Hello Wednesday! My hot + not blog entries are measuring the speed of time for me right now. Obviously NaNoWriMo is swallowing huge globs of my free time so everything else has come to a grinding halt (Including a notion that I might have made entirely homemade christmas presents -Pah! Ridiculous!).

Here’s the game plan:
To play along, it’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me here at loobylu.com and then adding your url to the widget below.

Hot

The umbrella plant in the kitchen (above).

Writing break through: So hot! 35000 words and still going. I have had a bit of a fraidy-cat block about the 30k mark as that was my bomb-out point back when I tried NaNoWriMo in 2001… I blasted past that point on Monday morning in a furious 2 hour writing session. And suddenly my book is a YA (middle reader) Fantasy book. I don’t know how that happened. My spunky little heroine literally took a wrong turn in a tunnel and all of a sudden there’s time travel and talking foxes and ancient shape-shifting Scandanavian mountain trolls… oh well. At least the words are flowing thick and fast even if I do have to edit out around 40k in December.

The kids ever changing breakfast cereal mix: Cocopops (very small amount mainly for the excitement factor), cornflakes, puffed rice, shreaded coconut, cut up dried fruit, almonds… it changes every few days as I stir through new things to top up the container.

Kirsty’s beautiful new house… and my mate Lizzie’s awesome new kitchen. Suffering from serious nice house envy, girls!

Good people making good stuff for Christmas:
Ward’s fantastic rubber stamps , Amber’s Kids Craft Weekly Christmas Craft and Card books and Cookies new wall decals.

Lily’s Kinder orientation. She was such a star – all confidence and cheer. I was quite taken aback (and impressed) when she was the child on the mat needing to be gently reminded that this was “listening time” as she tried to share all her stories right away.

NaNoWriMo Pep talks – they arrive in my inbox when I need them most.

Amazing enormous wall decals - my kids are keen on the little guy falling down the stairs with the broken skateboard by Darcel.

Not

Finally getting off my butt and doing some baking – made a banana cake and didn’t realise I had used salt instead of sugar until I was putting it into the oven and happened to lick my finger to get rid of a tiny blob of batter.  Argh.

Taking dad (and his station wagon) all the way down to Ikea to pick up two chairs for $99 each. Bargain! And with acorns… can you spot my mistake? Apart from not being as cute as I hoped in person and a little more like camouflage material, as my dad pointed out… they were also not $99.

Home organisation meltdown… my system needs work. The main flaw with my home organisation system is that it’s not just about a pretty set of index cards. It’s also about doing what the little cards say – like housework – and cooking! Never mind. I’ll get to that after I hit 50k.

My blog! December will be all about a redesign for my poor neglected blog which is terribly neglected and literally falling apart at the seams.

And you?

Jeepers  - this is quickly turning into a Wednesday only, what’s hot + What’s not blog. Nanowrimo is really not leaving much time for blogging. Never mind! Here’s the spiel if you want to play along:

It’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me here at loobylu.com and then adding your url to the widget below.

Here’s mine:

Hot

Days – the days are hot. I am not a fan of Summer (at least not of the Antipodean kind – Summer in Canada was really very pleasant) and it’s not even officially Summer yet and still we are sweltering. Climate change, will you be the cause of a mass family migration to cooler climes? Perhaps.

Frosty fruits. Oh yeah – a basic necessity.

NaNoWriMo – I am getting words down. Not very good words, but words none-the-less. almost 21,000 at last count. Chris Baty’s advice to get as many down in the first few days was very good advice indeed. I need to keep up the momentum however, because I feel myself getting bogged down with the second week blues. Startling questions like “What is this book actually about?” are starting to flare up at the most inconvenient times – like all the time. It’s making me a bit grumpy actually. I think that I should save the rest of this for the Not column.

The house is tidy and I still don’t quite believe it. Most nights we even manage to get the clean laundry foldedand put away in drawers. This is previously unheard of! The home organisation system I mentioned last week isn’t exactly easy – and I have to say the novelty wears thin very quickly – but I have managed to keep things under control around here despite the 21,000 words. If I manage to keep it for another fortnight  I promise to let you in on all the secrets.

New artwork (top photo). We have been very, very bad in our No Spend Year and bought some artwork. It’s number 8 in our yearly wedding anniversary artwork buying – and it’s a goodie. We found it Byron Bay, but it’s by Melbourne artist Timba. Love it.

Not

Chadstone Shopping Centre – I went on a little Chrissy shopping reconnaissance trip yesterday and I got LOST – inside the mall! I have been going out to Chadstone a couple of times a year (at the very least) for the last 20 or so years. I have seen it go from a dinky little shopping mall to an out of control temple to the gods of consumerism… and I feel like I know the place quite well… but honestly, it is so big and only getting bigger. I got lost somewhere down in the bowels of the place and in a state of confusion ended up buying a bath mat and a packet of flavoured lip gloss – neither of which I needed.

Grumpiness and disgruntlement due to my lack of plot focus (see Nanowrimo notes above). I am projecting my NaNoWriAnxMo (anx is for “anxiety”) onto other things, like what to get people for christmas, and why isn’t the playroom clean? and what am I doing with my life? and do I really need to bake for the school fair?

Not baking for the school fair. I did huge amounts last year – gingerbread and biscuits and so on… this year I left it until 7pm Friday night and then had a “argh, stuff it” moment. Not hot. I did, however, serve sno-cones and ice creams to the overheated crowds on Saturday afternoon. The sno-cone stall was one of the best to be assigned to as we were down underground in the very shady equipment storage area, and the medieval sno-cone machine tended to shower bits of ice all over us as it crushed lumps into “sno”. Did you know that people will pay $2 for a tiny scoop of crushed ice in a paper cone with a little bit of highly coloured and flavoured syrup squirted on top? They really do! Some even paid $2 for a tiny scoop of ice with NO syrup! I was stunned, but our stall made the most money of the day – and all for a good cause. Amazing.

Hot weather. Hot is not hot. I think I already mentioned that.

See you at your place, hotters and notters. xx

How did it get to be Wednesday again so soon?

What’s hot and what’s not at your place? The weather is getting hotter around here and so is my frame of mind. Bonza. I had a few people asking me how to play along – it’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me and then adding your url to the widget below. Simple! So hot!

Hot

Home organisation – brilliant! I am actually making a difference around the house. What will be totally hot is if I keep it up for more than a fortnight. The house looks pretty fine at the moment and I am still managing to get some parenting and some NaNoWriMo-ing in.

Polly&Me handbags… (images above) so gorgeous. I saw a couple of these bags in a gorgeous shop in Bangalow last month and came home to look up the website. “Polly&me is an Australian sister team working in Pakistan. Cath Braid, a fashion designer who trained at Central St. Martins, London, started working in Chitral on a womenwear label “Caravana” and has been working in Chitral for six years. Now she and her sister Ange run the business Polly&Me with over 400 women across eight centers in and around Chitral town, producing textiles for women’s accessories.” (from Fashion Windows). The top two bags are from their current collection Sugar and Spice (how much I love that beautiful bag with songbirds and laundry – top right) and the bottom two bags are from the new range, Gup Shup, coming out soon. (images reproduced with permission).

Bored to Death – love it. It makes me laugh out loud.

We have a big gap in our yard and I keen to fill it with a cubby house. I am super keen on this Roulotte in a garden in the Netherlands- -see what I mean? Who wouldn’t want such a cute playhouse? I have serious playhouse inspiration every time I visit Mikodesign.

Lemsip, echinacea, blueberry & pomegranite juice, vitamins, fruit and lots of water. Coaxing my immune system back into a more enthusiastic approach to life.

Not Hot

Arguing kids. Is this how it’s going to be for the next 15 plus years? Perhaps when they get to the age when they plug themselves into individual sound systems and cease communicating all together will be when we have some peace. Sad!

Not hot is not getting around to visit all the What’s Hot + What’s Not participants from last week. I’ll definitely come by and visit this week now that I have everything so neatly written on index cards and am totally organised! Thanks for playing along again. xx

Hello! It’s What’s hot + What’s not time *again*! Luckily my interests are so fleeting and fickle I have enough stuff to manage to get these lists together weekly. Are you taking part with your own list this week? If so, don’t forget to leave you link in the widget below. I will come and say hello!

HOT

Zinc – my favourite store this side of my parent’s house. While sometimes I feel a little like I am living in a shopper’s desert, a quick visit to Zinc in Toorak Road, Burwood (or is it Glen Iris around there?) to use a gift certificate and to dream of Christmases to come  always restores my faith in the Eastern suburbs. Yesterday I finally replaced my (exploding sunscreen filled) wallet with a gorgeous thing from Elk. Very nice.

Halloween! This year we have a cindy-lauper-style rockstar and a bottom-of-the-dress-up-basket fairy princess.

Count down to NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. Are you taking part this year? The first year I signed up was 2000 and it was a complete failure. I look back and think to myself… what was my problem? I had all that TIME! This year time *will* be my biggest problem, but I want to get back into my daily writing again and this is as good an excuse as any. I have a new book to start so it seems like perfect timing.

Related – The NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s Program. Just like NaNoWriMo but for kids under 17 years and with the opportunity to set reasonable word count goals. The word count recommended for Amelia’s age group is 300-3000 words. Hmm. Wonder if she’d be into it too.

Related – the Office of Light and Letters is hot. I loved reading the history of NaNoWriMo and am so impressed with the vision and the energy and the passion of the people involved in running it and their charitable organisation, the Office of Light and Letters. Donate to a great cause, or if that’s a stretch, use GoodSearch for all your NaNoWriMo searching and choose the Office of Light and Letters as your charity – GoodSearch is a brilliant idea – 50% of the company’s revenue is donated to designated charities.

What I wore today in drawings – the blog and the flickr pool. Gemma Correll is one of my favourite illustrators and she has started such a great meme. I think I might have to get in on the action. Also, just for fun – today is an All Gemma Correll day in my etsy faves over there in my sidebar.

NOT

My energy levels are not hot. My immune system is not hot. It’s boring, and annoying.

Sleepless nights – so, when do kids start sleeping through the night? I was hoping 7 would be the magic number but it seems not.

Forgetting to take snaps for my “life long project” of dinner photography. I missed every dinner while we were away and then there was the gastro so now am out of the habit enough to only keep up sporadically.

Favourite new book – Yumeji Graphics.

“This book focuses on the graphic works created by legendary Japanese artist and designer Yumeji Takehisa. It included his illustrations for books, editorial designs for magazines, drawing, typography and more.Takehisa (1884-1934) was a painter and pioneering graphic designer during Taisho era and early Showa era in Japan.”

There are spy girls creeping around our house wearing advanced technology bracelets. Look down and you might find a tracking device has been planted on your sleeve, or your pants.

Also — The Quilt Project is now online. We went along last night to the showing at the (magical) Abbotsford Convent and it was quite moving. Kirsty’s amazing – and so was the quilt.

It’s time again for this week’s What Hot + What’s Not. It comes around quickly – take part if you feel compelled and leave your url link in the little widget at the end of my post so we can come and see you hots and nots.

What’s Hot

Around the World with Mouk by Marc Boutavant. Recently translated from the French is this fabulous children’s book which is totally hot in our house this week. Every page is a huge explosion of colour, activity and cute characters. Mouk travels from Lapland to Africa, from Australia (Kangaroo Island specifically) to Japan. The whimsical characters are a little Moomin-like (and spot the character reading a Moomin book in Lapland!) and the huge spreads with so much to explore remind me of some of Richard Scarry’s big books from when I was a kid. According to the Chronicle Books blog, the American version will be released in the Fall… so… now-ish? If you have a child in the right age group for this which is probably 3 – 10 (or a illustration freak of any age) — this book would be an AWESOME christmas gift as it is big and glossy and has a slightly puffy cover and has removable stickers in the back. So good. You can preorder it at Amazon, or get it at Readings.

Pimm’s: We went to Byron Bay with a UK lad who introduced us to the joys of Pimm’s and lemonade. I gained several kilos from sipping on these. So our new celebratory cocktail is Pimm’s on ice, with a top up with lemonade, with slices of orange, lemon, thin slivers of cucumber and a sprig of mint. So pretty and so delicious.

Holztiger wooden animals: I bought a shark and a dolfin back from Byron for my girls – because not only are they absolutely gorgeous but can go in the bath! Lily’s shark has become a bathtime terror. “Holztiger toys are all handmade using maple, oak, beech and birch and make use of water-based acrylic paints.” We got ours from the beautiful My Toy Shop in Byron Bay. The fox is sitting on my bedside table.

Trop Jr: “The Worlds Largest Short Film Festival for Kids! By Kids! A recent addition to the Tropfest program is a short filmmaking competition open to kids aged 15 years and younger. 2008 was the first ever Trop Jr, 8 Finalists premiered their films to a live audience at the Crescent Precinct, across from Sydney’s Domain, before big Tropfest.” — this year’s signature item (a theme or something that needs to be included somehow) is “DOT”. It’s time to put all those video cameras.

Also: Teddy’s new nose, blue playdough, our new avocado and lemon trees, Flash Forward and Hydralyte Liquid.

What’s Not

Gastro! First Lily, then my parents, now me… who will be next?

Coming home from our holiday to an exhausted and sick family – and all the associated stress and guilt. Not hot at all.

My Mum looking after Lily as I vomited etc. on her birthday – NOT HOT! Happy birthday Mum.

Blergh. Hopefully next week’s not hot will not be about vomit.

Pip’s started a meme – My Place & Yours… with a new theme every week. This week is “On the Shelf”. I found these two sweet little kokeshi dolls in a gorgeous shop in Bangalow called Little Peach. They have joined my handmade girls on top of my radio on the shelf above the sink. They make me happy.

We’ve been back from Byron Bay for two days now, and I can hardly even believe we were actually ever there. It was a completely perfect break and hard to drag ourselves away on Friday. I was pleased to find that while Byron has changed a lot in the 12 years since we were last there, it still manages to hang on to its essential Byron-ness. We have loads of photos but most involve me in my bathers so quite obviously not blog-appropriate.

Top to bottom: Australia’s Eastern most point, where we stood and peered out at the ocean, hoping to catch a glimpse of a whale.

And glimpse we did. I know it’s pretty slight – but it made my day (holiday, even).

Poolside, lying back on my banana lounge looking up into the trees. This is probably my “happy place”… the place I close my eyes and imagine when the girls start shouting at each other, or someone is stamping their three year old foot and shouting at me.

Thank goodness for blogs – all I need to do is visit Megan’s blog The Byron Life and I am right back there.

Hello – There is a phantom publishing this post, as  I am some miles away hopefully lying on a beach or sipping a cocktail. What – no internet for 5 days? CRAZY. But here’s my What’s Hot + What’s Not Wednesday – it was great to hop about the place last week and find out what’s hot and what’s not elsewhere, so please feel free to post the link to your url below if you take part.

HOT

Fake tan! I got a fake tan – oh so funny. Amelia couldn’t look at me without saying “I want the real you back!”. I have never, ever had a tan in my whole life so it was really very novel. I was surprised at how good all my clothes looked. Now I get why people like to look brown. The actual spray tan process was not nearly as humiliating as I imagined and I am not even orange. Amazing! It’s too bad I discovered this in an era when it is completely dangerous to get out in the sun and get the natural version of this.

Migaloo: (above) An albino humpback whale. He was sighted off Byron Bay on the 28th of September. He’s probably well and truly gone by now, but I hope to see some whales (and maybe their calves) on their way home from their migration south. I am also packing binoculars because imagine how many new birds there will be to add to my list! The place we are staying even has a downloadable bird walk brochure. Awesome. (Tag: bird nerd)

Paul’s chocolates. Our good friend Paul did a chocolate making class last week and he gave us a box of his beautiful goodies. I am so impressed with how beautiful and interesting they are, and how good they taste. We spent quite a lot of time trying to convince Paul to try out for Master Chef for next season… but then we all wondered if there is anyone who needs that amount of stress in life.

Upgrading iTunes and sharing all Phil’s music. So much good listening going on around here.

NOT

Pale people (but not pale whales – ha ha!)

The little barky dog next door, right outside our bedroom window. We had a peek at him over the fence and he’s insanely cute but he does have a tendency to need to express himself at all the wrong times.

A small child with post-viral asthma: Phil and I were running on stress for two days. She’s getting better but I am no good at sleeping while wondering if we are going to be leaping into an ambulance at any moment.

Survivor Samoa. I dunno. We watched the first episode and there a couple of characters who are so mean I didn’t feel compelled to tune in again. I *know* they are probably actors, I *know* they need bad guys… but it left me with such a bad taste in my mouth.

Hot or Not? Alexander McQueen’s 10 inch stiletto pod shoes — I can’t stop looking at these. Surely influenced by the Alien films – but amazing and creepy and dangerous! What do you think?