I'm lovin' it

Country Road

Is this dress just divine or what? I love the print and the shape of the sleeves.  For those of you with enough disposal income, you can get it from the new collection at Country Road for $199.  It is 100% silk which actually puts me off slightly as it would probably crease horribly (am I starting to sound like my mom?)

It would look great over coloured skinnies in the summer but equally good with brown legs and bright shoes.  I might go and try it on, just to see if it looks as good in the flesh.  I won't buy it, of course......

Seasonal dysfunction

One of the biggest advantages to living in WA, apart from the weather, the easy going people and the beaches is the fact that we're exactly one season behind the UK.  Ergo, you can buy all your clobber in the UK sales, get it shipped over here and look pretty cool on a pretty slim budget. 

Fashion in WA follows the UK pretty closely so I can guarantee that all the bright colours seen for S/S11 in the UK will be hitting the shops over here quite soon.  In fact, I saw a bright tangerine silk tee in Target that I have my eye on for Summer.  Witchery have a bright yellow clutch appearing in stores too.

So go have a shufty at ASOS.com and see what bargains there are to be had to see you through spring and summer, particularly as they ship to Australia for F.R.E.E!  Cool, eh?



Collage made with photovisi



New threads

I wonder if that should be "thread" when you've only bought one thing?

Out of all the shops over here in WA, I think Witchery is probably my favourite.  It's overpriced and sometimes a bit pedestrian, but the quality of the clobber is just divine and it has some really great timeless pieces that kind of "nod" in the direction of being fashion forward.  This season's stuff in Witchery has been all about nudes and neutrals with loads of grey, camel and khaki.  All of which suits me just fine as I find it a bit of a struggle to wear anything bright (more of which in a later post as I WILL be attempting some colour blocking for S/S11)

A couple of weeks ago via email, the lovely Witchery offered a $20 reward for the first 5,000 people to fill out a survey.  I obviously had a crack and was duly rewarded on my loyalty card - woohoo!

I hotfooted it down to Joondalup and purchased this very versatile little skirt for the princely sum of $29, reduced from $109 (see what I mean about being overpriced?)

Bloglovin' - here I am!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

For those vaguely interested in my ramblings you can now follow me on Bloglovin' - though for some reason it hasn't updated with the new Blog name yet.  Bloody technology.

I feel so dirty :(

Please forgive me, followers, for I have sinned.  I have succumbed to the lure of the boxed cake mix...... it wasn't for me, honest, it was for the kids to keep them busy this morning. It worked for all of about 7 minutes, then they went back to torturing each other - and me.

Smartie pants

Is it just me, or does everyone elses' cookies spread horribly and end up wafer thin?  It doesn't seem to matter what recipe I use, they're always exactly the same. EXCEPT for today -woohoo!

Today, I used a Nigella recipe - why I didn't search for one of hers first as they're always successful,aren't they?  It seems to have a pretty high flour content so the dough was "rollable" rather than "spoonable".  This seems to make all the difference, plus I rolled it into balls then baked them once they were really cold.

I didn't actually have enough smarties so used some hundreds and thousands pressed onto the dough and also some freckles chocolates.

This is the recipe, taken straight from Nigella's site, though now I've re-read it, it's not one of hers at all, but one of her fan's recipes!  How funny, just shows how rubbish I am at cookie making, huh?

Smartie Cookies

Ingredients

345g (690ml) plain flour

5ml Bicarbonate of Soda

3ml baking powder
2ml salt

250g butter (or block margarine) softened

300g (375ml) sugar

1 extra large egg, beaten

5ml vanilla extract

2 x 150g Smarties

Method

Makes around 24 big cookies

1. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and set aside.
2. Cream together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, beat in egg and vanilla extract.
3. Gradually beat in sifted dry ingredients to form a stiff dough. Stir in one box of Smarties.
4. Roll dough into large walnut sized balls and place on un-greased baking trays. Leave plenty of room to expand!
5. Press three or four Smarties into each ball.
6. Bake at 190 degrees, 12 to 15 minutes until pale golden brown. Leave on trays 2 minutes and remove to cooling racks to cool completely. Store in airtight tins
7. Scoff (ok, I added that bit in)

A change of direction

Don't get too excited, it's nothing earth shattering in the slightest.  We're not moving to the other side of the world again or anything like that.  Nope, I've just decided to take a different course with this blog.

I'm sure the 2.5 people who actually read this are mildly interested in this news but I've kind of come to the conclusion that not many people are actually interested in the bumps and scrapes of my kids or the ups and downs of our household. Soooooo. I'm renaming the blog "Cupcakes in my Closet" - cute, eh?

It's going to be a kind of lifestyle/baking/fashion blog obviously based around WA.  I'm going to be writing about the things that interest me and to hell with the rest of you.

Keep following if you're vaguely interested in such things, hopefully there'll be lots of nice photos to look at and the like.

Sunday bloody sunday

Have I already called an entry this?  It rings a bill somewhere in the back of my swiss cheese brain.  There's a distinct possibility I have since when you've got 3 small children, most days include blood to some extent or another.  Today's drama occured at King's Park - Grace and Ruben were playing the usual who can do the stupidest thing on the playground and today's challenge consisted or climbing the wrong way up the helter skelter slide, both at the same time.  Ruben's knee connected with Grace's nose and voila, Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Despite this, it's a nice day out and the kids never seem to tire of going there.  There's plenty of outdoor barbeques that you can make use of, and if you get there early, you could do yourself an nice full English in the great outdoors. What more can you ask for?  Coffee you say?  Of course there's a coffee shop!  What self respecting WA park doesn't have a coffee shop...tsk.

In other news, we have a house inspection tomorrow - for that read "the Gestapo come round and check your skirting boards for dust".  I hate HATE HATE them and it's just the worst part of renting a house over here.  Even though our house is usually fairly clean and tidy I feel like I have to go over the place with a fine toothed comb.

Ruben is currently reading the girls a bedtime story.  He's practising Julia Donaldson's Stickman for a "Lamplighter's Night" at school next week.  The Year One children are reading stories to the kindy kids at 6pm after school.  Cute, eh?

They do quite a lot of stuff like this at school.  For example, next Friday at 5.30pm they're having a PJ & Movie night.  The kids all arrive back at school with a pillow, togged up ready for bed and get given hot chocolate, marshmallows and watch "Up".  Wish I could join them actually, but I'll be looking after the whirlwind, otherwise known as Agatha.

Gala Day for our little Auskicker!

Today Ruben spent the morning playing "real" Auskick against some other teams at a Gala day at Kingsway Sports Stadium.  Ruben and his fellow Magpies played incredibly well and were well rewarded with the obligatory Aussie tradition of a sausage sizzle (read "hot dog").

It was great to see the boys getting really stuck in and some great goals were scored, including one by Haydn, who was playing his first ever game.

Auskick, for those not in the know, nor in Australia, is Aussie Rules footie for little people.  It's hugely well supported over here and for boys AND girls, which is great. 

We then spent the rainy afternoon at The Beach House in Osborne Park, one of the better indoor soft play places in the Northern Suburbs.  Unlike the ones in England, there appears to be no sick stains on the carpets, nor any overly large 12 year olds tearing the place up.  Oh, and the coffee is significantly better too.

Have I ever mentioned the Aussies' obsession with coffee?  OMG, nobody seems able to function without a coffee in hand or at least one on order.  In fact, if you don't feel like you can finish your car journey without a caffeine hit, you can stop at a drive through coffee bar, such as Muzz Buzz or One for the Road.

I like my coffee, me, but don't find it necessary to balance a steaming grande skinny latte whilst driving (a manual I hasten to add), refereeing the kids in the back seat and doing a U-ey to go and pick up my gym bag that I left in the car park (true story).  Maybe it's just me, or maybe Aussies have a special coffee cup holder in their cars that I know nothing of.....

Rain, rain go away

Or not actually, as we're in desperate need of a bit of the wet stuff here in WA.  But, despite that, it makes for a horrid day when you're stuck indoors with a 2 year old.  So we decided to go to the playground, yes, in the rain, then did some puddle jumping in the garden.  Aggie's boots were FULL of water by the time she'd finished!

I can't get you outta my head

I'm sure everyone knows which song that line is from and also sings it whilst doing a very uncool robotics style dance.  WE'RE OFF TO SEE KYLIE!!!!!!

She's currently taking her Aphrodite tour around Australia and gets to Perth on the 22nd June.  My fabby friend Sam and I are going to go, looking hot, of course and ready for a boogie.

I'm very much liking the costumes on the show, though I think the "winged ears" are taking it a bit far, don't you?

The wanderer returns....

Oh Em Gee.... I'm so, so sorry for leaving you all in the lurch, desperate to know what the Thompson family have been upto.  What was that?  You mean you didn't even notice that I hadn't posted for 6 months?? Charming, I'm sure.....

Well, I'm back and promise to update this on a much more regular basis.  In the meantime, I'm going to do a few rush posts to bring you all back to speed on what's been "goin' dawwwwn".

I successfully ran the HBF run for a reason - a whole 14km of it!  Proud of meself?  You betcha.  I followed a Hal Higdon training programme which transformed me from an ashmatic uphill wheezer to a 10km/hr runner (prob should call myself a jogger, but hate the legwarmer conotations of that word).

I ran the whole race and finished in 1hr 27min, a very respectable time for my first race, so well pleased with that.

That's me, looking a bit of a nobber, but feeling very pleased with myself.

My next stop is the City to Surf run which is in August. My only problem at the moment is that I can't decide whether to do the 12km or whether to tackle the 21km half marathon - any thoughts?

The other biggie that has happened of late....my best mate Rebecca has been over to visit with her lovely family.

Bek is the hottie on the left, I'm the wrinkly one on the right.  We had such a lovely time whilst she was here, and I'm really hoping that she liked Perth as much as we do.

Here are a few gratutious shots of them and us enjoying our 7 precious days together.

Happy 2011!

Firstly, big apologies for not updating this blogs for what seems like months.  Actually, I think it has been months!

Secondly, welcome to 2011, our first full year to be enjoyed on the West Coast of Australia - very excited about this!

Not that much has happened over the last couple of months, though there have been a couple of events that are probably more interesting to tell you about.

Just before Christmas, Grace had a concert at Kindy, which all the mums attended.  Very cute, with lots of triangle playing and the like.



On the way out, whilst carrying Aggie and holding Grace's hand, I walked straight into a swarm of bees - apparently they have a nest in one of the trees at the back of kindy.

Christ, it was terrifying.  I screamed at the girls to run away and a couple of the parents grabbed them and looked after them.  I could see Grace screaming and this mom was swatting bees off of her.

I, however, couldn't escape them.  They were in my hair, inside my dress, just everywhere. :-(  I was stung countless times, mostly on the face and scalp with a few on my chest and back.

I've never been so frightened in my entire life and still have no idea why they attacked me - thank god it wasn't one of the kindy children though.

On a lighter note, Paul and I (and recently arrived Pom, Kevin) went to see U2 at the Subiaco Oval.  We saw the 360 degree tour in Glasgow last year, but it was so fabby that it was really no hardship to watch it again.  Bono didn't disappoint and was his usual modest self - ahem......

To update you all on our weather, as I know that all the English readers like to be pissed off at our current enjoyment of sunshine, it's around 40 degrees most days and unbearably hot! 

So happy new year to you all - wishing everyone a safe and happy 2011.  (and I promise to update more!)