& I'll say it again. I'm an all or nothing kind of girl.
Recently, I've been having a lot of all:
work craft opping mess
& a lot of nothing:
housewifeing maintaining caring sorting cleansing cutting back
I've reached breaking point & can stand it no longer. We live in a nice suburb with nice neighbours who paid good money for their real estate & frankly we are letting them down. I need a huge garage sale &/or a huge skip.
I pledge to be ALL about the house this week. You could get lucky if you live in Melbourne...
My smalls are not the best eaters. I'm trying to encourage them to broaden their tastes a bit. The big girl especially would happily live on white food alone! With my goal in sight I picked up some teeny asparagus at the fruit shop this week & with this image in my head set about making this for their dinner. It's more of a construction than a recipe.
They LOVED it!
Birds Nest Pasta 1 Chicken Breast Sweet Paprika 1 bunch tiny asparagus - chopped 1 handful of mushrooms - sliced 1 egg per person 1 birds nest pasta per person
Rub Sweet Paprika into the chicken breast & pan fry. Slice finely & set aside.
Cook the mushrooms in the same frypan.
Boil water in a large saucepan. Steam asparagus & set aside. Use this water to cook the pasta.
Return the sliced chicken & asparagus to the frypan with the mushrooms & keep warm.
In a separate pan poach the eggs.
Place the pasta in the centre of the plate. Then scatter your vegie & chicken mix around the pasta. Top with the egg sprinkled with Parmesan (& cracked pepper if it's for anyone over 12).
Enjoy.
I think I'll have a couple of Stacey's cheese cubes & cocktail onions for befores & I'd kill for a Melbourne Bitter Cam. I'm so glad you guys could make it to Slide Night. .
So...I was planning a move away from blogger but you know, I've worked pretty hard in this space for a while now & it seemed a bit like going back to square one. The main reason I was considering a shift was that was the flash commenty systems going on elsewhere.
I've been enjoying the friendly chat over on twitter & was hoping to get something like that going on.
I'm trialling JS-kit comments which seems to be pretty good.
However ... I did transfer my comments from blogger yesterday afternoon so anyone who left a comment last night or today - your comment had disappeared. They are still saved behind the scenes in blogger & if I dump JS they will magically reappear. I'm sorry girls.
Anyway, let's try it out for a few days & make a call after that.
Note: All those trial comments are live on this post. Feedback most welcome.
EDIT: Oh yikes...it seems as though all previous comments are not properly readable. Need tech support.
UPDATE: I think I'm going to keep on keeping on. I can always reload original template tomorrow morning.
1. ACEO- She wore Beauty Brown - Original fabric/colored pencil on wood art, 2. Live stump, 3. rabbit companions flee scene, 4. Green Room Sketch- print of original drawing on wood, 5. powerful books, 6. Wood slice
The Heat Beads Hawkers' Market is running as part of The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.
What a magical event this is!
I was lucky enough to be there to watch the Vic Market transform into a bustling Hawkers' Market (& then back again ready for this morning's regular market).
Last night the Vic Market sheds were filled with the smell of delicious Asian foods sizzling over hot coals. There was live entertainment, cooking demonstrations & tables jam packed full of people soaking in this rather magical event (& they are doing it all again tonight & Wednesday).
It's certainly an experience I'd recommend so if you're in Melbourne you should consider making tonight or tomorrow night's meal plan "The Heat Beads Hawkers' Market".
My dad & step mum live in North East Victoria, they are not under threat.
They rang today to ask if they could donate a doona that I'd left there... It's cold at the relief centre & they really need bedding.
YES!
We talked more about how awful the situation is & where the greatest need is. I offered to get more stuff together. A few friends from school are helping out too.
I'm meeting Dad on the highway tomorrow morning & I'm feeling like my contribution might make things just a little easier for a small number of the bushfire victims left with nothing.
My lovely friend is walking this. I've done it - it's the hardest thing ever! If you'd like to donate to her team of go-get-em girls and support OXFAM go here. I'll be tracking her progress over the next 20 hours or so.
I'm off to support another of my lovely friends tonight. She is doing live stand-up - that's gutsy!
This game is only able to be played if you have a blog.
1. Sign up to play on the game post with "I'm in".
2. Start your clicketty trip. Click around & pick up your answers. Have a pen & paper handy.
3. Copy & paste the Q & A section of the game post into your own blog.
4. Enter your answers in red.
5. Schedule your post to go live at the time specified on each new game post. I'll be clicking around at that time & unfortunately if you've made an error in your time calculation your entry won't be able to be included in the draw. You should also check your profile to make sure that your blog time is the same as your local time. Check what time you need to schedule for here.
6. Check in at kootoyoo to vist other players & find out who the winner is.
Help, I don't know how to schedule a post!
How to schedule a post using blogger How to schedule a post using wordpress How to schedule a post using typepad
I made a lemon birthday cake for The Date...for desert at the family(his) lunch.
I'd scoured Delicious and found just the recipe. A nice list of ingredients that made me sure the resulting cake would live up to the "delicious" promise.
I made sure I had the best ingredients, nice olive oil, home grown lemons, quality prosecco, beautiful eggs. I set to work and made the cake. It did all the right things in my new oven (which I'm not great mates with yet) & looked gorgeous when I removed it from the tin.
I tasted the tiny bit that stuck to the side of the tin & my heart sank. It tasted very eggy.
What was I worried about? I'm normally pretty good with this sort of thing. I thought that there'd be plenty said about the egg cake rather than the lemon cake. Then all sorts of crazy food poisoning scenarios were running through my head.
I knew I wasn't going to be serving my cake. We went to Browns on the morning of & picked up a white chocolate & raspberry cheesecake (stunning) & a flourless orange cake (meh).
The cake was duly sampled when we returned home on Monday evening & it was, just as the magazine promised ... absolutely delicious.
There's a lesson here ... if you think it's good - it IS good & who cares what other people think.
I responded to a request from Kami this week & it really got me thinking & then I found this...
The value of the collective and the community in the continuation of successful practice
Presenter: Carole Hanson Epp Verge: 11th National Ceramics Conference Brisbane, Australia 10th - 14th July 2006
"I have found that working within a community of artists or collaboratively can be a means, in particular for emerging artists, to gain valuable experience, access to opportunities and an awareness and understanding of the role of the community in support and critique of ones work. When we leave our academic environments to set out on our own as craftspeople we are still in need of a community of like-minded, inspirational, challenging and active producing artists around us. Academic programs can instill such skills as self-criticism and personal motivation, but it is through the community that we evolve and build upon that foundation...
...Only through active involvement will we as practitioners see the growth and development of these organizations and the artists they support. Attendance at events, membership, financial support, volunteering of skills and time, are all means towards common goals."
Complete article here
What does this mean for me? How can I nurture the relationships I've been building with this craft community & particularly the Melbourne girls?
Support the community in which you hope to prosper whether financially or otherwise. Get around - have a chat.
If you enjoy a blog, admire a piece (or collection) of work, got inspired, had a laugh, shed a tear, made your day, touched your heart - support them!
Buy their work, leave comments, shop in their store, celebrate their wins & take an active interest in their journey.
Everyone has to buy stuff sometime. Before you head to a nameless, faceless, bigger than Ben Hur store owned & run by a man in a suit you'll never see - consider buying from someone you "know" & who you KNOW will appreciate it.
Put back what you take out and then some.
I'm trying really hard to live this rather than just think it. A community is a powerful & wonderful thing. So to all who take the time to post, make, create, share or care - thank you.
This post has been rather more deep than my usual drivel so I'm going to finish on a totally tacky low note...
Mike Brady in the Brady Bunch Movie: Alone, we can only move buckets. But if we work together, we can drain rivers.
If you think that I was going to get close enough to a real live chicken then you are crazy!
No...not really...my mother-in-law has chickens & I probably could have summoned the courage but they are on holidays with her at the moment.
I am REALLY scared of chickens. I think it comes from visiting the country cousins & having 20 chickens chased out of the hen house towards me on a daily basis. The country cousins would of course roll around laughing their heads off.
Sweaty palms & racing heart .... I was truly terrified & too scared of my aunt to say I didn't want to go down to the chooks anymore.
The fear is actually for all winged creatures. I'm NOT a bird girl.