Sunday home-making

I have conquered the Gorm and the Lack who first entered the scene a couple of blogs ago. Ha!

IKEA flat packs have been relationship breakers, tipped fragile people over the edge...but I did it. The pictures are NOT easy to follow and what's more disconcerting is when you psyche yourself up into readi-ness and then the picture of a spanner taunts you with your spanner-lessness. A trip to Penhalluriack's, the hardware store that has it all...the name says it all really...spanner procured, bookshelf built. Smug. That's me. Smuggily smug.

Cooking class

Saturday morning. Sunny. I walked through the leafy Elwood streets to Brighton Road and Lezzet, a turkish restaurant and scene of The Cooking Lesson. Kamal, the Head Chef and owner met me and 4 others and explained that today we were going to be learning the art of baclava, which, he added, was handy as they had run out the night before and we would be making a batch for the restaurant. We made baclava nests and fingers and learnt about the intricacies of filo pastry...every packet has a different personality, it seems. We used a wooden rod and we all had a go and yes, we made an entire tray which he did use for the restaurant. We then made turkish delight, but I agree with Kamal...it's a 2 person job and really, you need a pretty well equipped kitchen. Turkish Delight is all heating ingredients to the right temperature and pouring and straining and setting. So the advertised glass of wine, take home pack of herbs and spices, recipe book did not materialise and if we wanted a baclava rolling rod, $5 thanks. To use someone else's clever observation, it was a lesson in, not only cooking, but also in turkish economics.

IKEA

I made the pilgrimage to IKEA. In Richmond. I had a list and I was sticking to it. It was not the day to be tempted by lamps or yuccas or interesting candle holders. Not for me, the brilliant organise-your-life-products or stylish, but cheap bowls, clocks or picture frames placed just in my vision as I kept to my mission. But I have filed their existence in the compartmentalised space that is my head. Another day..

The following are pictures of how my purchases should look. On getting the aforementioned purchases home and looking at the instructions and the many screws and random bits of wood and metal, it remains to be seen as to whether I can achieve these completed scandinavian masterpieces or not. I know, I know, it's not that hard...you'd be surprised at what a medievalist finds tricky...watch this space...

I think what I like best about IKEA apart from the obvious cerebral challenge, are the names.

When this one is completed, it's a Gorm.

This one is a Lack.

And this one is a Vitten.

 
They sound like the names of characters in a slightly macabre children's moralistic tale set in a dark forest and involving goblins. No?
Wish me luck on the assembly...

View from my balcony

Back to Elwood, finally! 

 To the right, is the city skyline...it really looks much better in person!

To the left is the sea.

I'm thinking...little french table, sitting out in the afternoon sun...glass of rose, olives...

Sunny weekend

Sunny, sunny Melbourne! Train from Footscray to Flinders. Coffee at Degraves.

I wanted to find Metropolis books in Curtin House on Swanston Street. 

Walked too far and had to retrace steps, but in losing, we sometimes find and I found this building. I don't know what it is, but I liked it.

Curtin House is a six storey art nouveau building and home to various venues I'd like to visit one day: The Rooftop Bar, Toff in Town where lots of great bands play, Cookie for great food, a rare record shop and Metropolis, my dream for the day. Metropolis is an arty booklover's paradise. Graphic design, photography, art, popular culture and just plain cool books. The kind of books that smell like real books. The kind of bookshop that makes you scorn the very notion of ipads. A real bookstore. And the stairway up to Metropolis...vertical laneway.

I could have spent a fortune on beautiful French children's books. But not today. The sunshine beckoned and a stroll down Southbank. Southbank with sunglasses and a bench. Perfect people-watching material.

Too sunny for the city. No. 96 tram to St Kilda and a walk along the beach with all the other people marveling at the stunning weather.

Prince of Wales for a beer before tram and train back to Footscray.

Nice. 

Noodles and me

Charlie got a bit of screen time and poor old Noodles hadn't yet made it...until now. Poor old Noodles can't travel in the car because she gets carsick...so no trips to the beach. But we did do a circuit of the hood this evening. The sky looked quite threatening and we were both concerned at various points of the circuit, but we made it just as some fat drops started to fall.

See how close the city is? No wonder everyone wants to live in West Footscray...so close to the city...

Noodles...just casually westside

 She's pretty cute.

Noodles

So, having spent the day in Elwood, making the space my own, surveying my work with a very self-satisfied smugness, I had to leave it all to cross the city to my other home away from home: West Footscray where Noodles awaited.

Bluff Avenue

I spent the day making the flat mine. I think I've done it.

 Needs a rug, maybe...

Friday Sunset

Cross the road from my place and this is what you get...

Happy Birthday Mr Tickle!

Mr Tickle, and all the other Mr Men celebrate their 40th birthday today. It's funny to think that I was a month and a half old when Roger Hargreaves looked proudly at the fruit of his labour and saw the ideas from his head, not only on paper, but on the shelves of bookshops.

Roger died in 1988, but his son, Adam, has continued the Mr and Miss series, writing and illustrating new personality adventures, which is appropriate, given he was the reason the books came about. Little Adam had asked what a tickle looked like and his dad drew the first Mr Man.

The series of  49 Mr Men and 36 Little Miss books has sold 120 million books worldwide since their first appearance, an average of one copy sold every 2.5 seconds. In the last decade Roger Hargreaves became one of the best-selling British authors alongside J.K. Rowling.

Moving Day

Moving Day....or moving day packed very tightly into 2 hours. I had been told by the removal company that the men could be at my place no later than 1.30pm to start unloading because they had to finish by a certain hour or they'd turn in to pumpkins or something. So I rearranged my day and did the big dash from Moonee Ponds to Elwood and got there right on 1.30pm. No removal men. By 2.30, still no removal men. When I rang the company, the woman told me that they had been 'holded up'. Once I got past the grammatical side of things with that sentence, I had visions of guns. But they eventually arrived at 3.30pm and very quickly had things ticked off the list. John and Phil totally redeemed themselves for their tardiness when they took all of the packing paper and boxes and even some extra rubbish away for me. So I'm in. Needs fine tuning on placement. But I'm there. 

My kitchen, lit by the christmas tree before my fabulous brother arrived with a fancy circular bulb for the kitchen light.

 Big red. Mid-life crisis red sports car red. That's how Mark described it. It's still going strong. I'm not a bit sick of it!

Voila...chez moi!

Sunset Blossom

A cocktail? A shade of nail polish? A stripper's stage name? Or a really lovely moment which made me smile at the end of a Monday...

Coffee

Finding the right place for morning coffee is vital. Fraught with peril. This morning, I cracked it. Fix Espresso in Moonee Ponds. It was like coming across an old friend. 1 Everage Street, as in Dame Edna. Apparently Edna is a daughter of this illustrious suburb.

Shabby chic, cosy wood, fantastic coffee, friendly staff. The perfect post-swim, pre-school moment. Next 6 weeks, I'm all over Fix Expresso.