Nigella Lawson

I came across this article about Nigella Lawson tonight on the Sydney Morning Herald’s site, and it prompted the following musings.

I have to admit that my first interest in watching Nigella’s show was exactly that she wasn’t thin. I was happy to see a woman who was outside of the media’s idea of beautiful. And she is truly beautiful.

But after watching Nigella, what I love, and what keeps me watching, is how she is so unashamedly herself. She isn’t scared to share her love of eating crispy pigs ears or to enjoy food that is seen by some as ‘uncool’.

She inspires me to be me, to enjoy the things I like unashamedly, to enjoy being a curvy girl who has a big bum and big boobs. You can be and do all that, and still be liked.

I think one of her messages is to just enjoy food, enjoy cooking, enjoy your life and your family and friends. There is no right or wrong, no perfect ideal. It is all perfect, as are all of us! Exotic food, cheap food, homemade food, big bums, small bums – everything is good! :)

Springing Forward. Blogtoberfest Day 12.

This afternoon I had a lovely time playing with my photos in Photoshop. The Lily above being one such photo. After titling it ‘Spring’. I thought about what I want to change and learn in this season of growth and freshness. There are too many things to list that I would like to change and learn to list them all, so I will stick to ones that more obtainable and immediate. I can always do another list!

  • I want to learn to be more accepting, more comfortable with what I do and where I am in life. No more holding back because I am scared of what other people think, or worse, that I could never be as good as others so why start in the first place. Very self-defeating.

  • I want to finally get more serious about photography and try selling prints of of my photos. I’ve held back till now because of fear of failure and also, not wanting to have someone steal my work or claim it as their own. But if no one ever sees the photos that I take, they lose their value.

  • I would like to learn how to draw, both with paints and canvas as well as digital illustration. I have plenty of paints, watercolour crayons and ideas; I just need to start.

  • I have dabbled with the older version of Terragen in the past and really enjoyed it. Now that there is a much newer, more advanced version, I want to learn how to use it in more depth. One of my images from Terragen is at the end of this post.

  • When I was much younger, in my late teens and early twenties, I used to enjoy writing and coming up with short stories. As I got older, I lost my confidence (I can see a pattern developing) and stopped writing. Time to dig out those old stories and get back into writing.

  • I would be over the moon if I could stop being so disorganized. Not to mention scattered in my approach to things. I know I will never be one of those perfectly organized people, but I would like to be better at it than I am. Being able to find things easily would be so wonderful! To start, I should create a filing system for myself.

I think that is enough to be getting on with for now, don’t you?! Writing that list highlighted just how much my confidence in my abilities (or lack of) has affected my life, particularly in terms of creativity. I want to go back to having that wild, carefree abandon in creativity that I used to possess. Deep down, I know I still have faith in myself somewhere, I just need to nurture that tiny flame and help it become a fire once again.


An ocean scene that I created a few years ago in Terragen.

Fifties Fair at Rose Seidler House

At the end of August, the Husbitect and I went to the Fifties Fair at Rose Seidler House. It was a lot of fun. Apart from seeing the house itself and the retro decor, there was entertainment plus lots of stalls selling retro clothes, household items, collectibles, food and so much more. We both found some goodies on the stalls, including a vintage model kit for the Husbitect and some vintage canisters for me.

This is a photo heavy post (not to mention the fact that I’ve heavily filtered the photos). I tried the built in gallery for WordPress but wasn’t all that impressed with the options. So good old insert one by one it is. If you know of a good gallery plugin for WordPress, do let me know!



The very retro hostess and the Velvet Set singing.


One of the coloured glass doors in the house kitchen.


I want one of these cute Teardrop caravans.

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All the items in the back were themed perfectly.


Including a gorgeous picnic basket!


Hula girl’s car was pulling the caravan.


Another Hula girl, with some faboo anodised aluminium cups.

Inchezonya! Blogtoberfest Day 9

I’ve linked to Charles Phoenix previously with his faboo video and recipe for Cherpumple. Today I noticed that he has another new recipe with video for Inchezonya! Mmm, we want to make this for a fun Christmas meal, perhaps using leftover Christmas roast for the mince.

Retro Recipe: He-Man Salad (Blogtoberfest Day 8)

I have a very large collection of retro cookbooks and recipe pamphlets. I am fascinated by the era of the late 40s to mid 60s. I love the design of the clothes of those times, the illustrations, the hairstyles, culture, the music, the architecture, the cars and of course, the food.

I started playing with one of my recipe pamphlets this afternoon and wanted to share a recipe from my copy of ‘Tasty Salad Recipes’ by Lora Lee Parrott. Isn’t that a fabulous name? Anyhoo, flipping through the pamphlet my eyes caught the title of He-Man Salad; how could I not use that one?! I haven’t tried this recipe, although I have tried many of those from my collection.

One day I want to host an authentic retro dinner party. All foods from recipes of the time, music of the time and guests must dress in period. Ah, one day!

The image above is the result of my playing. The two illustrations come from the cover of the booklet and the rest is from my own little hands. I had so much fun making the image that I think I shall do more! I hope you enjoy these images, too.

* Soundtrack: I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire by The Inkspots.

Halloween Links (Blogtoberfest Day 7)

As I type this, I am listening to “Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett, “The zombies were having fun, the party had just begun…” Listen and watch here.

Anyhoo, since we are getting close to Halloween, how about some craft and food links for Halloween fun?

  1. A collection of recipes from TLC. Make Bat Wings with Drip sauce! Mmm…

  2. Papier-Mache Black Cats from Martha

  3. Spiderweb Plates, again from Martha

  4. Vintage Halloween postcards from Craft Jr

  5. Halloween Crafts and Cards from Vintage Image Craft

I have always wanted to have a Halloween fancy-dress party. But I don’t know enough people who would be interested. Boo! But I think I will make some decorations and themed foods regardless. The Kitty Litter Cake has been on my must make (and must gross people out) list for a long time. Is this the year I make it? I think so! Muhahaha! I’ll just have to make sure my Max Kitty doesn’t think it really is a tray!

The ghosty cupcake at the top is one of the Halloween foods I have made in the past. That year I made dark chocolate cupcakes and used food gels to draw spiders on some, and placed white marshmallows on the rest. I shaped each marshmallow by pulling a little of the top part up, and then twisting it to look ghost-like. I then made a mouth with a toothpick, then decorated with gels and icing. Ghost Mallow; not all that scary but very cute and tasty!

eBay Treasure (Blogtoberfest Day 5)

Another fabulous find from eBay. You may remember from when I last bought a retro sideboard from eBay, that I have a penchant for naming furniture. Well, not all furniture, just my two retro sideboards. My newest of these I have named Bettie after Bettie Page.

Solid white oak, glass top and a glass shelf on the inside. There is also a cutlery drawer and another two shelves behind the door. Bettie was a gift from my Husbitect for our Wedding Anniversary. I have plans to line the cutlery draw with felt or perhaps velvet if that is more in keeping with the period? I haven’t completely decided what to keep in Bettie as yet, but I have put some of my kitschy and cute retro collectibles on the two main shelves.

Eclectic, yes?!

A new to me vintage blog that I think is totally faboo is ‘Into Vintage’. If you also love retro, vintage and kitsch, you’ll love this blog!

Do you also collect retro things? Something else maybe – what do you collect? I’d love to know!

Standard Post

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

Continue Reading“Standard Post”

I am a gamer (Blogtoberfest Day 2)

I love games. Computer games. I’ve been a gamer since way back in the 1990s when Apogee software was producing some of the best games to ever grace the PC. I remember the excitement of receiving the latest shareware games catalog. In the mail, printed on paper. Back then, the ‘web’ was in the form of a local bulletin board or bbs. Sidenote: First PC game I bought was Legend.

After a while, there was the beginning of the current web, accessed using Netscape. Wow! It was exciting! I wish I still had my very first web page. I possibly do, somewhere. If I find it, I shall share it. It has lots of animated .gif files and very basic html.

Anyhoo, back to games. The first PC game I remember being excited about was Doom (id Software). I remember seeing the full page artwork for it in PC User magazine. It looked so amazing and so different from the basic graphic games we currently had. Things like Paganitzu and Duke Nukem. And when it came out, I kicked death-match butt! I was good, even if I do say so myself (and it was usually death-match via null-modem cable). hehe For those non-gamers, death-match is playing head-to-head with another, real player.

I am still a gamer today, although I will admit, at times I am more of a casual gamer. I go between full on gamer when I have Fallout 3 or Oblivion type games to play, to casual gamer with my love of the simple, Farmville via FaceBook. Or even light-hearted games on the Wii like Animal Crossing: City Folk/Let’s Go To The City. In a couple of weeks when Fallout: New Vegas is released, I will turn back into serious gamer girl!

Do you play any PC/Mac games? How about web-based games? If you play Farmville, let me know – maybe we can be friends?! I also play games on the iPhone (AngryBirds, Peggle, Battleship etc), and within GameCenter I am SquirrelKitty.

Here are some pics of my characters in a few games, I’m missing one from Oblivion, shall find one tomorrow!


My character in Dragon Age.


My character in Fallout 3.


My character in Farmville, on FaceBook.

Old Blogs and Old Designs

I’ve been adding some much older archives to my blog today. Somewhere, amongst all my backups I have the archives from my very first weblog which was way back around 2001/2002. Eventually I will add those here, just need to get over my laziness in not wanting to recode and add images back to all those posts.

I first started blogging, or journaling, by updating all the archives manually which soon became a pain and something I didn’t want to deal with anymore. Along came Blogger which was so much easier! After a while I switched to GreyMatter, then Movable Type and now WordPress. One of my much older ‘about me’ images is below, including one of my first forays into illustration. Hmm, that was nine years ago, where does the time go?! I made the illustration in Flash. Yes, Flash. Not Illustrator which would have been logical, but flash. I used it more for drawing than I did for animation, crazy woman that I am.

I updated the design of my weblog much more than I do now, back then I had a new design at least once a month. I like smaller design tweaks now, maybe a new header every month. It’s been fun (and embarassing) to come across my old blog designs. Some I still like, some make me wonder what I was thinking! One of my favorites is below, the one with the bus. My blog was called ‘Oubliette’ then, a reference to the movie Labyrinth.

Do you still have copies of your first web pages or weblogs?

* An important reminder: While I have been looking for old blog posts, I’ve been going through CDs that are up to six years or more old. One or two have failed. The data is now unreadable. If you have much older data and files backed up on CDs and DVDs – please go check they are still okay. Maybe save your most precious files to a brand new disc. Really – check them. Don’t risk losing files like I have.

Blogtoberfest

As I am the queen of procrastination, I decided to join this years round of Blogtoberfest. One post, every day throughout October. Hopefully, I will manage to post every day and not procrastinate! Blogtoberfest is run by the lovely Tinnigirl and Curlypops.

I’m also thinking about signing up for Socktoberfest, a month long celebration of knitting socks! As it happens, I have a recently started pair of socks on the needles. These socks are for my darling Husbitect. And, umm, remember I mentioned procrastination? I may have had the yarn for these socks in my possession for over a year. Ahem. This is my third pair of socks, all three using a pattern which includes an afterthought, or peasant heel. My first socks are pictured below.

Are you going to join Blogtoberfest or Soctoberfest? Maybe you are planning on both?