Dah winnah!

I'm really excited to announce the winner of my book give-away.

I used a random number generator and it came up with #14. And who do you think the 14th comment was from?

My dear friend Ruby!

I'm so pleased. And I didn't even rig the draw.

Congratulations, Mamma Ruby. I hope you enjoy Stephanie McPhee's writing style as much as I do. Your book is on its way.

The rest of you will just need to read what the Yarn Harlot is up to on her blog. She's renovating her stash room this week. Single handed.

Sounds tiring to me. Glad I only have to read about it.

Be it ever so humble...

We hit the ground with a bit of a thud on our return home last night, as together we surveyed the damage the recent flood had wrought on both our garden and the structure of our Peaceful Home. Dead plants and lawn, and large cracks up to a centimetre in width greeted us at every turn. Doors won't close, the hall arch is propped at an alarming angle and there are little piles of telltale dust everywhere. And no, our insurance does not cover flood damage, and yes, we have checked. There is not a room without injury, and great swathes of our garden will need to be replanted. Meh.

Still it is not all doom and gloom. The freesias are still scenting the front garden with their old fashioned perfume, and the bunch I gathered is freshening the sitting room. The two Lorraine Lee roses that smother the garage have begun flowering. The oranges are ripe and the bowlful on the kitchen table fills me with happy spring feelings. There are pots of pansies everywhere. And joy of joy, the pear trees are in wonderful exuberant abundant bloom. Oh how I do love pear blossom.

There is the wonderful smell of bread baking in the oven, an orange cake cooling on the counter, and Chicken Korma on the stove. There are freshly laundered sheets fluttering on the line, Colin McPhee's Tabuh-Tabuhan playing merrily on the iPod and piles of enticing new books on the coffee table. Audrey the poodle lies asleep on a zabuton in the sun, happy to be home. The colours of my ripply crochet blanket look much brighter in the spring sunshine, and there are fresh flowers in every room. Friends are on their way over to join us for the evening.

As I look around me I can't help but feel incredibly blessed and happy to be here.

It's so true, isn't it - be it ever so humble (and crumbly), there's no place like home.

Kuala Lumpur Highlights

Mum:
The amazing architecture and decoration of the Sri Mariamman Temple
Eating soft buttery flaky Roti Canai and lamb curry with our hands - yum
The frenetic activity of the Jalan Petaling street market

Dad:
The Petronas Twin Towers lit up at night
Teh tarik - watching the process and drinking the result
Browsing the stalls of the Central Market

Jemimah:
The wonderful street entertainers
The new National Geographic shop
Watching the Indian roti makers stretching that dough

Bali Highlights

Mum:
Enjoying a private Balinese dance performance by the local girls from Kedewatan village
Celebrating my birthday early with a Balinese feast in a private balé overlooking the Ayung Valley
Talking Indonesian textiles for hours with the wonderful Jean Howe from Threads of Life in Ubud and going home with a beautiful sekomandi from Sulawesi

Dad:
Relaxing by the pool
Time to read
Walking barefoot in the warm torrential rain hand-in-hand with his favourite girls

Jemimah:
Riding elephants at Taro
Balinese Dance Classes with the local girls from Kedewatan
Learning to body surf at Legian
(Potentially Waterbom Park - we're going tomorrow!)

Pulau Moyo Highlights

Mum:
My first ever scuba dive of the Moyo sea wall
Talking to the village children in Labuan Aji
Swimming in the natural limestone pools below the Barry Lee Waterfalls

Dad:
Scuba diving the Labuan Aji Reef
Watching the sunset from the decks of a Javanese fishing vessel
Indulging in a synchronised four hand massage

Jemimah:
Catching her first fish
Learning to snorkel
Having her hair braided

Lost me?

I'm here.

In a National Park.

Doing boring things like Nature Study and PE. Important homeschool things. SOSE and Geography and Social Studies (or is that SOSE?) and Cultural Studies and subjects like that.

Boring stuff.

Fish Identification 101 today.

Of course I'm not enjoying myself.

Not at all.

Happy cakes

Don't you just love the colours you can make icing nowadays? In my youth there was just cochineal. It made a pretty light pink, but add one drop too many and your cakes would become the most startling shade of purply pinkiness that just was not attractive at all, not even when disguised with white coconut. Remember? Kinda reminds me of the Milton the Monster opening:

Narrator: "On top of old Horror Hill, in a secret laboratory,
Professor Weirdo and Count Kook were in their monstrous glory."

Professor Weirdo: "Six drops of essence of terror,
Five drops of sinister sauce."
Count Kook: "When the stirring's done, may I lick the spoon?"
Professor Weirdo: "Of Course, Ha ha, of course;
Now for the tincture of tenderness, but I must use only a touch;
For without a touch of tenderness it might destroy me, oops, too much;
Better hold your breath it's starting to tick."
Count Kook: "Better hold my hand I'm feeling sick!"
Milton: "Hello Daddy."
Professor Weirdo: "What have I done?"
Milton: "I'm Milton, your brand new son!"

Hmmmmm, Evidence of my telly-filled childhood there.

I digress. Sorry.

These pretty cakes of Jemimah's just make me happy. I love her quirky colour combinations - purple sprinkles on pink; yellow on blue; pink on yellow. So much more interesting than the nice pale pastel offerings that grown-ups produce.

I thought I'd leave them here as something pretty to look at while I'm gone. I hope they make you a little bit happy too.

On doing nothing

My goodness - I'm on holiday. What a wonderful feeling to wake up with nothing to do. Quite surreal. Not even the fact that we have risen to a leaking hot-water service and no hot water can dampen this very fine day. (Well, if you stood underneath the unit you would get rather wet, but I meant metaphorically and figuratively damp and not physically so.)

Apart from organising a gas plumber, today should be a lazy lead in to our super-lazy break. I am so looking forward to doing nothing, and I suspect that I may be somewhat out of practise, so I shall use today to have a trial run of nothingness.

I have a hairdresser's appointment booked for later this morning, followed by a trip to the beautician's for some obligatory lash darkening. It is such a drag applying mascara when it's hot and humid outside, don't you think? In the meantime I am enjoying catching up on some of your bloggy goodness, and in creating a little of my own. How nice to have time to just surf between pages on a whim like this. My Beloved has toddled out early for a neck crunch at the chiropractors, and Jemimah is still being slothful and so this time is my own to just chat to you. So nice. I am enjoying this very much.


Tonight we're heading out to opening night of The Nutcracker. Should be a very fine start to our holiday indeed.

Are you doing anything nice this weekend?

Holiday reads and a pressie

Early on Monday morning, when you look at A Peaceful Day, you can imagine me in Bali. If your imagination is good enough, you'll see me reclining by the pool, gaudy tropical cocktail in one hand and a book in the other. If you look even closer you'll see the title of the book, the 30+ sunscreen, the floppy hat and the rashy - and possibly even some of the wrinkles I'm trying to minimise, but those things probably cause the illusion to crumble somewhat, and so I suggest that you take a step or two backwards and survey the now more enviable scene from a distance.

If you really want to know what I'm reading, the book will be Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, the book that everyone reads when they travel to Bali. Chick Lit, I know, but remember, Monday is the first day of my holiday and I will have been flying all night. Cattle Class too. Bleurgh. On my reading list I also have A House in Bali by Colin McPhee, and My Journey from Paris to Java by Honor de Balzac, but both of them look far to erudite for first day reading, so Gilbert it shall be.

Jemimah and her Daddy are swimming. Can you see them? When she returns to her recliner for a rest she'll be reading her very first trashy novel - a prospect she is inordinately excited about. It's Paul Jennings' Funniest Stories, and I shall probably be sorry that I bowed to presure and purchased it for her, but hey, I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love, so what do you expect of a mum who reads twaddle like that? Later when we've recovered a bit she will be reading The Ramayana as retold by Lynne Jessup and Gecko's Complaint retold by Anne Martin Bowler, and so I'm hoping that the good will outweigh the bad in her case as well as in her mother's. My Beloved has earmarked the second book of the Millennium Trilogy, The Girl who Played with Fire by Stig Larsson as his first tome, but really he plans on sleeping, not reading. You can probably see that, even from your safe distance.

It is nice to be able to contemplate some serious reading time. I haven't done enough of it lately. I found myself incredibly scatterbrained and unable to concentrate when my dear Dad was ill, and life has seemed a little out of control since then. I had been midway through The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery when he first was ill, but as he got worse I was unable to continue. A book about a dying man just wasn't my cup of tea at the time. I was also reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones but I had to put it aside for the same reason. I've packed them both for Bali. I did manage to finish Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie - a short novella that I absolutely adored, as did my mother when I passed it on to her, but that is about it for me in the reading stakes recently.

To be honest, the thing I missed reading most during those weeks in Geelong was your blogs. Blog writing is different from printed writing. It is shorter, pithier, rawer and mostly more honest that stuff the publishers produce. It is also often far funnier. Personally I like the blog writing genre very much. Which was why I was rather excited to discover this book on the discount shelf at the local Borders Store:

Reading through the pages of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Free Range Knitter was just like reading her blog Yarn Harlot on the screen. Stephanie's blog about knitters and knitting and people in general is one of my daily reads, and with her book in hand I was able to get my daily blog fix right from he comfort of my bath or bed. I loved this book.

Only one morning I lost it. I hunted everywhere for that little book, but it had truly vanished. Kerpoof. Gone. Disappeared in a puff of smoke. I was so frustrated, let me tell you! I told you I was scatterbrained about then. Anyhow, eventually and after two whole days of looking, my irritation got the better of me and off I beetled into Borders to buy another copy. Which I finished. And then, you guessed it, the first copy turned up, squashed between the foot or the bed and the mattress. I swear that it wasn't there earlier, Officer, I swear. Somebody must have planted it there after nicking it to read in the bath.

Regardless, I now have two copies. And so while I'm away sunning myself in Bali, I'm going to give one very-slightly-used-but-not-so-you'd-know copy of Free Range Knitter away to one of you, my wonderful friends. Now I know you won't yet be able to read Stephanie's book while you're missing A Peaceful Day, but at least you'll be able to imagine my return when you'll have both Jeanne and Stephanie to read. Me on the screen and the Yarn Harlot in the bath. You proved your powers of imagination earlier, after all.

So what do you say? Keen? To enter just leave me lots of nice messages while I'm gone. Your comments make me happy. You can enter more than once by commenting on more than one post from the archive. Just follow the links to something you've not read before. It doesn't matter what you say either but it has to be nice. I'll simply count all the messages that turn up on my email notification list while I'm gone and pick a winner randomly. Sound fair? I thought so. I should get lots of nice messages as well, and knowing that you're out there waiting for me makes me happy.

So does lying by a pool in Bali, mind you.

I'll be back in a fortnight.

Love you all. Bye.

Comments begin now, and close when I first check my email on my return. Have fun!

Of course I bake my own bread!

I must admit I've always felt a little bit guilty that I've never baked my own bread. It always seems to me that bread baking is one of those things that one must do if one is to call oneself a reasonably efficient home maker. Which I do. But I don't make bread.

It's all the waiting that gets to me. That and the kneading. I'm too lazy and too impatient for bread. Plus, I don't like yeast cookery much. Too temperamental or something. Or maybe that's me.

Anyhow, this leaves me purchasing decent looking and expensive loaves from classy looking French boulangeries and pretending that I've baked them myself. Well, not quite, but I'm always tempted, and if you don't ask and just assume, well that's not my problem, is it?

Well, a couple of weeks ago Mum went to Irene's for lunch, and was served the most delicious looking and tasting bread that Irene had made her very own self. In five minutes. True. Apparently Irene got the recipe from Sarah who got it from...well, actually I don't know where Sarah got it from, but she got it from somewhere. Irene gave it to Mum, and Mum gave it to me, and now I can proudly say that I make my own bread for real.

It is crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside and it makes excellent toast. It is just perfect.

So, would you like the recipe? Yes, I thought you would. You'll find it here.

Do give it a go. It really is the easiest thing to make. Easy enough for me even. And I've never been bothered before.

Once you've made your loaf, here's how to eat it - toasted with lashings of delicious butter and Vegemite. Mmmmmmm, this stuff is the best.

Can't wait until they fix my oven.

The value of friends

Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:

If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!

Ecclesiastes 4:9-19

So as the waters recede the cleanup begins. And what a job it is. To be honest, I would be quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of the task we have in front of us if it weren't for one thing: We have friends to help.

Outside in our garden - can you still call it that - you'll find W and B. They're raking, sweeping and chopping. They're watering everything with detergent to try and minimise the damage caused by the oil slick that covered our land. They're removing oil soaked vegetables and digging the soil. They've been here since this morning and they'll still be here tonight. They're here because they care.

In the kitchen you'll see D. She's cleaning out the cellar. Again. It keeps refilling with water, but maybe this time the water level will have dropped enough for it to stay dry. She's vacuuming and mopping and cleaning. She's hosing down steps and verandahs. She's making cups of tea for the boys and entertaining Jemimah. I am so blessed to have her as a friend.

Friends carry each other's burdens physically, but friends also pray for each other, and I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love shown to us by our Christian friends during the last few days. Thank you to those of you who sent messages of support to us, and to those of you who remembered our town in your prayers. I value your friendship.

As we sat in the Community Meeting last night it was easy to appreciate just how blessed we have been through all of the last few days. Our peaceful home remains high and dry, albeit rather chaotic. We have a place to sleep and a place to work. We have food in the cupboard and friends to help with the clean-up. Others have been affected so much harder than we are.

It is amazing how good a warm home feels when you have been without heating for a few days. You appreciate the electricity more when it is reconnected after a while as well. A cup of tea tastes fantastic when the water once again flows from the tap. It is incredible what a difference these things make to our every day lives. To have been without them makes me appreciate what I have all the more.

It's the little things that make our lives comfortable, isn't it?

I'm appreciating them so much more today. And I'm appreciating my friends more as well. They were here when we fell down, and they were here to help us up. We are blessed indeed.

Our town from the air

A bit close to home

Our garden this afternoon, just before the Avoca River peaked. Just a bit soggy underfoot...

The Side Garden

The Courtyard

The Children's Garden

The Kitchen Garden

The Front Garden

Our street facing West...

....and facing East.

A little elf taking a peek.

Of droughts and flooding rains

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.

from My Country by Dorothea Mackellar

Could you please pray for us today as we sandbag our peaceful town.

The river is currently at 7.9m, and is expected to peak at 8.3m later this morning. The High Street is already under water.

Our home should be safe for the moment, but the property we supply fully furnished to one of our senior staff members is expected to be flooded soon, as the waters continue to rise. It is currently 10cm below floor level. We will be moving as much as we can from there this morning.

Thank you for caring. It is certainly far from boring here this weekend!

I love you, Daddy

If I were able to upload a current photograph to illustrate today's post it would be of Jemimah sitting at the kitchen table making a card for her Daddy.

Tomorrow is Fathers' Day in Australia, and at this very moment Jemimah is using fabric from a pair of old boxer shorts to decorate a card to give to her beloved Daddy. A relic from another Fathers' Day long past, the silk fabric is printed with medals saying variously, 'Top Pop'; 'Father of the Year'; 'No. 1 Pere'; 'No. 1 Pater'; 'You're the best' and more. The card is going to be beautiful, and it will honour the man most important in Jemimah's life.

This card, made with love and care, will be very different from the offerings available at out local newsagency. Purchasing a preprinted card for Fathers' Day is a somewhat terrifying experience in my opinion. You have a choice of a garishly decorated missive celebrating total incompetence, flatulence, impotence or ballooning weight. You can purchase a card sporting a button announcing 'I'm the Boss' only to discover that Dad is to return it to Mum in the morning. You will find cards announcing that Dad doesn't need an expensive gift because he already has one - your child. But, if the cards at my newsagent's are anything to go by, you will not find a single card that says simply 'I love you, Dad', or 'Thank You for being my Father' or even simply 'Happy Fathers' Day'. No, it appears that it is simply not cool to tell your father that you love him.

Which begs the question of why you are bothering to buy him a card at all.

This is the first Fathers' Day I will celebrate without my own dear Dad. I would give pretty much anything to be able to tell him how much I love him. So why is it then that when men are still alive they are shown so little respect?

We are told to honour our fathers. It is not a request - it is a command. We are to honour them not because of what they have done, but because of who they are. We are to honour them simply because they are our fathers.

That's what Jemimah is doing right now as she carefully creates her masterpiece. She is honouring her Daddy. She is saying that she is glad that he is in her life. She is saying she loves him because of all his quirks and perfections, not despite them. She is saying 'Thank you for being my Dad'.

She is saying I love you Daddy.

And she does.

My boring life?

Hello.

Remember me? I used to blog here on a daily basis once.

It is now one week since my computer died. I have a whole camera full of photos to show you and I can't download them. There are posts hiding in those pictures about cooking, crochet, dance, gardening, books, homeschool and family. They're posts about the minutiae of my ordinary domestic life. And you know that's what I like to talk to you about most - the boring stuff - the stability of the daily rhythms of my Peaceful Life in the country. Somehow without those photos I just can't get inspired to write. The old clunky laptop doesn't help much either. And so I've been silent.

Only it hasn't really been an ordinary peaceful boring week. There's been lots happening - good, bad and ugly - and so I thought I would drop in sans photos to update you on what's been going on around here. For what that's worth.

Perhaps you've all left me anyhow - for more exciting places - blogs where something happens. Blogs about lives that are not boring. Perhaps, but I hope not. I'd hate not hearing from you all, and if I don't blog nobody comments and I pine. Anyhow it hasn't been boring this week at any rate, so at least today you'll have something to read about, even if you can't see the pictures. For those you'll have to be patient. Which is something I'm not feeling at all.

This week:

• The computer, the oven, the sandwich maker and the vacuum cleaner have all died. Now to be honest, having no vacuum cleaner doesn't worry me unduly, but having no oven does. Especially since it decided to die halfway through baking a loaf of bread. This is bad.
• Also bad is the fact that the smoke alarm battery decided to start beeping its 'getting flat' alarm at 2 o'clock this morning. Why does this always happen in the middle of the night? Are they programmed at the factory to do this?
• Jemimah decided that this was the week to purge her room of all toys that she has outgrown or tired of. The tidy room is sublimely good; the heap of toys that she has haphazardly piled on the laundry floor for me to sort into opp shop/bin/family piles is bad.
• My Treloar rose order arrived in the post and I have planted out 11 Abraham Darby along the front fence and 6 Felicia along the fence in the English garden along with sundry other varieties in other places. This is decidedly good.
• I have begun pruning the 100s of older roses. You may remember that this is a task that I loved doing with my dear Dad, so this job has been decidedly bittersweet. Lots of tears because he's not here with me, but lots of great memories too. I am determined to do a job that he would be proud of.
• Jemimah danced in her Jazz Ballet concert and looked beautiful. You will need to wait for pictures of this. She looked beautiful and the dancers were great. This was really good.
• My dear Mum came to stay last weekend to watch Jemimah dance. This was wonderfully fantastic, of course.
• Our older daughter - the one I don't blog about - was rushed to hospital with meningitis. This was very terrible.
• The diagnosis turned out to be the viral type of the illness which is much milder and rarely fatal, rather than bacterial meningitis, which has a terrible prognosis, and she is now back home nursing a bad viral illness but otherwise unscathed. This is a wonderful answer to prayer.
• We celebrated the 60th birthday of one of our homegroup members with cake and singing prior to our study of the wonderful word hesed, as part of our study of Jonah. This was good.
• We ate chicken curry served with Thai sweet and sour vegetables with friends. The bok choy, broccoli, coriander, tomatoes and lemongrass were harvested from our own Kitchen Garden. This was good.
• The freesias are flowering and I have lovely little scented bouquets through the house. This is lovely!
• I have mastered the Ripple, and my ripply blanket of cuddly goodness is now about a foot long. I can't wait to show you this. I do hope you will ooh and aah over it with me. This is frivolously fun.
• Grannie is not yet finished. I am not liking the sewing in of all those hundreds of ends one little bit. This is bad. We are using her though, and she is beautifully warm and cuddly, despite being rather hairy, so this is a good thing.
• Literacy Lava 6 was published. This is definitely good. You can get your copy by clicking on the button in my right sidebar there. Can you see it? That's it above 'your say'. Nobody has told me what they thought of my article on travel with kids. That is bad. Or maybe it is my article that is bad and you're too polite to say. That is possible.
• My sister accompanied hubby and me to the current Australian Ballet production, Edge of Night. I love the ballet, I love my husband, and I love spending time with my sister. All good.
• One of my bloggy friends booked flights for her family to come and stay with us in December. This is absolutely wonderful!
• Hubby has developed tennis elbow. This is bad.
• I have mastered the art of no-knead bread. I will share this with you when I can show you the pics, but I am so proud of myself. This is yummily good.
• Last but not least, we have booked a holiday to Bali and Moyo Island in Indonesia. We will be leaving next weekend, and will be away two weeks. I will leave you to decide which word best describes this announcement for yourselves, but I'll give you a hint - it is definitely not ugly.

See? Not boring this week at all. I wonder what next week will bring.

Thanks for reading.

Literacy Lava Issue 6

Spring is finally here, and along with it comes the newest edition of Literacy Lava. Hurrah!!

Download your free copy of Literacy Lava Issue 6 from the wonderful Book Chook's site now to find ideas for revving up reluctant readers and ways to use poetry to support literacy. Discover how to tell tales with story stones, and how to unlock the mysteries of early readers. There's info on how to get started with a father/son book club, and using newspapers to build literacy. There are lots of fun learning activities with buttons and bottle caps and there's more.

From me you'll get some ideas on how to get the most from travel with children. Here's an excerpt from my article to whet your appetite:

Jemimah has an intimate knowledge of the lives of Muslims, Buddhists and Shintoists. She has eaten Bhutanese Emadatse, Thai Curries, French Cassoulets, and Yemeni Salta. She has climbed in the Himalayan Mountains and explored the hedgerows of Hereford. She knows what it’s like to be stared at for being different. She knows how to adapt and change to her surroundings. She has friends who live differently to her, and she knows that ours is not the only way. She can appreciate cultural diversity.

We don’t need to do much planning for our kids to learn while they travel. When a child is exposed to new sights,experiences and foods, they will learn. Lots. We are a learning family. To us, learning can and does happen everywhere. It’s an integral part of life. Learning is fun.

Pop on over and get some of my well practiced ideas for getting most out of a holiday with your kids without turning it into a trial and a drudge for you or for them.

I'd love to hear your suggestions and ideas on this topic as well. It looks like we might be off to Indonesia next week.

Sigh, It's a hard life.