How is it possibly even Monday again? I mean I know it’s a cliche to talk about the weekend going by so fast but I HONESTLY think I blinked and missed it.

Approximately two hours ago (in my head) it was midday on Friday and one of my best friends in the world, Cara, was due to arrive any minute on a visit from Sydney. Then she DID arrive and I couldn’t even go to the tram stop let alone the airport to meet her, because a) I didn’t have a car and b) Harry was sleeping upstairs in his cot. Poor Cara made it to our place in between showers and hailstorms and… we think that was SLEET. What? How cold was it in Melbourne this weekend!?! I kept seeing friends’ feeds on Facebook of frolics in the snow basically just outside town and it was all so beautiful.

Cara and a bunch of our other friends joined us at the Epworth Gala Ball on Saturday night, which was organised by Mr B and his team. Just us and more than 1300 other people, raising money for medical research. (Cara was adorable because she’s from Sydney and the cold weather was killing her so she wore thermals under her dress. She is a stunner so she could get away with it, but I still thought it was pretty funny). And permit me a little boast but I am so incredibly proud of Mr B and the people who work with and for him because that night they raised $5.6 million to go to medical research. That is INSANE. There were two people on our table who pledged a million and 1.2 million each to this cause. When the first woman announced her gift – a lovely lady in her 80s – you could literally feel 1300 people hold their breath. We were all thinking, “Did she actually say what I think she said?” and then the whole room erupted in applause.

The ball had a “Rio Carnival” theme and later we were all up and dancing to cheesy Latin music, including the 80-something-year-old lady. I want to be like her when I’m old. Not just rich and generous (although that would be nice), but also fun and cheeky and celebratory and go-get-em fun-loving. She has lost her husband, and battled cancer more than once. She and her late husband made their money by sheer hard work. They weren’t tycoons or heirs, they were hard-working, careful-saving, and smart. And now she gives and gives and gives again to charity, because she genuinely cares. Then she laughs and cracks a slightly-blue joke, and tears it up on the dance floor.

Another highlight of the evening was when, during the Latin-style dancing, they announced a conga line. I said to Mr B “Let’s sneak away,” because there is NOTHING WORSE than a conga line. And he agreed. So I started to walk back to our table and he had his hand on my waist and the next minute we looked behind us and there were six or more people all holding onto us and it turned out WE HAD STARTED THE CONGA LINE. Which was horrifying and hilarious in the same moment.

We stayed in a hotel that night and Mr B didn’t get in until almost 4am and I didn’t sleep much before that because babies and hotel rooms don’t always go well together, and we all four of us ended up in the bed together. Thank goodness for luxurious, king-sized hotel beds! When we woke the next morning, bleary and tired but on massive highs from the night’s success, it was so beautiful. Everybody smiled at each other all at once. Madeleine threw herself across my body to kiss Harry, and Harry exploded into giggles. Then we ordered a big breakfast and ate it in our room overlooking the city.

I strapped Harry to me in the Ergo and walked out into Melbourne’s coldest morning in 16 years. Cara texted me. “It is 1 degree!” and I said “Isn’t it great?” and she simply responded “ONE DEGREE.” I guess she was glad of those thermals. Harry and I were each others’ hot water bottles so he quickly fell asleep and we were fine as we walked from Crown Casino to Gertrude Street where we met Cara, and Madeleine and Mr B caught up with us. By this time the day had warmed up to one of those perfect sunny winter’s days that are like peering at the world through the finest layer of ice and nothing is more clean.

Madeleine was a trooper despite the night of broken sleep and no nap, and only had one meltdown all day. So we all rocked up to yum cha before heading home, where Madeleine and I picked and washed lemons to make preserves while Mr B and Harry had a nanna-nap together.

And the next minute the kids were both asleep in bed and Mr B and I were watching something cheesy on the TV and the weekend was over just like that and I SWEAR everything I’ve just written only happened a couple of hours ago, and the weekend is about to begin.

There is a hand-drawn sign just inside the door of Kinfolk, a little social enterprise cafe on Bourke Street in Melbourne, and this is what it says.

rules of kinfolk

allow yourself to BE you…open up to receiving generously and giving generously…

teach others with your smile, learn to let your heart sing, your soul

dance… savour every mouthful. give thanks. Take praise. DO

what you do best and enjoy it. Share. Care… sit a while… and come again…

I’ve been wanting to share Kinfolk with you for literally years. It was one of my favourite places to go eat and read a book when we first moved to Melbourne, before I had kids and had to factor pram-parking into my eateries of choice. You’ll find it right down the bottom of Bourke Street, near Southern Cross Station, so it’s also where I used to meet friends visiting from interstate or overseas, giving them somewhere lovely to relax after they stepped off the airport bus and before we had to board the tram.

Run with the help of up to 30 volunteers, Kinfolk is a not-for-profit space, directing its income between development projects for communities in need in Rwanda, Ghana, Palm Island and Melbourne. Customers can choose where they would like the profit from their meal to go by popping a coffee bean into a jar, or trust Kinfolk to distribute it where it’s most needed.

As you’d expect, the food is seasonal and wherever possible organic, biodynamic, locally-sourced and fair-trade managed. Oh and delicious. What you see on my plate is a chicken tagine with seasonal vegetables, but there are always vegetarian and vegan options on the menu too.

Last year they ran a crowd-funding campaign and successfully raised enough money to lease the space behind the cafe, enabling them to install a commercial kitchen, build on the catering side of the business, expand the menu, add 30 percent more table seating, and increase trading hours. Through all of this, they are now able to raise more profits for their project partners.

But this may well be the best food truck idea yet.

Called the Food Justice Truck, it is a social-enterprise initiative of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), and the goal is to make fresh, healthy food available to asylum-seeker communities who could otherwise simply not afford it.

Riddle me this. On average, it costs $130 a week for an Australian adult to eat well. Most asylum seekers have about $20 a week to spend on food. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out that you have $110 worth of hunger and chronic malnutrition going on right there. In our back yard. On our watch.

The Food Justice Truck will buy locally-sourced, ethically and sustainably produced fruit and vegetables, then resell them in asylum-seeker communities at a 75 percent discount on the rates they’d pay in the shops. In effect, asylum seekers will be able to buy $80 worth of healthy food for themselves and their families, for $20.

By using the truck to get around to communities where the greatest numbers of asylum-seekers are congregated, they estimate they’ll be able to help bring healthy food to 2000 asylum-seekers a month. This little video helps explain it all.

If you think this is a great idea, too, you can donate to help them buy a truck and get started via their crowd funding page. If you can’t afford to donate but still want to help, how about spreading the word? Let’s help get the Food Justice Truck on the road!

Image credits: food truck is a screen shot from the promo video above; market produce is by Natalie Maynor, licensed under Creative Commons

How it works is that you and I will be able to submit photographs we’ve taken that represent something we’re grateful for. Rain over thirsty grass. A kiss from a baby. Freshly-picked strawberries, still warm from the sun. Then Hailey Bartholomew (of 365 Grateful) will select her favourite photographs, print them out as giant polariods, and post them up all over town to inspire everyone else to stop and think about the little things that make them happy. Lovely, oui?

Hailey has launched a Pozible campaign to fund this project, and she could sure do with your support to help make it happen. Plus, there are some rather nice rewards on offer for everyone that makes a donation (even a little one). You can learn all about The Little Things (and help out if you have the motivation and means) here.

{Photo is from Hailey’s Pozible page. First seen via Meet Me At Mikes}

To me, 124 sounds like an almost impossibly-small number. But it is actually a wonderful improvement: in the 1970s, there were only 18 birds.

To celebrate the recovery of the Kakapos from near-extinction, as well as the resilience and unity of the people of Christchurch, New Zealand, after the devastating earthquakes they have suffered, Melbourne-based “guerilla kindness” artist Sayraphim Lothian is planning a unique public art project in March.

“I will travel to Christchurch to install a number of soft sculpture Kakapos around the city. These birds are then left for the people to find and move, hide, remove, adopt or throw away,” she says.

The project, called Journey – The Kakapo of Christchurch, is about “recovering communities, helping hands, and of being surprised by joy.”

Sayraphim contacted Kakapo Recovery, a conservation group organisation dedicated to saving the Kakapos from extinction, to tell them about her project. “Wouldn’t it be great,” they said, “if you made 124 of them, one for each Kakapo alive today?”

So that’s what she is going to do. Sayraphim will spend the next two months making 124 Kakapos, then leave them for the people of Christchurch to find. “Part participatory art project, part game, part scavenger hunt and part social media check in, Journey invites people to get involved with an art project on a very personal level,” she explains.

The two-week art installation will also be supported by free craft workshops on two weekends.

Sayraphim has launched a Pozible project to raise the funds she needs for bird-making materials, flights, accommodation, publicity, and materials for the free craft workshops. If you’d like to take a look or help her out, go here (there are some pretty special rewards for people who donate, too).

ps. If Sayraphim’s name sounds familiar, that’s because I featured another of her “guerilla kindness” projects in Melbourne here.

When they’re done walking, Emily will join them for a little holiday in Beijing. Madeleine and Baby B2 and I will keep the home fires burning, unfortunately not yet in our new house (although we may move just before they get home. Eek!).

So a little while ago Mr B and some of his charity-walk teammates met up for a bit of a training session on the 1000 Steps Kokoda Track Memorial Walk, in the Dandenong Ranges.

For my non-Aussie friends, the Kokoda Track (actually in Papua New Guinea) is the very famous site of a WWII battle in 1942. It is considered one of the most significant battles fought by Australians during that war and, tragically, more than 600 died in that jungle, and another 1000 and more were wounded. The walk in the Dandenong Ranges commemorates the courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice that characterised that battle.

Once again, Madeleine and I kept the home fires burning while the others walked, since being pregnant with a back injury doesn’t lend itself to carrying a 10 kilo child up several kilometres of stairs, especially at “training speed.”

These are some photos we took while exploring around the entrance to the walk. Apparently it’s very beautiful once you’re inside!

If you were following the Australian elections at all, you’ll know what I mean. I read a tweet a couple of weeks back that said choosing a Prime Minister in this election was like choosing a boyfriend in prison. That about summed it up.

There were two happy moments, however. The first was watching the Greens get up in my electorate, against the odds and against all predictions. At a time when Australia seems to be growing increasingly self-centred, I felt proud (but also a little sad) to live in the only community in the nation that succeeded in giving voice to the Greens.

And that’s all I have to say about politics (on this blog).

The second happy moment was when my daughter waddled over to the bean bag for a robust series of games of Stealing Mama’s Headband, followed by Bouncing on Mama’s Knee and then Tickling Mama’s Baby-Belly.

Of such things (complete with impressive double-chin action) are cheerful Saturday nights made.

ps. Yes, those are moving boxes in the background. So exciting!

I’m just. So. Tired.

Our family has been sick for months and months. Lately, Mr B has had a bad stomach bug and I have the ‘flu, while Madeleine has a viral chest infection following closely on the back of septicaemia (admitted to hospital and on IV drugs for 10 days) on the back of a horrible gastro virus (rushed to hospital in an ambulance at the doctor’s behest) on the back of another virus (taken to Emergency by us because we couldn’t get her fever down), all mixed in with her heart condition which makes her at once more prone to picking up these illnesses, and in more danger when they occur. When Madeleine is sick she doesn’t sleep which means we don’t sleep, which makes it a lot harder to get healthy, let alone… cope.

Even the dog is sick, with a torn tendon, a heart murmur and bad teeth (with accompanying Biblical bad-breath); and each separate condition will cost us literally thousands of dollars to treat – thousands that we don’t have – so we’re working on pain management and comfort instead. The healthiest member of our family is Ruby the cat, who has been referred to a weight clinic for her obesity problem (I’m not even kidding and yes, we think that’s as funny as you do).

I don’t talk about this kind of family stuff all that often on here, because this blog is supposed to be my happy place. It is where I like to document and uncover beautiful things: things that make me smile and inspire me to create, and hopefully do the same for you. But, honestly, there’s a reason why there have been long sessions of silence on here periodically since… March? Have we really been sick for that long? Yes, we have!

Anyhoo, on Meltdown Morning, I had only managed to get about two or three hours of sleep. My little baby had been so sick and congested that she could barely breathe, and was panting and sweating (one of the key warning signs we’d been told to watch out for with her heart). Eventually in the early hours of the morning when I’d had precisely NO sleep so far, Mr B took her out onto the couch so she could sleep in a more upright position. So he didn’t get much sleep either. We were both subdued, tetchy, worried and generally unpleasant by morning.

[Warning: the next paragraph is a bit gross. Skip it if you have a weak stomach.]

Madeleine agreed to take some milk and a tiny bit of toast for breakfast, which felt like progress until an hour later when she projectile vomited it up all over the carpet in the direction of Playschool. (A critique on the fruit-salad dinosaurs they were making? Only Madeleine can answer that, and she doesn’t say much other than “Gak” which means “Cat.”) I cleaned up my poor baby while she sobbed. She’s like her mother, she cries when she vomits. Then I tried to clean up the main event. Problem was there was so much phlegm in the mess that nothing would soak it up – it just moved around under the damp sponges I was using like ball-bearings. Particularly slimy, smelly, offensive ball-bearings, speckled with chunks of Vegemite toast.

I made the decision that the rug had to go: it was getting old and hard to clean anyway. But it was trapped under heavy furniture, so I would have to wait for Mr B to get home before I could remove it. So I covered the disgusting mess with a couple of cloths and a big towel to stop Madeleine from digging into it (which she was already trying to do), then dragged an armchair over on top of the towel and that’s where the phlegmy vomit stayed, all day, until Mr B and I were able to remove the carpet that night.*

There wasn’t much room for Madeleine to play in our tiny living room once a vomit-towel and armchair were dragged smack into the middle of it, so I opened things up for her to crawl around in the kitchen while I packed up for our day. Until I smashed the orange juice all over the kitchen floor, mercifully managing NOT to cut my baby with flying shards of glass.

I was already running late to get Madeleine to the hospital for a check-up following the septicaemia, and what with the broken glass and vomit debacle there was no floorspace left to put her down while I cleaned it up, so I cried instead. Then I gathered up my bags and my baby and walked out the door, leaving the glass where it was and the juice to grow sticky and the vomit still on the carpet and TOO BAD, I was over it.

In the car on the way to the hospital (which honestly feels like a second home because we have been there so often, I mean, the guys in the cafe know my coffee order and greet Madeleine by name!), I kept thinking, we can’t catch a break. It’s one thing after the next, after the next. Mr B wanted me to ask the specialist if there was anything wrong with her immune system, that she just couldn’t seem to get healthy.

But somewhere around my second coffee (“The usual love? How’s Maddy?”), and around-abouts the reassurances that Madeleine’s heart was yet-again unaffected by this latest infection, and that her immune system was fine, reality began to seep in.

I have a beautiful, happy, affectionate and intelligent little girl. Yes, she has been plagued by illnesses lately, but we are so lucky that they are mostly minor illnesses, and even the serious ones have been quickly and effectively treated. Here I was feeling sorry for myself because my child had a virus and I broke a glass, when there were families next to me in the cafe who were genuinely suffering. Brave little children facing trials that no child – or parent – should ever have to face. Some of them, with very little hope.

That afternoon I went from victim to victor, in my head. I am so thankful for all I have, particularly for my loving, healthy family. So if things continue to go quiet on this blog from time to time, well, it just means I’m prioritising my little family to give us the best chance of staying victorious.

Right now, Madeleine’s breath is rattling around like old bones in her young chest while she plays. But that’s the point, isn’t it? While she plays. Even during our recent stay in hospital, Madeleine took every opportunity when they allowed her off the drip to crawl around the ward and play chasings with the nurses, squealing with laughter.

I am truly lucky. And I am truly thankful.

*I will call Council Pick-up and put the rug out the front of our place as rubbish. However, I am hoping that the scabby neighbours who have stolen Mr B’s Lite & Easy food delivery TWICE from our front porch will help themselves to the Vomit Rug. That’s karma, friends.

Being ‘spoiled for choice’ is definitely a first-world problem. In the scheme of things, does it really matter whether we paint our bedroom walls Bit of Blue or Barely Blue? Yet if you were a fly on the wall of many a home renovation (or, let’s face it, just watched half an episode of The Block), you’d witness full-on domestic wars arise over just this issue.

Artist Shawn Huckins has explored the concept of choice in his clever and darkly humorous Paint Chip Series. He says, “In today’s abundant American culture, any material thing we could possibly ever want or need is at our fingertips. The Paint Chip Series explores color choice and its meaning in our daily lives.”

Each work exactly replicates the proportions, font, layout and hues of the miniature paint cards you find in hardware stores. These are the “bands of color we may choose for our most intimate spaces—bedrooms, kitchens, family rooms,” and Huckins says they represent the ideal stage to examine everyday people and objects.

All images used here with the kind permission of the artist.

ps. Take a look at Huckins’ tweets from the American Revolution series. Underneath the cheeky tweets in all those teen abbreviations that I can never quite get (thank goodness he ‘translates’ in the title of each work), these are all hand-painted portraits.