I just realised I forgot to update y’all with my Bridge to Brisbane debriefing! You can watch the end of this video to see my footage, as well as things that fill my heart with glee.

You can see that I was true [...]]]>

I just realised I forgot to update y’all with my Bridge to Brisbane debriefing! You can watch the end of this video to see my footage, as well as things that fill my heart with glee.

You can see that I was true to my word, and wore a tutu! Nick and I are totally going to participate in more fun runs from now on but I think I enjoyed it a little more than him. He brought up the rear, finishing a whole 4 or so seconds after me! I would like to step up my pace next time – a few of the #btub crew participated in the B2B so it was more of a social dawdle.

If you want to support my fundraising for JDRF, you’ve only got a couple of weeks to donate before they close my page. Go here now to donate! I’ve raised over $100 so far which is more than I’ve ever raised for anything in my life, but considering that my target was $1000 it seems kind of paltry!

Last week was insanely busy, and one of the highlights (of my LIFE) was seeing Aimee Mann at the Powerhouse! I never thought I’d get the chance to see her come to Australia, but I’m glad to be proven wrong! She was fantastic! If you haven’t heard her music, go out and buy all her albums. Her music has pretty much been the soundtrack to the last decade of my life :D

It’s Father’s Day in Australia and New Zealand tonight, so we went over to Mum and Dad’s to have a big family dinner. I gave Dad this card, which I made from reclaimed materials (including: card from Reverse Garbage, drawing [...]]]>

It’s Father’s Day in Australia and New Zealand tonight, so we went over to Mum and Dad’s to have a big family dinner. I gave Dad this card, which I made from reclaimed materials (including: card from Reverse Garbage, drawing from my notebook and paper from Frankie magazine).

We also made Dad special home made strawberry jam, or “Boonge’s Conservative Conserve”. I can never remember where “Boonge” came from, but it’s a name bestowed on Dad by some of my uncles on a fishing trip many years ago.

Anyway when I went over, Dad told me that he’d come across some photos of his Mum’s family, taken in 1945 by Pix Magazine. They lived in a mining town that had been producing munitions during the war, and the magazine was looking at the effect the end of the war had on families in the town.

This is my great-grandfather, who was a power attendant in the factory. He was also a part-time boxer and through the magic of google, Dad’s been in touch with the son of the man who lost a finger and the match to my great-grandfather!

This is most of my grandmother’s family – she’s sitting on the far side of the table, just right of the centre.

Pretty cool, eh?! I love the internet!

My husband and I seem to disagree when it comes to Yoko Ono: I think she is wonderful and I admire her work as an artist but Nick being the avid Beatles fan thinks she split up the band (yada yada ya whatever). When I saw the the

My husband and I seem to disagree when it comes to Yoko Ono: I think she is wonderful and I admire her work as an artist but Nick being the avid Beatles fan thinks she split up the band (yada yada ya whatever). When I saw the the SMILING FACE FILM by Yoko Ono group on flickr I decided to submit after browsing through several pages of all these smiling faces, with different smiles, and different faces.

I’ve not had the happiest of weeks, being very busy and stressed. Today the maternal figure in the passenger seat of the family roadtrip that is my usual shrieking, forever accelerating brain turned around and yelled at me: IF YOU DON’T BUCKLE UP BACK THERE, WE’RE TURNING THIS CAR AROUND. So I decided to cheer the frick up. It started with me considering the notion that it might be ok to laugh about things. So I did. And then I found more things funny, and soon after that… the car-full of passengers in my brain did settle down, buckle up and quit whinging about when and if we were going to get there yet. We haven’t quite gotten to the sing-a-long portion of the trip, but I’m sure in no time the paternal figure will slip a cassette of the Grease soundtrack into the dashboard and start hamming it up to the doleful sounds of “Sandy“.

How To… SMILE by Yoko Ono

I told you to smile when you are feeling down.
However, there are steps you should know.
First you go to the mirror and smile to the mirror in anyway you can.
You probably will not feel any different.
Smile a few times that way.
If that is not enough, smile a few times every morning when you see the mirror.
That won’t do much, either, right?

Because there is a way to smile and change not only your mood, but make your body healthy and young, and change your life for the better!

1) Smile just by twisting the ends of your mouth up. That doesn’t get you anywhere, I bet. But that’s a start.

2) Smile with your eyes and mouth. That’s better. Your smile will make somebody feel good, maybe. Add a little giggle, and they will either think you’re crazy or like you for it.

3) If you really want to smile so it will make yourself feel good as well – you have to smile from your heart and your lungs. Don’t worry, if you are ending the smile with a quiet sound like ummm.

4) The next step will make you feel still better. Smile from your solar plexus. This has an added benefit of making your solar plexus healthier, and active.

5) The next step is to smile right down from your stomach. When you do this, make sure to breathe deeply and pull your stomach muscles in as you smile.

6) The next step – yes, there are more steps! – you should smile from your knees. Again, just pull your knees in – as you pull your stomach in – at the same time you use your lungs, heart and solar plexus. You’ll see that by then, you are smililng with your whole body. You won’t forget to smile with your eyes and mouth at the same time. It will happen anyway. That’s how you will get the true benefit of smiling.

How about giving a smile to others? Should we forget that? Don’t worry. They’ll notice your smile. Only, this time, you’ll feel good, too. Very, very good!

I love you! yoko

Yoko Ono
24 July 2009

I’ve never been very big on cooking, and since being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes I developed a strained relationship with food. It’s a bit of a chore, really. Gorging on a delicious treat needs to be calculated against the amount of insulin or exercise I will [...]]]>

I’ve never been very big on cooking, and since being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes I developed a strained relationship with food. It’s a bit of a chore, really. Gorging on a delicious treat needs to be calculated against the amount of insulin or exercise I will need to do in order to bring my blood sugar down to an acceptable level. A low blood sugar means I have to force feed myself even when I’m not hungry. I guess it’s because of this strange and forced friendship with food that I never really got into cooking… which doesn’t really make sense but it’s something I’ve just realised in the last 6 months or so.

When I first started learning about Health at Every Size principles I realised that my relationship with food would have to change. In order to eat intuitively I’d have to actually drop my food defences and think about the things my body wanted me to eat. A part of my self motivated “food counseling” has been taking photos of the things that I make. I’m also a big fat perfectionist, so I find myself making really fiddly things instead of just slopping stuff on a plate. Maybe I should work on that too :P

I started by making cupcakes, because everyone was making them and I wanted to join in. They’re fun and it’s easy to do pretty and creative things with them, but I think I’ve almost exhausted the humble cupcake. It was by making cupcakes that I discovered the joy of sharing food – something I have never really experienced until I started baking. Some people assume that I make these cupcakes just for myself, but they don’t see how I share them with my friends and family whenever I go visit!

In the next few months I want to learn more and more recipes, and take photos along the way of all my results. I find that when I take a photo of something I can properly document it and pat myself on the back! It might sound like a very simple sort of thing to most people, but I really struggle with food sometimes and I’ve found that cherishing my meal has helped me so much. Maybe a similar approach can help other people who feel similarly… but at the very least you can make pretty things to eat, share and reflect on!

I have discovered that a big part of what I do involves buttloads of time and love. People must think I’m crazy for spending hours drawing tiny lines or baking things from scratch, but it’s one of the only ways my primitive consciousness knows how to [...]]]>

I have discovered that a big part of what I do involves buttloads of time and love. People must think I’m crazy for spending hours drawing tiny lines or baking things from scratch, but it’s one of the only ways my primitive consciousness knows how to properly convey love and affection. A small part of me frets that people don’t value what I do – I worry that people throw away the things I make for them as if they were Hallmark products, but in the end I have no control over that. The only thing I really have control over is my love, and even if they did throw away my gifts I’d still spend time making them.

I have been incredibly busy lately, which is awesome, but I fell behind in making cards for Mother’s Day. So yesterday was spent drawing furiously… and making cupcakes. I finished icing the cupcakes and gluing the cards about half an hour before we left to have lunch at my sister’s place today… I was frazzled and half resentful because I feared how my gifts would be received. I needn’t have worried – my family always appreciate what I do, and I am so grateful for that because otherwise I’d be one bitter headcase :P

Thanks to the women in my life, including most of all – my Mum and Nana. You are brilliant, and my very limited vocabulary can not express how much I am indebted to you for helping me become who I am.

If you want to show someone you really think they are tops but you can’t express it in words, print off this recipe and make them some amazing cupcakes. They’ll get it :)

I bought the domain eatsleepcupcake.com to start a group authored cupcake tumblr – for people who make cupcakes and like to show them off. Unfortunately I failed to realise that the submission tool used around tumblr is only for private beta testers, not for me, so my plan collapsed [...]]]>

I bought the domain eatsleepcupcake.com to start a group authored cupcake tumblr – for people who make cupcakes and like to show them off. Unfortunately I failed to realise that the submission tool used around tumblr is only for private beta testers, not for me, so my plan collapsed :(

Eat, Sleep, Cupcake is now running as a group tumblr, authored by Kathleen, Heather and myself. You’ll see photos of our baking, and our inspirations, as well as recipes we want to try out!

These were the most delicious Milo cupcakes ever, and the goodies in the first photo are cupcakes I’ve just finished making today! They’ve got crushed Tim Tam bits in them, and they’re iced with Cedar Creme liqueur.

So yeh, you should follow Eat, Sleep, Cupcake. The End!

Today I went to a cupcake picnic, organised by the lovely @shique! We got to sample one from The Cupcake Parlour and another from Poppy Cakes. The cupcake I had from The Cupcake Parlour was a vanilla with this blobby blue icing, I found [...]]]>

Today I went to a cupcake picnic, organised by the lovely @shique! We got to sample one from The Cupcake Parlour and another from Poppy Cakes. The cupcake I had from The Cupcake Parlour was a vanilla with this blobby blue icing, I found the cupcake to be amazing and moist but the icing was far too sugary for me! From Poppy Cakes, I had a lemon poppy seed cupcake and thought the cake was dry but the icing was beautiful. I couldn’t eat all of the cupcakes, much to my husband’s delight.

2manycupcakes

Miss @shique

I look kind of obnoxious, sorry about that :P

Lately I have been pretty busy and preoccupied with other things, and I feel bad that I have neglected my bloggerly duties. Sometimes, you get into funks and just don’t know what to write about! I am a very visual person, and often I feel [...]]]>

Lately I have been pretty busy and preoccupied with other things, and I feel bad that I have neglected my bloggerly duties. Sometimes, you get into funks and just don’t know what to write about! I am a very visual person, and often I feel like I could just communicate via images but for some reason I don’t think that’s good enough for this blog.

I’m dragging myself out of this blogging rut, and posting my latest creation: peanut butter frosted cupcakes. They’re delicious!

And also this – a very tongue in cheek stab at indie poseurs :)
You can buy it on a t-shirt or as a print!

You guys… that’s Joy Nash wearing my illustration on her chest.