Bringing home the bacon

When my husband and I were on our honeymoon in the States and Canada, we often found it really difficult to find fresh fruit and vegetables. Leaving LA was a Godsend - not only because it was such an unfriendly city, but because the whole time we were there we had been subjected to some pretty unhealthy food! Most impressive was blue, red and bright green corn chips served with a Mexican meal one afternoon! We did find a few salads on menus around the place though and one night feeling a little peckish at midnight, my husband and I decided to order room service. We ordered a salad to share. It arrived in the largest size mixing bowl in a standard kitchen set and consisted of an entire iceburg lettuce and what seemed like a kilo of bacon and a litre of blue cheese dressing! It was awesome - but not really what we had in mind when ordering a light salad to snack on!

When we arrived in London Ontario, about an hour and a half from Toronto we walked the city to try and find some fresh produce. We finally discovered a beautiful indoor space called Convent Garden Markets. We went nuts stocking up on vegetables and fruit to snack on, just to try and combat the scurvy that had set in while in the States! But it wasn't until we got to Toronto that we found the Holy Grail of produce. The angels had sang and a light came down from the heavens - It was the most inspirational and beautiful display of vegetables I had ever seen. This was such a phenomonal sight it was almost enough to turn vegetarian...

If it wasn't for the memory of that dripping hot, crackly bacon on that bloody salad in LA!

Order Chaos Domesticbliss

I have already mentioned that by keeping a clean and tidy house, you can create more time in your day. The other plus by keeping a clean house is that you can keep some order in your life! After all, it's not easy running around after a toddler, a newborn and a husband - although I don't so much run after my husband anymore, more of a trot... Where did my fitness go...

Absolutely EVERYTHING in my house has a home and because of that I never get caught out looking for the car keys while running late, or my toddler's half sucked lolly bracelet she thought was in the toybox but turns out to be in the sandpit, or the childrens panadol at 3am!

You know all of that crap that gravitates around your kitchen bench right near the phone, or on the little shelf near the front door, or the pile of crap jammed hard into the hallway cupboard - so tight no-one has opened the cupboard since 2003?... Well all of that stuff needs a home to call its own, so it doesn't develop security issues later in life. If you go through the stuff that accumulates in these places and put it where it should live or in the very least a big pretty box, you will create a sense of harmony in your house. It's feng shui of the house and mind! I like to call it

Order Chaos = Domesticbliss.

My husband thought that was a really catchy term too and loves to go on about my O.C.D!

Bless...

You don't make friends with salad

Most people I know, focus the creation of a meal around meat as the centrepiece. It's not often you hear about a 'swede a vin' or an 'onion bourginon', but whenever I am really inspired about creating a dish, it is always because I have some new fantastic vegetable or a great bulk buy vegie box from the markets. As a kid I would cook myself carrots, peas and potato with a chop on the side instead of eating Friday night fish'n'chips - I loved vegetables that much!

I found the most bountiful bunch of silverbeet at the markets recently and couldn't wait to get creative in the kitchen with this luscious leafy produce. I started by making a silverbeet lasagna using the lovely green leaves only. The stalks I had cut out of the individual leaves then went into a minestrone soup, which simmered away while I prepped the lasagna. The stalk ends I diced up and used in a stirfry and my husband who abhors silverbeet, thought they were water chestnuts - what a versatile vegetable it was! The best part of all was that this vegetable had taken all the hard work out of planning three nights meals - I can't wait to get to the markets this week to find the next inspirational vegetable!! I'm sure my husband can't wait either, if only every vegetable tasted like potato...

Its not easy being green

I like to think of myself as environmentally concious. Recently I put my cardboard boxes into the laundry trough so that they could be wet down to use in the compost heap. The idea being that when I did a load of washing, the rinse water coming out of the machine would wet down the cardboard for me to rip up.

It wasn’t until I walked past the laundry and saw the pool of water snaking its way under the door that I realised the flaw in my plan. Having been away for Easter and unfortunately having to do catchup amounts of washing - I had also put a pile of dirty washing on the floor right over the drainage hole. Not only that but my floor slopes in the opposite direction of the hole!! I had now made myself another load of washing by using every single towel in the house to mop up!

Not really sure how the environment had benefited here; my carbon footprint may actually be one step forward, two steps back…

On the plus side, it’s the cleanest my floors have ever been!

There is no instruction manual for life...

There is no instruction manual for life! I think that's why when I cook or sew or generally do anything, I kinda make it up as I go along. There is a real sense of achievement if something turns out the way I planned and if it doesn't I just put it down to learning and because I haven't followed the instructions, guidelines or pattern - well I cant really beat myself up can I!?

I'm not saying I leap into things blindly, I do some research about whatever it is I am undertaking first, then have a crack. If I want to cook something I'm not familiar with, I look up five or six recipes online first then take the best bits from each one, and generally adapt which ever method sounds the quickest or easiest! If I want to crochet or sew something, I find a similar garment and 'eye it up' - basically using grade eight geometry, anyone can do this! Sometimes I will cut my own pattern based on the 'eye it up' principal, just to check its going to work first - I cut corners but I'm not a doofus.

Gardening has its share of guesswork too! I certainly don't measure how much blood'n'bone I am putting on my vegies, but I do know that one of my handfuls will cover a square meter - pity none of the gardens in my yard are actually square! So you see, even when you do have instructions on how to do stuff, it doesn't always suit your own situation anyway...

Super Freakette

There are days when I seem to get more done than others. I try to fit a lot into any given day, because I have so many things I want to get done and so many things I actually need to get done. Mostly the things I want and need to get done are the same things; I'm lucky because I really enjoy my day to day routine looking after my beautiful children, cooking, gardening and housestuff. But there are definitely days which are more productive than others and I think I'm piecing it together... I say this tentatively as my research is ongoing, but here is what I know so far...

Firstly, let me say, I finally understand why my mum was such a clean freak with her house! We used to occasionally tease mum with the 'clean freak' term, when our being messy kids would interfere with her grand plan of a sparkly home, often asking her "when the queen was coming?" Now I feel really bad about that because I finally get it. And this is why - if your house is clean, everything else will happen with relative ease AND it will make more time! I had to buy a new watch when all of sudden my day went to 25 hours instead of 24... god that's awful. Anyway, sorry mum for calling you a 'clean freak' all those years, I am now donning the term 'clean freakette' in your honour!

So, on the days when I achieve lots, its because my house is clean. When everything is where it should 'live', everything happens so much quicker and then keeping it tidy once its actually clean seems to take less time too! This way I am able to cram more into my day and less into my to-do list. I am loving myself sick with this new found appreciation for a clean house!

Long time listener, first time caller...

I have been a fan of blogs for some time now and never considered that it may be something that I might actually do myself! You know when you hear people say "I can't believe it happened to me!", well, its kinda like that - but with less money from the lotto winnings...

On my final visit to my obstetrician for the birth of my second (and final) daughter, it occured to me that I should have kept a blog during my second pregnancy. That way I have a permanent reminder of how crap it was if I ever relapse and begin to ponder a third addition - usually during a half lucid and champagne induced lovey dovey moment.

So I was sitting in the waiting room, wishing for the onset of pre-eclampsia just so I could get induced and get the whole pregnancy thing done for, when I realised just how much I have got to say! With one toddler already at home and a newborn on its way - it didn't look like anyone there was going to listen, so here we are!