the happiest Father's Day in our little world

Greetings all,

Yay, my husband is home for a visit!!  Much to our excitement, he arrived early - surprise - carrying boxes of mangoes & mandarins from Queensland, double yay.  

 Father's Day morning started with a quick cooked breakfast & i took our twins to compete in Tournament of the Minds (yes, 8a.m. on Father's Day) while my husband went back to bed (he drove 1350km on Saturday). 

 Our Maths & Engineering girl (in gingham above, with a French accent) won her division, like her big sister 3 years ago, so she advances to the next round.  Our Literature girl (below in green) was playing Cameron Diaz in a Shrek inspired performance which was hilarious, but apparently, not award winning. 

 Back home in time for lunch & freshly squeezed orange juice . . . 3kg fills the KitchenAid food processor jug to the pouring line, ok, a tiny bit too much, i did spill some . . . 

 & a sink filled with oranges to compost!! 

 For a simple BBQ dinner & salad, we threw together a lettuce, avocado & mango, no dressing, just raw ingredients chopped & a little bit mashed together - damn delicious!!

 Notice the flavour scale increase when my husband is around??  Well, he eats dinner in an Army mess & sometimes, meals for one at his bachelor pad . . . totally demoralising as he's a fantastic cook.  My cooking is bland, so when he's home, i assist him & we cook up a storm, of FLAVOUR.  Anyone for Peking duck tonight??

 So easy: pick up a BBQ duck from a good Chinese restaurant or grocer (around $28 in our neck of the woods, but feeds a football team/ my large hungry family), steam Peking Duck Pancakes, slice up shallots, add Hoi Sin sauce & roll up your bundle of happiness.

 Oh & just because we had some delicious bread rolls left over from the Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets, we made some pre-dinner herb & garlic bread, mmmm.

Don't worry about my waist line, we've been running around with the children in the park, on the oval & by the lake, plus our over zealous puppy.  Eat well my friends, love Posie
PS i have some great giveaways live right now, go enter . . . Hero Factory Lego &
Riley Grumpy Wombat book + pencil roll!!  Good luck!!

deception . . . count the ways . . .

Greetings all,
Well i thought 'deception' might be an interesting title for this day - a federal election no less, quite suitable.  Just thinking how many forms of deception, good, bad & surprising there are.
Starting with this purple patchwork quilt i made from scratch after dinner last night for an early morning pick up.  The customer brief was 'lots of purple', keep it plain & to use a few childhood shots for a 6x6 patchwork quilt for a 21st today.  Done!!  The photo transfer paper worked quite well.  It's actually quite detailed, alas, smoke & mirrors people!!

So i was up at 6a.m. for the school BBQ & cake stall, selling snacks to voters.  Can i please point out - we were on high wind watch & snow alert, yet I still got out of bed to volunteer!!  After planning, shopping, organising & setting up, the day ran smoothly, we sold a zillion sausages & cup cakes, coffee & drinks.  What's the deception, well i see this as easy (even with a migraine, sleep deprivation & dragging 4 children along) but it's actually a lot of work, i just keep being told i make these events low stress & fun.  Yippee.  That is one of those 'perception is reality' deceptions, where i appear to have it all together. 
I'm quite good at making life look easy, but i can assure you, having a husband at war & hearing the news we lost 2 more soldiers, well it breaks my heart & worries me to my core.  In order to not worry the children, i keep how much it affects me, to myself.  I certainly talk to them about what happens, i've never hidden the news from them, they are proud of what their daddy does & are also realistic about the danger.  Alas, my husband is my whole world, these soldiers who were killed yesterday, they were someone's whole world too.   

Now for a sneaky 6y.o. deception . . . as you can imagine, my priority upon arriving home was to shower, get BBQ grease off my face & smoke out of my hair, so i let the children play the Wii.  My eldest daughter went home with another family today, so my son took this opportunity to log on as her Mii on the Wii & play some new games - terribly - in her name.  Then he logged on as himself, played brilliantly & beat all her scores??  He likes his name at the top of the highest score board.  I think that's kind of evil genius deception.  Thankfully, he puts this much competitive energy into his spelling, maths & sport too!!
So after being school-parent-of-the-year today, i glanced over at the reason i do all this P&C stuff, my children, only to find 2 sitting on the roof of my car, one sticking a cup cake to the inside of the windscreen & one completely missing.  I looked at one mother (whose child was leaning out of my car window throwing a ball) & yes, people were watching . . . i said "imagine being the mothers of those children".  I can't even bother to defend my children's actions!! 
Have less political Sundays everyone, love Posie