Christmas Eve is here – our lights are twinkling on the tree in the twilight and Amelia went straight to sleep knowing that Father Christmas wouldn’t stand for anything less.
Bliss.
Have a wonderful and peaceful Christmas. May all your parcels be good ones, and all your puddings full of the good stuff.
I’ll be back soon!
xx
There’s cookie dough chilling in the fridge, presents are all wrapped, paper snowflakes are bobbing in the air-con breeze, advent activities are all but finished and I am ready to crawl in to bed – never mind that it’s only 4pm. I am exhausted and, frankly, over it.
Amelia and I both had a momentary cease-fire and a lapse in bad moods where we seized the opportunity to sit down and do some Christmas craft. I am pleased to say that this has been our most successful joint crafting session to date. Amelia’s attention span and my tolerance span seemed completely in-sync and a fabulous sticky, sparkly mess was made. We created little wooden peg angel dolls. I was wildly inspired a week or so back when I saw Kath’s post on peg dolls and her link to Monkton where there are the most beautiful, simple little dolls. Here are my two favourites from today. Amelia’s on the left, mine on the right:
And you can find a snaps of all of them on flickr. In the catwalk photo, you will see mine in the top row and Amelia’s underneath. You can see that Amelia has great flare – a truly original, couture approach to dressing her dolls where as mine are a little neater and far less inspired. You can see she is exploring the themes of facial hair and big bows for belts in her collection. I love every single one of her little beauties and don’t know how we will part with them as they are intended as gifts for family members.
These are two photos by Amelia. This is the first time she has played with our camera and watching her stumpy, sticky little fingers grapple with the easily-smashed-to-smithereens gadget nearly sent me berserk but she produced a few classics. I am not going to publish some of the delights she took of me and my expanding belly, but here are a couple of the more successful “thank you” photos. The first is a gift she received from Melissa who sent her a cow girl ornament to go with her cow girl from Christina. I bought one of Melissa’s delicate princess ornaments so both are now happily bobbing around amongst our other treasures. The other is a shot of her foot in the foreground and one of Lyn’s beautiful sleepy rabbits in the background. She arrived in the mail today and is instantly loved by the whole household. Amelia is totally convinced she is a cat and so her name is Janey the Cat. Thank you my dear blogging friends!
Our tree is looking trim! Thank you Theresa (above), Hillary and Christina for contributing ornaments to our plastic tannenbaum.
I am working working working up until Christmas, but I have discovered the wonderful world of podcasts which make the days fly by. Today I downloaded the first installment of ‘A Christmas Carol‘ read by Geoffrey Palmer from the Penguin podcast page. It’s great! I have also been enjoying Crafty Chica Podcast and the Ricky Gervais Show (which comes with an ‘Explicit’ warning) — and there’s still one Sunday Night Safran available on Triple J’s podcast page. Have you any other favourites I should be listening to?
See more of our beautiful ornaments beyond… Read the rest of this entry »
The most exciting thing – we had evaporative air conditioning installed yesterday, and I am so ready for the next few days of heat! I don’t think I have ever been so excited by a 33°c forecast.
The timing of this installation is pretty good really, as for the last few days Amelia and I have had a cold – nothing really major, just the sniffles and so on, but the most annoying symptom of this particular cold is extreme grumpiness. And I mean extreme. It’s the teeth grinding, eye rolling, loud shouting kind of grumpiness which doesn’t bode well for family harmony. The advent activities have almost completely fallen away, mostly because by the time 5pm rocks around we are all ready to hurl something through a window and the idea of “everyone make a christmas ornament for the tree!” is possibly the most unappealing idea EVER suggested. At least the heat won’t make it even worse tomorrow.
So poor old Big-P has been putting up with 3 year old and 33 year old temper tantrums as we continually blow our noses and cough noisily and then shout and slam doors. Very nice. Happy birthday Big-P. We really do love you, we’re just too grumpy to say it to your face right now. ok? OK?
I have exciting news today. Come June 8th (or there abouts), there will be a tiny little, fourth family member in our home. I am 13 weeks pregnant and can hardly believe it.
Perhaps if you have been keeping up with my blog for a while you may remember that just over a year ago the mere suggestion of having another child seemed quite off-putting. It’s no secret that I found the adjustment to being a mother incredibly difficult and it has taken me a long time to sort through my feelings and fears about going back to that new baby place all over again. Actually don’t let me think about it too much!. Over the last couple of months I have occasionally found myself after an exhausting day wondering what on earth it is we are doing, but mostly time is just spinning so fast that there isn’t enough time to (popped-out) navel gaze. I imagine that life with a new born might be a little the same this time around.
So much has changed since we moved out of Mum and Dad’s house and into our own place. Personally, I feel stronger and more capable and happier. I feel like we are a real family again.
But it is time which has probably influenced the biggest shift in my thinking. Now from experience I really do know that the old saying “This too shall pass” is almost always true, and not just something well-meaning people tell you in moments of crisis. Breast feeding that doesn’t seem to quite work out, minor illnesses, sleepless nights, tantrums (both child and adult) and exasperating boredom… it all passes and good things follow. I feel ready to face those first few years and not be pulled down by them again (ah! we shall see!).
And I was worried about “my work” and how I will have to put it off again but I have got to the point where I think well, that’s ok. Amelia is about to start kindergarten in 2006 and soon she will be at school full time and it has gone so very fast. One of my biggest heroes is Rosalie Gascoigne and I will often think about her creating her amazing work later in life after she raised a family almost single handedly in a strange country. She found ways to be creative even before she became a well known artist – she made quilts and threw herself into ikebana, and then she made the art pieces that now hang in national galleries. I think about how time is quite elastic.
In truth, I have been busier and more creative in the three years since Amelia was born then ever before – it always seems that the spare moments are so precious that the work just gets done, and you start to find what it is you really want to spend those precious moments doing. I appreciate the clarity this has brought.
And in the end of it all, you have a most wonderful little person in your midst and the wonders increase every day. I feel completely ready to love a new one. I realise we are lucky, and I am very grateful.
Yesterday afternoon, as I was peeling squashed grapes off the kitchen rug, it occurred to me that it’s now December and (apart from all the exciting advent things that happen in December) December also marks the anniversary of the beginning of my website. On December 3rd I had been blogging for 6 years. That is honestly the longest I have stuck at anything (apart from relationships with friends and family of course) so I am quite proud of myself.
I am not amazingly proud, because keeping a blog seems to be one of the easiest things to do – there is so much to be gained from blogging. I love the friends (real and virtual, near and far) I have made, I love the ease of expression and the immediacy of feedback, the sense of community especially the warmth and support of the wonderful craft blogging women and I love the fact that I have this sort-of record of my life for the last six years and more importantly the first three years of my daughter’s life. It’s only a sort-of record because obviously much goes unsaid and what I publish is often the glossy, happy, shiny version of my life. I don’t delve too often to the bits where I find myself weeping after a particularly hard small-child day, or the moments of insecurity and mind-numbing self-doubt that I am sure every artist and craftsperson experiences. But even so, it’s a record and a record that I am content to put online.
Yesterday afternoon I was called by a guy who told me that I was one of 11 finalists in an Australian Blogging competition with the first prize being $10,000 (big shout outs to Virge who let me know it was on). He told me that they would be deciding on the winner in the next couple of hours and would I be available to answer media questions if I won. Of course! I went to Kmart to buy dad some socks for his birthday and as I guided Amelia through the aisles (she had her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut because she didn’t want to catch a glimpse of the father christmas who sat at the door mournfully ringing a bell) I could almost smell that $10,000. What a fabulous way to celebrate 6 years of blogging, I thought. But a couple of hours later and still no word and by 5pm I had given up. Sure enough, I see today on their site that Singing Bridges took out the $10k. And I have to say, I am so happy for her! I am so pleased that a woman won, that an art blog won and that someone who can obviously really put the $10k towards her art and her blog won. If I had of won, and a newspaper had asked me what I was going to spend the money on, I would have had to have said something sad like “air-conditioning” where as Jodi will be able to continue to travel, blog and do her thing. Big props Jodi!
The tree is trimmed, Amelia is in bed and in a minute it’s time to get back to some client work. This evening’s Advent Activity was “Give everyone crazy hair styles”. Amelia insisted on going to bed with her hair still like this, so who knows how comfortable she’ll be. There are more photos of this and our other activities over in my flickr advent set.
Thank you for all the wonderful suggestions for A Month of Softies theme for December. I have chosen one that I think is just perfect:
“Under the Tree”
Thank you Kerrie! She wrote in my comments:
“What about something like “under the tree” I can see softie presents, the gift wrapped versions or actual presents or taking a more natural view woodland animals and plants…”
In the end it came down to this one or “Fairy Tales” which was first suggested by Val in the MOS forum on flickr. Shall we make January’s theme Fairy Tales and announce it well in advance so that if you feel so inclined over the holiday season you can work on this one too?
The reason it came down to these two was apart from being quite inspiring, they are also non-specific when it comes to what holiday it is you might celebrate at this time of year nor does it require you to stitch up something that is totally bizarre for your climate as not everywhere has snow and freezing ice in December.
As you know, apart from a couple of fairly specific themes through out the year, I really like the themes that are open to imaginative interpretation, but are also not intimidating for first-timers. Perhaps if you are really set on the idea of snow and snowmen, you could incorporate it in the woodland part of the theme, or if you really want to make an ornament perhaps it could be one you hang from the lower most branches of the tree. I think there are lots of ways of interpreting this one.
So there you are! Thanks again Kerri for December, and Val for January. Good luck!
This afternoon we took part in Advent Activity number two. “Hot Chocolate with all the fixings”. We had whipped cream, coloured sprinkles, marshmallows and wafer biscuits as well as an accompanying thin slice of very ordinary chocolate cake that had just come out of the oven.
And boy am I glad that I decided that this one had to be an afternoon tea treat rather than a pre-bedtime treat. Sugar rushes all round. So now I am regretting it and thinking about good, healthy food again. It seems to be a pattern.
In August, The Age’s Sunday Life magazine published Rosemary Stanton’s list of “The 20 Healthiest Foods you can Eat” (The full list can be found here – thanks to Denise for searching it out in August). While I am not a food-blogger, and I don’t even pretend to be a very good cook, I am interested in healthy eating and I thought it would be useful to go through the list and write something about each item and also ask you to leave your tips, recipes and ideas in my comments. So far we have covered Avocados and Berries and the recipes in the comments have been great so thank you!
The next thing on Rosemary’s list is rosemary:
“The flavour components of herbs are often antioxidants that contribute to health and rosemary tops the list for its antioxidant content. Some of the dozens of potent compounds found in rosemary stop blood cells clumping together to form clots and so benefit the heart. Carnosol, another constituent of the herb of remembrance, is a phenolic diterpene, which has antioxidant and anti-cancer properties. Tip: Use fresh rosemary with barbecued meat to counteract cancer-causing substances that form when it’s char-grilled.” -R Stanton, Sunday Life
I am growing rosemary in our garden mainly because I use quite a lot of it around and under a cooking roast. There’s not much else I really use it for. Sometime soon I may plant a group of rosemary plants under the washing line to fill the drying clothes with lovely fragrant wafts and now that I see it’s number three on the list of good foods, I thought I should try and find some other rosemary recipes apart from roast.
I went through a bunch of cookbooks looking to find something simple, quick and not too heavy. While a “rosemary and bay leaf savoury custard” is probably quite amazing, this is not something I would be whipping up to be tersely rejected by a three year old, nor was the “pizza rustica with potato and rosemary” going to happen tonight… but the “roasted rosemary potatoes” got a bookmark in both Stephanie’s Cook’s Companion and Delia’s How to Cook. I didn’t really follow either recipe – but taking their inspiration, here’s what I did (and it ain’t rocket science!):
You will need:
Some potatoes cut into thick wedges (I used about 5 medium sized ones for the three of us)
A tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary leaves
3 tablespoons of olive oil (though if I made this again I would probably use 2 tablespoons – it was a bit oily).
3 cloves of garlic in their skins but crushed slightly
Preheat oven to 220°c. Place potatoes in cold water and bring to boil on stove top. Let them boil for about 10 minutes. While they are boiling mix the rosemary and olive oil and put aside.
Drain potatoes thoroughly then return to pan and dry steam for a minute or so, tossing them so the outside flesh becomes a bit rough and fuzzy. Pour over oil and rosemary and toss potatoes to make sure they are all coated. Put potatoes into a baking tray and place in your preheated oven for 30 minutes, turning at least once. Pop the garlic in the tray after about 10 minutes. Serve with salt and pepper and sour cream if you’re feeling indulgent. Tonight we had them with grilled lamb and greens. Unfortunately we ate them all before I could take a photo. They were really good. But then so was the hot chocolate.
So, that’s my paltry offering – have you got any excellent uses for rosemary so that we can continue to stop those blood cells clumping?
