Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how lucky we are. In the midst of running around and paying bills and cooking dinners and catching buses and shopping and walking and sleeping, you can lose sight of those little everyday sparks that make you smile. So, in case you’re having trouble finding yours, please share mine from yesterday – a beautiful necklace made for me by my five year old niece, Lauren. Yes, that’s a silver Barbie logo and little silver handbag (Carrie Bradshaw, eat your heart out) and there’s a pearl and a shell and too many other good things to mention. And it fits over my head and sits beautifully, like a designer necklace should. Tiffany & Co, look out.
We had a family party on the weekend and, as I was packing away the puzzles that the younger kids had been playing with, I noticed one aspirational puzzle entitled Careers. As I checked out the range of career options that our kids were being shown, I could not help but notice that the ‘Artist’ looked suspiciously like Jesus. Oh, and also like he has A PENCIL COMING OUT OF HIS HEAD, but that is really secondary.
The Artist and the Doctor.
I was so amazed that I took it to my brother for a second opinion. He pointed out that the other puzzle professionals looked sort of suspicious. The grimacing scientist mixing up a lethal cocktail of chemicals, the smug computer programmer on her ancient PC and the very shifty looking carpenter who may well be nailing his most recent victim under the floorboards…
Look out, kids.
But there is a clear winner in this puzzle – the teacher. You would definitely make sure your homework was ready if this was waiting for you in the classroom – ready to strike with poisoned apple or the ruler dagger.
Yikes.
So, there you have it. A whole range of frightening career options to choose from…
I wrote last week that some friends from Ireland were visiting Australia for the Lions tour, spending this past week here in amazingly sunny Sydney. I haven’t yet processed my feelings about the match on Saturday night, where I was the lone little Wallabies supporter in a block of hundreds and hundreds of Lions fans, but I’ll try to write about it another day.
Anyways, my lovely friend Gavan brought me out a bag of treats from Ireland as an international gesture of goodwill. I’m not sure who started this crazy contest – I have been known to send over hideous Austrayan goodies (mostly to remove them from our shops) from time to time – but this bag o’ crap from Dublin’s finest tourist store has really raised the bar. In fact, it has inspired me to put together a Diddly Dee Oirish showbag for next year’s Easter Show in Sydney. It will go off like a leprechaun in a pot of gold, so it will.
Here are some pics of my gifts – do let me know if you would like to borrow anything…
The bag. Off to a very good start.Complete with a tin whistle playing leprechaun, if you don’t mind.They really would work with any outfit.Roll on, 17 March…Probably not so lucky if you actually eat them.An unexpected warning on the bag of ShamRock lollies.
I’ll stop there, even though I’ve only covered maybe half of the contents of the bag. But you get the idea. Although, I do need to add one more highlight – I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Tayto, the Irish crisps that backpackers miss so much that they have their family post out boxes to them (well, they used to, until an entrepreneur started importing them to Australia and charging extortionate prices for a taste of home). Anyways, the flagship flavour is cheese & onion and they’re pretty much a national treasure. So, what else to do but release a limited edition treat – embed the chips into chocolate bars and sell them to the general public. I’ve tried it and it’s pretty much as horrible as you might imagine: some things were just not meant to be, Tayto.
Limited edition indeed.
Huge thanks to my friend Gavan for this bag of treats – I don’t know that I’ve ever had such a thoughtful/generous/funny/scary/sickening gift all in one bag. Now the stakes have been raised, I’m off to find some hideous Australiana to further advance global cultural understanding and tolerance. Or something like that.
This post was made possible by our EverydaySparks correspondent in Dublin (aka my Irish sista Aoife), who somehow stumbled across this site and thought I might like it. And I do. A great find, thanks AB!
The site in question is Jim’s Pancakes and I was pretty impressed by the home page header alone, where Jim has taken word art to a whole new level and made his site name out of little pancakes. Then there’s the understated tag line: ‘just trying to make some cool pancakes for my daughter’. And that’s what he did…
Jim made Star Wars pancakes:
Jim made a romantic gift box pancake stack for his wife:
Jim made candy cane pancakes for Christmas:
Jim made a burger and fries pancake extravaganza:
And probably my favourite. Jim’s bling pancakes – a whole chain of pancakes worthy of any sweet rhymin’ rapper.
You can check out Jim’s Pancakes here and if you’re feeling particularly inspired, Jim has a book for sale, with a very exciting title: OMG PANCAKES!
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Sydney Royal Easter Show with some of my peeps. I love the Show, but hadn’t been for many years. It was a very fun day – adults have full permission to act like kids, everyone consumes waaaay too much junk food and suddenly us city folk become instant experts in everything from dairy cattle to alpacas to bull riding and cake decorating. And then there are the infamous show bags.
Showtime
With security guys outside each entry and exit point of the giant Showbag Pavillion and a maze of fences and railings to herd people through the entrance (just like the cattle in the pavillion down the street), the kids are always a-buzz and the adults are all exchanging looks of dread. Inside, it was crazy. A mass of humanity, hundreds and hundreds of people of all shapes & sizes crammed in together trying to get a showbag and get out. Except for those people who stopped in the middle of the traffic, just gazing from one display to another, philosophising over the relative merits of the My Little Pony showbag over the Moshi Monsters showbag. No one likes those amateurs – they generally get a sharp elbow in the ribs to jolt them out of their reverie and encourage a quick decision. (I didn’t do any elbow-ing, I promise.)
Anyways, I did join in and get a Trolli show bag full of gummi treats – it was the only lolly show bag that included items that were so obscure that I couldn’t work out if the showbag price was a rip off. (My familiarity with chocolate prices had me scanning those Cadbury bags and saying wise old-lady things like, “$10? We could buy all that at the supermarket for $7.50. Outrageous!”)
So, I had a look inside the showbag this morning and discovered that lunch today was sorted – every detail taken care of by the good people at Trolli with my gummi lunch. As healthy and natural in gummi form as the real thing. Amazing. Bon appetit!
My gummi lunch bag, packed full of treats.There’s Gummi Pizza, seemingly prepared by a chef from Super Mario Bros…And a gummi hot dog, bursting with colour.And a mini gummi burger, looking eerily like the real thing.And of course, sour gummi fries.And to wash it all down, a gummi cola. They’ve thought of everything!
everydaysparks 