Doofus mcDoofus pants here has hit her bandwidth cap download limit thing.

Interwebs are now rooly rooly slow.

I hates them when they're sloooooow.


Pouty face mcDoofus pants.

ugh

Snotty and stuffy and sleepy.
The unholy trinity of the lurgy.
I want them to go away. I don't deal well with being sick. I hates it and I become whingy and moany and feeble and snappy.

However...

Chicken noodle soup from the really good chinese place makes me feel nourished.

Making toffee and having it work for the first time ever makes me go squee.

Torby bringing me my pillow and then dragging the sheet and doona off the bed to keep me warm and comfy on the couch makes me giggle.

Nw remembering that the lat time I was this feeble and hungry, duck salad was the thing that worked and stopping at a thai place on the way home from shopping so I could could dash in and buy some, makes me feel loved.

Have used up the latest burst of energy now...time to lie down on the couch and let the munchkin tuck me in and kiss me better.

fickle dv

So new template - hopefully with less eye straining for peoples.

The old one was too difficult to change to a pleasant colour and still have it look good.

Now for a night of saving the world and trying to pretend that my throat isn't sore and my head isn't fuzzy.

i assembled fud

Reheated pie from the markets
Delicious potatoes that I have serious trouble justify as healthsome
Peas with pancetta, garlic and onion
Shop-bought spongey cake ( I fail at baking. It's kinder to my friends to buy the cakey bit rather than inflicting my baking abominations on them) with whipped cream and raspberries.

I heart cheatypants food to feed to lovely people who come around for dinner.

I stuffed up the timing on things so we did end up eating at about 9pm. Bugger. Good thing there was cheese and nibbley things to sustain us. Oh and wine and entertaining conversation.

Good thing I have amusing friends...otherwise they might notice my crap timing and object to being fed at a time that's normally associated with early bedtimes.

Must make potatoey goodness again

mmm.....potatoey, creamy goodness.

/drool

ooo back view

mmm sleeep

The lovely husband cunningly let me sleep-in when Torby woke us up at 6:30 this morning.

Oh the difference half an hour can make!

In other (much more exciting) news, it looks like we are definitely going to buy a house..well, try to anyway. The auction is next weekend.

The lovely lovely lovely parents-in-law are being most excellent and giving us a large amount of money (as an early inheritance) so that that a) the banks will lend us some money and b) we won't be in debt for all our loves, just most of it.

Have found a solicitor (thanks for the recommendation MsHunnyddddd), have got the pre-contract thingy you need before auction and we just have to get building inspection done and confirm that the bank will let us go into debt to them.

Oh, and then win it at auction for the price we're willing to pay. Easy peasy i say!

But for now, I have to clean the house and do the washing up ready for lovely laaaaadies to come 'round for ninner tonight. Why is it that our carpet sprouts weet-bix crumbs on a regular basis?

sluggy rainy morning.

This morning i have accomplished...
Changing the blog template. Yay for butterflies!

and

deciding to make africanesque stew (exotiqueness) for ninner.

Oh yeah and showering, shopping, eating, washing up, reading, munchkin entertaining and watching 'coupling'.

So exhausting.

I may have a stressful afternoon of trying to decide what to make for dinner tomorrow. I might require chocolate to keep my energy up.

EDIT: made the stew - was quite nummy but maybe less chili flakes, needs something else as well..brown sugar maybe? maybe coat chicken when browning? use cayenne pepper like suggested? oh and use coriander leaves instead of parsley at the end. Also used sweet potato and carrots and replaced chickpeas with fava beans (not a fan of chickpea texture)

Who's a cute widdle kitty den?

Thomas de Braunstone, May 2009., originally uploaded by Medieval and Renaissance - V&A.

click on the photo or link to go to V&A flickr set.
Lots of cute stuff.

This is a closeup of the lion that some guy is standing on in his funeral brass. I have called him Reginald. The lion, not the man.

rain, rain, go away

It's officially pissin' doon out there.

Luckily I am rugged up, on the couch and watching amusing dvd's

So there, stinky water falling out of the sky!

On a related note..big red coats get very heavy when they get wet when you get caught going to the bank without your umbrella and the sky starts leaking. Just so ya know.

Torby catch-up

The cute/nice stuff he's doing at the moment

Pretending to be a dog.
There's a song from playschool
"There once was a dog
and his name was Bill
If you said Sit
He would sit very still
If you said Down
He would lay down flat
And If you said Speak
He would bark like that"
I sing this about eleventy billion times a day to Torby-dog. He thinks it's great!

Hiding!
We hid under blankets or pillows and then count 1,2,3 - Surprise!It's usually someone's birthday so then they get cake and a party hat and a present (Wow, thank you for my lovely rainbow/horse/book/house/etc) blow out finger candles and now even sing Happy Birthday. Brown bear gets very excited when it's his turn for a birthday.

Counting and the alphabet still feature quite strongly

He now hugs you and strokes your back like we do to him. Is cute

Very fond of announcing that he's three and a half!
Then goes on to list that Isobel is four and half and ZoZo is two and a half. Often followed by I'm a big boy and Isobel is a big girl and ZoZo is little girl. We occasionally then practise chastising ZoZo for saying his name wrong and telling her how it should be said. An extra addition may even be the reminder that ZoZo is a littler than him and she's just learning. I love how he carries on conversations with himself consisting of things we've told him.

Putting all the cushions onto the back of the couch and playing cheeky monkeys in the cheeky monkey tree. (5 cheeky monkeys bouncing on the bed...)

Climbing in to bed with us in the mornings with his pillow and blanket and snuggling down. Occasionally reading whichever book he's dragged along as well. Occasionally just telling us about his dream the night before (we assume that where the blue dinosaurs are from). Then the decision is made that it's morning so we get a kiss and a cuddle and a 'wake up Mummy/Daddy' shouted in our ears and it's time to trundle off to the living room for breakfast and TV while whoever was unlucky enough to get up with him lies on the couch and ekes out a few more precious moments of horizontallness.

Love love loves playing his computer games. His laptop is set up near my computer and I often get told we have to 'be busy' next to each other.

Has started riding his bike. We bought a bike with training wheels at a garage sale for $5-, Nw cleaned it up and fixed the chain and now it's a great delight to ride it around the street or down to the park.

He will sing along and copy the actions from his favourite songs. Usually the ones that are part of his computer games. Is very amusing.

Has learnt 'sharing' and 'fair'. Phrases like 'you have 3 cushions and Ihave one so that's not fair' and 'good sharing mummy. we like sharing' are repeated a lot. Taking turns is also a good thing. You wave a finger back and forth between yourself and another person and repeat 'your turn, my turn, your turn, my turn, your turn, my turn for a while.

Toilet training is working. He likes to point out my lack of willie whenever I'm on the toilet. Oh and to check if I've got any more poo or wee inside me. Helpful child. However there are less accidents happening so I'm fine with his interest in everyone's ablutions. I'm assuming it stops at some point. Right? Right?

Most nights he will read his books to fall asleep. Makes the bedtime ritual faster (no more of us reading him two stories) but we might have to restrict the amount of time he gets to read and muck around. He will happily do it for a few hours.Daddy is still the preferred person to put him to bed. I'm tolerated when there is no other option.

Him and Stampy are becoming friends. Stampy likes to hang around and jump onto his bed for a pat when he's getting put to bed and if he sleeps on our bed for naptime, she will stay on the bed and let him pat and kiss her. Further signs that our cat is turning into a hussy in her old age.

Umm bad stuff to temper out the rest.

Insists on doing things by himself and will throw tanty if it doesn't happen. Some days getting clothes in is a 3 hour process. Drives us insane. Love the independence, hate the howls of protest if you try to help buy undoing a button or untying a drawstring.

Food other than the 10 on the approved list is still evil and not to be eaten. getting more and more frustrated by this. We have successfully gotten him to try a few new foods amongst much threats of no DVD before bed/icecream/busytime/etc. Oh for a child who happily eats new foods.

That's all I can think of for now.

The good definately outweighs the bad.

I wanna kitty hat!

via Blame it on the voices

comfort food, sewing and an early bedtime.

Last night I made Curried Sausages a la Masterfoods packet.
They were just like I remembered them.
They were perfect in that way that completely wrong food can be sometimes.

I also accomplished sewing the bling on one skirt panel for my frenchypants frock. One more to go and then all the bits on the bodice once it's patterned and cut out. Sigh.
Is looking good though.

And then I fell asleep on the couch with Nw while he watched Tales from the Green Valey. There may have even been some snoring.

It's a wild life I lead. Betcha you're jealous! Or, you know, not.

icanhazimmunesystemnaoplz?

Have stinky headcold. Oh the aches, oh the pains. Hey, can girls get mancolds?

A day on the couch watching Tales From the Green Valley and eating macaroons from the french pattiserie of deliciousnesss in town has improved my mood a bit.

As has getting better at warcrack arena matches (just nod and smile you non-warcrack addicts)

Finding funky funky frocks is also good.

Being entertained by people on IM always makes me smile.

Having the lads sit on top of me and give me hugs and kisses when they got home was especially nice.

Have now ordered pizza for dinner, taken more aspirin, and turned the heater back on.

This burst of energy has made me a bit tired though..shall lie back down and conserve my energy for Torby wrangling when he stops being distracted by his game and decides that I've rested long enough.

Do we try and improve upon our childhoods when we have children?

Both my parents came from abusive households. One physical, one mental (or so I'm told).

Disclaimer:
I was never hit or verbally abused. I was spanked by Mum. It was what you did at the time. It was never idly threatened and it never happened in anger or with anything other than an pen hand to my butt or back of legs. Nice fleshy bits that sting but don't hurt.

Other than the Big Fight (tm) when I was 14 or so (Mum had been dead a few years, dad wasn't coping well with having a teenage daughter who wasn't going through puberty pleasantly. I wasn't coping with anything at all. End result was my sister, Nic, moved up from Sydney to look after me for a while, then I lived with other people until I finished school and moved out of Cairns) Dad never spanked or hit me at all.

Anyway, that's kind of the background to the fact that we are not a very demonstrative family. I don't really remember being hugged and kissed a lot when I was growing up. Even now, we aren't a very touchy-feely family. This is not to say that I feel unloved by my family. I'm reasonably certain they wouldn't have put up with half my shit if they didn't love me. Just that there were few physical outpourings of love. I think that it was a byproduct of my parents childhoods.

I still don't hug people often. Never quite sure how they'll take it. There are a few people in my life that I hug and kiss (nothing raunchy, usually top of the head etc) a fair bit. It's nice. It's needed. I'm just aware that not everybody likes physical contact and it's not inbuilt enough in me to do it anyway. This is a byproduct of my childhood

I now have a husband who likes cuddling and hugging and kissing and is very tolerant of my constant demands of 'tell me how much you love me'.

I now have a son who gets hugged and kissed and told that he is loved approximately every 3.7 seconds. Poor child.

In so many ways I had a good childhood (baring mum dying and the big fight (tm) and lead up to it). I was looked after and cared for and educated. I was given a lot of opportunities. I was not denied things as often as I probably should have been. I was given freedom and an idea of self-worth and the ability to host a dinner party for 12people.

The demonstrative love is my way of improving on my childhood in the same way that not abusing their kids is the way that my parents improved on theirs.

I wonder how Torby will improve on his childhood if he has kids?

Happy Mothers Day to Me!!

I got tea and crumpets and cards and paintings and a beeyootiful macaroni covered box (Nw led the kids in crafttime last night while Meg and I looked the other way) and hugs and kisses to wake me up.

I got to hang out with Nw's family and drag them all to the markets and spent time loitering at M&J's.

I got to see Mouse n Tops n CrankmasterJ.

I got to eat yummy food and spend happytime with family and friends

I got to go see Wolverine and perve on Mr Jackman. (Despite my phone dying and therefore not being able to communcate with missCharlie who I failed to meet up with which sucks.)

I got to have a doze on the couch with the sound of Torby playing on the floor, the clicking of Nw on the computer on the other end of the couch and the smell of slow-cooking lamb wafting through the house.

I now get to have the house to myself for a few minutes while the lads play in the park.

I am very definately spoilt.

oh baby

You know when you are craving something but you're not quite sure what it is?

For the past week I've been craving a crunchy, tasty, vegetabley thing.

Last night I had thai duck salad.

From the first mouthful, I knew that that was what I'd been after.

The happydance inside my mouth was almost worth the wait.

Evening and frock musings

So I trundled down to the first (trial) Tae-Kwon-Do lesson with Torby and Isobel last night. Oh the horror.
It was parents week (where the parents are involved in the lesson) so it was uber-noisy in the room.
Isobel freaked out from the noise and clung to me from about 10minutes in.
Toprby was a big squiggle mcsquiggler who closely resembled a child who had sucked down a [packet of red food colouring and sugar before the lesson (he hadn't)
Two children and one me did not a good combination make.
We left about halfway through.
Halfway back to Meg&Jamies, the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down. We put hoods up on our jackets and got Isobel into Torby's rainjacket and scurried back quickly. Not a very successful evening. We shall try again with torby in about 6mths time. He needs the discipline of classes and was responding well the few times the teacher came over and made him look at her and respond properly.

We had full attendance at FC which was lovely but a bit too much for me. Combine crappy day, 'that time of the month', having to pick a new frock to make, too much noise and lack of food in tummy and you end up with an sadsack DV)

The lovely MissHelen was good to me and didn't slap me once as I dithered about styles of frock (and oh how she would have been within rights to do so - whingy, dithering thing that I was).
Thinking about in the morning and I realised that I need to fall in love with a picture before I can get enthused about making a style.
So an amorphous idea of 'hmm lets make an early tudor' was failing me becasue I didn't have the right picture to fall in love with and to imagine myself in.
The constraints of the frock were that it had to use fabric I had, not be too complex so we could make it in the timeframe, not be the same thing everyone else was making, have headwear that we already had (a french hood, a snood or a roll of fake hair) and be flattering. All the piccies we could find broke either one of the rules or I just wasn't that fond of it.

I also had to purge the thought of making my spanish out of my head.

So finding the piccie of the girl (below post) was good. She's gorgeous and I loves her.

Have spent a lot of my work day looking at other frenchypants frocks and I've fallen in love with the style again. I looked at it years and years ago but was too complex for me. I love the line and the shape and the 'look'.

I don't mind being corseted. Breathing is for peasants after all. All my late frocks have boning in them anyway to keep my bososms in place and give the right shape. It's one of the things I love about costuming, this changing of body shapes and how to do it. A bone here or there, this type of pleat or that one, where the seams are all can make a big difference in how you look.
Fascinates me.

It's one of the great things Meg has taught. How to create the shape you're after.

It does sadden me when I see lasses who have put a great amount of work into their frocks but the shapes not right (usually through lack of boning or structure) or it's not fitted well or at all (see above point).
Usually just looks slightly uncomfortable and unflattering.
That could be because I'm a well-bosomed lass and if they're not supported, they get annoying and painful.
This is not to say all my frocks are perfect and I do have the luxury of friends who can fit a frock well. It's just my thoughts.

And now that I've got all that out, it's time to actually do some of the work I'm paid to do.

Don't wanna!

fabrics for frenchypants frock

fabrics for frenchypants frock, originally uploaded by Miss DV.

The band of purple is wrong..imagine the red that's in the spotty fabric..That's the red I'm after. think I have a piece of it somewhere..in a safe place..dooomed!

and the winner is...

Duchesse de Boullion by Francois Clouet (1550)

In a bone coloured brocade with dark red bands and gold braid.

Will take a piccie of the fabrics when the light in our living room is better.

MissJimmy is making me a corset and the petticoat and loaning me her farthingale because she rocks.

Gold braid from Meg, some boning from Charlie, Krin's French hood and the fabric was originally found by Spyder. This will be a conglomerate frock. I likes it :)

Midwinter Frockage

One of these girls maybe?

lists glorious lists

Today I must;

Go meet Mel and Charlie for lunch (nom).

Actually put dvd's in mailbox so bigpond movies can send me new ones.

Go to post office and get a card sent to MissFinn et al.

Find fabric at home to take to Fight Club.

Take Torby to his first Tae-Kwon-Do class. One of A's daughters is a black-belt in it apparentrly. Unfortunately she's the one in WA studying medicine so can't get any tips off her.

Stay awake at work (snoring and drooling at your desk is not considered a good career move apparently).

That'll do I think

tick

Family daycare spoken to.
Replacement confirmed.
Will be the lady (R) who oooked after him over christmas when A was away on holidays. She's quite different from A but has the big advantage of already having cared for him so he's used to her and may still remember some of the kids from last time.
Should be good.

The catch-up

Starting to look at houses to buy. Well Nw is doing most of the looking as I just get too attached to a house. The one criteria it has is that it needs a shed/storage room so the lovely parents can have their shed back. I know, the selfishenss of them wanting to not have our stuff (mostly Nw's) cluttering up their shed and house. :)

Megzz n Smurg have lent us a spare heater so now our living room is not an arctic wasteland. Was revelling in the toasty warmth last night. No chillblains on my hands for me!

Need to find a new frock to make for Midwinter. the people who won (Gabs and Stanzi) wear Spanish frocks and whilst the frock I was planning isn't the same style as they like and it won't be purple, it would still be strange.
As someone said on the weekend, 'You don't want to dress like the bridal party unless you're a bridesmaid'.
Thinking late Italian or early Tudor/French. MissJimmy is looking at piccies as well and maybe end up making part of it for me (have time to make an overdress but not the underwear required for Tudor/French.
If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
If all else fails, I have my uber-toasty V-neck which is pretty and will keep me warm.

Had a delighftul weekend involving a dinner, a 10th wedding anniversay party and an unplanned but highly enjoyable couple of games of Settles of Catan with Meg&Jamie after the markets. Would ahve then gione with the boys to vist the parents but a desire for a nap (didn't ahppen but lying on the couch reading my book worked almsot as well) overtook me. Then some warcrack raiding on Sunday night to round out a pleasant weekend.

Now I'm at work, eating some grapes (that aren't as cruchy as I like) and avoiding doing the work I should be doing.
I think I'll call the Family Daycare people now and check-up on who our alternate carer will be for the two weeks our beloved A is taking off to go see her very ill dad.

Then I'll get right into the pile of work beside me, really I will..oo look pretty pictures on the 'net....