Let's Redecorate

I absolutely love doing small home improvements and renovations, my husband, does not!

I recently had the grand total of 10 beautiful days off work over Christmas. I was in desperate need of a few mornings where I didn't wake up to an alarm at 5:30am. This was to be my first break from work in over 18 months and since returning from maternity leave after my second child. I decided that although these 10 days were to be spent mainly bonding with the kids, going to the beach and drinking margaritas, that there were some things that I would like to get on top of in the house, much to my husbands dismay.

I came home from work one day flapping some cuttings from a Real Living magazine that I had knocked off from the tea room at work. I pinned them to the fridge so that I could stare at their wonder with great hopes of having my lounge and dining room looking something a little similar to my new inspirational cuttings on the fridge. The first was of a bed room with filing cabinet-esque side tables and a gorgeous low bed with a brilliant orange quilt cover. The second was of a period style dining room modernised up with a royal blue table. I loved the table, I wanted the table, I had to have a blue table!

I had been thinking of rejuvenating our old oversized Japan Black stained dining table with matching bench seats and chocolate leather high back chairs for quite a while. The style is still popular, it is still quite common but I had grown sick of looking at it and started to hate it. Once I get an idea in my mind its very hard to erase it. I stopped putting table cloths down to protect the tables dark polish and started leaving hot cups of coffee on its surface. It was a sure sign I no longer liked it. My husband wasn't too sure about the royal blue. He asked a lot of questions about what I wanted to do to the table, it's his way of trying to talk/question me out of something in part because he knows that whatever really needs to be done to the table is most likely going to end up his job. Bingo!

My husband works for a very large tool company so I asked him to bring home the necessary equipment to strip the table. I asked and I asked and then I asked some more. 400 requests and a few months later he caved and bought home the tools. Stripping the table was actually a pretty quick job and he got most of it done in a very short period of time. What started out a little like this- see pic below (this is not actually my table, well it is my table, but its the same table in someone else's house. This is a cut and pasted picture from eBay of someone selling the same table as mine. My floor isn't that dirty, seriously, if you saw this pic blown up these people have a really seriously dirty floor and their dining room set up looks a lot like ours, freaky almost) I really should have taken before-and-after photos but foresight isn't my forte.

Turned into this...

What was underneath the Japan Black stain is this amazing timber with major character. Now, I understand that this isn't everyone's taste but I really am in love with it. My husband tells me it is cheap wood, I don't believe him, I think its some sort of treasure, some amazing type of wood that is more expensive than Walnut and all those other fancy woods. I really love it and although it looks a little like cow hide with the browns and neutrals, it is definitely very "now" and has worked to brighten up our dining room. I no longer want to paint it royal blue.


To finish off the table, despite the fact that I didn't want to coat it with anything, just admire it's raw natural beauty to which my husband quickly assured me wouldn't last long with small children, food and drink around, we used Cabots Cabothane Clear in a Matt finish.

I loved the table but...and a big but...when I bought the table I also bought a matching side board/hutch, matching smaller entry way side board, two bed side tables AND a tall boy. Our house was filled with oversized Japan Black stained furniture and as a result of the distaste I felt towards the dining table, I now wanted everything stripped so I could see what treasure hide below the varnish and so it all went a little like this....

With every new item from the house that was dragged out to the front grass I wondered in anticipation as to what timber hid beneath. At the end of the day, if it went all pear shaped and we hated the final finish we were prepared to paint everything white or even just re-stain it again.
The side boards have a unique appearance, almost as if the wood has been stained permanently by the once heavy Japan Black stain and I absolutely love them. They are really on-trend with interior home design and they have once again bought life back to our house. I am in love.


My husband used a large electric hand planer and an orbital and mouse sander to remove the thick layer of stain and varnish. We finished everything off with the Cabots Cabothane Clear Matt finish.
I didn't want any shine and really wanted each item to speak for itself. I much preferred the raw look of the timber but had enough people scare me into protecting the tables with something that I decided to go with just the Cabothane as it was the lightest application of all the oils and stains available.



My second inspiration fridge piece was the small filing cabinet-esque style bedside tables I wanted for next to the bed. They were a little smaller, more sleek and something that didn't have these huge cavernous draws that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't fill with anything more than some half used jars of hand cream. The alternative was the Helmer Drawer unit from Ikea and I'll give you one word to describe them- CRAPPY!


I went to Ikea to inspect, I love that there were 6 draws that I could fill with half used hand creams rather than two large oversized draws and that they were a lot more narrow than what I currently had but up close, they were shonky and the draws had no stoppers so when you opened them the entire draw just falls right out. Design flaw? I think so! For $129, they were really small (the above picture is deceiving) and just so rickety and crappy. I decided we'd stick with the current, strip and paint them and see how they went.
The result is this...

I don't love them, but I don't hate them. They were better than what we had. I painted the front of the draw white.















For a small pop of colour I bought a few embroidery hoops and filled them with brightly coloured materials in current patterns of polka dots, chevron and scallops. For $2.99 for the hoop and next to nothing for a fat quarter of material they are my most favourite things in the house at the moment. I had wanted to keep the idea of the embroidery hoops secret and then start my own Etsy business selling them, I was certain this was a new and creative idea and that I would make a fortune from but my dreams were shattered when I jumped on Etsy, searched for "Embroidery Hoop Wall Art" only to find about 3 million listings for something similar and so I share with you all, a super cheap and insanely easy way to inject fun and colour to a little nook in your house.

Hoops (all sizes) $2.99 Spotlight
Chevron & polka dots available in fat quarters from Spotlight for about $4
All other fabrics available on the roll bought as quarter meter.

Happy redecorating!

The Honest Parent

I recently had a pretty lengthy discussion with a lecturer friend of mine about the unspoken rules of parenting. More specifically, the things which mothers seem to think they aren't allowed to talk about or admit to. We shared all the same views on parenting and it was incredibly refreshing to hear another mother, in fact, a mother with much older children than mine, voice the same sentiments. She still remembers vividly of times that her kids drove her so insane she went and locked herself in the laundry with a beer and a cigarette to calm her nerves and she wasn't even a smoker. We laughed, we shook our heads in horror and we nodded along to the conversation agreeing with each and every tid bit that shit us to tears about being parents.

I have the view, that many of us (and even myself at times) feel there is a societal pressure not to admit to or speak of the horrors of parenting as if somehow the act of talking ill of parenting and its many facets in someway means that we are saying we do not like or love our children. Perhaps we shouldn't be complaining about a path that we wilfully chose to go down? For me, it does in fact have nothing to do with my children as individuals at all. For me it is a cathartic way in which to vent frustrations over the often enforced slavery camp I feel I have been demoted to. Oh, I can hear you hiss, lighten up, I don't find parenting that bad, just sometimes, like the times I find pink highlighter on my new white quilt cover, pink highlighter that was drawn on the bed while my husband lay there half dead watching TV while my little man drew all over the quilt cover right next to him, highlighter he swore he never even saw in my little man's hand, that kind of annoying or the sheer fact that projectile vomiting even has to exist as a bodily function.

Is admitting to frustration, annoyance and guilt somehow admitting to defeat and weakness? Why is it that us women are great at getting men to talk about feelings (or perhaps we are just so persistent that we break them and they fold) that we love to be in touch with our own emotions, but some don't always use the same logic in dealing with parenting issues and the ways in which being a parent makes us feel, the emotions that come along with making some of the greatest decisions of a life time. Parenting is the hardest job that many of us will ever do, it is tiring, confusing and repetitive and being a parent isn't just about taking care of the needs of your children, feeding and clothing them etc but making sure that everything you do is honourable because don't forget, they are the greatest little sponges and they are always watching, that you're setting the right example, that you're guiding them in the right direction and making the correct decisions for them that could affect them throughout their lives as they know it.

My early exposure to the world of mother hood wasn't always rosey. Where I had wonderful and lasting interactions and formed strong bonds with women in my local area through Playgroup and Mothers Group, I had at times difficult experiences online with the bullshit artist parents of the world that thrived on making other new parents feel like crap with the fake stories, fake lives and quite possibly fake children. I am older and I am wiser now, I've done the hard yards, I've done what not a lot want to or can do, I've tackled head-on two under two, hell, I've tackled two under 17 months and I have learnt a lot. I have learnt so much that I need to write it down, I make notes, I copy and paste important words from inspirational parents, attachment parenting guidelines which speak to my parenting soul, that I connect with and that I find helpful. I have done the parenting gig while working, I still am, I have parented through family and personal tragedy and through a lot of my own soul searching and I am still here and my kids are thriving stunning little beings. I can now see through the façade, my few short years in the parenting service have afforded me the ability to smell bullshit from a mile away particularly the type that says (emphasis on says because saying and doing are two totally different things) they love each and every single aspect of parenting life and each and every single thing that their child has ever done- no, no you don't, no one does.

The reason that I feel so passionately about this and the reason that I have discussed it more than once is because many of us live a great deal of our lives online, we search for information online and therefore many of us rely heavily on the interactions we have with others online for friendship, moral support and information. As someone who never really dabbled with online forums and groups before, someone that had never been around children for long enough to have any idea about where the off switch was, I had no other benchmark in which to compare anything and was very impressionable. I was like millions of other parents out there too. I learnt that there are people out there who take great pride in making others feel inferior and are so desperate to be part of something, part of something so toxic that they are afraid to turn away, that they say things and agree with things that they would probably otherwise not.

Clearly I still carry a bit of a chip on my shoulder. Needless to say, you can all stop worrying, delete your Essential Baby account, break free of the uptight snotty ways you've come accustomed to, there are a new breed of parent leading the way to bring light to the fact that parenting ain't always easy, they are out there screaming from the hills with news that parenting is sometimes quite crappy and that the only way you can survive is to poke fun at it...a lot and I love these men and women.

By far, my favourite three are:

1. Amber Dusick of Crappy Pictures 
http://crappypictures.com/
Facebook: Parenting. Illustrated with Crappy Pictures
Book: http://www.bookdepository.com/Parenting-Illustrated-with-Crappy-Pictures-Amber-Dusick/9780373892747 (The Book Depository is amazing, if you haven't had the pleasure, check it out. They are by far the cheapest.)

2. Bruce Devreaux of Big Family Little Income
http://www.bigfamilylittleincome.com/
Facebook: Big Family Little Income  

and my most favourite of all, my hero

3. Karen Alpert of Baby Sideburns.
http://www.chicagonow.com/baby-sideburns
Facebook: Baby Sideburns (BS)

I literally don't know where to start with these three. They speak my mind, they put the crappy things about parenting onto paper and then turn them into hilarious little morsels that I can relate to in every way. Each of them has written something in their blogs or on Facebook or for the media (many of them blog for other sites and have been in the news) that I have said or done myself. I purchased Amber Dusick's book Parenting Illustrated with Crappy Pictures, it's a riot. I read the majority of it out loud to my husband, we laughed our arse's off, everything we read we could relate to, everything her kids had done, so had ours. I was introduced to Ambers site by a friend a while ago after I posted here about bits and bobs around my house that I had used to inject a little life and colour once the dust had settled with a toddler around. She reminded me that no one likes a person who boasts about their super tidy house that has children, she was right, but I do have psychopathic, OCD tendencies and I can't help but clean. (Below, is a taste of Ambers work.)


Bruce Devreaux is a great down to earth guy, he shares snippets and stories about his kids and he always finishes each off with a brilliant punch line. He is worth following, particularly one for the dads, might make you mean feel less weird and less like you're being online unfaithful to your wife/partner/girlfriend.

AND, AND AND, then there is Baby Sideburns. I must warn you, she's as honest as it comes and with her honesty comes crude language and real home truths. Baby Sideburns currently boasts close to 71,000 fans with thousands more on Twitter and thousands more again that follow her blog. I have yet to read anything in recent times as hilarious as her stuff. Each day, sometimes multiple times per day she will update her status with something less than charming one of her children has done, something bizarre she's discovered like lotus birth or placenta paintings (be warned my friends, don't say I didn't tell you) or about an odd article of clothing available e.g. Cockini, fart pads and the Cuchini. She is hilarious and well worth following on Facebook, but like I said, just don't say I didn't warn you.

A REAL HOUSE TOUR WITH AMBER OF CRAPPY PICTURES

AUGUST 17, 2011 COMMENTS (257)

I love design blogs. 

But whenever I see a house tour of someone with young children I smile, knowingly. Where is the cereal on the floor? Where is the toy clutter?

I'm an insider, you see. I have a house with young children. Their house doesn't really look like that. Ever.

Below, you can tour my home. The "design tour" version and the "real life with kids" version. Welcome!

Have you seen those hand painted or stenciled stairways on house tours? We have those. We have a unique wrought iron railing too.

Only this is what the staircase actually looks like:

Tan baby gate at the bottom. Green poultry netting tied to the wrought iron railing. Oh yes.

Custom design requires custom babyproofing. Remember that. It sucks.

Next up is the ubiquitous bookshelf. Every house tour has one. Sometimes they are built-ins. Sometimes not. But they always have a color coordinated display of books interspersed with art, frames, vintage globes and cool stuff like that.

We totally have one of those artsy bookshelves. Vintage globe and all. 

Only this is what it actually looks like:

The bookshelf display changed some when the little guy started getting mobile. And ripping pages. And throwing vintage things.

But all the cool stuff is still there.

Dining room next!

Why yes I have an antique china hutch that I painted turquoise and distressed. And of course I have a funky tablecloth and a teak wooden bowl in the center to showcase fresh fruit from the trees in my yard. And see the lovely wall color? It is Benjamin Moore in sweet honeydew melon. Don't you love the vintage maps of wine regions on the wall? Not to mention my vintage milk glass collection by Hazel Atlas.

Totally design blog worthy, yes?

Only this is what the dining room actually looks like:  

My kids added their own finish to the china hutch with permanent markers. The tablecloth had to be removed because they like to pull it off magician style. The walls are splattered with spaghetti sauce. And also squash. 

Ahem.

So why don't we move on and see the bedroom! 

Handmade, modern quilt on the bed. Handpainted headboard. Minimalist. Clean. Fresh. Don't you feel relaxed just looking at this room? 

Only this is what the bedroom actually looks like:

The bed was moved to make way for a diaper changing area so the headboard doesn't line up. Piles of diapers on the dresser and wipes on the floor. Bed rail. Um. 

Wait! Don't go! There is one more room to see!

My living room is also amazing. It is the most used room in the house so it is the most important.

I've saved the best for last.

See the mid-century modern style I've got going on? Oh yeah, baby. Those design blogs are knocking at my door. 

Only this is what it really looks like:

Most used room? Yeah, this doesn't even need an explanation. 

Sigh.

So next time you see a house tour where the owners have young children, just smile knowingly.

They are stepping on cereal just like the rest of us.  

The Committing of Blogging Sins

I have committed all sorts of blogging crimes lately, the first and probably the worst is my complete and utter lack of posts. Now don't get me wrong, I have started and revised and edited quite a number of posts behind the scenes but never got around to finishing them off, polishing them up to a beautiful sheen ready for review and comment. I blame it on my busyness and yes busyness is a word even though it looks and sounds wrong. I won't bore you to death with why I have been busy, because quite frankly it is all relatively boring, sadly I haven't climbed any really tall mountains lately or managed to convince Kim Jong-un to sign a peace treaty but I have been pretty awesome and that's all that matters really. So, I don't dare go back and see the date of my last post, it was probably right before I returned to work after maternity leave which was well over 6 months ago and the sheer fact that I have left many of my avid and committed followers hanging in the lurch for so long makes me feel guilty, but only for a second, I don't have much time to feel such emotions as guilt any more, I am busy involving myself in busyness.

I recently started a post on the topic of Emotional Intelligence, it went down windy roads and into slightly bore you to death territory. I have studied the topic during my Masters Degree and I found it incredibly interesting but was aware that I was probably one of a small few who did find this topic interesting. I was also innately aware that I was wording my post in such a way as to have a few small digs at people (IN GENERAL, don't worry, I am not talking about you) that annoyed me on Facebook.

There was an article written recently on the ten most annoying Facebook users. It was shared on a friends wall, I too subsequently shared it on mine. The top most annoying was the Vaguebooker. The one that wrote status updates to the effect of "shattered" or "I'm literally crying right now" and "can't believe it!". Shattered, what shattered, did you drop something? Crying, but why, do you need a tissue? Can't believe what? God dam what happened? Stop being so elusive, passive aggressive and vague! Aware that my blog post was going down this most annoying of roads I didn't post it but instead I used it as an opportunity to cleanse my mind and allowed the article written by someone else to do the dirty work for me he he he. Now before you go huffing and puffing and blabbering about the pot calling the kettle black or however the hell that stupid saying goes, I admitted below in the comments section of the article, that I was guilty of committing all the crimes. I was no angel and I was not going to be a hypocrite.

Moving on, I am back now and I will try my hardest to be a bit more regular around here. I can't promise the world but what I will promise is to follow this rubbish up with something a bit more light hearted, a little something about a few very funny little ladies that I have recently had the opportunity to learn a bit about.

Customer service crazy

One thing I can't stand more than anything and I mean anything, I have just spent 5 minutes trying to think of things that I dislike more and all I could think of was spiders and cockroaches, is poor customer service.

My general distaste for the men and women who engage in this behaviour is well founded and deep seated. I genuinely detest people who treat a paying, or even non-paying customer for that matter with a sour look, a short temper and a bad attitude. After all, without us, there would be no retail jobs.
I was about to enter into a tirade about an "incident" that I had with a staff member at a Spotlight store a few weeks back but quite simply, the tirade is boring and my efforts to address the issue with the staff member through calm, collected and polite means followed by a complaint to their head office via their web page and the consequent lack luster apology from some random who rang me at home on a Friday evening at 6pm, just fell on deaf ears and for a while there made me feel as if what is the point in complaining in the first place? What is the point of the company having a complaint page on their website if the follow up is just as poor as the shit head who served me at the beginning of all this drama? It seems this wasn't an isolated incident and a friend who I told my story about Spotlight too had also had an encouter of the rude and unhelpful kind at the same store just a few weeks prior.

It made me think a little deeper about what the hell is going on in the world? Why had so many people working in customer service become so angry with their customers, so angry with the world and so thoughtless about their approach with people?

Watching an episode of Insight from a few weeks back where the topic centered around Internet trolls, I had an enlightening moment of clarity and perhaps an answer to my above question. If you've read any of my past posts, you will know that I don't think too highly of those that engage in antisocial behaviour online, however one troll they interviewed was more than your average 'under-a-bridge-dwelling' troll and made some really poignant statements one of which resonated with me- "the core of it is that people are so dissatisfied and I think they're dissatisfied because our generation is the first in a long time that knows they're looking downward. That our civilisations are in decline and if you want people to be less discontented you're going to have to improve the management of the society. You know, spread wealth a little bit more and generally make people have a sense of a positive outlook on the future. That as long as they think that the future is negative they're going to be at war with the external society."

Perhaps that is what was wrong with all these jaded customer service people, in fact, perhaps this was part of the root cause of a lot of problems we have in society. Perhaps these people were overworked, perhaps these people had watched one too many of their fellow colleagues being made redundant and were worried the same was going to happen to them, after all it seems that redundancy is the new black. Perhaps they were but a bunch of skeleton staff working to keep big businesses afloat on a remuneration package that left little in the hip pocket at the end of every week and it's no secret that retail pays pittance. I can say with utmost certainty, that the woman that served me a few weeks back at Spotlight and the unit that served me yesterday at Woolies as an example, looked as miserable as hell. It was a sad state of affairs. They put me in shit moods and I truly wondered why they participated in such jobs if they were just so terribly miserable that the only way they could function in their positions was to make everyone else around them feel just as miserable too.

Blah! Life is just way too short to have people around me with their negativity and their poor outlook on life but I can't escape it, it's everywhere, I'm a consumer I need to purchase to survive and everyone I know seems to be having repeat bad experiences with customer service folk just like me and I'm not just talking about a one off episode in their life many many moons ago, I'm talking about recent, prolonged and continual dissatisfaction.

For me, the reason that it bothers me so much is that a smile is free and as wanky as that sounds, it won't kill you to smile at someone even if you feel negative within yourself. You'd be amazed at what it does for you and the recipient when you engage in the activity. Trust me, it won't crack your face and it won't kill you, try it! But on a serious note, in my line of work, I have met many people whose future doesn't look good, their outlook on life is one that is drastically cut short, many of them given but weeks to live lives fraught with pain and suffering but I can't remember a time that any of them treated me as rudely as some customer service staff have. Yes, the situation and the setting is entirely different and yes, some of them have found it difficult to smile and to engage with me, but they have very real and valid reasons not to. Those that ignore you when you walk into a shop looking for help, snatch your credit card off you, can't even bring themselves to say hi or how can I help you, bark orders at you down the line of the phone when all you rang for was assistance...I just see no need and it frustrates me immensely.

For a while I felt like it was just me and that I was the target in some weird Truman Show-Esq poor customer service racket but fear not, there are entire TV programs, news articles, current affairs topics and media investigations dedicated to bringing poor customer service under the spotlight. Mary Portas is most well known for pioneering to improve customer service particularly in the fast fashion retails sector, think Supre as an example. She sheds light on the fact that many big businesses continue to report record profits but don't recycle profits by way of improving the quality and quantity of customer service by investing in their staff. Again, another reason why some customer service staff show little if any enthusiasm for their profession.

All in all, there is a fair argument for both sides and it is big greedy businesses which are shaping society. Just like the troll said, there needs to be a better spread of wealth and not just that spread of wealth in the form of hand fulls of cash being thrown from the office window of the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, a bank which boasted a statutory net profit after tax for the full year ended 30 June 2012 of $7,090 million, an increase of 11 per cent on the prior year, although I certainly wouldn't argue with them should they wish to engage in such an activity, but change can occur when we start at the grass root level, in fact, half the time that is the only way to change.

Take the local dump. Ours charges a minimum of $40 to dump rubbish even if you were to dump just a bucket full. As a result of the sky rocketing prices to remove and dump waste the bush land in our local area is infested with mounds of gyprock, brick, broken furniture and all manner of rubbish because people are either 1. protesting against the price of rubbish removal and dumping or 2. can not afford to dump legally. So along comes a little guy from the council who puts up this little pink ribbon around the mound of crap on which is something printed to the effects of "illegal dumping" etc etc and it gets left there, like a mark of the fact that someone is watching, watching enough to just put a ribbon on it? Perhaps it is the ever increasingly unattainable zen in one's life that is upsetting people, the exorbitant cost of living and maybe it is being treated rudely and unfairly for no good reason.

For now, I reside to the fact that I will have to endure poor customer service from time to time for years to come. I don't see it changing any time soon, I don't see Wesfarmers or Woolworths, Woolworths being the largest retail company in Australia and NZ and the owners of Woolworths, Woolworths online, Safeway, Food for Less, Flemmings, Thomas Dux Grocer, Macro Wholefoods, Safeway Liquor, BWS, Dan Murphy's Woolthworths Liquor, Cellarmasters and Wineark - Wine storage and Retailer/Langtons Wine Auctions/Dorrien Estate Winery/Vinpac - Bottling plant/Winemarket - Online retailer/International Liquor Wholesalers - Imports/WineIQ - Telemarketing/Cellar Force - Telemarketing, ALH – Hotel and Poker Machine operator, which is 75% owned by Woolworths Limited. This makes Woolworths one of the largest players in the Poker machine industry, Caltex Woolworths/Safeway, BIG W, Dick Smith, Tandy and Masters Home Improvement, well, I don't see them doing anything to improve their service over night and quite frankly, they don't have to, they hold the biggest monopoly over food, grocery and alcohol supply in the country, they don't need us as much as we need them. Greedy much?

What I will do however is get on my soap box if and when poor customer service comes knocking. I will name and shame the individual and the company, I will complain should the problem be big enough to warrant it, I won't shop and give these businesses money they don't deserve, if and when I can avoid it and I will make a stand for the little people making the giants rich and being treated poorly for it in the process even if by staff jaded by the giants too. That, I won't stand for!

Dear Diary

M.I.A again I know I know!

I feel like writing things to the tune of "where does time go?", "how does time go so quickly?" bla bla, blanket statement about time flying when it has gone at the same pace for eternity. I sound like such an old biddy when I say "time flies", but it kind of has...

Tomorrow is my little girls first day of kindy. We call child care "kindy" in this house. It sounds way cuter than child care. The words "child care" sound sterile to me, "kindy" seems far sweeter. As a result of her graduation from stay-at-home-baby to kindy baby I have spent the last few days and weeks getting us all prepared for the new chapter in our life. Her starting kindy is a big deal for me. I have a very real sense of a door closing and another opening. Tomorrow will be just as much a big day for her as it will be for me. I know many people who have made comments that a baby's first day at child care or kindy if I may, is harder for the parent than it is for the baby or child. I wonder how many babies would concur with this statement? I don't know many who could engage in a in-depth discussion over it. I know for a fact that this is going to be a massive almighty transition for my little girl. She is mega attached to mummy. She is a massive mummies girl and quite frankly I like it that way. It doesn't mean she tones down her general distaste for most things other than food or food or food, for me, it doesn't mean she settles or sleeps any better when I am around, oh no, she ain't afraid to let me know when shit has hit her little fan, but what she really doesn't take lightly to is my absence. There are days I can't even get up to walk to the other side of the room without her erupting in fear that this action may mean I leave for eternity and never come back. She, is not going to like this one little bit.

As such, I won't start work until a week from tomorrow. I need to help her embrace this new chapter with the ability to run to her rescue when she needs me. Yeah, yeah, I can't do that when I am at work, why prolong the inevitable you say and I say shut up to you hmm hmm, but right now I can. I can take this week to just be there for her when she needs me while also making this as easy on her and on us as a family as possible. She is sensitive and precious and needs to know that this needn't be frightening forever.

In order to get this whole kindy thing happening and also at least feed her once a day I need to make the hour round trip from home to kindy to home about 3 times tomorrow. My darling husband suggested that I just sleep in the car. I suggested that perhaps the elves and the fairies can do the house work, the shopping, the washing, make dinner and re-pot a few dead and or dying plants in my absence? Perhaps those elves and fairies might just wax his eyebrows off in his sleep if he weren't careful throwing around such oh so impossible ideas again. I have no idea what I will do with my day tomorrow as I have no idea how in between doing those 3 x 1 hour trips I will have the chance to do anything other than just drive and then get out of the car at home stare at the walls unable to make a conscious decision and then get back in the car again and drive. Perhaps I should just sleep in the car??

Tuesday seems like it might not be so much like I am imprisoned in my car but it does mean at very least 2 round trips. Wednesday might be just one and if there is a god he will ensure that it is just one. I still need to rearrange my life so that we can all take a trip to my mums for the weekend, the "just sleep in your car" dude and I are going to a really fancy shamcy dinner in the city sans children and then need to repack the car like we've driven half way across the Americas when we've really only had one night at mums and get my shit sorted to get up at the crack of dawn Monday to restart my life as a working mother of two. The week ahead will be the busiest of my life. In amongst all of this I need to stick by my dad at his darkest of darkest hours. He needs my strength and my courage and my ability to solider on more than he ever will in his life. I need to take the bull by the horns and keep it together for everyone.

While I am tired, I am motivated and ready and anxious for this next chapter to start. I am ready to return to work, I am ready to be a confident mother who can get things done while still having fun with my kids.

Bring it on baby!

Status Update

I am going to try and make this post as least boring (is that even proper English "as least boring"?) as possible and at least haha look at me, I'm so great as possible too as I don't tend to do the whole "I'm so fabulous thing", I find it vain and annoying. And now I am pretty much going to be vain and annoying...

I have now been on the Lose Baby Weight diet for about a week but have been focusing on diet and exercise seriously for 9 days. On Wednesday I had lost 2.8kg, yesterday I had gained a kilo and with that I decided to drop my glass scales off my balcony and watch them shatter like all my hopes and dreams onto the driveway below. I am glad that I didn't follow through with that slightly odd act as today when I weighed myself the tally is now up to 3.2kg and I am pretty happy with that. I do however vow not to undo all my good work with this good result as I have done time and time again.
I decided that I might take some measurements which I have never done before. The tally board shows a total loss of 5cm from hips, waist and thighs which is even nicer and I can definitely feel that I have changed a little bit and trust me, I am looking and watching like a hawk.

As for my challenges, the results of week 1 are as follows:
NO CHOCOLATE & NO WINE
- Success: 6 days
- Fail: 1 day
EXERCISE
- Success: 6 days
- Fail: 1

This weeks challenges, starting Wednesdays was to be no pasta and no butter but I already unknowingly achieved that goal too. I may have inadvertently ingested butter at a kids party on Tuesday when I ate a sandwich and I have had to test the kids ravioli to see it is cooked before they ate it, so sue me, but seriously, that's pretty bloody good for me let me tell you because if anyone asked me what my favourite food is, what food I would eat if it was my last meal, what food I would eat if I had just come out after 50 years in the slammer and what food I would eat if I could eat food and never get fat- it would be pasta!

I went to Cargo Bar (oh dear God how did I enjoy a nice quiet glass or three of wine in the Sydney sunshine on the harbour with no children in tow, serenity, the chance to have a complete and uninterrupted conversation, to eat seated, not inhaling food over the sink like I had become accustomed to...oh, sorry, got a little carried away there) with one of my oldest friends. I had contemplated having just a glass of champagne and then following it up with water but I didn't. What I did have was quite a few glasses of wine so that was most certainly a fail day, but I had abstained from wine and chocolate aside from some 70% cocoa chocolate which was gross for 6 days. As for the exercise I have walked, worked out or done some form of exercise every day except for Sunday when I gave myself a bit of a rest.

As for the food part, I have stuck to and not strayed from the diet plan each and every single day. I have eaten cleaner and healthier and fresher than I have in a very long time and am now realising how much I miss this food. I had fallen into a bit of a rut, I had become lazy in some areas whilst I had become beyond busy in others. Lite n Easy now in hindsight wasn't as fresh as I first thought. They did a good job, but this diet is soooo much better, keeping me fuller for longer with no frozen meals which is without doubt Lite n Easy's major downfall. I have since learnt that frozen meals are worse than getting takeaway. At least with takeaway it is made relatively fresh in fairly similar circumstances as you would make you own food just with shit loads of salt. As for frozen, there is too many hidden nasties that aren't required in home cooked or even restaurant cooked food because it is made fresh, to be eaten immediately.

I have had the healthy option when I have eaten out both times in the last 8 days which has in the past been my biggest pitfall. I used to use the excuse of eating out, to make poor choices, but not this time. It has been salad and fish or meat and yesterday I didn't even finish my lunch which is a first. I was engrossed in some good catch up conversation with my girlie's but that aside, I still ate what I needed and left the rest.

I have learnt about thermogenesis, I have been reminded how good red meat is, I have upped some of my walking to running, in part I can thank that to thinking yesterday that I was being followed by some weirdo, but he wasn't actually a weirdo, he was just like the other people walking home, just walking a tad too close to me and that I was listening to Bohemian Rhapsody which not only made me what to run but play air drums and wave my hands around in the air like a mad lady. I have downed 4 cups of green tea each and every single day and when I can muster up the courage I have had a table spoon of arsenic, sorry, apple cidar vinegar in hot water before every meal which is supposed to aid with digestion. The arsenic has been the hardest part as it is just foul, I would also describe it as another four letter work starting with 'f' but I'll spare you the French. I have put a reminder in my phone repeated everyday for the rest of eternity with the reasons why I want to lose weight and am still using the Map My Run App and annoying everyone I know with it posting to Facebook. It is a great way to see how far I have walked and challenge myself with each block of exercise to walk or run harder and faster each time.

This blog post here is yet another reminder that there is no turning back. A lot of my family and friends will know that I am on this missions and will question me about it constantly won't you! I need that, I need the mission to be made public, so that failing is public and hence a lot less likely because people are watching and waiting now.

Watch me go!

A little white board, a little smoothie, a little organisation.

I woke up on Tuesday after having a legendarily bad sleep, yes legendarily, legendarily is a word, click and you will see, feeling strangely enlightened, energised and very very clear headed. This wasn't the "I'm seriously deliriously tired" enlightened, energised or clear headed, it was true blue, honest clarity.

My baby girl is a right mess at the moment with a really nasty virus, she is wonder weeking, her sleep is all over the place and she hasn't taken to teething quite as well as one might have hoped for. Monday night saw her wake at the unusual time of 9:00pm RIGHT when I was getting into bed. I was treating myself for the first time in what felt like decades to an early nights rest, she had other ideas and was awake until 12am requiring some serious hands on rocking, patting, sushing and me stomping back and forth to her room in frustration to get her to go to sleep without screaming down the house. She then woke at 3am and decided that she'd string us out till 5. During that time we had one incident of the big boy being woken up by her crying requiring more hands on settling for him, one incident of my husband standing at the door of the baby's room staring in on me while I had my eyes closed while feeding her only to scare me shitless when I opened them, me yelling at him because he looked like a freak/robber/knife wielding murderer in the dark staring in on me, only for me to realise the next day that he had only being standing there for about 0.0000000000000005 of a second and one episode of me yelling at him in frustration and then waking up the whole house and I'm pretty sure the dog barked too. It was neither fun nor exciting, all those things you thought parenting would be BEFORE you had children.

That night, after 3 huge bowls of pasta, I went to sleep sensing that a change was upon me and woke knowing that I had to do something about it pronto. Perhaps it was a carb coma, perhaps it was something else but I just had to make a change. The change centred around being more organised and losing the rest of this baby weight I've been carting around. 10% will be given to being more organised as I am pretty good at that already the other 90% going to losing baby weight. I feel I owe it to myself, my body, my heart, my liver, my back which aches constantly, my boobs which are too big, my knees which I am sure could do with a little break too, my husband who deserves his wife to be just a tad lighter under foot, my children who will want and will need (if I have anything to do with it) me around for many many years to come and my brain which needs a little bit of a pick me up too. I have done the big big weight loss thing in my early 20's losing more than 35kg's and have always been very fit- if I wasn't rowing or playing basketball with the girls at work I was at the gym or walking and running every afternoon. Two children 17 months apart, 18 months out of the last 2 years being up the duff and more than 18 months breastfeeding and still counting, my body has taken an absolute beating and I want it back big time. This has been the longest period in the history of me that I have not had a gym membership or been involved in some sort of team sport. It was time to shake things up.

I have been eating really well for a while now but always treated myself for being so good all week with a really big dinner, some wine, some chocolate, some cake and week in week out I was undoing all my good work with just one or two bad meals. I stuck with eating Lite n Easy 5 days a week for more than a year now, I even ate it when I was pregnant with my baby girl but ate a higher calorie diet so that I didn't compromise on the calories and nutrition that I needed while pregnant. My doctor thought it was a great idea and I liked how easy and convenient it was to have the food delivered. I still like it, in fact I perish the thought when I think about where I would be if I wasn't eating it, but I need a change. Lite n Easy will always be there, but for now I just want to get back to making my own food, trying a different diet with more fresh ingredients and giving the Lose Baby Weight smoothies a try too.


I have been following Lose Baby Weights (http://www.losebabyweight.com.au/) page on Facebook for a while now. I had seen enough transformation photos to make me jealous for a life time and I wanted my picture to be up on their website one day too so I emailed them and got a response immediately. The next day I bought their 28 day Diet and Exercise Guide and some of the breastfeeding friendly smoothie powder mix, some fish oil caps and got a free cream with it as well and if you know me you'll know how much I love free things. It literally got dropped off to the front door about an hour ago and I am ready to rock and roll and give one a try tomorrow for breakfast.



I have added inspiration everywhere so that I keep on track- inspiration pictures on my Pinterest and my phone, the Lose Baby Weight Checklist's and my challenge board in the kitchen with weekly challenges. This weeks is no chocolate and no wine, next weeks is no butter and no pasta, I have a tally for the number of days I exercised with this weeks aim to be 5 and a tally for the number of days I ate really well and didn't fall off the band wagon. My weekly challenges don't mean that wine, chocolate, pasta and butter are off the diet indefinitely but I do need a challenge, to test my will power and my endurance. I am going to do personal training with my best friend every Saturday and god knows she is going to punish me, I am going to join the gym at work when I start back next month and I am going to use every bit of help out there and pick myself back up each and every time I fall off the wagon and keep going. I feel weighed down by this extra baby weight (pardon the pun) in every aspect of my life and as I embark on my return to work I need to be at very least a little fitter than I am right now, I need more energy, my metabolism needs a kick start and I need to be focused and clear headed for the challenge that lies ahead.

To help, I have upped my household organisation and bought a white board and a pin board to put at the top of the stairs. I have a weekly planner, a calendar and have timetabled how and when I am going to get two children up, ready for child care, dressed and fed, myself dressed, fed and looking respectable for work each and every day, ready to leave by 7am and to start work by 8. My days will be long, I won't get home till 6pm so I need to be organised. If I am to fit in healthy eating, healthy cooking and exercise then this is going to be one tight ship.







I foresee this taking some time. Getting into a new rhythm with work, diet and exercise is all about the lifestyle change that everyone is always harping on about and it's true, this is a whole new life. Wish me luck.

To eBay or not eBay? This is the question.

I've been a long time user of eBay but for selling more than buying. Over the past 8 or 9 years my rating has tallied up well into the hundreds, closer to the thousands in fact and has afforded me the opportunity to interact with some very interesting buyers. It has at times been my best friend and my worst enemy and at others it has near destroyed me and I have vowed more times than I can count not to deal with eBay ever again. When I say interesting, I truly mean it, many of my customers have been quite frankly some of the strangest people I've ever had to deal with, they are after all just names on a screen and we all know we can do what we want and say what we want online can't we hmmm!!! They cover all extremes and there's a broad range of adjectives out there to describe them. After a comment on my post titled Online Shopping: The Good The Bad The Ugly reminded me that I hadn't listed eBay as a potential shopping site I felt that eBay indeed needed a bit more than just a few sentences, it needed a post of its own.

I started out selling vintage, rare and designer clothing and footwear and at one point I was making quite a business of it. I shopped at goodwill stores snatching up amazing labels and beautiful vintage finds and selling them on eBay. While at uni I needed a bit of extra income and this was a great way to rake in the cash. When I first started out, eBay itself was relatively new and the market for one of a kind, second hand vintage clothing was at an all time high. eBay had become a remarkable place to sell these unique and rare items that people once had to trawl through vintage shops far and wide to find and the listings weren't saturated with overseas sellers labeling their cheap and nasty goods as "vintage one of a kind, retro, boho" etc when they are none of the above. 100% of my items sold and at very respectable prices at that, the buyers paid on time every time and on the whole were very happy with their pre-loved, one-of-a-kind goods.

However, the overseas sellers invasion on eBay now means that selling your beautiful tan leather 1970's mint condition clutch isn't so easy when you have to compete with cheap copy versions that are neither leather nor vintage. Potential buyers now have to wade through hundreds of pages to find yours if they don't use the advanced search options. The chances of your item being diluted in a sea of cheap overseas products is high and their competitive price point means you're no longer guaranteed to make top dollar like I used to. It is hard to sell that vintage bag for $50 when there is a similar dodgy cheap and nasty version for 99c that looks like vintage and looks like leather if you stand about a kilometer away.

Our current economic times means buyers are more frugal and demand the highest quality for the lowest price and this has caused me more headaches than an 8 month old baby who wakes up three times a night. I recently sold my top of the line 3 wheeler jogger pram. It was a hard sell, I really didn't want to part with this item. It was my first ever pram purchase and this baby was top notch, you couldn't buy better and I had looked after it like a little glass ornament. If anything I had worn it in for the next owner, I'd done them a favour. They got a $1100 pram for less than half the price, there were no marks, no stains and I swear black and blue my son never wee'd in it, truthfully, he didn't, but I appreciate we all worry about wee and poo and vomit when we buy second hand children's things don't we? I had all the manuals, warranty card, rain cover, bug cover, SPF50 cover, bassinet, every single last attachment and add-on you could think of. I listed all the attributes, took 3 million photos from every angle, it was spit shined and ready to rock and roll.

The pram had at one stage, more than 30 watchers but failed to sell 3 times over and then the stupid questions started. I had one person ask me whether the wheels had dirt on them? Um, well yes, you dick of course they have dirt on them, the wheels have come in contact with the ground haven't they?! I gave them the benefit of the doubt and responded with a very nice "Hi there, thanks for your question. So, yes the wheels do have some dirt on them, the pram is second hand bla bla bla" thinking, are you for real, am I really answering this question. Then the questions about naming each and every single mark on the pram and how long and how deep it was and no, I'm not joking. I again gave this potential bidder the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she was a second hand re-seller and while I didn't name all the marks I gave her a general overview...no bids! I had one person ask me to bubble wrap and send the bassinet to her overseas- NO! And another ask me if they could come and inspect the pram before they bid on it- NO AGAIN! Others asked me for quotes on couriers, quotes to send parts of the pram via Australia post, it was beyond ridiculous and while I am sounding ultra hard work here myself, all I wanted was for someone to make a bid, come pick up the pram and take it away. I was in no place to be selling it for parts or parts of the sale via the post. I wondered what I had to do to get rid of this pram in one piece to one legit buyer. In the end I had to list the individual pieces separately and sold the pram alone and the bassinet with the additional extras and all for a lot less than I had wanted to. In short, it was the biggest run around I had ever been part of and again swore to be gone with eBay.

So, my word of warning here is, don't expect your top notch item at rock bottom price to always sell. Expect that selling something more than just a few measly dollars will result in your buyer being mega picky and mega fussy and mega bloody annoying over parting with their hard earned.

And then there was the story about the weirdo who harassed me when I was trying to sell a new iphone and the strange circumstances that surrounded the sale. I had bought it from eBay but when I got it I decided that I didn't really want an iphone and preferred my Nokia after all (don't worry I have since learnt the error of my ways). The wrapping had been removed, but the phone itself was brand new and never used. I listed it on the higher price side compared to other previously listed iphone's but wasn't in a hurry for it to sell, all I wanted was to recoup my cash plus a little extra. A few days into the listing an online iphone reseller contacted me telling me he thought I was ridiculous for selling the phone for the price stated and that I would never sell it to anyone, no one would be so stupid to buy it. WTF? I was sure to give him a piece of my mind once I picked my jaw up off the floor in some pretty colourful language at that. The phone did actually sell, someone bought it with the Buy It Now price and we arranged a day and time to meet to swap money for phone. The buyer repeatedly pushed to meet us at home to pick it up. Given that it sold for $600 and given that the arranged pick up day resulted in us not being at home, we decided to meet at a McDonald's car park down the road, out in the open, less chance of a snatch and run etc etc. Again, he pushed to meet us at home and it all started to become a bit weird and a bit dodgy. He refused to meet us anywhere other than our home address and it just stank of a potential home invasion. He never met us at McDonald's and I decided that it was just safer to bite the bullet and keep the iphone for myself. Another lesson learnt.

Other strange but true stories include the time I sold a very large box of mixed clothing items to some weirdo who claimed she never received them but when I called her local post office was told she had in fact come to pick up the box. This dirty thief opened a case against me through Paypal claiming that she never received her goods and the amount was deducted from my Paypal account. I lucked out by nearly $100 and was all sorts of mad. I had not sent the item with any form of tracking and the receipt from Australia Post for lodging  the item as well as them stating she had in person picked up her item, wasn't enough evidence for Paypal- no tracking number, we no help you! She had found a loop hole in the system. Essentially anyone can claim through Paypal that their item hasn't been received if the buyer has no proof, doesn't send the item registered or has any form of tracking on the box. I vowed never again to send anything as regular mail. Each and every single last item would have tracking and anything purchased above $50 would have the full rigmarole attached- tracking, registered, signature, person-to-person, you name it, I wasn't going to be duped again.

My stories with the crazy people of the nation don't end, I have had non-paying buyers leave me negative feedback which is totally out of line given they didn't fulfill their commitment to pay. One recent circumstance had me spend hour upon hour talking with eBay staff over the circumstances surrounding the sale. Essentially the buyer was told not to pay until I gave her a postage quote for a large box of children's clothes. Despite the listing stating that the winning bidder would need to wait for a postage quote once I knew their post code she decided that wasn't on and left me negative feedback when I told her postage was going to be $20. It made no sense and she had no right to leave negative feedback under their extortion policy. After more fussing and back and forth emailing the negative feedback score was removed and my 100% perfect record returned.

Right about now you're probably thinking eBay doesn't sound all that glamours and well no, it isn't at times but to no fault of their own. With every 5 items I sell at least one person fails to pay and I end up needing to relist the item only once the mandatory 5 day wait is up after an unpaid item case is opened. I always follow through with the unpaid item assistant, it means I get back my listing and final value fees and the little pests who fail to pay get a strike. It's a very minor slap on the wrist. While you can put in place provisions so buyers with more than 2 strikes in 1 month can't bid on your item, once the month is up the provisions no longer apply. The non-paying, argumentative buyer is always the most time consuming with their back and forth emails. I have spent hours reiterating the same 2 pieces of information to buyers who can't seem to grasp the fact that I don't do freebies and I won't accept their out-of-eBay offer which mind you is against eBay policy. These are my worst nightmare and they are the most persistent of them all. eBay no longer lets you leave negative feedback for people who don't pay which I think is ridiculous because it leaves a very one sided perspective of pest bidders. You can cancel the bids of dodgy bidders or bidders with really low feedback scores but deciphering who is dodgy and who isn't is hard and I have never gone down this path although a lot of my listing descriptions state I will just for scare tactics.

Listing items however has become much easier over the years. There are templates for well known items with all the item specifics e.g. the dimensions of a McLaren Stroller so you don't have to get out a tape measure and scales to provide all that useless information, a stock photo is also provided so if you don't want to take a photo you don't have to. The first couple of listings per month for each seller are also free and listing photos no longer costs a small fortune as they too are free. I find the best time to list an item is so that the sale finishes in the evening e.g. 7pm onwards when people are home on their computers ready to follow the sale and put in their final bids in an all out last seconds bidding war. Listings that end on a Friday night after most of the country are home and relaxed after a few TGIF wines and eager to spend a little cash is invaluable although these types tend to be the ones that quite often fail to see the sale through and pay, perhaps they wake up in the morning after a tipsy evening and regret their purchase? One might never know.

As for postage, the option for local pick up will definitely weed out the serial pests as postage has become so ridiculously overpriced it is criminal. If someone is willing to come and pick it up then they tend to be pretty genuine, it saves you going to the post office, waiting in line and avoids any issues around non-receipt. Always sell your items with tracking on the package and always try your best to wrap the items at home with paper, garbage bags, masking tape, old boxes, large paper envelopes etc. Australia Post capitalise on their post packs, packing materials and satchels which are a massive rip off and really misleading. First off they provide no protection for your item as they are easily ripped and because they are so convenient you can be mistaken into just throwing in even the lightest and smallest of items thinking it is just easier, cheaper and more convenient but essentially even if your item only weighs 1g you'll still pay for postage on the item as if it weighs 500g and if it's more than 500g you'll pay the same postage on a 501g item as you would on a 3kg item and there is quite a considerable difference. So sending a small item in a A4 envelope you wrapped and addressed at home that only weighs 100g will be about $2 compared to the $8 satchel. Unless you are going to stuff that satchel to near breaking point within the weight limit then it isn't worth it. Bunning's has free boxes in every size and shape imaginable so don't pay $5 for a box when you can get one for free.

When it comes down to buying on eBay my experience isn't as broad as selling however these are my findings. Career eBay sellers with eBay stores tend to be less competitive in price and I have found there are generally cheaper stores elsewhere online. I have been able to find a few random items on eBay that I couldn't find elsewhere but I am frequently burned by poor quality, grossly over or undersized items compared to Australian sizings despite their sizing charts and measurements and with a lot of overseas sellers claiming to be selling original items which aren't original but copies, you have to be careful about who you give your money to. I know of a number of Ergo Baby carriers sold on eBay that have been fakes, eBay sellers claiming to be re-sellers for Asics, selling their top line Kayano sneakers for close to RRP that aren't original Asics and designer children's clothes that aren't so designer. It pays to go through feedback scores, question the seller before you buy and take note of the origin of the item e.g. the country it is being sold out of in the postage instructions. If something is claimed to be Australian Made but the item location is in China then one might be lead to believe it ain't actually Aussie made after all.

I know I haven't painted a great picture of eBay but I also know I am not alone. I have many friends who sell on eBay regularly and have had hundreds of different issues over the years. Accounts being hacked and losing all their feedback scores, disgruntled customers not willing to follow through the appropriate avenues for returns and refunds, accounts being suspended for often ridiculous reasons and lengthy waits for assistance with site issues, rectifying problems with suspect buyers etc. If you're selling name brand clothing you must be very careful to respect intellectual property rights and copyright. I recently had a listing banned and removed for unknowingly using wording similar to the wording a particular clothing company used to sell their jeans and was warned that if I did this once more my account may be suspended or cancelled.

eBay is a great way to compare products and prices, their advanced search function which shows "sold items only" is great for getting an idea of how much your item might sell for and is currently worth before going through the process of listing and allows you to determine whether it's worth listing or just donating your goods and there are many genuine bidders and sellers out there who I should make note of but bidding and selling does come with all the above warnings.

I no longer trawl through vintage and goodwill shops looking for amazing finds to sell on eBay, I don't have the time nor the patience and have been burned far too often. I now resort to eBay for getting rid of my larger house hold items such as old desks, old furniture, outdated and no longer used baby swings, rockers, old clothes and shoes etc. It is cheaper to list and sell something on eBay than to take things to the dump half the time. I sell our old clothes and the kids clothes in bulk lots to reduce the headache of listing individual items, make all items available to be picked up and have very strict guidelines for purchase. Looking out for designer clothing swap meets is far more fun than selling on eBay and you can even snap yourself up something in the process, other sites such as Gum Tree and the Trading Post have often turned out to be better avenues for buying and selling large items and I have found both to sell items remarkably cheaper than eBay.

Occasionally eBay comes up with the goods but sadly that is for me becoming more and more of a rarity. Happy Shopping but please....be careful!

Where have I been?

Quite simply- 50 Shades!

I have been utterly engrossed in the 50 Shades Trilogy and therefore quite detached from my blog the last 2 weeks. If I haven't been reading, I have been nursing sick kids and doing my utmost to avoid their germs so I too don't get sick. Looking after sick kids while you yourself are sick is near impossible. This blog post from Crappy Pictures describes and illustrates it better than I could think to imagine. Treat yourself, she is one shit funny lady, not afraid to take the piss out of her kids and her parenting situation, for some it's the only way to survive motherhood.

My engrossment has resulted in some seriously late nights and very bleary eyed mornings. I get little if any time to read during the day so have taken advantage of the the baby in her big girl room to read into the wee hours of the morning. Sadly I don't do mornings too well and the late nights, early mornings, being woken time and time again when all I want to do is have like even 5 hours uninterupted sleep makes me so hell crazy mad and tired and all sorts of emotional nonesense and as a result I haven't been able to juggle the kids, 50 Shades and the blog all at once and yes I am admitting that I could not and would not multitask on this one.

I finished the last book Sunday night, well 1am Monday morning to be precise and am feeling a little twitchy. What will I do now that there is no Ana and no Christian? I did fear this feeling when I was near the end of book 2 so made sure to read book 3 nice and slowly, savouring every last word. This wasn't no Pulitzer Prize winning novel but it was captivating and I did enjoy reading it immensely. The next book on my list to read, in fact this was a re-read, I need to update myself on how in the hell I am going to manage the terrible twos is the Second Baby Survival Guide but it's no 50 Shades...far far from it and as a result I am struggling to move past the first couple of pages.

The Big Boy is beyond testing the boundaries, he is lighting small fires to them he has been so la la crazy and as a result I needed to refresh my memory on what to do and how to handle his newly found dissatisfaction with the baby and with making a massive song and dance about every tiny small task we need to complete to just get through the basics of the day. He is talking with gusto and trying to fit so much into the few short hours he is awake that my head spins just watching him. He amazes me constantly with the new things he says and the tid bits he remembers but he is struggling to share and everything the baby lay's eye's on he has already claimed a hundred times over, has marked his territory and nothing is to be messed with. Rattles, girlie dolls, teething rings, their all his, he is a little Bower bird with his well hidden stashes that just 2 seconds ago he had no interest in nor even knew existed.

But, one must be patient during this time. Their little heads process so many emotions all at once and they know nothing about how to appropriately deal with them and react in very much a caveman like manner. It is fascinating, annoying and overwhelming to deal with all at once. Very much the roller coaster of emotions. I have coped and I have not coped. I have spent a fair bit of time on the phone crying to my darling mother, the darling husband who is just as perplexed and tired but tries his utmost to stay cool and keep it together and have surrounded myself with all my nearest and dearest to avoid feeling alone and isolated, although with as big a family as I married into and I myself have that is never going to be possible. I am a lucky lady, there is always a shoulder to lean on and cry and wipe snot on too.

Monday was my birthday. It was my first birthday as a mother of two. It was a totally different birthday to one I have ever had before. This one I wanted to be not just about me but about all of us, us as a family of four. Previous birthdays have been wild week long, fortnight, even month long events of catching up with friends, massive parties, dinners, cake and lots of champagne. This one was about us spending time together doing stuff we all liked doing- eating hot chips and chicken Cesar's, giant slides, stir fry and experimenting with cake- just the four of us. It was perfectly relaxing, I had a little munchkin come stomping into my room and say "happy birthday mummy, open your presents" in a massively gorgeous munchkin voice, helped me open my gifts and also helped me eat my favourite chocolate sprinkling lots of tiny fragments of coconut into our bed but who cares, you can do that on your birthday.

My baby girl drew me a scribble picture and my darling husband framed it- she is so squeezable and the picture just melted my heart even more. I got to lay on the lounge and sleep, I just got out of bed and went and fell back asleep on the lounge and let me tell you as a mother of two small noisy needy children you have no idea how much of a rarity this is and managed to get the kids to both sleep for 3 hours together at the same time. It was near perfection until the kids decided that I no longer needed to celebrate my birthday and both had massive meltdowns after dinner. Oh well, you can't have it all but what I did have while it lasted was as close to a perfect birthday as possible.

How not to clean the house

I am OCD when it comes to cleaning. Mess, finger prints, lint in the carpet, scuff marks on the tiles, they all just make me want to gag. While I am OCD about mess and cleanliness I also like to complain about how much I have to clean at the same time. I dig my own grave with my OCD ways and always try and find someone to blame or carry on that my husband doesn't do enough around the house even though I end up redoing what he does do anyway. It's a complicated affair, one not even I understand half the time. In fact I will often start ranting and raving in my head while mopping the floor "god why doesn't darling husband do this more often" when in actual fact it is generally he who does the floors anyway. My brain starts trying to immediately pass the buck and it's my rational side that needs to remind it to chill out. See, my cleanliness really is an issue, it messes with my head.

I have a habit of also saying out loud "I don't know who does this, but I am so sick of the mess" almost as if I am living with 100 people and can't be quite sure who tipped a bucket of little people over the floor or spilt milk on the carpet. It's as if I don't know who made the mess when I actually do. Strange and complicated I know. Don't even bother trying to understand my cleaning ways.

Having two children, a dog and a boof of a husband will do that to you. There is no end to the work one has to do around the house. You could clean for the rest of your life and still find more to do, a bit like painting the harbour bridge, once you get to the other end you have to start all over again. All that aside, I recall just before I had my son that I was stressing about how I would be able to keep on top of the cleaning once I had a baby to look after. A friend told me that you eventually learn to drop your standards and let go. I dropped my standards in some areas but ended up replacing my desire to be neat and tidy with other things. While I wasn't able to do my big Saturday morning whole house top to bottom clean with the stereo pumping what I was able to do was iron things while the baby slept instead. I ironed baby socks, baby singlets, tea towels, I once even ironed my bedspread while it was on the bed because it had a few creases. I simply replaced my habit with another equally weird OTT/OCD one. I am still OCD, I still clean incessantly and constantly and am proud of how well this house has shaped up after 5 years of wear and tear and 2 years of brutality from a toddler however there was one thing that niggled at me and it was the grout in the downstairs tiled kitchen dining area and it all started with grout in the bathroom.

Somehow as if over night mould sprouted in my shower. Prior to the invasion I had boasted a pristine girlie bathroom that no mould was welcome in. If I saw mould I killed it dead with every bit of chemical product and man power I could find. This time though it wouldn't budge and the lime scale was getting pretty bad too. I decided I needed the heavy stuff and went to Bunnings. I found an enormous wall of chemicals and got as excited over them as I would do a new pair of shoes or some new products of beauté. I picked Long Life grout cleaner and some CLR cleaner. These two were based on acid and that was a good thing, this shower needed acid!! The CLR worked pretty well on the lime scale but didn't remove it all, the Long Life however didn't work what so ever so I decided on some vinegar and bi-carb soda. That seemed to stop the growth until it sprouted behind the tiles and grout. What had I done? It appeared, when I got up close that the Long Life had actually eaten the grout and given mould a new home behind the tiles which I now couldn't remove. I had inadvertently made the problem worse. The grout that was keeping moisture away from the tiles was no longer and I had trapped mould unable to scrub or burn it away with acid. Damage done!

This didn't stop me. I just decided that perhaps the Long Life was too harsh for the shower and probably should have done a test patch like the instructions said. But who actually does that any way? I'm far too impatient for that sort of nonsense. Perhaps there was different grout for different surfaces and uses and thought that it was likely that the downstairs tiled area would have harder wearing grout more able to withstand grout cleaner so I set out to clean downstairs. Now, Long Life is serious stuff, sulphuric acid serious and it did wonders for the grout but cleaning it required a lot of scrubbing, wiping off the acid, wiping again, mopping after and then a very thorough wash of the mop after so no acid got near the polished floor boards. It was essentially a massive pain in the arse, but the floors looked unreal once done, almost new even. I stopped and marveled at my handy work for days after and talked to everyone I knew about Long Life as if I had such a boring life I could not talk about anything else. Some thought it was great, others thought I was crazy to be so sick for cleaning products.

5 months on the grout was getting grubby again and the very thought of cleaning it festered in my mind. While the Long Life did the job it was still a little harsh on the floors, were there was an air pocket in the grout, it ate through it and left little black spots speckled here and there. You also needed a face mask, lots of gloves, lots of old towels and lots of time. I had the face masks and towels and gloves but time I did not. I decided to mix a concoction of my own this time. A little boiling water, some bleach from the laundry, some detergent and then the infamous bi-carb. With each dash of product I added, I lent back in case I inadvertently made my own home bomb. I had no idea if the combination of chemicals would explode in my face or burn my hand off. It did neither and in almost a quarter of the time it took to use the Long Life and it's arduous process of spraying, leaving to sit, scrubbing, wiping, cleansing and mopping I was done and again marveled at my beautiful floors but the joy didn't last very long. Oh how wrong was I.

I had done it again! A bit like my grout in my bathroom and the time I left exit mould too long in the sink and it tarnished the metal drain. The bi-carb had left this grainy, rough, chalky residue over the entire floor. Not only was I adding bi-carb to this potent concoction I was also tipping some on the floor to dab my brush in as a bit of extra abrasive. You stupid woman! I literally said out loud "what have I done?" I was panicked. Had my OCD tendencies resulted in complete destruction of my the entire downstairs kitchen and dining room? What do I do, what do I do I thought. How do I fix this? I was worried that I had damaged the surface of the tiles. It looked as if they had shriveled a bit under the strain of this concoction I brewed up. I dashed to the kitchen draws and pulled out the scraper and tried to scrape this chalky residue off. Some came away, but there were lots of smears and mess everywhere. What was being removed was a super fine white dust, quite possibly toxic. A bleach bi-carb dust! Brilliant. I was now going to not only ruin my tiles but poison my entire family.

I needed to think quick. I boiled up some water and got a scourer and a bit of detergent and thought maybe I could scrub and wipe it off. Burning my hands in the process I went on hands and knees again over the floors begging for this treatment to work. The whole time I was thinking how much it would cost to repair and if this didn't work I was going to be in big big trouble. In the end I had to scrape, scrub and mop the floors 3 times to remove the baked bi-carb and it did come off but my mistake essentially tripled the time it took to clean the floors and made a serious mess in the process, one that took the good part of a day to remedy.

So, my moral to this OTT and slightly ridiculous story is don't use Long Life grout cleaner, I actually think it's meant for outdoor use on much harder wearing surfaces and don't use bi-carb. While it is nice to think you're being environmentally friendly and all you may just find yourself creating far more work for yourself than you planned. Patch testing is vital. For the price of waiting a mere 24 hours after a patch test you might actually save yourself a lot of money and heartache when you realize that not following the instructions means you need to re-tile and re-grout your entire downstairs eating/kitchen area, just a quiet $20,000.

Put down the sulphuric acid and walk away!