That place in Flemington

The dishwasher is clattering towards a clean load of dishes I have found a 'sugar free mum' recipe I am hoping will divert my growing chocolate craving. Brownies with a secret ingredient. I guess my baking urge is really just the hangover from our family sojourn to Flemington markets yesterday.

After devouring plates of Crispy skin chicken, lemongrass beef and salt and pepper squid at a Vietnamese restaurant that I sadly can only identify as 'the place next to' Pho 97 we head round past the renown bakery serving red bean filled donut like balls, to the markets.

Eric and I are both gob smacked by how cheap everything is. (No really I made sweet potato and white bean fritters tonight with a salsa salad and the whole meal cost me $6! Not per head, in total).

We all loved the market experience, Eric and I have childhood memories of our trips with parents down these bustling aisles, so there was a healthy amount of reminiscing about some fun and crazy moments.

The kids also had their share of fun. Miss seven loves the cheap nail polish and the even cheaper lollies. Master four and the goo, win the hearts of all the stall holders being offer Fuji fruit, mandarins and plums at every turn. Definitely on the cards again. And I'll tell all about these brownies soon. X

Zambezia at the Ritz

Very fun... Totally not Disney nor Pixar and an added sense of achievement that with a mixed bag of diversions I was able to keep my almost 9 month old awake and content through it. Produced in South African with the notable credit at the end to Samuel L Jackson; Adventures in Zambezia was a very G rated feel good flick that made our ANZAC afternoon at our favourite old school cinema really enjoyable. Definitely a crowd pleaser with our preschool aged crew.

I choose you

I don't love you in spite of your cheekiness... I love you because of it. I don't love you in spite of your incessant mimicking of everything we say...I love you because of it. It's not in spite of what seems an in aptitude to listen when I ask you not to drag Hubba bubba clumsily down the hallway to join your game of tent building, its because of it. It is you that I love my babies, even when I am close to bubbling over with frustration, even when I do. In the quietness of reflection it is you I choose. Each of you.

Stop the world I want to write

Days are long and leisure activities (for me that is) are minimal... But I am loving the school holidays nonetheless. Less planning, more spontaneity. Time with friends, potting seeds, throwing a ball. All things that make me feel a little less regimented, a little freer. Good times with my school aged baby. Writing can wait for these stolen late night rendezvous

Swedish fun

It's one of those relationships, you know it's not healthy and really it has little long term value but you keep returning. Its just so enticing, captivating in the short term....

Ah Ikea, if only I could stay away. Your clever designs, your eclectic marketing you had me at hello.

Big Red Sofa

I am perched in the sunroom on our new red couch. I am in love. The cool breeze on my arm is saving me from dozing off. It is my retreat. The place where I have been hiding myself away. Sometimes to re focus, sometimes to just breathe. Alone, uninterrupted. I have been juggling this week and it has left me feeling like a circus clown. Still happy if a little chaotic. It is 2.47pm on the last day before the ‘weekend’. The days surrounded by the children are catapulting towards me at break neck speed and there is still so much to be done. This week I have discovered the joy of baking goods with coconut flour and Miss Seven now requires these muffins every day. My other less inviting discovery is that my Resume is like a dinosaur and that my filing system for professional development certificates is haphazard to say the least. But strangely its all ok when i am on my red couch.

Movement

The need for movement is always there in me but sometimes it is stronger than I can carry without a release. A walk along the extravagant coastline we are blessed to live near, other times sending a bag to Vinnies is the action that propels me into a different space. An overseas trip such a lovely prospect that dreaming it up can be enough.

Tonight we had a dance competition in our lounge room and it was good for the soul. Varied forms of the movement I crave but all beautiful reminders of the power of momentum.

The art of talking oneself round

I am sitting on the spare bed in the sunroom. Overwhelmed. Sometimes the speed at which life happens stops me. My eyes flit between the laptop screen and the cascading water that is embracing the gutter beyond our fence in a frantic journey to the bottom of the street. It looks displeased that the tyres of our car has interfered with its travelling. Disjointed.

I’ve nothing to be so fractious about really but I am. I was up last night for almost an hour, for the first time in months. Teeth maybe or perhaps the runny nose that Hubba Bubba is sporting. I don’t really need to know, but it has left me a little unaligned. I coach myself to concentrate on tasks that need to be done while trying not to embrace the grey mood the sky is projecting at me. I feel a list may be in order. Small, measurable, manageable achievements I hear myself say to anyone but myself, perhaps I will listen to myself.

My visual journey

I don't really know what drives me to them but I have these moments of delusion semi regularly. The last was over a year ago when I decided to scan into my laptop every piece of artwork Miss Seven had ever created. In total there were 276 paintings, collages, etchings and sketchings.  

 For six movies over three night I sat wedged between pillows, a scanner next to me and the laptop on my…lap.  Until finally the project is complete.  It is a project born from antenatal insomnia but despite this a year later I am ready for another organisational task that potentially outweighs this effort, immeasurably.  

 

 A timeline style album of pics of the kids… pregnancy, birth, 6 weeks, six months, first year, first Christmas… and on it goes.  The album may never materialise but the journey it is submerging me in is an outcome in itself.  I have almost been swallowed by this pictorial evolution of my life now. Transported mythically through the past eight years; the narratives that accompany each shot are full of duality, raw and wild, cultivated and nurturing, inclusive and intimate.  I am immersing myself in the energy the task is creating that feels indescribable with words because it is visual in its essence.  It is enticing me away from my pen and page and I am allowing this…For now.