This post is brought to you by the Blu-ray, DVD and Digital release of I Don’t Know How She Does It
My son will be eleven the day after tomorrow.
Eleven is great. Young enough to be sleepless with excitement at the thought of a new bike. Old enough to ride it without a parent running alongside it.
It’s a funny time though – a grey period, where birthday procedure isn’t clear. Before eleven, it was de riguer to take a sweet treat to school to mark the passage of another year. This could be a large cake, a box of cupcakes, or if you were (quite literally) the cool kid, you brought Paddle Pops. The Paddle Pop scenario could only be achieved if your family was a favourite of the school secretary, who policed staff-room freezer space like a bouncer at The Birdcage on cup day.
Thankfully, that’s behind us, but it still seemed weird to send my birthday boy off to school with nothing. ‘No,’ he assured me last week, ‘We don’t do that any more. It’s a little kid thing.
But predictably, today, two days before the event he said nonchalantly, ‘You know, Miss D said that some cakes would be good. But only if it’s no trouble.’
It wouldn’t be any trouble because I was planning, as always, to use a packet mix.
‘No worries, love,’ I said, channelling my inner Julie Goodwin. I might even have winked. ‘How many boys in your class again? I’ll whip up some cupcakes.’
‘Twenty eight,’ replied Ben, ‘And Mum, Betty Crocker is heaps better than Green’s.’
Win a DVD of the movie and a bottle of Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker
It felt like the bowl of batter was poured over my head. I’d never truly believed I was fooling anyone with my late-night baking, but surely my own son could have maintained the charade?
What are your secrets to successful faking it? Do you bodgie up shop-bought cakes like Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in I Don’t Know How She Does It? Or do you leave a handbag by your desk at work to give the impression you’re still there at 9pm?
Share your secrets here and you could win one of ten I Don’t Know How She Does It prize packs, each with a 100ml bottle of Lovely, by Sarah Jessica Parker and a DVD of the movie. The 10 comments with the most thumbs up will win! This competition closes on Wednesday the 14th March at 5pm AEST.
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What are your secrets to successful faking it?
Comments
174 Comments so far
no i taught the boys/girls to cook early from a packet and they were so proud of themselves.
Now they tell me it was child labour. spoilsports.
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I have put my clock forward by 5 minutes…… with 3 little ones in tow we are always running late but my little clock trick seems to give us a bonus 5 minutes when we need it most!
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My partner does that too and I don’t get it. Don’t you just subtract 5 mins when you read it, to get the real time?
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This actually works for me too and I have no idea why! I’m sure there is some scientific reason. Our clock is set roughly 5-10 minutes fast (not sure exactly how much) and even though I *know* that it is fast, for some reason I still unconsciously get ready for the fake time.
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Subconcious not unconscious – then you wouldn’t know what you’re doing!!
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My kitchen always looks clean.
….because I never cook in it.
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I constantly put a fake smile and brave face on and tell people that we are happy with our daughter being an only child.
My Husband and I are both very private people and really don’t want to share our devastation at not being able to have another child. In the 6 years since our beautiful daughter was born, we have had numerous miscarriages, been told we are not candidates for IVF, unsuccessfully looked into adoption and even been knocked back as foster parents (we have a 2 bedroom house, and foster children must have their own bedroom).
We adore our daughter and feel so blessed to have her, but we still mourn the fact that we will never have another child.
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I didn’t know that about fostering; with the shortage of carers you would think the department would understand there are worse things that can happen to a child than sharing a room!
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you can’t honestly say that? These children are being taken from sometimes heinous situations and you think that they should just be PLUNKED into a corner somewhere? There are rules to MINIMISE the impact… if these people were serious about adopting they would simply move.
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Sharing a bedroom with another child is hardly plunked in a corner! Particularly when it is young kids we are talking about.
I think a stable, safe, supportive and stimulating environment is far more important than a room of their own.
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Of course there are worse things but I think it makes sense for a foster child to have their own room. Presumably they are in foster care because they’ve been taken from a situation that is unsuitable for children. They may be quite traumatized, they may need their own space. It would be difficult enough being in a strange home, it would just add to the stress having to share a bedroom. I think these kids probably need somewhere safe to retreat to every now and then, somewhere private.
I imagine it could also create problems for the child being asked to share their room with another child who could potentially be quite troubled.
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I agree it is probably better in most circumstances for the child to have their own room, but in the current situation where there are not enough foster carers, I don’t think that is sufficient to exclude a potentially otherwise excellent carer.
Children are better off being in a stable family home (albeit with a shared bedroom) than in a group home, hotel or other emergency accommodation that is utilized in the absence of an available foster placement.
Likewise, I think the requirement that one foster parent not work at all should be reconsidered. For example, I work for 4 hours, a couple of days a week. Children at risk are prioritized for childcare places, so are often familiar with that environment already, but once fostered, can not attend.
In a perfect world, foster parents would rarely be needed, so only the close to perfect need apply (stay at home, big house, lots of money, no other kids, or maybe same age other kids… Gee gets hard to define perfect…).
But the world isn’t perfect, and there are a lot more kids who need foster placements than carers ready to take them. Reconsidering carer eligibility in this context is one way to redress the balance.
Sorry for getting off the fake it topic!
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I fake this exact same thing. We have a child from a sucessful IVF round after 5 years, but another 3 years and lots of treatment and IVF rounds later – no more children, and when people ask (they always do) I cheerily say that we aren’t thinking of it yet and my son is more than enough to handle at the moment. The truth is I’m never NOT thinking about it.
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I fake it every day that I actually know what I am doing as a mother. So long as you are smiling and the children are fed, no-one is ever any the wiser
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My ongoing statement is:
“I have no idea what I’m doing – but neither does the baby!”.
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I’ll be remembering this statement!! Great!!
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crazy but i invite people over for a “spontaneous” coffee when the house is spotless. and then feign surprise when they comment on how nice the house looks. really?? it’s always like this..
every other moment i suffer from CHAOS (can’t have anyone over syndrome).
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I had never heard of chaos. That is me to a t. Are there any cleaners out there…I want to know how you feel when called to clean a really untidy house. I’ve never had a cleaner…but id love a one off house clean..but I’m too embarrassed get them to come and see the hasnt been it cleaned one month bathroom. Does that make sense.
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Makes perfect sense to me Jess, because I feel the same way. And then I once heard someone who did housecleaning gossiping about how filthy someone’s house was. (And I knew that someone as well!) No way I could get a cleaner in now, knowing what they’d say about my place! Have heard and used the term CHAOS before – me to a T as well…
(
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Oh no, that’s the bit that worries me. I have thought about it too much….I might go out and get my hubby to meet them…and only come home when they have gone!
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I’m not a cleaner, but I’ve been told by a few that they think it’s a waste of their time when they got to a house to clean it and it’s already clean. They know why people do it, but still. I will only get my kids to pick their mess off the floor so it can be vacuumed quicker.
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I had a cleaner come into my house fortnightly, before they came I would clean the house so I wouldn’t be embarrassed by our pig sty!
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i think the answer lies in 50% keeping the house a bit tidier and 50% caring less about how your house looks.
real friends wouldn’t care, they just want a nice cup of tea/glass of champagne and a catch-up!
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My “cheating” or “faking it” thing is inviting people over so that I HAVE to clean
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actually i do a bit of that too!
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As a working, studying sole mum of an almost 3 year old “faking it” is a must have in my arsenal of survival strategies. My oddly parted, disheveled hair with its array of clips? Oh, just a quirky look I’m going for, it’s the next big thing and perfectly blow dried bobs are waay too north shore for my taste. Nothing to do with my 6cm roots and greasy hair. No siree.
That great slow cooked casserole I make? I’m all about the slow food movement sweetie, the fact that it’s 1/8th the price of your sirloin is a happy accident. And this chateau de cardboard is a gorgeous merlot.
In all honesty though the biggest lesson I’ve learned as a single parent is that it doesn’t matter what you earn, the car you drive, if you have the MBA or the shiny merc, as parents we all struggle and all need to ask for help. The bravest thing can be not to fake it at all.
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I throw my hair up in a bun because I don’t have the time or effort to blowdry it, then when I take it out a day or so later the waves look like I’ve actually spent time doing it.
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Well said!
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Watching Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights instead of reading the books so I can tell my mum I finally finished them.
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Fake tan instantly makes you glow and people notice that healthy, sun-kissed look (especially when you look and feel pale and tired).
Another one is buying the homebrand version when shopping to save you a bit of cash here and there… something like peanuts, an item where the brand really doesn’t matter when adding into a stir-fry for dinner.
I’m all for Groupons and Scoopons deals, the best invention ever!
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I fake that it wasn’t me who finished off the chocolates/sweets/cake
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The first time my partner came over I said I would cook up his favorite – Seafood linguini
Never having even pouched an egg in my life I decided to pick up take away pasta from the local Italian restaurant on the way home.
When I got home, I put on an apron, poured the beautiful pasta into a saucepan (mussels, prawns and all), put it over the stove.
“Hi Darling, just finishing the dinner now. Give me 5 to plate up.”
We now live together and he is always asking me to cook the Seafood Linguini…….
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Is the restaurant still there? Maybe you could “make” it as a welcome home dinner next time he goes away!
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I have to fake it every time I am around my friends who have big, bouncing, healthy kids and went through trouble-free pregnancies. I’m pregnant at the moment and have had (through no fault of my own) awful, life-threatening complications, and my baby is expected to come very early. Yet when all my friends talk about the joys of pregnancy and how trouble-free it has all been for them I smile and nod and pretend to be very happy for them, while wishing I knew at least ONE person who did not have a perfect pregnancy or birth!
I know it will all fade away once my baby is born but for now it’s hard!
Sorry to bring down the tone! On a lighter note, I do sometimes have to fake a semblance of comprehension about the more high-tech aspects of my husband’s job in IT.
And I pretend to like coffee, wine and fancy food when all I really want is Quik, cider (not at the moment, obviously), plastic cheese and Rosella tomato sauce
Is that bad?
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Katie, I can totally empathise. My daughter is now 6 and very happy & healthy, but I also had a very difficult pregnancy with several very serious complications, resulting in our beautiful baby being born at 32 weeks.
Best of luck with your pregnancy.
I found it extremely difficult to talk to any of my friends about the pregnancy or having a premature baby. The 6 weeks she spend in hospital after her birth were the most difficult experience of my life, and I’ve never really been able to talk about it to anyone.
I know we don’t know each other, but if you ever need to talk to anyone, I’m happy to give you my email address
P.S: I don’t like wine or fancy cheeses either!
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That’s so lovely of you, Kaz. And yes, that would be wonderful. This is why I love Mamamia!
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Hi Katie, sorry I’ve been offline for a few days. My email is:
kazfromtas@hotmail.com
Please feel free to drop me a line if you want to have a chat
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Not bad at all Katie you’ve just had a different experience than them. I had the most wonderful first pregnancy and loved every part of it….my nose is bleeding all over my lunch, how fascinating!!! But pregnancy number 2 was HELL. I was completely incapacitated, I couldn’t look after my toddler properly and by the end of the first trimester I was half wishing for a miscarriage so the hell would end. I felt so guilty but it was just the worst experience.
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Thanks so much for responding, Weno! It’s so lovely to know there are people out there who understand. I’ve never once wished not to be pregnant – she was a much wished-for baby and that makes it all the worse! I can go through any pain as long as she’s okay. I just hope she makes it!
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Good luck. I hope everything is okay. Maybe this just means you’re getting the hard part out of the way earlier and your baby will be a champion sleeper. All the best.
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I have a 3-week old daughter and she is nocturnal and suffering lots of painful wind. She also doesn’t feed properly cause she takes 1-2 hours to do so. I am VERY sleep-deprived. I keep saying it’s my punishment for having a perfect trouble-free pregnancy
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I fake a relationship with my husband’s friend’s mother. She and her family supported him a lot in the couple of years before I met him and sees themselves as his family. I understand that family means different things to everyone, but when people make out that as his wife, I am not as important as they are, as they have known him longer (but not better), I really can’t stand them. I put up with them because I love my husband so much. When my husband was away training for a couple of years, this woman made up stories about how he rang her in tears about how hard the course was. Absolute rubbish. I also was having a conversation with her about a job he was fired from, and she was telling someone else that the company he worked for had gone under, so thats why he lost it. Their inability to see that he is not perfect and that things go wrong was so frustrating.
I however, can not fake how tricky it is to type with my index and middle fingers on my right hand strapped together…and how its unfortunate that I have learnt to adapt to doing most jobs around the house still. No faking I can’t do housework, even with a sore finger!
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I don’t bother faking it, I lower my standards of all the ‘things I *must* do’ & people still love me
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I did birthday cupcakes for my daughter’s 8th last week! 36 of the damn things and they had to be perfect because she only gets a birthday every 4 years being a leap year baby! I do the packet thingy and as far as I’m concerned that’s good enough… at least they’re not bought! I used 3 packets of White Wings chocolate variety. My little trick is to slightly under cook them so they taste nice and moist the next day. Worked a treat, the kids loved them and not one came back.
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“At least they’re not bought” – I really don’t get this, who cares if the cupcakes for the schoolkids is bought or home-made?? When I was in primary school I was lucky if mum made anything for me for my birthday! I reckon if you’re giving your kid any kind of cake to take to school for their birthday, you’re being pretty nice!
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Fair enough Stylus… but I’m not knocking bought! I was just referring to Kate Hunter’s sons acknowledgment of her using packet mix, that’s all. I’ve bought plenty of cakes for preschools and school functions. Nothing wrong with either
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Definitely not
cake is cake is cake!
Sorry, didn’t mean to come across as a bit aggro!
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my daugter only likes sultanas in the mini lunch box sizes and from one brand. becuase they are expensive (to continually buy) i just buy a big packet of home brand ones and full up all the boxes. she leaves them in her lunch box and since i rotate the boxes she doesn’t notice.
it works out for both of us.
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Once in a blue moon (or perhaps every night there is a moon) I will fake interest in fiance’s job in fiance which doesn’t actually interest me.That’s right I continually fake an interest in interest rates.
And pay my price night after night as he now thinks I am waiting to be updated on the latest.
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Anyone else fake a ‘nice’ relationship with their MIL when the real truth is every day I wonder how on earth my lovely boy came from someone who is so unlovely? (to put it politely)
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Oh goodness yes, very hard to get along with but we do so much with my family that on the odd occasion I see my MIL I feel like I should at least smile and pretend to be interested in her stories (that more often than not she told me last time I saw her!)
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My husband’s favourite show is Squawk Box and Switzer on the Foxtel business channel. I try not to go in the loungeroom while that’s on otherwise he regales me with finance stories while I pretend that it’s as important to me as it is to him. I’m a terrible wife.
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I fake it ALOT with my kids….
Pretend I know where I am going ………when I have no idea
Pretend i love reading groups at school…….when i am really falling asleep
Pretend I feel really brave……..when I am about to vomit
etc etc
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I’ll go one better! BUY the cakes from Whites and cover them in home made icing!
Home-made icing being packet of icing sugar, block of butter whipped together in kitchen aid – add colour of choice – et voila! Looks homemade – no cooking involved
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I have one of those rotating brush hair dryers- I still have to section my hair off but the whole process takes a lot less than a normal blow dry and involves much less upper arm exertion.
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My hubby has a thing with towels… He likes his towel to get outside during the day to help it go dry & fluffy so I try to hang them out on our line every day. What he doesn’t know is that sometimes I forget (2 kids under 2!) so just fold them neatly in the laundry like I would if they’d been outside… Pretty sure he can’t tell the difference!
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I recently had to fake it for my sons birthday. A friend of ours cooked him some cupcakes which he took to school for all his classmates. I had so many mums come to me and tell me how wonderful they were. I just didn’t have the heart to tell them l didn’t bake them
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1. The ‘I’m always working’ – You can delay emails being sent in Outlook – so, for emails which aren’t urgent, I might schedule them to be sent earlier in the morning than I come in, or slightly later than I stay
2. The ‘disguised packet cake’ – get the packet carrot cake, and add a tin of pineapple to instantly make it into a ‘hummingbird’ cake
3. The ‘I’m not cleaning the house’ – I always agree to meet at other people’s houses or at a cafe/restaurant
4. The “Gourmet” – quickly garnish a boring/easy meal to make it look gourmet. Chopped parsley or basil can go on most things, and Sesame Seeds work a treat on most Asian dishes.
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OMG how did I not know about the email delay thing!!! You have just changed my life – thank you!!!
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That email thing is brilliant!
Sadly I sometimes send work emails at 2am for real, when I’m up feeding my baby. I like to think someone might notice the time and realise.
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You. Are. Amazing. I didnt know outlook can do that. Game changer. Thankyou soooooo much.
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The last time I took ‘my’ brownies into work, one of the guys ecstatically commented “You could be the next Jamie Oliver!” – you should enter Masterchef…. you’d SO win!”
He was so impressed, that I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a packet mix!!
I’ve also had compliments on our collection of ‘art’ at home – a couple of canvases from Target, and even one from the Reject Shop!!! Win!
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I love the Reject Shop! I bought a large ‘weathered’ clock from there that’s on our patio wall and I get so many comments on it!
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my biggest fake is my clothes cupboard.looks neat enough,and thats the trick.make it appear that way.but open it,and if the sliding door dont fall off the hinge and fall on you,thrown in clothes piles will spring forth.not good :/
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Wear dark lipstick -it makes your teeth look whiter
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I have the most complicated excel spreadsheet open at all times on my computer desktop, but the Mama Mia web page minimised to the shape of my head so it “looks” like I’m working from behind…
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I’m doing this right now, only I have the spreadsheet on my other screen and I have minimised mamamia to the size of my outlook reading pane
I’m typing an ‘email’ right now! 
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When my husband and I first started dating I invited him over for dinner. 10 years ago I wasn’t that flash in the kitchen (much better now!) but I wanted to impress so I organised a caterer to provide me with a 3 course meal. It wasn’t too fancy that it wasn’t believable but it was certainly not my efforts. Lovely catering man came and delivered the food, I transferred it to pots/pans (had to look like the real deal) and when my (now) husband came over for dinner I was just getting ready to dish up. He was very impressed and wanted to do all the cleaning up because I’d obviously spent the afternoon in the kitchen working on dinner. (At this point I was feeling a tiny bit guilty!) He was none the wiser and it was only 5 years later when he proposed that I fessed up. He said he did wonder why I never could those particular recipes again but it didn’t occur to him to question me. Bless him.
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As a working single Mum I am faking it all the time, thats my life but I don’t really have a problem telling people that. A week before my twin girls 6th Alice in Wonderland 6th Birthday extravaganza I knew I was not going to pull it off. I was close to breakdown with work so I outsourced their party…it almost killed me as I am the Queen of Birthday Parties. It looked amazing and I tried desperately to pretend I did it myself but ended up confessing. I also texted a housecleaner 2 hours prior to guests arriving, she showed up 10 minutes later and made me look great.
I have also been known to do the sniff test on my kids school uniform every morning. A baby wipe here and a spray of perfume there and we are good to go.
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I hate it when the fresh clothes get mixed up with the dirty clothes, because, yet again, your children have not put them away, and you do the sniff test on the undies.
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When people are popping in to my house without much notice, I shove extra mess into the junk drawer and study, close the door, dim the lights and light candles to ‘hide’ dirty spots. It creates quite the relaxed ambience!
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Mine is when we have guests coming over and I havent had really much time to clean. I shove anything that’s laying around into the main bedroom and shut the door. Leaving the rooms that people will be in or see SPOTLESS… Yet little do they know a deadly mess is hidden!!…
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I have a quiche dish which exactly fits the size of the local patisserie quiches. Just pop them in the dish to heat up before guests arrive! Sometimes I do feel guilty and confess…
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I have an 11 year old, a 20 month old, work part time and teach and am happily a single parent so to fake it so I make it I have 1 rest day a week where I hang in my pj’s, have an extra sleep and just chill…to be able to do it all again next week…
Happy International Women’s Day every one!
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Amen to the guilt-free rest day! I have a three year old girl and I work part time and study part time, so sometimes after lunch on the weekend we have a quiet movie afternoon with catch up sleeps and no house work or study being done… great lazy bonding time haha
keeps me sane for another week ahead!!!
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I buy family size meat pies from the bakery and tell my guests that I cooked it myself!
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I always do a packet cake mix- Betty Crockers Vanilla but with my own icing. Everyone loves it and I always take the credit for my wonderful cake. Oh and on the packet cake mix- Green’s is the best for school because it gets around the no nuts rule (all the others have traces or made on the same equipment) well at least it was last time I checked.
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If I really can’t be bothered cleaning the bathroom, I just spray a bit of bleach smelling cleaner in the shower. If the bathroom smells clean…
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I haven’t done it, but someone I know puts a bit of detergent in the toilet and flushes it so it bubbles, and it looks and smells clean!
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I have any new or absurdly neat/ clean freak friends over for coffee on the one afternoon per fortnight my house is not awash with toast crumbs, forgotten puddles of baby vomit and more toys under foot than clear carpet. That afternoon being every second Tuesday after the cleaner had been.
‘Ohh, your house is spotless, so tidy!’. Mother in Law often gets an invite on this afternoon also. God forbid if they popped in on any other day of the week. They’d probably think they were at the wrong place.
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That’s brilliant!
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If you want to do a quick tidy up before you have guests, grab an empty laundry basket and fill it up. Throw the basket into an empty room and voila! This is especially essential if your house, like mine, is full of kids toys and books!
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…if you had an empty laundry basket…
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Great comment Kel
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Home Brand cake mix is even better than the brand names; just add an extra egg to the mix and they’re fabulous. Plus: 70c per packet = winning!
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I agree! And it is the best raw cake batter I’ve tasted. Although, now that I am pregnant- I can’t eat the batter
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I do the same, except substitute milk for water. Years ago I took a packet Date Loaf made in the same way to an old ladies afternoon tea thingo at my former Monster in Law’s church. They were asking ME for the recipe!
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