We Make: Mistakes. A Pantry Make-Over. And a Give-Away.

Posted in Parenting, Projects by

 

Step 1: Find, in your possession, some adorable kitchen labels from Stuck on You.

Step 2: Stand, forlorn, in front of your woefully disorganised pantry. Your Spare-Room Policy of ‘if an area is a total mess, but I don’t have to look at it, does the mess really exist?’ has clearly been extended here. Look from your pantry, to the cuteness of the kitchen labels, and back to your pantry. Resolve that drastic action must be taken.

Step 3: In a flurry of activity, remove every item from your pantry and place them, haphazardly, all over your kitchen surfaces. Preferably an hour or so before you must prepare a meal for your family. This will lead you to discover that the lid of the washing machine makes a perfectly adequate chopping board.

Step 4: With hot soapy water, scrub all hardened jam, flour, crumbs and fingerprints until sparkling clean. As if on cue, have your cat walk over your freshly washed surfaces. Rinse and repeat.

Step 5: Get up at 5.30am, two days in a row, to undercoat your pantry before the children wake up and try to ‘help you’.

Step 6: Go to your local paint store for test-pots. Do not let the fact that, on returning home, you discover you do not have any of the other tools required for painting a decorative feature. You know, like painters tape. Or a ruler. This is the point where most people, on having a freshly painted pantry, all white and inviting, would just say, hey, maybe I don’t need to paint a Chevron stripe in here. But you are not most people.  Devise that, alongside your can-do attitude, a record sleeve and some ordinary cellotape will do just fine to fashion a guide for your stripe. Be pleasantly surprised with the results. Feel a little smug once you have finished. Go and have a shower. I can’t believe you left the house like that.

Step 7: As you stand under the warm water trying to wash the paint out of your hair, think to yourself what a shame it is that it overcast; that now you will have to wait until tomorrow for your paint work to be dry enough to get to the fun part of the make-over – the organising! Wonder if it’s normal to feel so genuinely excited about your kitchen cupboards. Realise suddenly that you seem to have completed a whole thought. This has not been possible during the children’s waking hours…ever before. Feel immediately and overwhelmingly suspicious.

 

 

Step 8: Expletives.

Step 9: Thank your ‘helpers’ for the ‘fine job’ they did ‘helping you’. Worry that perhaps the tone in which you write about parenting on the internet is somehow drawing these experiences to you. Try not to think too much about Thomas theorem.

Step 10: Spend another two days preparing all the meals in the wash-house because you cannot face painting the pantry for the eighth time.

Step 11: Just do it already. This is getting ridiculous. You haven’t seen the bench in a week.

 

Re-Re-Painted Pantry.

 

Step 12: Paint over Jackson Pollock Jr and Jackson Pollock Jr. Jr.’s masterpiece, ignoring their cries of protest. Realise this may well be the first in series of instances wherein you ‘don’t understand their art’.

 

 

Step 13: Once your pantry is completely dry, enjoy with great relish the grand reorganisation. Know now that this was the reason you had been hoarding all those jars. Stand back often to admire your work and to take a series of poorly lit photographs. Ignore the realisation that you could have just used washi or another decorative tape to create your Chevron stripe, and saved yourself a whole heap of trouble.

But where’s the fun in that?

 

The End.

 

And now! A  Give-Away!

Stuck on You have kindly donated a set of their gorgeous personalised kids pyjamas. Head over to their website and check out all the styles available here. Then come on back leave your preference in the comments for a chance to win. I’m crazy about the Circus themed ones!

The winner will be picked at random next Thursday the 18th of April. Good luck!

For more from Stuck on You checkout their homepage. Or say hi to them on Facebook or Twitter.

That’s no Gouda.

Posted in ...What did you just say? by

Mabel comes tearing into the living room, in distress.

Mabel: ‘Mama! There’s an angry, angry cheese!’

Alice: ‘An angry, angry…cheese?’

Mabel: ‘Yes!’

Alice: ‘Um…I’m not sure what to do with that information, Mae. That’s…no good?’

Theo enters.

Theo: ‘No! I am a happy, happy cheese!’

 

Sometimes you just have to let them brie.

Three Hundred & Sixty Five : Days at Home – Ninety-Three + Four + Five + Six + Seven + One for Luck.

Posted in 365 by

 

This is what the week looked like:
The first yield of Apples off our little tree / My Grandmothers signature yellow beads hanging in the entranceway (thinking of stencilling the empty wall there on the left – suggestions welcome!) / Every room is better with flowers / Our little Lemon / Succulents on the front steps / And one for luck! Spent hours bricking out edges, mulching, planting blubs for Spring and tucking everything in with a layer of peastraw. These bricks were once my chimney – but that seems so long ago now.

Hello Autumn.

—

Would you prefer the 365 daily? Or in a weekly round up like this?

Three Hundred & Sixty Five: Days at Home / Ninety-One.

Posted in 365, Parenting by

91

 

Creating a gallery wall is a great way to cohesively display art in your home. Here I have clustered artwork made by friends, favourite cards and a paper bag my best friend gave me my birthday present in (it was a tea cosy). Your children may wish to add incredibly adhesive Toy Story stickers to your woodwork. Embrace their creativity with savoir-faire. I mean of course, drink a glass of wine and spend a tortuous hour trying to peel them off once they have gone to bed.

 

 

March.

Posted in Heart, Parenting by

Dear Babies,

When we are dancing, to records I used to play, on Saturday nights; and your little bodies are spinning, spinning and your little faces are laughing, laughing, I am filled with the knowing, that there is no where so sweet as now.

I have never just loved where I am. Not known how to be still, have rushed and pushed and run toward a future; always desperate for ‘something to happen’.

And then there was you; and you slowed me down. Made me look up and out, instead of down and in. Connected me.

And the more I listen to that, to you, to all the lessons you have brought with you, the happier I am.

Mabel; you are infinitely sweet. When you were a baby, and you lived in my lap, I could literally kiss you to sleep. 1000 kisses a day seems to be your requisite – we’re the same in that way. I am doing my best to get you to stand up to your brother, when he does something you don’t like; making sure you have a voice, and the confidence to use it. You told him the other day, ‘Don’t treat me like a toy! I’m a robot!’, which was so cool and empowered I would have given you a high-five, but I like to let you just be in your own radness sometimes, to find solidity there, in who you are; to trust your own reactions without need for affirmation. You boss us all around, constantly. You don’t like to wear dresses, but on the occasions you do, you tell me they are for dancing, so we try out a few moves. You say ‘ya’ instead of ‘you’ and the other day when you couldn’t remember the name of your tounge, you told me you didn’t need your face washed because you’d ‘Use your licker’. You make me cry with laughter.  You’d rather be a pirate than a princess.

Theo; your comprehension is incredible. You process best when given all the information, which I can see you sorting in your mind, adding up, finding validity within your understanding, working out how things are. You are perceptive and persistent. You have great big feelings – we’re the same in that way. I do my best to support you through them, to provide you a place of stillness, to be the constant you can always come back to when you’ve gone to far. Remember, little love, no matter how far you go, you can always turn around. You ask me amazing questions all day. ‘Why are the crackers being quiet?’, when we haven’t sealed their container properly, and the air has made them lose their crunch. ‘What is that light dancing in the water?’, the windows reflected in the bath, I say. ‘That’s interesting’, you tell me. ‘What’s that hook for?’, it’s for a chain to connect the plug with the bathtub so you don’t lose it, I tell you. ‘That’s clever’, you say. You’re three, I tell myself.

We are constantly learning from one another. All the time finding out how to best be ourselves. You have brought out the best in me. Your very existence has made me finally appreciate my own.

Thank you for being you. And thank you for being mine.

Love, Mama xx

January.

Feburary.

That’s Admiral Doctor President to you.

Posted in ...What did you just say? by

Alice: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up, Bubba?’

Theo: ‘…I’m tall already.’

Alice: ‘I mean, what would you like to do for a job one day, when you’re older?’

Theo: ‘I’m going to fix a teapot and a CD player and a video player and a DVD player and robot tractors and space rockets and robot children and batteries and horses and robot books. And computers. And toy computers.’