Day 2: Frocold and the symptoms of Ovarian Cancer

Do you know the term Frocold?

It is when you are wearing a dress in the cold. I know, it is so boring to talk about the weather but the winds in Melbourne are blowing roofs off, the dog is wearing a special doggy winter coat and I would love to be wearing my beloved puffer jacket.

Today is a work day for me, so I am donned in my stockings and work dress, Hello Corporate Attire!

Grabbing a photo of me in my work gear is not part of my usual get home routine, but I asked Mr H to snap a few anyway, this was as good as he could do, he was otherwise busy making the best lasagna he has ever done. It was good.

Immy went to Kindergarten, I felt a little guilty leaving her there when all the other kids are on holidays, but really my mother guilt about creche has pretty much dried up. She was happy to be there. She was not happy to have a photo taken when it was her time to watch ABC Kids and she also doesn't like hugs from Mum when I am wearing a necklace.

Which means we have conquered Day 2 of Frocktober under very blowy conditions, this is of course nothing compared to those woman with cancer who have no choice, and don't get to take a day off the disease just because the weather is bad.

Do you know that there are symptoms of Ovarian Cancer that you might notice?

It can be difficult to diagnose ovarian cancer because the symptoms are ones that many women will have from time to time, and they are often symptoms of less serious and more common health problems.
But we do know that ovarian cancer is NOT a silent disease. Women who are diagnosed with ovarian cancer report four types of symptoms most frequently:

• Abdominal or pelvic pain.

• Increased abdominal size or persistent abdominal bloating.

• Needing to urinate often or urgently.

• Feeling full after eating a small amount.

If you are feeling any of these - click here and download a "Symptom Diary" to keep track of what's going on in your ovaries.

See you tomorrow, let's hope it's a cardigan free Frocktober Day.

Wearing:
Me: Dress from Oxford, Pink Shirt from Oxford, Best ever work stockings - Jabou from Voodoo (been wearing this colour and brand for 20 years, seriously the best) Cardigan from Kmart.

Immy: Rainbow Dress from Hootkid, Stockings from Pumpkin Patch

Day 1: Let's Get Frocking

I was telling Immy about how we are taking on the challenge to wear a frock everyday for October.


She didn't understand what a challenge was and after we discussed it, she decided that she would need to get new nighties, because she was going to wear a dress AT ALL TIMES, for 31 days.

Popps said that dresses are what Bessie wears in Folk of the Faraway tree and they have to be very fancy, I told her that a dress is a frock is a dress.

So here we are, as I mentioned the other day, I am giving Frocktober a red hot go. As I have recently asked people to donate towards my Leukaemia fundraising, I am not asking for support on this one, instead I am going to share a little bit of information each day mixed in with some fashion for Mums and little girls. I have a lovely cast of guest bloggers who will be taking over the blog some days too, which I haven't done in a couple of years.

It's going to be fun. Join in with your frocking good stories anyway you like, this is not just about bloggers, it's about an awareness campaign for women and everyone can be a part of it.

Today there were winds blowing and trees falling over. It was cold. Really cold. I would have like to be in anything but a dress. 

I asked Popps to take some photos of Immy and I for the day and these were the best she got. Immy is in her third dress for the day, the photos are not ideal, sorrrrryyyyyyyy. I will try much harder tomorrow - I have another 30 days to get into the swing of dresses.

One fact about Ovarian Cancer:

Ovarian cancer is the growth of malignant cells in one or both ovaries, and is often accompanied by the spread of malignant cells to surrounding organs in the abdominal cavity. Whilst a small number of cases appear to have an underlying genetic component, in most instances the causes of ovarian cancer are unknown.

Wearing: 
Me: Yarra Trail long sleeve dress and leggings, Elk Necklace
Immy: Hand me down dress from Target

Painting a Magnetic Chalkboard Wall in your home

This post is sponsored by Masters 

I have spent much of this year looking for a place to move to. Just weeks ago, I found the place. Or it found me. It doesn't really matter which. The answer was, like usual RIGHT HERE.

So simple, but it took me the good part of a year to work out I don't really want to move. Instead, what I want to do is make some changes at home. Plant the trees I should have planted three years ago and do a few jobs around the house to make what I have already, the place I want to be.

The team from Masters sent me an email asking if I had any jobs around the house I was thinking of writing about, and, well, yes - YES I DO.

I have so many that I didn't really know where to start. We logged in online for about 3 seconds and then just jumped in the car, Mr H and the girls already frequent Masters quite often, the girls knew the trolley they wanted and the park area AND the Macca's item they would beg for.

I got side tracked by so many things. When I start looking I get ideas for nearly every room of our house. But I decided to start with something simple, something that didn't need too much planning, just a free weekend.

Our craft wall has been getting more and more wrecked. It is splattered with paint and texta and crayon.  The table is totally trashed and scribbled all over in permanent markers and pens and the artwork wire is sagging from too many pictures that MUST be kept.

I have been wanting to clean up this area for weeks.

I decided that it would be excellent to turn the wall into a giant magnetic chalkboard wall. This way I can use magnets to put up the artwork and also use the wall to write in if I need to - or let the girls write on it and then easily clean it off.

If you want the super fast way to see what I did, then here is a little photo log, I even added music because Popps showed me how, (it's  my first ever vimeo, be kind).

MAGNETIC CHALKBOARD PAINT from Clairey Hewitt on Vimeo.


All you have to do is paint on the magnet paint (three coats are recommended) and then paint on the chalkboard paint. DONE.

Of course any little DIY project is a little harder than that, because Better Homes and Gardens have fooled us all and nothing is really that easy.

But, lets go back to the start:

You can buy the magnetic paint from Masters and the staff there will tell you exactly the amount that you need for the size that you are painting.  We used this one.

Pick the chalkboard colour that you like. We chose from the Wattyl range, but there are others there too. Wattyl had these colours and I thought I said the green but both Mr H and Popps both swear that I said I wanted Mantra, so that is what they got me when they returned to Masters to get everything we needed.

Back at home. I was clearing away the junk craft and preparing the space, ready to paint.

These are the things we got from Masters for this job:

After the wall was given a good clean I got busy with the green frog tape, this is decent tape for painting, and I used it to stick the drop cloth to the floor too, plus some of the gorilla tape just for good luck. It must have worked as my drop cloth didn't budge and my floors are safe.

Me very happy with my green frog tape.

Next I got started with the magnetic paint. This paint is not like normal paint. I tried to give it a stir and couldn't even get the stick through the paint. It is like a very heavy sandy sludge and takes a fair bit of elbow grease to get this mixed. I am not all that strong, so it took me around 20 minutes to get this paint mixed. Mr H helped me with the next tins and was much faster.

Apparently before he left Mr H told me to use the foam roller. Which I misheard as don't use the foam roller. If you don't use a foam roller you will find that the sludge flicks everywhere. All over your house and in your hair and on your face and on the ceiling.

Tip 1: Use the foam roller.

Magnetic paint is really messy. Once you have the foam roller you will still find that bits of sludgey dirt specks are rolled on to the wall.

Tip 2: Be prepared for magnetic paint to roll on quite roughly. It doesn't give a smooth finish.

I followed the tips on the tin and did three coats of this paint.

Tip 3: More coats are better, make them thinner rather than big thick coats of paint.

The following day, after giving the magnetic paint over 24 hours to dry and checking that the magnets stuck I started on the chalkboard paint.

IT STICKS! A magnet on our plasterboard wall.

The chalkboard paint is just like normal paint.

You can stir it very easily and one can of paint goes a lot further. According to the size of the wall we only needed the one can, but I found the roller (normal not foam) soaked up the paint quickly and I would have liked more paint.

We painted this wall together and we were really happy with the final result.

While we were waiting for it to dry Mr H and the girls were also busy sanding and painting our craft table. We used things we already had in the shed for this and did not make any purchases. (The sander thingo and sanding triangle bizzos we had).

After two coats of the chalkboard paint were finished and dry we were really keen to test out our new wall. The magnets were sticking and we really wanted to get it finished for the day.

Before you use a chalkboard you need to chalk the board.

That is when you use the side of a piece of chalk and go all over the board to prep it for future use.

This is a very messy process and you should NOT remove your drop sheet before you do this, which is what I did.

Tip 4: LEAVE YOUR DROP SHEET IN PLACE UNTIL THE VERY END.

Use the biggest chalk that you can find, the type used on the footpath is best, we had this really colourful stuff already.

Then you need to dust it off as good as you can, give it a good rub all over.

Tip 5: Have lots of clean rags handy when doing this project.

It took me quite awhile to clean up this wall and once I did, it wasn't looking as flash as it was before we did this. I got googling and read the brochure from Wattyl which suggests you wait 48 hours for the paint to dry BEFORE you chalk the board.

Tip 6: Wait 48 hours for the paint to dry before you chalk the board!

Due to the magnetic paint being quite rough underneath, our chalkboard wall is also quite rough. Mr H tested it with a very light sand but the magnet paint comes through very quickly.

We are happy with the look of the wall, but we will most likely give it an extra coat of chalkboard paint in a few months. We will just live with it for a bit to see how we like the new colour, how we use the wall and how hard it is to clean.






This area is located in an open room, that is both our kitchen and living area so we look at it all the time. The end result is a much more colourful, brighter and more useful area.

If you would like to keep up with anything else from Masters, you can catch them on facebook or twitter or if you prefer more visual, give Youtube a go.

ImmyTime

It is only minutes away until I will have both the girls at school. 

Ok, not really, it is a few months, or a full term and the summer holidays, but still this is really just a number of weeks. 

Once that happens I won't have any little people to share a drink with at a cafe, there will be no little legs swinging from the child seat in my shopping trolley. 

At the moment there are only two days a week that Immy and I have together alone once work and kindergarten are attended too, so when we can we head out to a place and have a hot chocolate or a drink and do some people watching and have a chat. 

Last week Mr H tagged along too and we took him to Koko Black, this is Immy's favourite because the babycinos here are not just provided with a marshmallow, but an entire chocolate teddy bear on a stick. 

She sticks that teddy chocolate stick in the warm milk and watches his face melt off before biting off his head. 

We make jokes about being a bear with a sore head. They never get old. Even funnier is when you tell her she just ate a bum. 

With one term to go I am going to enjoy every last babycino and headless bear joke I can get and hopefully drop in to a few new cafes along the way.

Made with Bricks

Over 150 years ago some people built some stables.

Big ones.

And they made them double brick - the bricks were also hand made.

Over the decades it was used as a place for the Cobb and Co to stop overnight, many horses rested in here on long journeys while their people rested in all sorts of camps and accommodation.

These stables have lived through a massive gold rush, federation, world wars, droughts, floods and the introduction of more inventions than those builders ever dreamed of.

With no more horses, no more carriages and no more travellers passing through the stables slowly started to have no purpose, other than just looking really lovely and acting as a bit of a bike shed or a place to store stuff that no one wanted anymore.

One big storm a few weeks ago was all they could take and when a few bricks fell from the walls there was only one option left.

The old stables had to come down.

And just like it went up by hand over 150 years ago, it pretty much came down the same way.

A team of my family got together yesterday, we chipped and cleaned bricks, we threw bricks (not at each other) we wheeled them to piles and we threw the old ones to use for clean landfill. We sat in the dirt and dust (and even one very dried out dead rat) and knocked the ol girl to the ground.


It is so true what they say. Many hands make light work - but, a brick is still a brick and frigging heavy when you are moving thousands of them in one day.

The wood that could be salvaged has gone to those that know what they are doing and will be recycled and turned into a brand new design. The tin roof has gone to live out its days in the house next door where it will have an entirely new life.

Today there are sore muscles aching and dirty clothes to be washed and a little sadness of the end of a building. But there is also the excitement of seeing the space planted out with flowers and fruit trees and lawn, a space that might become a haven for people to sit, relax and enjoy the space for maybe another 150 years.

Frock it.

I am no fashion queen.

I love looking at what other people wear, I enjoy looking at fashion sites, I just struggle to keep up with the latest looks and tend to dress much more for comfort than anything else. Mainly, I just don't like being cold.

I am also fussy with fabrics - I don't like any of those synthetics that make me stinky.

Immy is Queen of the Dresses and I am happy to allow her a daily dose of dress wearing. I know all too well that this phase shall pass and the time will come soon enough when the little frocks of bows and smocking will be abandoned.

With this in mind I have signed Immy and I up as a team to do Frocktober. That means we are accepting the challenge to wear a dress every day in October to raise awareness for Ovarian Cancer.

I am not asking for donations for Frocktober, Immy and I will make our own donation to the cause but hopefully I will be able to share some important health messages or the stories of other people, plus also have some fashion fun along the way with everyone.

While Immy has her wardrobe of 40,000 dresses (thank you Granny) I have a wardrobe of about 4 dresses and this is really going to be a big challenge for me. I am not even sure if I will make it 31 days wearing a dress. I am also not sure how I will go blogging for 31 days of me wearing a dress so I am putting out the HELP WANTED sign.

Would you like to be a guest here on my blog? It could be you wearing your favourite dress, it could be doing something about Frocktober, maybe you have a personal story relating to ovarian cancer that you would like to share.

Or, are you a brand that sells dresses that you would like to have shown off? If you want me to give your dress a try, I am happy to give it a whirl for the day - and return the samples in the post for you. Maybe you sell children's dresses and would like Immy to give it a whirl - I can't promise she will keep it clean and appropriate for returns though, in fact I can probably confirm it will have glitter glue on it within 2 hours.

What do you think? Wanna play Frocktober with me? Just email me at claireyhewitt AT gmail dot com and we can get it all sorted.

Edited:
As mentioned, I am not asking for donations, however some kindly folk has indicated they would like to make a donation. This is my fundraising account for
those.
https://frocktober.everydayhero.com/au/claireyhewitt

Bombed out.

When I was little I can remember the thrill of getting my first Essendon Bombers football scarf.

I remember it because my Aunty Lynette had already given me a pair of Collingwood leg warmers. It was the late 70s and I loved those leg warmers. They were given as a gift and gifts were not as regular as they are these days so I knew they were very special.

When I received my bombers scarf, I was told I was receiving a very special gift for doing such a good job starting school and being so well behaved. The scarf was considered something only the really lucky kids got. From this I equated the bombers with being the best and though I loved the legwarmers, the decision was made.

I would support the bombers. FOREVER.

Just like my Dad and my brother.

It is natural for children to follow in their parents steps for supporting football teams and I expected we would be just the same. At her first football day I dressed Popps in a black and red dress and had my Mum knit her a bombers beanie in time for the day. She wore it proudly and was a keen bombers fan.

Then something changed.

Probably the Bombers kept losing and the Cats kept winning and with Mr H cheering so loudly it was hard not to hear. And her older cousin passed down a footy jumper he had grown out of and then pussy cats are much nicer to think about than bombing jets I guess.

Then there is the fact that the Essendon merchandise person manages to choose THE ugliest stuff ever made. For Example:

By age 5 no amount of discussion could get Popps to barrack for the bombers and I turned to two year old Immy. It was only fair that if Popps was supporting Mr H with the Cats, Immy and I would be together as bomber fans.

Only Immy is so enthralled with everything her big cousin Emma does that she has also decided to barrack for the Western Bulldogs, just like her. I can't believe it.

Next Friday is Footy Day at Kinder and Immy is refusing to wear anything we already have, no bombers or cats stuff for her, she is a dogs supporter and there is no changing it.

I may not be an avid fan or interested in watching footy too often, but I did think at least one of the girls would be wearing the red and black each year at footy dress up day.

Perhaps I should try one last time to convert them, with a snazzy pair of leg warmers.

What does a fox say?

We are celebrating musical theatre here this week, it is school concert week! I have counted out a few hundred killer python lolly snakes and helped bag a few hundred bags of mixed lollies to sell at the refreshment stand. In honour of decent musical theatre and great songs I give you this.

Watch it.

Laugh.

Sing Loudly.
 What's your favourite line? Mine is definitely: Would you communicate by m-o-o-orse.