in search of the real captain kk

what kk did: march 2012

2013-04-07T23:47:00.001+10:00

what kk did: march 2012

1. despite my grumpy pants about the mini & it's new home in the garage meaning the contents of the shed were dumped throughout the house to accommodate the mini, i did enjoy the husband picking me up so we could have lunch together. i would text him a scribble like this & he would text back Y or N. the husband is nothing if not efficient with his texting.
2. i've had this chair forever. in fact, my mum has had it since she was 15 when she bought it at auction for peanuts with the matching desk & gave it to me when i was 15. i love the shadows it makes & the kids love poking cotton buds through the little holes.
3. contents of my desk. every blue moon i clean up my desk, which involves moving everything on to the sofa & then back again once i've given it a quick once over.
4. if the husband wasn't in enough trouble over tricking me about being OK with the mini being parked under the carport & then changing his mind and re-organising everything to turn the shed into a garage, he was when he shaved off my baby boy's hair!!
5. we did some gardening. i love photos like this when mirka just stares straight into the camera, even if her expression screams "get out of my face, i'm busy being daddy's little helper!"

the mini

2013-03-29T18:49:00.003+11:00

i couldn't' let february 2012 go past without acknowledging the mini. the husband bought it for himself for his birthday last year in an effort to get him off the vespa & into a safer mode of transport. hmmmm. not sure a 1964 mini cooper classifies as having any safety features whatsoever & it freaks me out nearly as much as him zipping around on the vespa. hello fun police. anyway this car has been the source of my grumpy pants quite a few times over the last year, (i hinted at it here) but after a big heart to heart with the husband at the start of the year, i think we've met somewhere in the middle of both of us understanding why he loves it so much & why i resented it. so, although it's not exactly a reliable, family sized or safe car (!!), of course the kiddyliwinks love it & it does make the husband's heart sing; just look at the stupid grin on his face when we picked it up last year.

what kk did: february 2012

2013-03-26T18:08:00.003+11:00

what kk did: february 2012

1. honey, i love you. valentine's card from here.

2. some favourite books. sweet cushion covers made by the talented kingsley.

3. cutest little hand prints displayed with my oversized timber peg.

4. we went to the zoo. a lot.

5. at the zoo again. mirka was never too thrilled about giving up the main seat on the bugaboo & would jump in at any chance if charlie left it unattended. charlie didn't seem to mind. he would just climb on the toddler seat /skate board attachment and hold on as best he could, with his little arms stretched to maximum. yes, i did get some funny looks.

what kk did: january 2012

2013-03-24T23:56:00.000+11:00

in an effort to return to blogging & continue capturing some of our life here that i don't want to forget, i've decided to do a series of quick monthly catch up posts, starting from january last year. yes, last year. i'm calling them the what kk did series and so, here is january:

1. we made gingerbread hearts with the leftover xmas gingerbread dough & started dreaming about maybe, just maybe, taking off for a big new orleans adventure, (hence the new orleans cafe du monde mug).

2. we went to the beach in the evenings most nights & the kiddyliwinks loved wearing their new swimmers & sunnies. yeah, i dress them in matching swimmers.

3. charlie liked to climb things. any height. fast.

4. i bought a 3metre high old painter's ladder from industria (sadly no longer in fitzroy) & made it our new bathroom towel rail. you may say crazy; especially in the light of my previous comment about charlie climbing everything, but i say interesting contrast in scale. and maybe a little crazy.

5. we had a super casual lunch for australia day & i got another use out of my sentimental rob ryan four season plates.

pom poms & rainbows

2012-10-07T03:05:00.002+11:00

we hung these small pom pom garlands out the front to welcome mirka's birthday guests for her recent party & although that was exactly a month ago today, you guessed it, they are still up. much like all the other decorations over the past few years, i find it hard to take them down too quickly*. these ones have gotta come down soon, in time for whatever we end up doing for halloween in a few weeks, but in the meantime, i'm enjoying them blowing around like crazy out on the front verandah, even if they are looking a little beaten up from the spring rain we've had. mirka is into rainbows as much as ever, hence the rainbow layered birthday cake again this year and i'll have to do something different for next year's birthday, but tell me, how fantastic is the rainbow poster? it was a gift from her honorary uncle hamo & is hanging up, pride of place, on her bedroom wall. pom poms & rainbows. what's not to love about turning four.

*all i'm sayin' is that our tree out the front, may, or may not, have the fairy lights still strung up in it from last xmas. maybe we're just early y'all.

4 cheers for our mirka

2012-10-03T22:25:00.000+10:00

happy, happy, happy, happy, fourth birthday mirka grace. we love you to the moon and back.

charlie's 2nd birthday

2012-09-18T22:09:00.001+10:00

charlie, lucky pants, harper. that's our boy. it has been crazy busy around here lately, not least because charlie & mirka have birthdays only 2 weeks apart. some may say it was genius on our behalf to have 2 kids, 2 weeks short of 2 years apart and some may say it was madness. to be honest, i'm not exactly sure where i stand on that one, but i do know our kiddyliwinks love a birthday cake. our present to charlie was a train set and while he did say "wow!" and throw his arms up in joy when he unwrapped it, that was nothing compared to his excitement over the mini mini on his birthday cake. like i've said before, charlie loves his daddy's mini cooper, (me, not so much. i mean who buys a mini cooper when you have 2 kids??). the mini mini cake topper instantly catapulted to world's best present in charlie's mind as soon as he saw it. the husband and i were pretty happy with ourselves after we managed to pull together charlie's birthday cake the night before. late, very late, the night before. not bad hey? nothing a store bought sponge cake, sandwiched with raspberry jam & cream and covered in coloured coconut and a couple of strips of licorice can't achieve. so there you have it. charlie's 2nd birthday cake made by mummy & daddy.

p.s. these photos were taken before i learnt how to use my camera properly. there will be quite a few more pre tim coulson workshop photos to come, since i've quite a lot to catch up on. quite a lot.

my sister kingsley

2012-09-17T23:46:00.003+10:00

my sister kingsley is pretty awesome. just sayin. she laughs at all my jokes & lets me believe i'm stylish, even though hipster fashion that ventures past wearing leggings escapes me. she even puts up with me having a camera in her face for the better part of our girls day out on saturday. we coffee-d, we window shopped, we perused galleries & discussed the merits of purchasing a gorgeous blue & green cushion from spacecraft against whether or not it would clash with a certain fluoro yellow 'jake' chair i've got my eye on from koskela. finally, we stopped in a brand new, new-york-style diner with a madmen vibe, that's just opened on gertrude street, where bam! i had my camera in her face every time kingsley took a sip of her asahi beer, (yeah she's a hipster. they're marc jacobs sunglasses she's wearing y'all). too dark. too bright. gotta adjust the shutter speed. no, still not right. time to up the iso. change white balance from cloudy back to auto for indoors. anyway i'm slowly getting my head around taking manual photos. these ones are totally untouched. i love the first one, but it's a little dark. the bottom left is my favourite, but i also love the pop of blue against the bright orange diner sign in the background of the others. what y'all think?

p.s. i've just decided to start posting bigger photos, but i'm wondering if they're a little too big. does it look & load OK on your screen?

dial M for manual

2012-09-16T00:21:00.000+10:00

in the spirit of improving my photo skills, i took myself off to a one day workshop yesterday with the talented tim coulson. i think i first saw tim's work on ms. beetleshack's blog here & then saw his work pop up again on the lovely one claire day blog here. when i saw he was having some workshops in melbs i thought why not? why not take my awkwardly social self off to a day with total strangers & learn how to break my habit of only using the auto setting. well, let me just say, habit broken. i've been annoying the shizen out of my trusty sidekick kingsley all day today. we spent the day checking out the shops in fitzroy & i made poor old kingsley stop every 50m so i could try out my new found skills on her. it's amazing what knowing all the little buttons on my camera actually do. yeah, i know that makes me sound like an idiot, but i'm embarrassed to tell you that i thought manual mode was when i switched from auto focus to manual focus on the lens. on the lens people! what a fool. anyway now that i'm a total pro, i can totes turn the dial around to m and know how (and why!) to adjust the iso & shutter speed. not the aperture you ask? no sista, no aperture adjustment for us nursery graduates. (i hope that's right! at least that's what i took away with me.). the husband wonders if mr. coulson is actually just an exceptional sales rep for canon, but his advice to pick up a cheap EF50mm f/1.8 lens was priceless. and who am i to argue with mr.coulson or ms. anna-beth. chao who i remember espousing the virtues of the 50mm lens ages ago on her fabuous blog here. so, above is my untouched photo from the workshop. tim's little sister was our model for the day & i was pretty happy that i could take a decent photo of her & her fabulous hot pink beanie, with gorgeous blurred out background on manual setting. thanks mr.coulson. it may not be the most awesome photo in the world, but remember it's untouched & it's my first manual portrait. hooray to discovering a whole new world!

charlie's 24 month portrait on the eames rocker

2012-09-12T00:15:00.000+10:00

here it is. the 24 month portrait. the last official monthly portrait of our charlie. so this is the end of my baby-mama years. is it? i'm 99.9% sure it is. the monthly portraits have been the only thing keeping this here blog limping along, but here's to getting back to business.

so what's new charlie boy? you are pretty funny, let me tell you. you even say "i'm funny!" .. i guess it's because you make me giggle & i tell you you're funny, but you know, you are. you can also be quite the determined, independent, cranky little shit when you want. like when you want to climb up or down steps on your own and someone innocently tries to help you. no. no thank-you. you crack it, wriggle out of said innocent helper's arms & climb back down or up to start over. on your own. other than your out-of-character tantrums, (let's-just-put-it-down-to-the-terrible-twos), you are one seriously happy, snuggly, clever little boy. you love going to the zoo, but can't decide between elephants, giraffes or meerkats as your favourite. you love music & your daddy's mini cooper like you love your mama. and you loves me a lot. when i took you for your 2 year old check up, the maternal health nurse was blown away by your beaming happiness & all your words. i think you're quite the little extrovert, just like your daddy. you are 88cm tall, which going by the old rule of thumb where you double a kid's height at 2, then add a couple of centimetres, means you will end up as 178cm tall. that's 5'10" for you non metric folks. (hi vivi!). anyway, we loves you charlie bear. x

update: in the month since he turned 2, the husband & i have noticed a considerable growth spurt in charlie, so i just measured him. as it happens, he has grown another 2cms since i measured him & is now 90cm tall. going by that, charlie will be a bit over 1.8m tall when he is an adult, (that's about 6' for you vivi).

charlie's 23 month portrait on the eames rocker

2012-08-11T21:49:00.002+10:00

wow. 23 months. second last portrait 'til he turns 2 & i finish up with the monthly updates. so here is our mr. charlie; decider of all things cool. "cool sthoes (shoes)".. "cool panths (pants)"etc. and yes, his little gonzo shoes are pretty cool, but if you ask me, the coolest thing is charlie's soft, husky voice that has the cutest little lisp when he says "s". we took the kids to see the latest muppet movie a few times when it first came out and charlie being a big grover fan, took an instant liking to gonzo. i think because he is also blue with a big nose & goggly eyes, just like lovable old grover. anyway, we brought gonzo & the little adidas gonzo-the-great shoes back with us from our recent trip to new orleans & they have been top of charlie's cool list ever since.

all you need is love

2012-07-07T08:00:00.000+10:00

all you need is love. i remember when i was pregnant for the first time with our gracie girl four years ago & realising how true that is & how reassuring i found that at the time. we were living in a one bedroom apartment in st.kilda & i was freaking out about how it was all going to work, but it did & it always does. it was a super lovely apartment, but it was upstairs, on a noisy street & had no laundry. anyway, that's what i always think of when i see these words & then i sing the beatles' song in my head.. all you need is love, love, love. love is all you need. happy times. thanks for my new tea towel jacq. i got quite the birthday haul this year. the PH5, new earrings, awesome tea towel & i'm typing this in my new spotty gorman socks. lucky pants me.

what's in the box?

2012-07-05T08:00:00.000+10:00

that's right, you better believe it's real. yeah it's real. i'm not into the whole copy-cat, replica, faux, fake, furniture industry that knows no boundaries. anyway, this rare beauty is my spectacular birthday present from the husband. for those of you thinking; oh man, why doesn't my hurs-ban give me an original PH5 pendant from angelucci? stop. no husband is that good. i organised it. the husband paid for it & is painting our living area in preparation for it. what? you wouldn't repaint a huge, pain-in-the-ass, open plan area from 'dulux white swan' to 'dulux vivid white'? the PH5 demands the perfect white, not some lame ass creamy white. if you really, really want your own PH5, i can't promise anyone will help you paint your room the perfect white, but i'm pretty sure you could contact angelucci & ask them to find you one. no doubt it will take several months, but i'm sure they'll find you one too. modern day treasure hunters.

charlie's 22 month portrait on the eames rocker

2012-07-04T00:42:00.001+10:00

22 months & so big already. at least charlie thinks so. in his mind, there's nothing he can't do. nothing. in fact his favourite game at the moment is "sthoo-per dhar-lie!" ..(super charlie) as in "super grover!" ..he lets himself fall straight forward from standing, assuming i'll catch him and of course i do, but just make it worse because once i've done it once, it's the best game in the world. just a little bit disconcerting, especially when it involves heights. but i've gotta say, he is a tough little cookie. falls, scrapes & head-butts into furniture are simply met with a grumpy face and a quick "ouch!" anyway, getting charlie to sit on the rocker was not happening, so i had to get out the old blue alarm clock again. hey, it works. props to props.

p.s. if you like his little drum windcheater, it's from hamb who have their own retail shop in footscray across the road from the happy river cafe if you're local.

birthday time

2012-06-11T18:26:00.001+10:00

it was my birthday yesterday, so to celebrate i lazed about in bed for an hour, (best use of time ever - don't be too jealous), before making our way over to st.kilda for lunch at restaurant mirka. every single time i go there i am knocked out by how stunning the dining room is & how good the food is. i told the husband that my lunch was so good, i felt sorry for him for not having what i had & he said the same thing back to me. the food is really that good that everyone feels like they've ordered the best dish on the menu. anyway it was nice to be back in the hood, dining in one of melbourne's most beautiful rooms, across the road from our old apartment where so many good things happened. we might not live across the street any more, but we're back with an entourage of two lovable* little monsters. my birthday present from the husband this year is kind of spectacular, so i'll post that next. let me just say it has required painting our entire back living area, which may or may not take til xmas to finish.

*mostly. charlie wasn't looking so lovable when we first sat down, but the fast thinking husband hailed a waiter to put some bread down in front of monster number 2 & all was good after that.

charlie's 21 month portrait

2012-06-05T08:00:00.000+10:00

charlie, charlie, charlie. funny little boy. i wasn't sure how to encourage charlie to stay on the eames rocker for longer than 10 seconds, but it was a stroke of genius* that made me think of this old blue alarm clock. i wound up the alarm & set it to go off, not sure whether it would make him laugh or cry honestly, but being the little bulldozer he is, he loved it. really loved it! the last photo gives you an idea of what he thinks of me and the camera in his face. again with the camera mummy? really? just as well he's a little mummy's boy & thinks i'm ace regardless.

*yeah it happens every now and then. don't be a doubter :)

yarraville festival

2012-06-03T11:30:00.000+10:00

while i'm playing catch up, i thought i'd post these photos from the yarraville festival. you can tell it was a few months ago by the sunshine. i gotta say i was loving the pop-up park out the front of the sun theatre, then just like that, it was gone. anyway, the festival.. i met the husband & mirka there with charlie. charlie saw his daddy & mirka saw her mummy. big hugs all round. nothing like a little person's reaction to make you feel like a rock star! mirka spotted the merry-go-round swing thing & really, really wanted a go.. let's just say the first time around was all smiles, but by revolution number 20, i recognised that rigid body language and dropped facial expression; well i knew the feeling. poor little girl was stuck on there until it stopped and she knew it, but our little trooper was very brave! we got to climb up & have a seat in a real fire truck afterwards, so all was shortly forgotten and our day was back on track. think i may have enjoyed clambering up into the fire truck just a little more than mirka.. or was that just because the firemen were flirting with all the mamas? hello ladies!

did y'all think i was dead?

2012-06-01T21:50:00.000+10:00

did y'all think i was dead? uh-uh i'm not dead; just lost my bloggin' mojo for a while, which not surprisingly seemed to go hand in hand with being crazy-time-busy at work. trying to finish a project and get it out to tender a couple of months ago was epic. the project wasn't that big or complicated, but it was the first real project i've done on archicad & in my new office & i seemed to be sucked into a time warp.. what felt like 15 minutes in the office was 5 hours in the outside world. needless to say the husband was not happy with me disappearing on weekends to "just quickly finish a drawing".. famous last words! i'm still not sure why it took so long to wrap it all up, but it did, and all before we went away on holiday to new orleans for close to a month. a whole month people. one glorious, sunny, silly happy month together & now i have to get back to normal life? huh? how do i do that? anyways, i wasn't sure exactly how to start back in this here space, so thought i'd share some more chalkboard scribbles with y'all. don't judge. i said they're squiggles. so before we left, we made a big count down board to get the kiddyliwinks excited & part of that was talking about where we were going, what we would do & where we would stay. just a little holiday shack. nothin' special. just a whole corner apartment in the heart of the french quarter with our very own wrap around balcony and this was my chalky squiggle at explaining what houses are like in new orleans. apparently it wasn't complete without fireworks, as added by mirka & charlie.

charlie's 18 month portrait.

2012-03-19T11:00:00.000+11:00

18 months. eames rocker. my 'baby charlie' is fast becoming 'big boy charlie'. lots more teeth. lots more words. his first word to me every morning lately is "narna" as in "get out of bed & get me a banana. please, please, please mummy.. good morning and all that". no longer can i just pick him up & bring him back to bed for an extra half hour snuggle & snooze. my snuggly, cuddly little charlie bear is now mr know-what-he-wants & who, how & where to get it from. if he feels like some sultanas he simply stomps over to the pantry, points his finger up high & says "ta", which i'm pretty sure is charlie code for "get me some sultanas now slave!" i shouldn't complain considering he is such a good little eater & not the fussy pants his big sister was, (still is). speaking of his big sister, no-one else comes close to her rock-star status in charlie's eyes. whatever mirka does, likes or wants; charlie does, likes & wants.. which is pretty awesome actually. we're lucky they are such good friends, but it does cause the occasional problem when charlie doesn't want to relinquish the toy of the moment or finish his turn. and why would he if his rock-star sister has just declared it the best thing ever. apart from mirka & grover* being charlie's favourites, his daddy's new-to-us 1964 mini cooper gets charlie unbelievably excited. "car, car, car!!" if he said it any more enthusiastically he would literally explode. mama's family subaru just aint gonna cut it anymore. if i say "let's go out to the car charlie" he runs out as fast as he can and looks straight past my car to try and see the mini. the husband opens the door for the kids to get in & because it's so low, charlie can walk straight in and clamber up into his child seat faster than you can say "mini". if only he could do up his own buckle. even mirka is on to charlie's obsession with the mini & uses it as a distraction if she wants to get rid of him or get the toy he has. a simple; "mini charlie!" and he's off & out of her hair!

*yes, grover, that loveable old furry blue monster is very important in our house.. we even celebrated his birthday last weekend.

p.s. how great is the 'hello' minti t-shirt? i bought this one from little pinwheel. charlie is also modelling mirka's hat that he has taken ~~ownership of~~ is obsessed with. once upon a time it was a fedora that we bought for their uncle's 30th hipster party, but now is so misshapen by charlie pulling it firmly down by the rim like a floppy farmer's hat that, well, let's just say it has character.

pop-up

2012-03-03T23:52:00.000+11:00

who isn't doing a pop-up something right? but i'm feeling surprisingly* joyful tonight after chatting to kingsley on the phone & thought i might just pop-up myself here on this little ol' neglected space of mine & share this happy photo. we took the kiddyliwinks down to the yarraville festival last month to check out the new pop-up park in front of the sun theatre.. you know, that old place where they show movies; just that stunningly-bold-art-deco-architectural-celebrity-of-a-building-around-these-parts. anyway, i was busy being that idiot with the camera when i noticed a lone yellow balloon floating off into the wide blue sky above & how great it looked against the big old sun sign. you can read more about the pop-up park here.

*i feel like i've been grumpy for about 2 months straight now.. but more on that later, maybe. it's not that i'm hiding anything, but i like to keep this space positive & i'm not sure i want to delve into an explanation of my cranky pants being most definitely on & feeling too tight.

put the love in the coconut

2012-01-19T00:07:00.000+11:00

what does that even mean? the stylish ms. montmartre asked me this after my bragging about my new castle/ gorman tea towel acquisition on facebook recently & she's right.. what the hell does it mean? i have no idea other than it being a cute play on kermit's 'put the lime in the coconut' lyrics, but i don't really care because one; i'm in to it for the colours, two; i'm shallow like that & three; my favourite is the rainbow one anyway. turns out mirka likes it too & i had to pry her little mitts off it to take these photos. good taste that one. fluoro.

oops

2012-01-15T22:47:00.000+11:00

holly, banksias & oriental lilies

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000+11:00

i loved how all of the flower stalls at the pre-xmas markets were bursting with holly branches & couldn't resist adding them to my armload of oriental lilies, along with a few banksia flowers on our xmas eve food shopping expedition. my favourite flower combos are simple colours & lots of texture. i think i'm going to plant a banksia tree somewhere in my garden, purely so i can harvest the spectacular blooms & spikey foilage.

mirka's xmas bouquet

2012-01-09T00:44:00.001+11:00

before i move head first in to the new year, i wanted to capture mirka's tiny bouquet of 'santa flowers' in a post. when we asked mirka what she was hoping santa would bring, "santa flowers" was the only thing she said, even when we quizzed her a few different times. that santa really does deliver. i don't know if you can really tell from the photos, but the miniature size was pretty special. mini for my mirka.

our xmas day

2012-01-02T01:49:00.000+11:00

this is what our xmas day looked like. laid back, low key, easy & summery. mirka muppet was sooooo excited to see that santa had eaten some of the chocolate & delivered the 'santa flowers' she requested. so cute! she carried them around for most of the day; at least until she changed in to her doctor's dress-up outfit. we gave mirka a doctor's dress-up outfit to balance out all the pink & princess stuff she is attracted to & we gave little charlie a masculine work bench to bang away at & balance out all the girl's toys mirka shares with him. we ate our lunch of salads & sandwiches off my new rob ryan plates from lark. each one is different, but i am particularly taken with the 'give me work to last me all my life' plate & that's the one i set for myself for xmas lunch.. i think it strikes a chord with me because i've realised how much i do love working as an architect and how working as an architect makes me well, happy. happy and a much better mama, wife & all round person. i look forward to working creatively for the rest of my life. i'm not saying i could keep up a 5 day week when i'm eighty, but this 3 day week i currently enjoy is pretty damn perfect. anyways, xmas day spent with the husband, kiddyliwinks & kingsley was as near perfect as it gets for me. happiness.

update: forgot to mention that the letter tags & twine i used to tie them around the little jars of flowers are both from bespoke letterpress boutique.

update: the 'cookies for santa' plate is from west elm.