It's not easy being a thief

I make no secret of the fact that I have no ideas of my own. So why should summer be any different?

If other people are having fun doing something, I see no reason to kill myself reinventing the wheel. The problem is when it just doesn't work.

For example why, when Lucy at Attic24 can rearrange furniture and throw away junk while her children play in the house, do I find myself unable to even unload the washing machine without having to stop to referee a screaming fight about a plastic wind-up dinosaur and wipe a load of paint off the floor?

I bet Lucy doesn't find her carefully picked blooms being waved around the house like a big watery bomb waiting to go off. Mind you, she doesn't put them in an ugly great milk bottle.


(I have to qualify the phrase 'carefully picked'. Actually they were hacked off by the lawnmower.)

And another thing. If Ali can successfully make butter by getting her children to shake a jar, why do I end up shrugging and shoving the jars back in the fridge after Mr Coffee and I find ourselves abandoned in the kitchen shaking jars alone, like fools, while the children find something less tiring to do?


Let's try a craft book. Emma Hardy assures us we can make a salt dough tea set that looks like this:


Sadly this does not seem to be the case.

(Before you start weighing in to say 'oh, but didn't they have fun?' I feel obliged to point out that I ended up making all the cups. And the teapot. And, you know, EVERYTHING ELSE.)

Still, sometimes stealing works out for the best. For example, when the Eldest Latte said she wanted to do 'science', the arts graduate in me started to panic. And then I remembered Dottycookie, my new very best friend.


If only I could steal her knowledge of what it all means.