Daddy Poo

Hazel has been grooving to Boney M recently.

She jives around the house, muttering Daddy, Daddy Pooooo; Daddy, Daddy Pooooo.

Tonight I am an amazing housewife

By 6:15pm the kids were in bed and quietly waiting for the sleep bus. Trudi is out at the gym. The house is fairly tidy, I've cleaned up the kitchen, and I want dessert. Problem: the fridge and pantry are full of buckwheat and broccoli, cream cheese and dried shiitake. Nothing decadent and nothing sweet.

I have a recipe for a chocolate pudding in a mug, to be made in a microwave, but I don't really feel like a doughy choc pudding. Tonight I feel like a light buttery cake in a big bowl of custard. Heaven.

This is the bit where I was an amazing housewife. I looked at the recipe for chocolate pudding and I tweaked a few things. I replaced oil with melted butter, I reduced the sugar, I skipped the cocoa and added vanilla, and I popped in some frozen raspberries. Into the microwave for a minute and a half. While that was nuking, I made custard sauce with an egg, milk and sugar.

In under ten minutes I was sitting on the couch eating a lovely dessert in a massive bowl while reading.

The bit that's making me feel particularly great is that I messed with a dessert recipe. I've never been confident about making sweets - I have to follow the recipe to the letter. 3.5 years of making muffins and anzacs has clearly given me enough practice to try.

I will never be a cook like Chloe (my friend whose mum would cook slices and cakes in massive tins for the shearers) or Liss (my sister who makes amazing cakes that look devilishly rakish and taste divine). But tonight I made a microwave pudding in a mug and thought I was awesome.

Snail blanket

Ivy asked for a snail blanket, so I made her one. She wears it when she is being a snail.
Here it is, on the end of her bed:

Trudi says: Stuff it!

I am working late. Trudi emailed me this:

If one doesn't like it, one stuffs it!  I'm talking about Hazel.

I've just pulled about over 10 CDs from under the bottom shelf under the CD player.  Turns out she stuffs them under there when she has had enough.  And while writing this, SHE HAS STUFFED THE RULER (which I used to get the CDs out) UNDER THERE TOO!

Ivy asked

And soon she will receive!

She asked me to make her a snail blanket, for her to wear when she is being a snail. It was not easy to get more information out of her. This is a tough client, who believes that a one-line brief is sufficient.

She did not want a thing that looked like a shell. She did not want a little blanket for her toy cat. She did not want a small blanket or a big one.

It does have to be sofffft and green. These concepts are very important to this client.

I finally proposed a circular blanket with a picture of a snail on it - and the client subtly indicated that this would be acceptable.

When I visited my sister last weekend, I mentioned the project. Liss kindly gave me an old sheet from an op shop, with little green flowers on it. She's been using it as a drop sheet, but it's in good condition. Just one tear in it (presumably from someone's midnight toenail, blurk. The good thing about op shop sheets is that they are worn, and thus soffffft.

That night I made this:

This is an applique snail, made from curtain fabric given to me by my mother-in-law. I adapted the design from a picture on the web. "Adapted" here means "did not include the eyelashes".

I still need to buy something to make the blanket warm - right now it's just two layers of sheet. I had thought of cutting up a woollen blanket (op shop again) but the client has intervened and decreed that this blanket must be light, not heavy. I'm thinking of using polarfleece. I'm wary of using batting, because I imagine it will bunch up.

Stay tuned for the client's final comments.

Ivy made some signs too

The one on the left is a salad of interesting letters: iiiHT. The other one is 'a picture'.

More signs

Hazel made this one: it says 'Do not jump on the mummies' bed.'