Vodka and Ganache

What a looooooooooooooooooong week it's been. I'm spent.

Since Scorpio is here to see the kids, and since our parenting styles are poles apart I usually make myself scarce so he can get on with doing daddy stuff. Without my head exploding at the thought of Cyclone 'helping' daddy with a screwdriver in his hand or whatever is on the agenda that gives me heart failure (usually everything).

I headed up to see Miss Neurotic for the evening. One great thing about that is I don't even have to brush my hair to do this. The other great thing is the culinary skills of this laydee. She was in the middle of baking a cake to feed 1400 people (ok 200), and I got there right in time for the ganache.

Ahhh, sitting on the big chair in the lounge, vodka at my side and a big spoonful of smooth, rich, chocolatey goodness. Look closely for where my sticky fingers have been.

Yummmeeeee!

Cylcone, fiddling on the roof

Cyclone climbed onto the roof of the garage today. He didn't want to get down.....

At least he found the spare house keys, the mop and 5 tennis balls.

Getting plastered

So one end of the living area is done. Time for the next one. The dining area. Sadly the dude that owned the house before me thought it was fine to line the walls with masonite instead of plaster, and that hanging it vertically instead of horizontally was ok too.

But its not. I have big cracks between the sheets and even my universal filler skills couldn't cope with.

So here is my plasterer - well his bum anyway. He spent 3 hours 'floating' my wall, for the princely sum of a slab of beer.
I love Jamie the plaster man, cos now it looks like this -


This IS an improvement. As you can see by the splotches of colour I am having alot of trouble finding the right green.I am looking for the perfect green to go with the candy apple red Kitchen Aid I don't even own yet.

Some of you will understand that....

Uncooking

Let's get this straight - there ain't gonna be nooooo recipes on this blog. I'll leave that to those with a huge passion. My cooking passion is waning due to crap kitchen, however this is how I do an Apple Pie.

Wait for children to go out with Scorpio.
Sit in front of telly (Grand Designs) , peel and slice 6 apples.
Put in pan with 1/4 cup water, sugar and a big sprinkle of cinnamon.
Cook slowly until its all soft.
When smelling wonderful and looking slightly translucent, get distracted by something shiny and let it burn.

Repeat step 2 - decide to do strudel instead, thaw puff pastry.
Stand over apple so it doesn't burn and scream threats at children from the kitchen window.
Cut pastry sheet in half.
Fold over edges of sheet, load it with apple.
Get funky and cut strips from other sheet and place over top lattice style.
Build up edges of pastry and seal latticey bits down.
Place in moderate oven
Get distracted by something shiny.
Notice strudel is about to burn, make mad dash to the oven to save it - tripping over the scooter that miraculously appeared in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Tell Scorpio you are going out for the night and use said strudel as bribe....

Painting Myths - 2 - Feature Walls

Feature walls are stupid. They were very trendy for awhile and you can blame that on all the Home Improvement shows that were clogging our screens for so long.

Why are they stupid? Well, because I said so - because I have only ever seen ONE decent one and it was done by a professional but even now it just looks outdated.

If you want to move your furniture around the 'feature' wall won't be that anymore.
You usually have to paint over them if you intend on selling your house cos not everyone loves Decadent Diva or Pina Colada.

That lurvely burnt orange that is so lovely in winter makes you feel like you are in an oven in summer.
Stick to changing the seasons with cushions and funky blankets - keep your walls a classic colour and save yourself 15 coats on the one wall. That's something no feature wall fan will tell you - the darker colours require so many coats of paint you are sick to death of it before it even dries.

Textured walls, save that for the outside. Sponging, rag rolling or anything that involves a special kind of paint - blueergh. I can't relax with a paint textured wall near me. It's never as easy as the DIY shows make it look, it just never looks right and you can always spot the part of the wall where the enthusiasm wanes.

Save yourself the hassle – have fabulous furniture instead….

The Passion of the Catamaran

This is a catamaran being moved out of the front garden in which it was built.

I like my neighbourhood alot and this is one of the reasons. There is always something interesting to look at when you are out and about.

For the past 5 years this guy has been working on it from the ground up. Initially it was upside down and he had a competition to guess what it was because you just could not tell. They needed a crane to flip it over to finish the top part but I didn't get a pic of that...

A keen sailor, boatdude sailed far and wide with his wife. Came back to Melbourne to settle down had a baby and that is where the idea began. His goal was to take his little boy on an ocean adventure on a machine built by himself. His son is now about 7 so once he has his sea legs and the boat proven seaworthy, they will be off on a 5 month trip to wherever they please.

What a terrific experience for mini boatdude and a testament to his dad who was determined to finish the project no matter how close to broke he got!

I'm looking forward to a postcard...

Rebacks on the dunny seat.....ummm the shed.

And that my friends is a very dusty redback spider - no I wasn't going to dust it off for you.

I found quite a few of them when I cleaned out my massive garage. I love my garage so much. I can buy crappy furniture and store there until I am ready to fix it up.
That didn't happen however. I only had time to put in a lovely old fashioned cradle (hard rubbish woo hoo) and a set of six wooden chairs (more hard rubbish) before my sister needed the space to put all the crap she has accumulated over years of being a circus trapeze artist.

Most of it is out now, but I still have some trees from the set of Where the Wild Things are, about 15 cans of totally unusable paint and some airconditioning tube-y stuff. I'm quite attached to the trees actually. They are very light weight but look fabulous. Maybe I can put them in my bedroom - I've always wanted to sleep in a tree-house jungle....