Dishwasher gripe - have faith in the engineers.

I have tried to tell the boys in my household that the dishwasher is DESIGNED to handle plates that are stacked one after the other. Very clever people got together, invented it, and tested it with dirty plates. Why then, do they insist on stacking this way??



Have they not heard that it's better for our pocket and our planet if the washer is stacked efficiently? Why do I even bother talking? Actually, I no longer talk. I just sigh, re-stack...



...and vent my frustration passively by "forgetting" to buy icecream. If only they knew...

The living room....

Today everyone helped on the living room. Well, three of us worked while a certain 2yo got in the way and undid everything. Lily Allen's Alright, Still on repeat got us through the worst of the sorting, ditching and cleaning up horrible sticky messes under the couch. We are now relaxing and watching Back to the Future (MJ Fox still gives me tingles) while waiting for our indian to arrive. Our food, that is.

The pics don't really capture the transformation. Note the mantle piece is CD and DVD free and the toys are neatly stacked rather than spilling over the floor...

Before:



After:



What actually happened was that all the toys were dumped on the floor, sorted, and broken stuff chucked away. The board games were all shifted to the TV cabinet and the toy tubs are now shelved so that we can actually open one of the livingroom doors all the way. The whole floor was vacuumed and the inch of dust covering everything was removed. Dust puppies hiding behind furniture were hunted down and exterminated. Yey.

More decluttering... maybe now I'll be able to do the banking?

On Wednesday my desk went from this:



To this:



An indication that I might actually be able to do things like, adjust our banking now that Hubby is being paid weekly instead of monthly (yey!!!!) and maybe, if the stars align.... do our 2007/2008 TAX!!! OMG!!!

Chocolate sauce recipe from things you DO have in your cupboard (if you're me)

I was hunting for a quick chocolate sauce recipe that involved cocoa rather than real chocolate, and didn't require exotic things that I don't have in my cupboard like chocolate, evaporated milk, condensed milk or cream.

Here's one I adapted and it's yummy!

1 cup raw caster sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
3 tablespoons cornflour
1 cup cold water
half a teaspoon vanilla extract
60 grams salted butter


You can sieve the dried stuff if you like but I just combined them in a saucepan and banged out the lumps with a wooden spoon. Add cold water and vanilla, mix, then dump the chunk of butter in. Stir on medium heat while watching the butter melt (very Zen) and quite soon after the sauce will thicken. Yummo, and in less than ten minutes.

Have just used it to trick my toddler into eating bananas.

You can put the rest in the fridge and it turns into a thick fudge that you can stir into ice-cream for a rather decadent sundae type concoction.

Finally the big de-clutter begins...

Now that there are no distractions such as honours, work, sick mother or funeral I have what seems to be a huge amount of free time (actually a spare five hours a day) w00t! I'm using it to de-clutter and, you guessed it, blog...

Before:



After:



How long will it last I wonder?

Fail Blog and Rachmaninov had big hands

Some funnies for today:

http://failblog.org/

My favourite is still the ship of fail. You have to go right back to the beginning to get it though...

and this:

Rachmaninov had big hands

Is it because I'm a Mum that I can't stand to watch?

People I know find videos like this one FUNNY.

Maybe it's the mother in me but all I can think about are the horrific injuries, the hospitalisations, and the general emotional trauma. How can people laugh at other people hurting themselves? I will never get it.