Mo and his daughter, Meggie, have the ability to bring storybook characters to life just by reading aloud. Their amazing gift backfires when Mo accidentally summons Capricorn, the evil villain of the novel Inkheart. He and Meggie must find a way to send him back to his literary realm ... So reads the plot of... Continue Reading →

DD got home from Tokyo yesterday. Yay! And gave me a bag of teeny tiny chocolate leaves. Yum! Then the kids came home from Tasmania. Yay! And gave me lots of big, squeezy hugs. Yum! Then DD and I went out to dinner with his friends. There was lots of yay and yum in that... Continue Reading →

I get my kids back tomorrow after 14 loooooooong days. They've started to take on a mythical quality ... am I really a mum of two? Their dad took them to Tasmania for a holiday. He's sent me a few happy snaps and it looks like they've been having a bulk fun time. The scenery... Continue Reading →

DD texted me from Tokyo with those words yesterday morning. He's sooooo nice about my warts-and-all blathering, especially considering I assured him on our first 'date' that I wouldn't write about him. I told his cousin (who's just started following HouseGoesHome) that the other night and she replied: "He's mentioned every day ... LOL!" It's... Continue Reading →

I've been overthinking again. Worrying about the way HouseGoesHome has transformed into a daily digital diary of my life. You know what I mean ... lots of I did this and this yesterday, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't always that way. On January 6, 2012, I wrote a blog called Murder, Medicine and Motherhood about... Continue Reading →

DD has gone to Tokyo on business, so it's just me and the fur babies this week. I took him to the airport last night - we nibbled on (surprisingly) delicious meatballs and sipped (surprisingly) cheap chardy at Macha, an offshoot of that old-school restaurant Machiavelli. After a cuddle at the express pass entrance he... Continue Reading →

I am not an athletic person. Sure, I go to the gym, but that's a late-in-life development and I stick to stuff that doesn't require much co-ordination. When I was in primary school, teachers made fun of how hopeless I was at sport. They'd do impressions of me flailing about to make my classmates laugh.... Continue Reading →

DD has been trying to teach me to scream into a pillow. Er ... not in a sexual way ...   The screaming-into-a-pillow thing is about releasing my anger without making the neighbours think I'm being murdered. I'm not very good at releasing my anger. I'm a bit like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. You... Continue Reading →

I have no idea how I grew up in Newcastle and spent years visiting in-laws on the Central Coast, yet never knew Somersby Falls existed. Somersby had always seemed such an in-betweeny place to me - just a turn-off on the freeway during my trips back to Newie. But DD's friends hired a house there for... Continue Reading →

How did you ring in 2016? DD and I crashed a party held by my sister's friends. So many lovely, friendly people and THE BEST slow-cooked beef brisket sliders with mac 'n' cheese and coleslaw. Mmmmmm. At 9pm we nicked off to the harbour to watch the fireworks from DD's favourite secret spot. Before After... Continue Reading →