Crummy Mummy

Duploo Rocket

Melissa — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 07:43:27 +0000

Meet Duploo 13. The interactive continence bribery tool for the particularly stubborn toddler. The idea is to keep your kid motivated when the whole toilet thing becomes ho-hum or they start to regress.

To prepare your mission:

Simply print out the Duploo template here
Back it with cardboard (cereal or biscuit packet works fine) and customise as you wish
Place it near the toilet or potty
Keep a little container of Duplo nearby (preferably yellow and brown blocks to indicate, you know…)

Blastoff:

L-platers: For the real learner a Duplo piece can be added to the rocket for just staying on the toilet and giving it a jolly good go.
P-platers: For the toilet-ready toddler, each time your child makes a deposit (here’s hoping) congratulate as you would normally with lots of woo-hoos. Then let them stack their own Duplo block on their growing rocket ship.
When the sixth block is placed, start the countdown and launch it into space with a big song and dance.

Print this to-scale Duploo rocket here.

Day 10: Stitch ‘N Bitch

Melissa — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:37:34 +0000

It’s quite simple in theory. All this mindful consumerism business can be explained by the 5-Rs:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair, Redistribute.

(There are a few alternative 5-R’s out there but I prefer to use Rachel Botsman’s because she is a Goddess and if I were that way inclined I’d have her babies and then share them peer-to-peer in my own Fortune 500 baby-sharing start-up)

But, I admit to having a weak R.

Repair

The other day I told my four-year-old to put a too-big skirt on the ‘sewing pile’ which until last week was code for ‘hang it over the sewing machine and wait until you fit into it’.

It’s not that I can’t sew, it’s just that I resent tedious jobs that give back little kudos or joy.

But that all changed last week when I was invited to my first Stitch and Bitch sesh.

My gorgeous bitcher stitcher sister, Amelia.

Sticth & Bitch, is an international movement that gathers (women usually) in solidarity, salaciousness, and stitchin’.

It’s kinda like mamabake in its mission in that it transforms domestic drudgery into sanity-saving sisterhood.

It also makes that 5th ‘r’ an absolute pleasure, and as such, I have salvaged my first item from the purgatory pile.

Between the four sozzled stitchers we repaired eight garments. And this is a weekly thing. Eventually the idea is to get on top of our respective mending mountains and start some kewl crafty projects.

And while I’m in the thematic vicinity, do you know what makes me hyperventilate until I turn a shade of insipid Lincraft purple?

Quilting and scrapbooking using new stuff! What the fark is it with that booming craft-by-numbers-idiocy? The whole point of those craft-forms was to salvage scraps. *deep breath*

And there is no excuse either! Even for new crafters it’s SO easy to pick up bundles of gorgeous antique remnants and trimmings and other lovelies. Just look at this box full of ribbons and lace at my fave op-shop:
So there is my bitch.

Go stitch.

Day 6: Op shop beauty & sadness

Melissa — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:17:12 +0000

The grey rain, the death of Steve Jobs and personal stuff too grave to blog-flog, have me punching walls today.

It is with this emotional filter that I gazed upon a bassinet of old crotcheted coathangers at the op-shop this morning. En masse, a thing of beauty: textured pastels, lilacs and mauves flecked with canary yellows. Some tightly knitted with an exacting hook, others bolder and bubbling with ornate trim.

Beautiful, yes. But today, kinda sad.

Today that bassinet of covered coathangers represents pre-feminist injustices and lost opportunity.

Busy work. It represents a PhD, an exotic language, a love affair, a Steve Jobs-like career trajectory, or a great novel not attempted.

All that time, those busy hands, for what? To give colour and texture to a coathanger? All those hours of work hidden for generations in mothballed cupboards, only to be dumped in an old shop bassinet and sold for $1 a bundle when Doris finally shuffled off.

So today I bought 5 bundles. I plan to hang them up on open racks. I make a promise that each morning when I rise I’ll appreciate the colour and texture holding up my frocks and I will praise the efforts of Beverley, Doris, Edna and Mabel and make up for a generation hidden away in mothballed wardrobes.

To busy work!

To womanhood!

To my own opportunity!

To uncovering injustices and appreciating the little things!

Now try to find THAT in a department store.

Pin It

Day 2: Favours from the Sistahood

Melissa — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:30:50 +0000

When you decide to do something unconditionally, for like, no money, good shit just comes right back.

Like when I spoke to my lovely, talented twin sister Laura Jane on the phone the other day and told her of my wish to hold a kids swap event, she immediately got involved designing a flyer … for non-refundable karma credits only.

Check out the flyer she designed for the event.. AMAZE-BALLS, right?

So if Buddha was going to get some freelance design work done she would have to go www.laurajane.com.au .

Day 1: Courting the ‘meeja’

Melissa — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:03:00 +0000

OK, so even though I sound like an 18th Century chimneysweep when quoted, I was still pleased as punch with the news story in the Northern Rivers Echo last week.

As an ex-journalist living in a tight-knit community, I had a great PR advantage. I’ve also read a kazillion verbose and obnoxious press releases as a reporter to know how and to whom I should pitch my own event.

So, in the spirit of sharing, caring and collaborative consumption, I have come up with:

DIY Press Release Tips for Swap Events.

1) Offer an exclusive: Offer the story first to the media outlet that is the best fit for your cause. Whether your decision is based on circulation or readership profile is up to you. After a piece has been reported by one media outlet, chances are others will want to follow it up, perhaps with another angle.

2) Email a press release first with a catchy yet literal explanation of your event as well as the word “EXCLUSIVE” in the email subject.

3) Follow up with a phone call to the editor (or section editor) to ensure they got the release and to keep it on their radar. If the journo says they are busy, then RESPECT THAT. Ask them when is a better time to call and follow up again.

4) Use traditional story telling formulas. Unless the press release is specifically about a new statistical finding, keep numbers out of the first few paragraphs. Instead offer ‘heros’, ‘people’ and ‘conflict’ as the hooks.

5) Spell check mo-fos!

7) Prepare to be a dick. There is no such thing as a ‘too-cool-for-school- spokesperson. Unless you’ve got a celebrity endorsement, chances are you are going to have to be the hero of your own story. This may mean you’ll find yourself grinning inanely in front of your clothes line with a double-chin (like me in the above news story) but suck it in! You might think you are too frumpy for the media, but believe me, the journos just want to lock in an interview and nail down a photo opportunity.

There is of course, a lot more to getting in bed with the meeja. Thats’s why PR school was invented. But to fill in the gaps this is the best quick how-to I have seen in a while:

http://nonprofit.about.com/od/nonprofitpromotion/a/pitching.htm

Not OKmart

Melissa — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 01:49:14 +0000

1000 ‘real mums’ romped through Kmart last month, squawking in disbelief as the chain’s ‘irresistibly low prices’ were revealed. The footage was captured in a 60-second TV commercial which launched last week. If Kmart’s brief was to highlight the chain’s new unbelievably low prices while imbuing the brand with a tuckshop-mum earthiness and irreverence, the advertising agency nailed it.

And I admit, if I was amid 1000 bargain-drunk mums, I’d probably start tickle-fighting my girlfriends in Homewares out of sheer disbelief too. But I’m not, so I have the presence of mind to reflect on Kmart’s new ‘point of difference’ with some age-old motherly wisdom.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
The fact is, a new pair of jeans are worth more than $10. How can the raw materials be grown and/or extracted from the earth, processed into fibre and fabric, manufactured into denim, sewed into jeans, shipped, marketed and merchandised for a tenner?

So who is paying for those jeans then? My guess is someone else’s land and someone else’s health in a shittier part of the world.

The 20-minute viral video The Story Of Stuff explains what really goes on when we buy a $10 pair of jeans or a $45 microwave. Please watch it – or at least from the 8.10 minute mark to the 11.30 minute mark.

Now you’re angry at Kmart aren’t you? But are they the one’s at fault?

If we look at Kmart’s new strategy from a purely economic standpoint, it was inevitable. One of the embattled discount giants was bound to make a bold move to win the retail price war (Hello CostCo) and I guess Kmart (Coles) was best positioned to do that.

Until Australians question their relationship with ‘stuff’ or stop equating a ‘fair go’ with purchasing unsustainably cheap ‘everyday items’, the Kmart model is justified.

The ‘fair go’ narrative is difficult to shake too. As a low income working Australian I can easily tell myself it’s my birthright to buy that 5-pack of animal print briefs for $5 (as seen in the latest catalogue). Everyone has their price.

But what makes me feel mad about Kmart’s position is that it represents serious competition for opshops and swap culture, which are environmentally and socially sustainable. As an ardent op-shopper I’ve started to question paying $3.50 for a scuffed pair of shoes from Vinnes when I can pick up a new pair for $3. Especially when opshop brands are competing with the promise of a feel-good girl-power shopping experience.

But I’m standing firm. The catalogues are tantalising but apart from the animal print undies I refuse to buy new too-cheap crap over old when I have the option. I also maintain that the feel-good hysteria contrived by the Kmart commercial could be equalled by a loungroom full of mums sharing hand-me-downs over jam scrolls. I’ve seen it happen.

Which is why I have given myself the challenge to find 1000 mums who would prefer to Swap or Buy Second Hand Than Buy Items at Unsustainable Prices; Mums who refuse to shout ‘OK’ to unthinking consumerism at the cost of the planet and other people’s kids.

C’mon Mamas. Join facebook group and tell your girlfriends.