Birthday. Interior design. Rake.

Hi there special friends. 

I'm exhausted so am blogging from mobile phone whilst watching weird doco on Star Trek. ALso have to speed type because now Rake is on any minute and I love it hard. Please excusr any tuopos I mean typos. Also if you are on my Instagram you will have seen all this so feel free to go and do your nails or pack kids lunches or whatever.

Will write in succinct fashion to facilitate express communication of concepts.

Baby B turned 2. Such a darling. Made him choccie cupcakes for playdate and kindy. Not success as B not a fan of icing. I KNOW. He refused to eat my lovingly prepared sugary delights and scoffed 3 pieces of my friend's plain and low sugar banana cake. GUTTED! I wonder where he came from sometimes.

Sooo...because of his predilection for banana cakes, I made him one for his fambly arvo tea party. Shoved Smarties on and candles into cream cheese frosting. He scraped his icing off. Also didn't eat the Smarties. WTF HE IS A CHANGELING CHILD. The faeries surely swapped him at birth.

We drank champers and Pimms at the arvo tea party because that's what you do at kids parties right?? Well I do anyway. For the moment at least.

Wore this dress at his party. Stinking hot day. Actually bought it in Melbourne the other weekend on equally stinking day. Is Quick Brown Fox. Shop was next to hotel. Convenient. Covers my lumps and bumps. Nice pattern. I likee.

Went for drinks with my blogging lady kindy person friends. Here is FF. Got to meet lovely Nikki from Styling You. Was starstruck. I talked a lot. Couldn't drink much because driving. As usual. Pfft.

Wore this dress at some point. Is Sacha Drake. Was got from Op Shop for a few bob. SUCH A SCORE.

Have also been styling my house up with weird op shopped things. See those paintings? Guess how much they cost me!? NO IT WASN'T A MILLION DOLLARS! I AM SERIOUS! IT WAS ONLY $2 per piece! I KNOW! One of the regulars at the op shop did them and gave them to the volunteers to sell, because her family didn't want them. M hates them with a passion.  A passion I tell you. I like them.

Got this ice cream the other day because Maggie Beer's burnt figgy thingo one was too dear. But I regretted it. This was poo. Sorry but I tell it how it is, people.

 Other things of note include;

- The swimming teacher felt the need to ask me if Benji went to kindy, because sometimes when she asks him to do something, he says "no no!" and blows a raspberry at her. She wondered where he would pick that habit up from. Last time I checked you couldn't pick up "being 2 years old" from kindy. Geez lady. Anyway I told her he got it from me because when my husband asks me to do something I too shout "no no!" and blow raspberries. I think she believed me.

- I would like to keep up my crocheting lessons but it is not appealing in this heat. Ugh. Can't stand the idea of the wool all over me AGH. But one of the ladies at my favourite op shop brought me in some new crochet needles and some patterns and beginners stuff. THE LOVELY THING! I was so touched.

-  I am panicking that I don't feel prepared for the beginning of uni which is not this week but next. So panicked. Am working 4 days this week too. One hand - good cos money. Other hand - bad cos work and also panicking about uni things and I think this week is O week so I should try and go and gahhh. Need to spend quality time getting to know the online Blackboard thingie that they put all the INFORMATION on these days. Feel like dinosaur. Must. Get. On. Top. Of. Tech.

-  Am sick of summer and am praying for rain. Our garden is DEAD as a DODO except for all the blasted weeds which would obviously survive a nuclear winter. 

Anyway have to go because RAKE!

So what have you been doing? Do you watch Rake? I do! It's good! You should get on board with it!

Cheerio.

SDM. 

How to mend a broken heart.

Ok, I'm willing to admit that sometimes the whole 'slapdash' thing works against me.  Thank god there are some perfectionists out there or I would totes do something stupid like send my wedding invitations out with the wrong date on them,  and then have a hardcore Bridezilla meltdown in the shower (that may have involved screaming obscenities and/or crying) when I realised.

Oh wait, I DID DO THAT!  [Hangs head in shame].

Anyway, developing this theme a little more, today was Baby B's small family birthday partay.

In the name of keeping things square for the siblings, I decided to do the same kind of thing that we did for P's first bday, and that included, (you know what I'm going to say right!?) a HEART SHAPED BIRTHDAY CAKE!

Booyah.

In the interests of keeping things easy, I made everyone else bring a plate, and bought Woolies croissants to serve.  Simple!  All I had to do was make the cake.  Which I've done a bazillion times at least.

The heart tin I have is ENORMO.  So I do the same basic melt and mix butter cake recipe I use for everything, and make three times the normal recipe.

So this means when I make the heart cake I need 6 eggs.  When I opened the carton last night, I discovered I only had 5 eggs.  Mum was there, so I said "Oh SHIT A BRICK I've only got 5 eggs.  Mum, 5 eggs will be enough won't it? I'm supposed to have 6".

Mum said, "Yeah, she'll be right mate, no worries, she's apples, just shove the 5 eggs in it'll be right", and then I said "Yeah, I mean it's chocolate cake so there'll be cocoa in it which will make it a bit dry but she'll be right, 5 eggs will be HEAPS!  Who needs 6 eggs? Pah to you recipe" and other things along those lines.

So I merrily made it with 5 eggs.  Everything was going swimmingly and I was having another glass of red wine as the cake cooled on the stove top, and then I had to turn it out of the tin.

And this shit happened.

Insert NYPD blue music here - "Duht duhht!"

When it cracked I went through the seven stages of grieving, like you do when your heart is broken.

Shock - "What the FUCK is happening! I can't believe it, I have made this a million times! THIS IS NOT HAPPENING PEOPLE!"

Denial - "It's fine, it's just a small crack, no-one can see it, it's a perfect masterpiece flawless cake, yes, yes, yes it is....nice little cake, good cake..."

Anger - "Goddammn this thing it is RUINED and I am THROWING IT IN THE BIN AND BUYING ONE FROM WOOLIES, I am not kidding, I am losing it, it is going in the bin RIGHT NOW GAHHHHHHH!!!!"

Bargaining - "Come on little cakie wakie, I'm sorry I was so angry, I didn't mean it, we can make it work, please...!!""

Guilt - "Poor Baby B, I bought all the other shit for his party from crappy Woolies, I just wanted to make ONE PERFECT HOMEMADE THING FOR HIM AND NOW HIS WHOLE LIFE IS RUINED FOREVER AND HE WILL BE SCARRED FOR LIFE!!"

Depression - "I am such a crap mother, I can't cook to save myself, who am I, where am I, someone pour me a glass of woine, I'm having a moment..."

Acceptance and hope - "You know what! I think I can do it! Yes! It's working! Look everybody I AM KING OF ALL OF THE CAKES AND THE WHOLE WORLD AND EVERYTHING!!!!! SUCK THAT MARTHA STEWART!! BOOYAH!!"


Anyway, at some point during this whole rollercoaster of emotion I posted this pic on Instagram (yeah for social media!) and everyone said "Just glue that bitch together with icing, nobody will notice, ain't nobody got time for dat!" and so forth, so I didn't completely freak out til this morning when I realised we HAD NO ICING SUGAR.

"Duht duhht".

This slapdash gig sometimes comes at a price people.  My life is my art.

Anyway, before I had time to replicate my Bridezilla moment in the shower, Mum rushed off to the servo and came back with icing sugar out the whazoo, and I successfully glued the SHIT out of that broken heart until it looked like this.

Pheeeew!

Anyway after that I was exhausted and could have done with a lie down, but the show had to go on and actually we had a lovely time and Baby B was his usual chuckly self, so that's the main thing.

Ever had a cake fail? Ever saved a cake from the bin with mad icing skillz?  Had a broken heart?  Tell your old friend Slapsie...I won't judge.  Believe me.

Slapdash-issima.

Food, glorious food! La, lalala, custard! Food, glorious food! Something, ya dada, mustard!

I keep thinking of things to add to the litany of my areas of excellence as devised in this earlier blog post.  Something I left off the list was my particular talent for remembering song lyrics. Mind like a steal trap, people.

Anyway loyal readers, I write to you this afternoon from an undisclosed location, deep in the hills, where I have retreated to my bunker with a stockpile of hoarded tinned goods and bottled water*. The apocalyptic weather has everybody panicking. Rain, wind, tornadoes! The end of the world is surely nigh.  What's a girl to do in this weather but comfort cook and eat for Australia?

Despite all of my personal deficiencies, my friends, it is true that when the planets are aligned and the spirit (or a spirit as the case may be) moves me, I can achieve greatness.

Yesterday, I felt the spirit of Peg Bundy, my erstwhile Muse, leave my body, to be replaced by none other than the spirit of infamous cookery sexpot Nigella Lawson. I could tell it was her because I developed a sort of Nigella induced Tourettes condition. I was overcome with the urge to shout out random things like 'unctuous!' and 'luscious!' and 'full fat, added salt, midnight snack, motherfuckers!' in between barking like a dog and licking food suggestively off my fingers and tossing my chestnut main like a spirited filly.


I'm sure you will agree the likeness is quite striking.

I got my longsuffering husband M to take these pics while I was getting all Nigella on everyone's arses. I'm not sure that he's really caught the "Slapdash Mama" vision just yet but full marks to him for indulging me.

So, the reason I've got that food song in my head, and even taking into consideration my ambivalence (tending towards downright hostility)  to Australia Day jingoism, is that I do enjoy any chance I get to make (and eat) seasonally appropriate foodstuffs.

So, dear reader, I made lamingtons. This was no mean feat because it involves making a SPONGE CAKE which I actually hadn't ever done before.  Even though I was channelling Nigella, I actually used a Stephanie Alexander recipe.  But I reckon Nigella would be down with that shizz because she's always stealing borrowing other people's recipes anyway.  And I've got this kind of weird idea that celebrities are all friends, constantly dropping into each other's houses and chewing the fat over a few spritzers and a bowl of chips, so I'm sure they know each other and are totes bffs.

The aforementioned lamingtons.  VERY NICE thank you very much.  A feather-light sponge soaked in the requisite amount of chocolate icing, then rolled in the perfect amount of coconut. I think even a rusted on CWA member would have liked these babies.

And then, just for good measure, I rustled up a bit of balsamic vinegar marinaded butterflied lamb for dinner. 

It was good.  Very good.  Nigella, you know your stuff.

 Look, don't be jealous, not everyone can be as talented as I am.  Women want to be me, men want to be with me. And eat my lamb.  What can I say?

Are you possessed by any spirits? Like making seasonal treats? Have you caught my vision? If so, please return it at once!

Don't get washed away fellow Queenslanders.

Mwah.


*I may or may not actually be lying about this.

EDITED TO ADD: I just reached 10000 views! Exciting. Also am linking up with Alicia from One Mother Hen's Open Slather! Still haven't worked out buttons. Urgh.

Merry Christmas to my crew.

Merry Chrimbo everyone.

We've had a fat old time here at the Slapdash Family Compound.  We had M's family over for drinkies here to Mums place last night, and I did a hardcore last minute giftwrap and then stayed up til the wee small hours to go to midnight Christmas Eve service with my Daddy.  Lucky because CHRISTMAS NEARLY HAD TO BE CANCELLED! I KNOW!

I know what you are thinking re: last minute gift wrapping but I can explain.  I am not usually THAT slapdash.  My feeling "off colour" all week turned into a full blown catastrophic migraine on Friday night. I had to get a jab in the arm on Saturday afternoon and everything.  I was wondering why I couldn't focus or get anything done and felt so tired and depressed.  As I said on FB, total RESPECT for peeps who get them all the time.  How do you do it?  I could have wept from relief when the GP said there was a needle he could give me that would fix it.  Thank FUCK.  I thought I was dying.  M had to take over and make the apricot jam I had conceptualised as an "easy" alternative to buying gifts for the adults.  Oh what a fool was I...anyway the jam is very nice so that's something.  Dad even had to do an emergency run to our house to look after the kids, even while we were supposed to be driving to his place!  Let me tell you if you don't have your health you have nothing.  Nothing, my friends.

Anyway, I went to the Christmas Eve midnight service a) because I am a good Anglican and b) because Dad has been coerced into some kind of candle wrangling role up at his ole church so he had to be there to offside the lady he's accepting the baton from.   I say accepting in the loosest sense of the word.  Which seemed to consist of him sort of lurking around while she officiously fussed about shaking out robes and whatnot.  If her actions could speak they would have been saying "I am NOT READY to relinquish my VERY IMPORTANT CHURCHY ROLE and frankly YOU'LL HAVE TO PRISE THESE CANDLES FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS you upstart you".  Dad was very noble and withstood the liturgical attitude being directed his way.  As we left I could hear her lecturing him "And when you do the READING tomorrow you must be sure to SPEAK CLEARLY INTO THE MICROPHONE so that they HEAR you at the BACK OF THE CHURCH! CLEARLY, mind!".  Poor Dad, I wanted to shout "Love, I think he'll be right, he used to be a Deputy Principal and spent 90% of his time yelling at halls a thousand kids strong with or without a microphone.  No problems with vocal chords here", but I restrained myself.  Dad has a better grasp of the whole humility thing than I do.

So Dad came over to Mum's this morning to watch the smalls open their pressies.  They got tonnes as usual, with some hits and misses.  P's favourite pressie was a pair of Hello Kitty PJs I bought her at the last minute.  Lucky!  She promptly stripped down and wore the jim jams all day long.  She's wearing them in bed again now.  Cutie patootie.

P lounging in her new, er, lounge wear I spose.

 

We had a VERY HOT day and so of course ate a huge pork roast with all the proverbial trimmings.  No, but seriously it was delicious and then we had cherry sherry trifle and some of good old Heston Blumenthal's pud.  Oh yeah.  Hubba hubba.  I overcame my uncharacteristic migraine induced lack of appetite and did the dinner justice, more or less. 

Me at the feast with a small.

 

Mum at the feast.

Hope you all had a nice day.  I'm off to indulge in some Christmas Day Night festive "nibblings at the leftovers", as is tradition.

My good friend Gordon has popped over and he's going to help me eat....

 

...some of this.

Peace be with you my interweb family.

My week, a synopsis in photographs

I'm finding it difficult to get a moment to myself to write this blog.  So here's a speedy update on my week in photographic form, for those who are interested, although why you would be is anyone's guess!  I tried to start it twenty million times with P and B at my feet "writing" Christmas cards and so forth but not a moment's peace was to be had. I usually do as much as I can on my phone in any snippets of calm I have, but I still have to tweak it properly on the ole fashioned desktop computer.

I cannot work under these conditions people I AM AN ARTEEEESSST!

Also, I've been shamelessly flogging the blog around the traps and have successfully ensnared some new readers.  Hello to you all my new friends!

OK so here it goes for what it's worth.

• I invented a new word, sangry. You're sangry when you feel like this - 

Oh woe is me, I'm failing the kids, I'm an awful Mum, I'm never going to have a meaningful career, my daughter hates me, boo hoo hoo hoo 

        And then immediately feel like this - 

Grrrrr the house is so MESSY no matter what I do, I may as well be a frigging char lady, all I do is argue with the toddler and wipe arses, it makes me so MAD I WANT TO KICK A SMALL DOG BUT I CAN'T SO I'M JUST GOING TO SCREAM LIKE A BANSHEE AT MY HUSBAND!

 And then like this again -

Oh the world is so full of cruelty and horror, global warming, war, Tony Abbott, famine, misogyny, it's all too much, {sobs into pillow}.

Closely followed by - 

If I hear one more word about RADIO BROADCASTERS ACTING LIKE ARSES or if one more person bags out Julia Gillard JUST BECAUSE SHE IS A WOMAN WITH RED HAIR or if P does ANOTHER wee on the floor I am going to go OFF LIKE A FIRECRACKER OR AT THE VERY LEAST SCREAM LIKE A BANSHEE AT MY HUSBAND!!!

Sound familiar anyone?  We all get sangry from time to time.  Let it all out folks, breath out sangry, breathe in love.

• I remained more or less committeed to Fox in Flats #darecember. Get ready for some hardcore selfie action you guys.

Dress

Neck party

Red nail polish

Animal print

All black

Curls

•  This happened - 

Then this happened - 

Then this happened again - 

See "sangry" entry above for further details.

• Cute baby crap went down

Hee hee

Bless

•  This happened. For ages. WTF.

Sharpness of mind and clarity of thought, I has it.

•  I had a Tupperware party.  I know.

Wore this.

Baked this.

Scored free shit.

What have youse guys been up to?  Get about in mismatching clothes? Yell abuse at your husband?  Score some noice free plastic gear? I want to hear it all.

Poo of a day. Festivus. For the rest of us.

WARNING: This post is long,  photo heavy and self-indulgent.


I had a CRAP DAY!  Everywhere I go I read blogs that say "I'm sick of hearing about people whinging and whining about life, harden up and be POSITIVE" and dammit I try hard to be humorous and see the good (which is hard as I am naturally all "What do you mean the glass is half empty?  It was never full!  Who drank it?  I'm thirsty and I want a drink and you mean my glass is EMPTY?") and what not but basically today was SHIT and I was a SHIT MOTHER and yelled at my toddler and rang my busy husband at work bawling and hysterical and had a HARDCORE MELTDOWN!  I put this status update on my personal FB account;

I usually hate whining FB rants but my 3 y.o. daughter and her behavior have reduced me to screaming rage filled tears today. I'm not looking for reassurance that I am an awesome mother here because I am freaking telling you today has been a What Not To Do as a Parent Day and I feel like poo. Yelling, screaming, crying, begging, shouting, chasing, threatening. You name it. Over it. Over it. Over it. I know there are people with awful problems and so forth but today I can't get perspective. And no booze. And no comfort eating. Farking farkity fark feck bum poo arse bugger bollocks crap shit.

This actually had the effect of cheering me up no end because of course my personal cheer squad chimed in with supportive crap out the whazoo so I am ok again and about to GET ME SOME BOOZE.  Also we bought P McDonalds in an attempt to atone for the horror day.  Poor kid stuck with a psycho mother. Who buys her junk food. Oh well.

Here's some slightly more cheering festive thoughts from me to distract from the gloom and horror of the day.

This year we will be up at the Slapdash family compound and spending Christmas Day with Mum in a sort of weird retro revisiting of family Christmases I have known.  It will be nice but also sad.  Last Christmas we didn't even know my stepdad was sick and now he is gone.  Anyway here's a sort of Dickensian tribute, a photo montage of recent-ish Family Christmases Past.

A much younger Mum sitting near the Chrissy Tree perusing some weird  retro cookbook for Christmas Dinner ideas no doubt. Maybe 1995-ish?

  This pic is from what I like to call "The Portly Years".  Mum and Dad and me looking rather well fed indeed. Brother C probs taking the pic.

This is much more recent.  Me and my bro at the unit at Mooloolaba we all stayed in one year.  This was M's first Christmas with us.  Probably 2005?

My first Christmas with M's family.  M partaking in a little tipple as he glazes the ham.

Cake and sherry.  The essence of Christmas.

The completed ham from that year.

M checking out his ancestral Christmas Tree.

Lunch with his family.  Me on my best behaviour, I didn't burp or even use the wrong cutlery or anything!

It was pork that year.  Crackling, anyone?

Fruity flan!

Another year, at M's family pre-Christmas knees-up.

The same year.  We went out to lunch at Pepper's Hervey Bay on Christmas Day with Dad.  Delightful and no washing up.

Same year.  M partaking in some bubbles.

Same year.  Awkward family shot.

First Christmas in our new house.

Dad and my brother-in-law with our niece.  

 All M's fam and my Dad and bro.  Note the crazy blue velvet cusions on the chairs.  We also inherited this dining suite from the same lady as the couches.  I ripped those suckers off and Mum and I reupholstered the hell out of them by buying some cheap IKEA fabric and staple gunning it on in true slapdash fashion.

As above, with atmospheric blurriness.

P's first Christmas.  Have Bumbo, will travel.

Christmas with Grandpa.  This was a hellish year where we drove to every parent under the sun and I went mad.

Christmas at Mum's with my brother C.

It was some time around this day that I went mad.  Screaming , sleep-deprived batshit crazy.  Sorry everyone.  Seems like this is a bit of a pattern for me!!!

Christmas the next year just us 3.  Was supposed to be Mum and her husband D too but the horror floods meant no traveling.  It was quite lovely really not to have to go anywhere.

Angel scampering.

The loot.

The morning.

Family photo.  Lush crazy vegetables and herbs in the background due to major crazy rain that year.

Last year.  Everyone at our house again.

Cousins.

My stepdad. And the ham. We didn't know this would be his last Christmas.

Pressies.

Table set ready to roll.

Almondy boozey fruity cakey goodness.

I for one can't wait for Christmas.  I am anything but a Scrooge.  Bring it on. We all need to look forward to something.