Movies. Normans. Garden.

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm in the mood to Embrace Some Colour. I'm thinking that this Missoni cardy could look good with a sort of leopard print top. Because I like how it looks next to the cushion. I also like it cobbled together with ye olde faithful green Milly top.

But don't panic because I'm not turning my back on neutrals.

I experienced what could only be described as a Veritable Sewing Frenzy yesterday and sewed buttons back onto 4 different things. I'd put it off for so long. The end results made me feel like I'd scaled Everest. In fact I'm casting an eye round here looking for anything else that needs mending.

Someone told me that once you had a baby it was impossible to go to movies. Thank God they were wrong. The Baby has slept his way through lots of good movies with me lately. We enjoyed Catherine Deneuve in Potiche, we loved the documentary Babies and we thought Bill Murray and Robert Duvall were excellent in Get Low (Can I just say that I love Bill? Groundhog Day nevers loses its charm and I love watching him sing Bryan Ferry's More than This in Lost in Translation). Luckily for me the baby enjoys a limited release low budget subtitled French art house flick too, so yesterday we saw Tony and Angele. I loved it. It's set in Normandy. Has anyone else seen it? The ending was so sudden and so emotional. I've never taken the baby to a Babes in Arms movie session (you know the ones designed for mothers and babies so no one will get cross if there is Misbehaviour) but I'm open to the possibility.

Meanwhile I tried to recreate the honey soy and lime chicken with coconut risotto that never leaves the menu at the Continental Cafe. It wasn't a half bad attempt. And fortuitously, bok choy was on sale at Coles. 2 bunches for the price of 1! Run Don't Walk.

I have a new Obsession. Documentaries about the Normans. Those guys are fascinating. Maybe I'll make them the Official Conquerors of the Blog and stick a snap of them on the list to the right.

This is the view from Jersey to France that I took last year so you can get a visual of them surging across the ocean ready to conquer everything in their path.

The Normans had ferocious energy and ambition and fierce enthusiasm for everything they did. They also endorsed terror chaos and violence. (Not the sort of things you'd want to see on a Workplace Team Charter).

And they were prodigious fort builders too. The Channel islands are full of them and were one of my favourite things when I was tripping the light fantastic in Jersey at the end of 2010.

I do love a fort.

I'm not sure though if the Normans were Gardeners. But if they were you can just tell they would have given it their everything. And ordered a bunch of conquered peasants to keep it flourishing. Or else.

I action my own gardening without the assistance of serfs or peasants. Although I do have that nice whippersnapper mower man who helps out with the grass and pruning.

It's freezing here. Maybe I'll bake a cake.

xxxxxxxxxx

Tonight

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm counting the seconds until that Kennedy miniseries starts tonight on the ABC. Goody. Which brings me to this-my girlfriends tell me that Maria Shriver's been on their minds too.
She always has such nice thick hair. I wonder what Oprah makes of it all? I might be coming down with that Oprah Loss Syndrome that everyone else is catching. I've been watching since the early 90s and have cried my way through thousands of episodes. I'll miss her. But I 'spose there'll be reruns aplenty.
I have a feeling Maria will remarry. Meanwhile I saw Water for Elephants today (I've joined the circus. The ring master's cruel. I fall in love). I give it 3 stars out of 5. I didn't read the book so I don't know if it's a good adaption or not. I can however tell you that Reese Witherspoon is ridiculously skinny. I've had a cleaning spree today. My polish is well and truly chipped but on the bright side there's a lot less dust.
xxxx

Pavlova-tastic

Happy Australia Day!

I hope you actioned your patriotic duty and made or at least ate a pavlova.
I use Stephanie Alexander's recipe- 4 egg whites, 250g sugar, cornflour, white vinegar and vanilla. Bake it at 150 degrees for an hour and a quarter but have your oven at 180 1st but then turn it down to 150 the second you shove it in. I add booze to my whipped cream. Do you? Did you have a barbecue?

So you could eat something like this?

In recent years Australia Day theming has really taken off. You can buy all sorts of stuff motifed with the flag like this paper napkin. All worryingly made not here but in China. Nationalism is huge these days. I don't remember it being so in my childhood last century....

Meanwhile, here are some snaps of what I've been wearing to the Coalface lately. This is By Malene Birger:

and in the Spirit of mixing chain store stuff with high end designer clobber I wore this brooch with this el cheapo smock thingamy from Forecast

Don's Party was on this morning. I for one never get sick of it and think it's the seminal movie to watch on either Election day or Australia Day. It's aged badly but has some great one liners. Plus the house is interesting and so are the hairdos and outfits. Apparently there's talk of a remake.

The FF garden is looking kind of ok despite being overgrown and full'o'weeds and leaf eating varmints

look how tall my Mr Lincoln rose is (it's the tall thing in the middle. It's about 2.5 metres high)

cordylines have such pretty leaves

isn't this porcelain ginger flower perfection? It was grown from a cutting from Zsa Zsa's garden

Hope your Australia Day was lovely.

xxxxx

Movies.Food. Weekend.

I just finished watching the 1st SATC movie on dvd but with the voice over commentary of Michael Patrick King who wrote and directed it. I found this really interesting. I never missed a tv episode (except the last because I was overseas in Dubai but I did eventually see it) Thanks M for lending it to me
I love the SATC franchise. I bought the videos, then the dvds, then the book. I met Candace Bushnell twice. I bought her books. All of them. I was excited to see an episode being shot when I was in New York.
Apparently a lot of people hated SATC when it was on tv. I'm not one of them.
The friendships were realistic. It showed women in their 30s and 40s looking great. It understood Singles. It realistically portrayed breakups. The whole thing spoke to me. Can't wait to see SATC2 on Thursday.
I ate this for lunch on Friday. I went out with some Coalface Colleagues. It was tasty but messy (the pasta not my fellow Coalminers).
On Friday night I went to Montrachet for drinks.
I love Montrachet. It is my favourite restaurant. Don't try to got there for the next 6 weeks though. It's shut.
On the way home I spotted this crazy flowering agave arrangement. It looked alien.

Yesterday I felt seedy and worn out.So when someone suggested Yum Cha, I ran, I didn't walk.

Behold all of this Restorative Yum Cha Goodness People:

This duck was Ducktastic

I love these sesame pudding-y things with red bean paste 11/10

Afterwards I met my girfriend M for a soothing pinor noir. I have the same scarf as her.

It was rainy and cold. Perfect soothing pinot weather really.

This is what the sky was doing. It was all very wintery and atttractive

Remember I was saying how Tammy and Malcolm Fraser were wonderful gardeners? Well I found this image of Tammy in her garden (How lovely is her hair by the way?) Behold the Gorgeousness. Gardening on a large scale in country conditions takes a lot of hard work, patience and determination. It really is a talent. I've asked this before but why are gardeners always such generous and kind people?

This image is from Country Living Magazine.

Last year my young whippersnapper friend S told me to watch Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood (she's full of Good Ideas- she got me onto Amaretto Sours). I finally saw it the other day on dvd and can tell you it is excellent. If you love Clint (I do) you'll really enjoy it. It's got everything a superior movie should have-good acting, a redemptive theme, lessons in tolerance, a cute dog, moments of humour....Run. Don't walk.

My life is not Glamorous: I have a bad feeling that I might have a mouse or worse a rat (crosses self). Having lived through the Great Rodent Plague of 2008 and successfully won I'd like to let any rodents in residence know that they should enjoy the next 24 hours of their lives because next week my Rat Guy from the Pest Control Company is scheduled to visit. Prepare to meet your maker because I have a strict zero tolerance policy and will be enforcing it with a zeal the likes of which this suburb has never seen before (well at least since 2008). My Rat Guy says that you are never more than 3 metres from a rat anywhere in the inner city. Nice.

On that Happy Note, I've got to go to change the light shades in my kitchen. Enjoy your Sunday.

xxx