A good weekend

I had big, crafty plans for this weekend. We were going to make peach cobbler, decorative vases, and photo frames out of vintage books. We didn't quite get there, but we did make some pretty good stuff. For starters, we made and played this game of personalised Monopoly, made up of places we'd visited, places we'd lived, and places we wanted to see.

At one point, I owned London (yep, all of it), The Plaza New York, Magnolia Bakery and Machu Picchu. These were returning some decent rent but, unfortunately, this was negated by my ownership of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in India. Mr B and the girls once stayed there, and it was so horrible that in our game, the first person who landed on this hotel owned it by default, and thereafter had to pay $200 apology money to anyone else who stopped by. I had a lot of guests.

Em also made a cake with multicoloured swirls, topped with white and dark chocolate, which gave me diabetes just from the looking.

The rest of the weekend? We picked Em up from Brisbane airport at 8am, popped over to Southbank for an al fresco breakfast, roamed through market stalls, walked over the bridge and into the mall where I looked at kitcheny things I couldn't afford, popped into the gallery (ok we wanted to use the loos, but we did take a little look around), stuffed ourselves with three tiers of things we shouldn't eat at High Tea, then home to take the dog to the park and play with a balloon helicopter thingy I bought for Em at Australian Geographic.

The perfect place for writing

Imagine the perfect place for writing. What would yours be like? Mine would have to be a place that truly inspires. A place where the everyday rules fall away and the imagination knows no bounds. Everything should available: pens, papers, desks, beanbags, whatever I need to find my muse. Oh, and how about established authors on-hand as tutors, to help get my writing to publication standards? Hey, why not, since we're dreaming. Now imagine giving a place like this to kids, many of whom are disadvantaged. Indigenous kids, migrants and refugees, kids from schools with limited resources in areas of rising crime.

What if you gave them this place as a gift? A safe haven for children to develop their creativity and love of words. A place that frees their imagination, and breaks down barriers to communication and self expression. Wouldn't you be proud to share a gift like that?

I've been dying to tell you about the Sydney Story Factory, a charity that will open later this year in Redfern, Australia. If you go looking, you'll find it behind The Martian Embassy on Earth, a shopfront portal through which the children will pass into a new world of imagination.

Take a look at this incredibly inspiring workshop the Factory hosted in June. You'll thank me. The kid at the very end is just too cute, and sums the whole thing up. How can you not love what they are doing, bringing literacy, a love of writing, self confidence, communication, self expression and pure, simple joy to these kids?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SobsFrTKIs0]

Nesting frenzy

We are moving to another state in three weeks. Again. After living out of suitcases for such a long time, I am nesting in the biggest possible way, even though we're only renting. Here's what's on my shopping wish list:

Image via from-me-to-you

* Lights to string across the back courtyard, where there is a lemon tree, an orange tree, a tiny little salt water swimming pool, and just enough paved space for a table where we will dine with friends, and big pots in which I will grow herbs. * A blackboard that I'll hang up somewhere central, I'm thinking possibly the kitchen? For family and guests alike to leave messages, write poems, draw pictures, do anything they like. * A ping pong table to put in the garage, because our car would probably freak out if it had actual shelter anyway, and we'll need something to do with our friends in between swimming, eating and creating chalk art in the kitchen. * Speaking of the kitchen, a proper mixer, a pasta maker (Mr B's request) and other culinary accountrements. * A home for the 1000+ books I have packed in boxes right now, because our own bookshelves are attached to the wall of our house in Sydney, so our tenants are enjoying them right now. * And some soft, wonderful new linens for our bed, and new pillows, because what we have is tired and old and yellow, and both of us are ready to dream good dreams.Did I miss anything? What else do you recommend?

Suitcases

Source: viksvicious.tumblr.com via Gin on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Bethany on Pinterest

Source: theeclecticlife.wordpress.com via Megan on Pinterest

I have been living out of one since April. I don't love it. In particular, I don't love wearing the same clothes over and over again, with the rest of my wardrobe sealed up in boxes in a rented storage garage in Sydney. Right now, suitcases to me spell "constrained."On the other hand, suitcases pulled out of the closet and dusted off can also mean

The beginning of a journeyThe romance of the road

A new adventure

At those times, I love suitcases.Last night I met a woman who had packed her suitcases so many times and lived so many places that home was no longer "where the heart is" because her heart followed the people she loved, and they were scattered across the world. I know how she feels.

I said "I couldn't tell you where I'm from any more." I don't know a place that is my home. I guess I've just packed and unpacked too many suitcases.

What do suitcases mean to you?

For Mr Lee, my best kitty-pal in New York, suitcases apparently represent the ultimate in luxury and comfort.So much so that when we finally do get settled in a home and unpack all those boxes, I am going to buy a Ruby a vintage suitcase, put a rug in it, and make it her bed. She will be over the sleepy moon, and our house will still look nice.

My books

I just wanted to share this with you, dear friends: the bookshelves in our dining room. Next week my books will go back into storage, less than a year after I unpacked them from the boxes they lived in while I was in New York, and this makes me rather sad.

One day, Mr B and I will be rich and old and we will have one of those old-fashioned libraries with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and big comfy armchairs for reading, with a bay window for light in the summer, and a fireplace for warmth in the winter.

(Moreover if this fantasy continues in the same vein, I may toast crumpets for tea, and Mr B will need to take up smoking a pipe.)

Makes me smile

I've had the 'flu all week and it feels like crap. But here are some thoughts that are making me smile right now: * Airmail is finally in my hot (flu-fevered) little hands after all these years.

* I just interviewed a lovely woman who is the 6th generation of her family to run a guesthouse on a tropical island, acquired in 1848 for two tons of potatoes.

* After a year of exhausting commuting, Mr B and I are actually going to live together full time again, starting this month.

* This morning, I painted my fingernails a particularly shocking shade of orange.

* My little brother is getting married this week. (This is us as kids on my old horse Queeny - how cute is he in the yellow stackhat?) * I am going to make spaghetti bolognese for dinner, and eat it while watching Glee.

* I finally filled the prescription for my sleeping tablets so I WILL SLEEP TONIGHT.

Credit where credit is due

I can't say it's a direct response to last week's open letter to Marrickville Council (somehow, I don't picture the Councillors sitting around the office reading naomiloves.com), but something has certainly happened in my lane-way since I wrote that post. The eight bags of rubbish we had collected from the street out the front are gone. So has all the rest of the garbage that was so much a part of that lane-way I had almost ceased to notice. In fact, I don't think I have EVER seen this lane looking so clean.

We must give credit where credit is due, so, thank you Marrickville Council!

Some men

Some men pretend they don't like pets but secretly spoil them. Do you know someone like this? Like a lot of men I know, my gorgeous new husband likes to complain about our dog. (Just to clarify: I mean to say a lot of men I know like to complain about their own family pets. Not all of them complain specifically about our dog. He's a good dog.)

But I digress. Mr B says things like, "He gets in the way of our holiday plans," and "He craps too much on a walk," and "He won't leave me alone - he always wants to sit near me." These comments are generally accompanied by a distinctive screwing up of the face, akin to having recently sucked a particularly sour lemon.

However, I put it to the jury that two out of the three above complaints may possibly be related, both to one another and to Mr B's own actions.

And further, I remind the jury that it was not I who made the dog a bowl of ice cream with fairy sprinkles for dessert last night.

Open letter to Marickville Council

Dear Marrickville Council, Don't fret, my family did your job for you. Cleaned the whole street. Gathered up the old McDonald's wrappers, the beer bottles, the coffee cups, even the white and fossilised dog crap.

We swept up the leaves, the dirt, the shards of broken glass and the cigarette butts. We weeded around the spindly trees you planted and then deserted to the mean streets of Enmore.

After months of your neglect, it came to this. Meg got dirt on her heels and a ladder in her stockings. Shocking, I know. And child labour: Em is only 12. How could you? Does it disturb you that just one side of the street on one block resulted in seven bags of disgusting, putrid garbage? I had to carry these bags THROUGH MY HOUSE. And a liquid, brown and sticky that I hope to god was Coke, spilled on my jeans.

Perhaps a little street cleaning on behalf of the Council to whom we pay our rates would be in order?

Just a thought.

Anyhoo, would you mind picking up the garbage from the back lane? We'd be terribly grateful. Yours sincerely,

Rate-Payer Who Wishes She'd Cleaned Up and Spoken Out Before the Election

Home is where the heart is

My nieces Olivia and Alexandra, aged respectively four and seven, made this for me and Scott on Sunday (with a little help from Emily). We live in a beautiful, 100-year-old house in Enmore with decorative ceilings, stained glass windows, French doors, a sweet kitchen garden, and an increasingly famous blue door.

The cat and dog like to sleep on the old Persian-esque rugs that cover the floorboards and wind up the original oak staircases that curve in two directions. Antique gilt mirrors sit above the marble fireplaces in the lounge room and our bedroom. Both the rugs and mirrors were left behind by the previous owner, and we love to keep his history in our house.

The previous owner also left behind a painting over the dining-room fireplace that we call “the pus painting” (pus is the only word to describe the colour of this painting, which defies description in its hideousness). We tried to remove the pus painting but nothing else worked: it belongs with the house.

We love our house. We really love it. And it was even better on the weekend, with the laughter of our friends and family ringing from every room.

But each Monday, my husband flies back to the Gold Coast, Queensland, for his job, and the dog, cat and I are alone in our super house. And without Mr B, my house is not really a home. I once read that clichés only become clichés because they are the best way of saying something…

So I am moving to the Gold Coast, which scares me on so many levels. I will miss my beautiful house. I will miss my parents and brother. I will miss my amazing friends, who are true family.

I feel like I am constantly leaving people behind. First I left everyone I loved in Sydney, then I left everyone I loved in New York, and now that I’ve barely been back in Sydney, I’m leaving it again.

Not to mention, it’s… THE GOLD COAST.

But Mr B and I will live together again. At night we will cook dinner, and argue because he’ll want more carbs and I’ll want more veges. We'll breathe the sea-salt air. We’ll walk the dog at dusk. I’ll sit in front of the TV and write blog posts while he massages my feet.

A girl can dream.

I will learn to cope with the humidity, and the schoolies, and I will find where the more artistic scene hides. It has to be somewhere, right?

And in the meantime, because Mr B is as sad as I am to say goodbye to our house in Enmore, I had it made into a snowdome. Now he can carry it with him everywhere.