I'm sure you would all agree it has been a fantastic week leanring 'How To Look Like You've Got Sh*t Together' with Shannon Lamden - thank you Shannon for being so generous with your knowledge!  Be sure to visit Shannon's blog for ongoing hilarity and her Etsy store for her Aunty Cookie product range.  And congratulations to the lucky winners of Shannon's ace lap quilts - Kate and Nikola!  Thanks again Shannon! - Jenny x

Fabric, quilting and Cookies- some of the stuff that Shannon does

Way too regularly I am being asked questions by people I don’t know well enough to give them honest answers. Usually its just a bland conversation starter like ‘so what have you been up to?’ Oh my how I dread this. Because I can’t answer – hang out, make shit, boss the kids about, cook stuff, clean, you know the usual. I'd love the just mutter ‘stuff’ but that wont cut it sometimes, and so I will have to form sentences that are suitable for people over the age of six. I have to think of something interesting – to them not me – like 'oh been really busy with work'.  Neither interesting nor exciting but vague enough to get a thoughtful nod. And that’s all you really want isn’t it? A thoughtful nod and then hopefully they’ll move on. Because really, they have no idea what I do.  As far as most people know I just make kids. I’m happy to leave it at that.

But there are conversations with new people I will enthusiastically inject myself into if they cover the topics of – TV shows, annoying kid stories, anything to do with netball (this happens only in my dreams or at the netball itself), celebrity gossip, online shopping and recipes involving a placenta. I’m hoping by putting this little nugget of information into the webisphere people will only talk to me about TV from now on. Or I can suggest that snapping yourself winking in the mirror of random bathrooms is fun and they should totally try it. Or craft. Now that I can bang on about.

Winking - it's hereditary.

- Shannon aka Aunty Cookie!