The Nose Has It

How much do smells rule your life?

The ones we love, the ones we hate.

For me, the most wonderful smells revolve around food.  I do love my food.  There's the usual suspects in the love column - freshly baked bread, a roast cooking in the oven, garlic, a baking cake.  But I do have one strange one, I'm interested to see if anyone else is as obsessed with this smell as I am... fresh parsnip.  I used to work in a fruit shop when I finished high school and when the crate of parsnips came off the truck the cool room would smell so so very delightful for the next few hours.  These days, whenever I peel a parsnip I always (and MR will attest to this) hold up the parsnip to my nose after peeling it and stand there inhaling its fresh aroma for a good thirty seconds with an expression of bliss on my face.  Odd, I know.  It's not a childhood thing, I don't remember ever being served parsnip as a child but I just love the smell of it. 

And then those smells that I cannot stand.  The food ones (because there would just be too many otherwise).  Cooking mushrooms.  Yeuch.  Dad used to do a big mushroom fry up in the kitchen, filling the frying pan with just mushrooms.  The whole house would Stink.  For Hours. Raw meat sometimes has a very unpalatable odour (and I can't stomach eating lamb that tastes like the smell of a shearing shed)  Coffee is another thing I cannot stand the smell (or taste) of.  And burnt toast makes my nose crinkle.

What about you?  What foods do you love the smell of? What can you not stand?  And do you just love the smell of a freshly peeled parsnip? 
 
 
 
 
NB.  I am cooking a lamb rack roast tonight with, you guessed it, parsnip.  Tonight's raw meat smelled very oddly of coconut.  That's a first for me. 
 

Childhood delights

Tell me, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of what should be at a fun day for kids?

My Dad has organised a kids fun day for a company as a fundraiser for his Rotary Club.

He has done a great job organising everything for the day even though he is well out of the vibe with what kids do in this day and age as neither my sister or I have any kids yet.  Unfortunately he forgot just one essential thing.

My sister and I are going along to help out manning a stall and were talking about it tonight over dinner.

I said, "Oooh, I'm soooo going to get my face painted!"

To which Dad replied "There won't be any face painting.  Hrm. Didn't think of that"

Oh No!  Can't have a kids event without face painting.  (Because then the big kids at heart will be devo at missing out on joining in the fun)

But am I right?  Face painting is a neccessity at these sort of things yes?

Or if no, what do you think a kid's day wouldn't be a kid's day without?

This week I'm grateful for...

 via

... Holidays.

With the many subcategories of...

- sleep ins

- pyjamas and snuggly dressing gowns

- time with my man

- winter sunshine

- NCIS season 7 on dvd while seated on our amazing and wonderfully comfortable recliner couch that in hindsight was well and truly worth waiting ten weeks for it to arrive

- banana splits (with caramel sauce and lots of crushed nuts of course) and introducing MR to the absolute wonderfulness of them (he had never had one before!?)

- sherbet fountains for a bit lot of sugary childhood delight

- books to lose myself in once MR went back to work

- cuddles with my meow


so much to be happy about and grateful for!

 

Books vs Movies

 via weheartit

I know this is an age old argument but I much prefer books to movies.  I particularly don't like watching movies of books I have enjoyed enough to reread many times.  I understand that you can't fit a whole book into a 3 hour time slot and bits have to be cut but it's when they change very minor details that they really didn't need to change that I get grumpy.  I really am not the person to be watching a book-movie with, I would annoy you greatly. Little things like using a chain in the movie when in the book it was a rope (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).  Or giving a character blonde hair when in the movie she has black (The Golden Compass/Northern Lights).  It bugs me.

I saw the first Harry Potter movie at the cinema and I haven't chosen to watch one since.  I have seen bits and pieces of some of the other ones at friends' houses when they were watching it or when it was on TV and I was flicking channels.  With all the Harry Potter hype at the moment with the last movie coming out I have no desire to watch the movie but have instead started to reread the books.  I haven't reread them since the last book came out, so a while now.

They are still just as good.  Each time I read them I think about how much planning JK Rowling must have already done because there are things in the first book which don't become relevant until book five, six or even seven.  I love it.

Are there any movies you won't watch because you don't want to ruin the book?  What do you think is the best book-movie adaptation?  I quite enjoyed The Lord of the Rings trilogy and had read that series many many times before seeing the movie.  Although, there was some spectacular eye candy in those movies to take my mind off silly mistakes/details being left out.

Yesterday

I spend Summer hiding from the sweltering heat of the sun and Winter searching for moments to bask in its gentle rays of warmth.

There really is nothing quite like that moment in the middle of Winter when you are outside and it is sunny.  And you have nowhere else to be.

Yesterday, MR and I went to the Swan Valley (just a 15 minute drive away for us) and had lunch at Cape Lavendar.  We sat outside and basked.  It was glorious.  I should have taken a photo but I was too busy enjoying being warm, eating yummy food and spending time with my fabulous man. 

We stopped in at the Chocolate Factory for a few tasty little delights to nibble on for dessert and at Yahava Koffeeworks for a coffee for MR (his favourite brand of coffee).  And the whole time the sun shone.  And a few fluffy white clouds meandered across the sky.

Delightful.

pottering around

Today I am all over the shop.  There are attempts at some creativity in the kitchen, some massacring in the garden and some dreaming of future creativity

I have been in the kitchen baking anzac biscuits for MR which unfortunately turned out more like an anzac slab.  He likes them soft so I put in a bit of extra butter and golden syrup - turns out a bit too much.  But the slab was nice and soft and chewy and I just cut it into squares, thank goodness for unfussy boys.  I sent them back to site with him in a takeaway container with a little letter written on the cardboard inside of the foil lid for him to find when he opens them up.

I have been outside in the garden, removing a very annoying purple daisy type flowered plant that is trying to take over the garden, both back and front.  I pruned it back a while ago and then it rained and all these little baby ones sprouted up from around where I had pruned.  So this time I took out the whole plant in the front, the one in the back gets to stay for a bit longer, mainly because the rubbish bin is now full.  I am thinking of planting some everlasting in their place but I have a feeling it is a bit late.

I have also been dreaming about fabric combinations, in preparation for this course that I just signed up for in an effort to motivate me to use my sewing machine more often than never.  We will be making a table runner, placemats and napkin rings.  I'm looking forward to getting the 'book list' of what we need fabric wise so I can go shopping, both in my stash and in the shops for some pretty fabrics.  I'm thinking of a white, blue and grey/silver theme...

I've also been thinking of what I want to achieve with the last ten days of my holidays.  I think a list is in order!

More successful and photo ridden creative spaces here
 

grumpola chops

the original grumpola chops, my meow, queen of instant grump.

I woke up today feeling grumpy.

Goodness knows why, it's the first day of the school holidays and MR is home.

Really, it's quite ridiculous to be feeling grumpy and to make matters worse I'm adding to it by getting grumpy about being grumpy.

I've been trying to become ungrumpy but so far there's been not a lot of success.  I'm about to have a bit of quiet reading time and if that doesn't work maybe I'll do some baking, that often tends to be a good mood improver for me. 

Although, I'm thinking the best solution may just be to stuff the first two options and just go for option three, which is have a nap.

How do you get out of a grumpybum mood?

Finished!

 

Slightly pre emptive here, I'm not quite finished, I still have about 10 ends left to sew in, but close enough and by the end of tonight's tv it will be done!

  

I was aiming for a unisex sort of colour scheme but it's still ended up looking a bit boyish which is a pity because it turned out that it is for a baby girl.  Her Mum is not a girly girl though so I'm hoping she likes it.

 

I had a go at using Attic24's scalloped edging tutorial which was very easy to follow and just adds the nice little finishing touch that I felt the blanket was needing.

  

I'm pretty happy with it, and I'm even happier that I finished a crochet project because I have 3 or 4 other crochet things sitting in various states of incompleteness in boxes in my craft room.

  

 

more creative spaces here

 

Cleverly dropped pointed comments

 via weheartit

On the weekend I was talking to MR on the phone and telling him about an annoying thing that happened at school last week with my principal.  He told me that I needed to tell her I was annoyed by what she did because otherwise she would never realise/improve.  

His example was "What if I told you that your housekeeping skills weren't very good?" Of course, I immediately went into defensive sooky mood because my housekeeping skills are not just not very good but are really rather dreadful.  After listening to me sook about being sorry I am a crappy cleaner and organiser and tell him that he knew I was well before we moved in together and I had just been so tired lately, he eventually got out of me "that 'if' he told me that I would want to improve" (and hence I should tell my principal that I didn't like how she did something).  

So of course,  now that he was very sneaky and clever to use that as his 'example', I feel like I have been told that and I feel like the most slovenly person ever and want to improve and for him to come home to a home that does not resemble a war zone.  No doubt this will not last, but I'm determined that when he comes home this Friday that he will be able to look around and see evidence of unpacking and organising and cleaning.  

And then I shall demand that he takes me out to dinner as a reward.  Really, I would work well with a sticker chart on the fridge, I'm such a child.

So to assist in this urge to impress on MR that I can actually keep a house tidy and relatively clean (occasionally, when I put my mind to it) I have decided that, starting yesterday, each day I am home before 5.30, I will set the oven timer (because I just worked out how to use it finally) for one hour and for that one hour I must either clean, unpack or organise unpacked homeless stuff.  Yesterday I spent it doing washing, unpacking boxes of picture books and sorting through them to make a stack of ones I don't want to keep and moving things off a bookshelf in the lounge room that were put there when we moved in but really belong in the craft room.  Today I got in washing and put it all away, put the books to keep onto the bookshelf, did the dishes, sorted through some paperwork and tidied the bedroom.

I'm hoping my motivation stays strong for tomorrow because Wednesday is pilates so I won't be home before 5.30.

Have you ever had something like that happen to you?  A comment phrased in a way that you couldn't get offended/too upset about, or have you ever successfully done it to someone else?

 

And do you have any reallllly good tips on how to keep me organised?

 

Inch by inch

With all the rain Perth has been getting over the last few weeks my vegetables have been growing well beyond millimetre by millimetre or centimetre by centimetre (plus, inch by inch is waaaay quicker to say) 

In the last two months my tomatoes and snow peas have gone from this...

to this!

there are lots of green tomatoes of various sizes and about 4 orangey red ones, not long now til the first one gets popped in my mouth straight off the plant!

 

and the snow peas are creeping up fast, no flowers yet but I have my fingers crossed.

I love looking at how the tendrils curl around whatever's available.

Have you got any winter veggies growing?  How are yours coming along?