweet and spicy = An adventurous day.  A day when the world can throw anything at you, and you will give it a smile back, throw your arms to the sky and yell, "Bring it on, bitch!"


Otherwise, I drink tea from my one-person tea pot that looks very shui.

Today, I bought a Coke.  A bottle of COKE.
It's really, really, not a good sign. 

People on fire.

I am on a lifelong quest to find out what makes children laugh.


Children have a very different sense of humour to adults.  Some adults still have not given up their childish sense of humour, and others supress their childishness (c'mon, admit it, EVERYONE thinks the word 'poo' is funny whether they smirk or not).  However, there is something about the world that makes children cackle and roll about hysterically and giggle till they can't breathe that adults can't really grasp or understand.


I recently attended a talk by my favourite children's author, Andy Griffiths.  Andy is genius.  He is pure genius because he spites the scoffing of parents and fuddy-duddies everyone and has decided that children will READ if they LAUGH when they do it.  
I see hundreds of reluctant redaers -  in particular boys - get so stuck on Andy's work that they actually read - and Mr Griffiths teaches them by sneaking into his books enough simplicity, rhyme, repitition and challenge that are the building blocks of a healthy reading diet.




Enough of my schpiel.
Here's the good bit.


I spend an hour in a room with 200 children at their parents, listening to Andy Griffiths read and chat to them.  I wrote down for you, and me, what made them laugh.  I;m not talking a quiet, polite, snigger.  I'm talking about bursting out of their bellies, grasping the chair and wheezing laugh, then doing bit satisfied post-laughter sighs and softly mumbling the joke back over to each other minutes after the joke had ended.  

26 Things That Make Children Laugh:

1. People on fire
2. Death
3. Terrible forms of undeserved death.
4. People with stupid names like "SuckerThumb"
5. Peeople names SuckerThumb getting their thumbs cut off with giant scissors.
6. Death.
7. Whipping machines.  
8. Kids riding their bikes at goats.
9. Boys lasooing girls
10. Silliness
11. Eating dirty worms
12. Eating dirty worms and vomiting
13.  Girls being disgusting.  In fact, just say the words "girls are gross" and boys think its great.
14. Misspelling words.
15. A mother's day card that read:
"Dear Mother, 
Have a lovely mother's day, or you are doomed."
16.  Pain on other people.
17. Rude words
18. Poo
19. Humpty Dumpty getting his head smashed in.
20. Eating poo
21. Innocent animals dying
22. Guts coming out of dead aninals
23. Koalas ripping people's faces off
24. "What's brown and looks out the window?
        A poo on stilts."
25. Pushing old people in front of trucks
26. People on fire.






What sort of world do we live in?


More to come.  Stay tuned.

A little jumping off point...

The problem with not blogging in over three months is that when you finally do, there is all this PRESSURE to write something everyone will have waited expectantly for.  I don't aim to disappoint, but I fear I will.


So, I got married, went on honeymoon and am now pregnant.


Okay, the last bit is a lie, but I thought that my small blog following of close friends may get a little bit of shock at the last bit. So, yes, I now resort to shock tactics to keep my readership.  Deal with it.


Despite my saying that at my wedding I would never, never, ever have bonbonierre, I did.  Yes, I got into an argument with two friends which got me to the point of tears about how stupid I think those gifts are and how I swore never to have them, but I did.


I enlisted girls (and Tim) to make these!:

They are bags with Gypsophilia seeds in them.  They were cute.  I cannot take the creative genius for them, I employ other people to do that.  I have planted some in a pot in the backyard and am happy to announce that life has formed!  Three little seedlings have sprouted and are battling their way through the Melbourne chill.

I recently admitted to the world that even though I appreciate craft and love it, I fear I am not crafty.  But boy, I do get my kicks from seeing other people being talented and then taking advantage of it!

Have no fear - while I caved on the bonbonierre, I did NOT have a ridiculous cake.  

Go away and never come back

You cannot escape the schmarmy cake-eating round pig face that is Eddie Maguire.  You flick on the box for some quality trash and what do you get?  Regular trash.  Ed.  Eddie Maguire I Must Host Every Show and The Olympics Too.

I was okay when it was just Millionaire.  Because, let's be honest, you don't watch Millionaire unless you're sick on the couch or your Grandpa happens to be watching it and you just tune in when he's there.

But the Olympics?  The OLYMPICS!!!??!  I don't think Ed has exercised since year 10 gym class.  He reminds me of that kid that nobody liked but you were forced to listen to in school because he had the highest pitched whiny voice and your ears could not physically tune him out!  

I don't trust Eddie's Olympic commentary.  When he says 'oooh, an excellent triple pike peu veu vermont!' I think "Yeah, Eddie, how would you know?  HOW?!"

Let's not even talk about the men's figure skating commentary.  That just bored me stupid.

Rebuke, rebuff, revise, repent

I take back what I said in my previous post.

1. Wedding prep is generally not 'fun'.  Women who think it is are in love with pain.

2. Tom and Alex slightly, if not mostly, suck in the morning.

 I have not blogged for a while, mostly because I am sick of the online world.  If one more person says the word 'Tweet' or 'Posted' again I'm going to roll them down a big hill and scream after them:"At least this way  you'll get some fresh air!!!"

That being said, there are some things I endevaour to post about in the coming weeks:
-my hairdresser's assistant named "Joe Vegas", what a rocker
-How much I hate Eddie Maguire
-why real estate agents are scum
-my stalker from the past coming back from the dead
-first aid training with the crazy bogan Home Care Workers

Keep you wanting more???