About

I’m Kate, a happily married thirtysomething mother of six, writing from Melbourne, Australia.  I like to see this blog as a place you can come to relax and chat with me over my virtual kitchen table.  I like my virtual kitchen – it’s much cleaner than its real-life counterpart and there’s always the smell of something delicious wafting from the oven.

What might we chat about?  I love to laugh about the things I do wrong, at the dentist, at the health nurse, when cooking a roast, at the café, when consoling a parishioner, when trying to encourage my three-year-old to wear clothing and when discussing vegetarianism with my eight-year-old.  Sometimes we might get deep and talk about God and grief and our souls and why I have a Mary in my kitchen.  We could trade recipes or you might nod patiently while I boast about something I crocheted.  We might get creative and do some art together or just stare out the window and do nothing.

In this blog, you will meet:

“Mr Knightley”, my handsome husband (from Jane Austen’s Emma);
“Matilda”, my fifteen-year-old daughter (from Roald Dahl’s Matilda);
“Christopher Robin”, my twelve-year-old son (from the A. A. Milne poem “Hoppity” in When We Were Very Young);
“Harry”, my ten-year-old son (from Harry the Dirty Dog);
“Annie”, my eight-year-old daughter (from L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables); and
“Daisy” and “Poppy”, my twins (from Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom)

Except that I’ve recently renamed my twins

“Penny” (from Penny Pollard’s Diary by Robin Klein); and
“Pippi” (from Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking)

They are currently four

As you can see, they are all named after literary characters.  In older posts, they will be younger than this, and it’s also possible they’re older and I haven’t updated this page in a while (I’m updating it now for the first time in five years)!  Occasionally, I will also refer to my two sisters and three brothers.  I name them after their corresponding character in “The Brady Bunch” (I would be Marcia)