Out.

The night before last we got the babysitter in so that we could go out......yes, on a Wednesday night. We had an invitation to the Light the Night Launch. Sadly, Hobart isn't getting a walk this year, if you want to participate you have to host your own. I'm not quite sure how this would work.....with my husband and children out on the lawn in the backyard....the Leukaemia Foundation suggest that you can have a bbq. We are on the case though, Felix did a fundraising magic concert for the boys at his school on Wednesday and raised $36 to be shared between the Leukaemia Foundation and the MS Society. Well done Fe! His next performance is for the kinders.

It is like a well timed military manoeuvre getting ready to go out in this house......especially at 5.30pm. Needless to say, I am usually exhausted by the time I've fed and watered the troops, cleaned up for the babysitter and sorted out their bed attire and going out is the last thing I want to do......but then euphoria usually hits at the bottom of the driveway.

I cooked my stand by dinner that I save for such occasions......'Pasta with Bacon, Peas and Cheese'. A recipe which I bastardised from a Delicious magazine from about 10 years ago. The original also called for such ingredients as cream and a specific French cheese. My version bears little resemblance to the original as it has been pared back to as far as it can go. Mercifully, all of my children love it, even the baby. Here is the recipe in case you have plans over the weekend:

*Cook a packet of spiral pasta.

*6 minutes before it is ready, tip in almost a packet of organic peas and two chopped rashers of organic, free range bacon.

*When it the timer goes off, drain and stir through chopped parsley and grated cheese to taste.

*Serve.....and run upstairs to get dressed.

The essential ingredient in the recipe is the free range, organic bacon......because the factory farming of pigs is CRUEL. Last weekend a young animal rights protester spent 24 hours in a farrowing crate on the lawns outside Parliament House in Hobart to highlight the cruelty involved in the horror that is  factory farming pigs. Read about it here.

My delivery from The Outnet arrived in time for me to wear this:

The dress is strapless bronze sequins By Malene Birger....as if I could wear that out on a wintery night in Hobart....I had to accessorise it with a black skivvy, black Sass and Bide jeans and a black linen jacket from Asos as well as wrap a pashmina from somewhere in the Crawford Market in Mumbai around my neck....for extra warmth.

I spend most of my time disappointed that Hobart is so daggy. Yet there are places in town that can quite convincingly delude you that Hobart really is hip, cool and groovy....baby. After the launch we went for a drink at Sidecar:

This is one of those places, but seeing that it is an offshoot of Garagistes it shouldn't come as a surprise. And then we headed in the direction of Remi de Provence for dinner because coincidentally, Wednesday night is cassoulet night:

Can you tell that our foray into teetotalling vegetarianism is over?

PS I have tried to email JMAC, the winner of my Giveaway, through Google Friend Connect twice now.....to no avail. JMAC, if you are reading this, and I have every reason to believe that you will as you are a bona fide follower, please get in touch with me so that I can send you your prize. However, if I can't flush you out over the weekend, I might have to redraw. 

Rx

Controversial.

On Friday afternoon I had a twenty four hour leave pass to head north, rendezvous with old friends and go to the Glover Prize exhibition opening at Evandale.

Before I went though, I did a full day of duty - heading to the pool to see Felix receive these at his swimming carnival:

I didn't shirk any of my housewifely duties and went from chore to chore before I left making sure that all of the washing was hung out, the garden was watered and there was a home cooked meal ready to be reheated so that I could socialise, look at pictures and drink bubbly with a clear conscience.

I arrived at my mum's house in Launceston just in time to throw on this:

In keeping with my current fetish for animalia - the skirt is layers of ostrich feathers although it's hard to see. How did we exist living in the shopping wasteland that is Hobart without Net-A-Porter or The Outnet? Earlier in the day, Toby had suggested that I should wear my wedding dress. Last time I took his fashion advice was in the change room at Myer when I can home with a leopard print bikini rather than the more subdued black one that I was leaning towards.

There was a queue to get into the exhibition:

And once inside it was very crowded:

In case you have somehow missed the surge of publicity the winning painting has generated, this is Rodney Pople's work of Port Arthur which took out the prize:

It's a tad difficult to see Martin Bryant holding the shotgun from this angle. Yet, he's been painted in, centre stage, in this hauntingly gloomy, nightmarish scene. Port Arthur has been the scene of crimes against humanity ever since European settlement in Tasmania - with the annihilation of the Tasmanian Aborigines, the depravity of the penal settlement and the more recent horror of Martin Bryant's massacre. Port Arthur is an emotionally disturbing place. This painting really captures that. And yet, until the opening of MONA, Port Arthur has been Tasmania's most visited tourist attraction. 

My friend Brigita from the Tasmanian School of Art  was one of the judges. She said that each of the three judges had a list. This was the only work that each of their lists had in common. 

R