Home

I am only just coming to terms with living in this dog's breakfast of a house, that I have started calling it a home. My home.

My home has been my home from the age of 1 when my parents had it built with the help of the Department of Veteran's Affairs. That's as good a handshake you'd get for serving in Vietnam back in the early 70s. My parents built it with gold glass sliding doors, wood panelling, mission brown paint work and khaki carpet, and Tim and I have only changed it in the last five years and it's still a work in progress.

It is the house I grew up in, the house we lived in as a family and then as a broken family, and the house my mum spent her last few days in.

I've come full circle and I'm raising my family in it now. But moving here with my family couldn't make it my home. It wasn't mine and it didn't feel like mine. It had gone back to being a house.

And now, after years of changing it from the house I grew up in to the home I will make for my family, I have favourite places and spaces I love. 

My computer. Oh, I lurve my computer.
Sorry Timbo, but the computer sees more of me than you do.
I also love my wine bottles I have in various places around the house.
I really do look like a drunkard.

My bed. Especially without Scarlett, but I secretly don't mind her being there.
It's the place that Mumma watches her stories and is not to be disturbed.
It is also iPad zone. And the bedroom is multifunctional -
it's a bedroom/spare room/laundry in one! Jealous?

The Wondertwins cell. It's certainly the prettiest room in the house. This is an old photo of their room as I couldn't get in there through the disaster zone to take a photo. Not that you'd be able to see their beds or floor anyway...
I like this room because it is at the far end of the house. Need I say more?

How good is it that the shine from the window hides the thick layer of dust?
And the sticky mess on the floor to the right of Scarlett's little chubby legs - can barely see it!
I love my TV and my TV loves me.
It not only has my programmes on the Foxtel storage, but it gives me respite from the Wondertwins. And, as you may have read in past posts, I really really need it. 

My kitchen. The heart of my house. Despite having desks in their bedrooms, this is where the homework gets done at the last minute, masterpieces of art are created, meals are rejected, friends gather, and mummy drinks her tequila. 

Did I say 'masterpieces'? I meant 'mess'.

My new garden in the making down the side of the house.
Grace looks like a boy taking a wizz and Lily is the shy one.

This is my new favourite place. I love having a BBQ
and sipping on a wine or four under twinkling stars.

And here ends our tour of my abode. I managed to avoid showing you the bloody battles and filth that normally makes up my home. Yay for me! 

Have a peek at other blogger's homes and favourite things at Home Life Simplified's Listmania link up. And then back to me, me, me at Cut My Milk Facebook page. I have now posted some photos of what my house looks like on a regular day, room to room. Trust me - this is therapeutic for both of us!


And please leave me a comment - good or bad - I'd love to hear from you!

Clean this

I'm still high on the fumes.

As the temperature here in Melbourne reached a steamy 39 degrees (that's 102 degrees for you non-metric fahrenheiters) I decided to clean. Of course.

The inside of my house is cool enough - not yet Fonzie cool - but refrigerated cool enough to do so. And, I'm feeling a bit electric and buzzy like a 3 year old on a double espresso. I get like that sometimes. Not often, thank God, but sometimes. But it makes me do stupid things like clean my house.

I've been busting my arse fruitlessly cleaning it. I started with my shower. We'd forgotten it was white. Now when people pop in (I soooo love the pop ins) I want to now steer them away from the dog's breakfast that is the rest of my house and lead them to my bathroom for a coffee as proof that I do actually clean now and then.

My goal is that the house will be clean by Christmas Day, when the relatives descend. Christmas Day here...well...that's another blog. I'll need a few drinks first before I write that one. 

Spring cleaning for me means to prepare the house for festivities, when on Christmas Day, after the kids have shredded the wrapping paper and packaging from their little-deserved presents, strewn ribbon, cardboard and those tiny plastic ties that hold the heads of dolls that will instil a body image complex in the twins in a few years time, the house will be back in it's late November stage of disarray and the whole cleaning exercise will been deemed pointless and a waste of fecking time.

Ordinarily, when I clean the house for Christmas, it is a last minute affair. Basically, that means we gather up all the crap on Christmas Eve and throw it in a wardrobe or two, or banish it to my bedroom upstairs and out of sight. The problem with that method is that all that crap is still there tucked in their hiding places from Christmasses past.

Lily (above) & Grace were very
lucky to have made it to their
2nd birthday. A year & a half later
& I'm still finding Coco Pops behind the
TV, along with pizza, spoons, etc.

Cleaning my house is no different to painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is continuous and monotonous. There's no chance to sit back and enjoy my hard work. All I do is create a blank canvas for the tornado twins.

I find myself apologising to friends who, bless them, arrive unannounced. "Sorry about the mess. You should have popped in yesterday. It was clean then". 

I've come a long way with cleaning. Or lack of it. When Ella was born, we had just moved into a brand spanking new house. When someone came over they were greeted with a display home. This was a dead give away to the Maternal and Child Health nurse who checked on me to see if I was coping ok, and saw that I wasn't, in fact, ok. That and the fact that the toaster was sparkling clean on the inside. And that I had stayed up the night before frantically cleaning the tooth brushes and the grout around the toilet tiles just in case I was found to be a bad parent if they showed signs of germs. You never know who could scrutinise your toothbrush at any time. You have to be ready for that. 

Look around my house now and you'll see how well I have recovered from that kind of manic behaviour.

Yep, this is pretty much a normal day.
Lily said Campbell did it. Gracie said Ella did it.
Campbell & Ella were at school.
It seems my kids learn to fib through their back teeth early.
You feel my pain? Do ya?

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Arts & Crarts

One of my twins favourite past times is what they like to call "Arts and Crarts". I am very very glad I pushed for hardwood floor for downstairs and not the lovely beige carpet we have upstairs. The lovely beige carpet is now decorated with red lipstick scribble, pink marker 'writing' and finger painted faeces (but I have cleaned that). 

Lily is a great artist. She loves drawing those circle people with stick arms and legs, eyes, nose and crooked smiles. Shame she won't do it on paper so I can frame it. I've given up on cleaning the walls. I'll keep the scribble there for years to come to remind them of the little shits that they were.

Gracie's mojo is to scribble a ball. Lily will often tag this art with her signature blob man.

Little Boy Sitting on a Bed,
(Ella's lipbalm on cotton, by Lily, 2012)

Green, by Grace.
Happy Little Lady, by Lily, 2012
(Kitchen wall art in pencil & marker)

Incy Winsy Spider, by Lily, 2012
(Pen & pencil)

No one has fessed up to this one, but boy was I fucking mad.
Looks more like Lily's handiwork. The other headrest has one, too.
(Permanent marker that I didn't know I had)

Not even Scarlett is safe from them

There's no bloody way she'll ever do my make up.

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