Fancy a bit of crumpet?

Saturday morning crumpets - a photo essay:








Fresh crumpets with honey ricotta. Yum. Now off to the beach with Boo and Matt to walk off our tummies!

Gifts from abroad

A package arrived for me in the post last week from Third Drawer Down and in it were the new pillow cases designed by Miranda July (the author of and actress from You and Me and Everyone We Know). They look loverly on our bed.


Guess which side of the bed I sleep on?

And on the same day (ohmygod - two gifts in one day and it wasn't even my birthday!), Matt bought me a new brooch from Object.


You can't tell from the photo (I should have included a ball point pen for comparison!), but it is teeny tiny. It is designed by a guy called David Neale, and is made from painted silver, the idea being that with time the paint will rub off in parts leaving it looking worn. So cool. Thank you Matt.

Oh I do love a mid-winter Nor'west wind.

As promised, the Nor'west wind came through today, and I got a lot done as a result...

I washed our sheets;


Mowed the lawn (in a t-shirt!);


Made pumpkin and kumara soup for lunch (with double cream camembert and parsley);


and watched some wax-eyes use the feeder I prepared earlier;



I also attended a morning yoga class, and took Boo for a walk at the beach (but don't have any photos to prove it). Phew. It was lucky I did so much because I had only just come inside from photographing the birds, when the weather changed and it started pouring with rain - horizontal freezing rain.


What's that saying? Make hay while the sun shines? So true....

A break in the weather...

The sun came out today (apparently it was out yesterday too but as I was enduring one of my worst ever days of work I missed it), and so I did something I've been wanting to do for ages - made bird feeders.

Not sure if it will work but I took some honey, peanut butter, linseed, sesame seeds, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, mashed them all together then smeared it all over some pine cones.


They look kind of ugly and silly, but I'm hoping they're enough to bring the wax eyes out for a nibble.


The weather has been forecast to not only get into double figures tomorrow but to get to a high of 16 degrees! A 'Norwest will be blowing and so I am ultra excited about the washing opportunities - I think I might even get the flannelette sheets washed and dried... I have a thing about washing, and a good drying day in July is like Christmas for me.

Boo spent this afternoon practicing lying in the sun - hopefully she'll get to do a bit of that tomorrow and maybe even the next day too.

Saturday afternoon

Waikuku Beach, 1pm. Boo and I made the most of the sun (although the temperature never got above 6 degrees today - yikes!).

Today's dilemma - update

The icing was definitely worthwhile, yummo. I've gone back and iced the remainder of the cake too.

Today's dilemma

Boo and I have a double date with friends today for lunch, and I am in charge of dessert. I've made a simple coconut cake, but couldn't decide whether to ice it or not.

I thought a palm sugar, lime and coconut icing might be quite yummy, but also possibly a little excessive - the choice was quite stressful, I can't handle pressure these days. Unable to decide I went half and half.

We'll take a vote at lunch, I'll let you know.

Sunshine on my shoulders...

The sun came out today and for the first time in weeks I managed to get a whole load of washing dry outside. Boo and I sat outside while I had a post-lunch gin, and she enjoyed the rays too:


Her shadow is so long, but it was the middle of the day!

I got all excited about the warmth and so made quite a summery dinner - pizzas with homemade bases.


A tomato-y basil-y one and a potato, bacon and rosemary one. Both delish.

Friday Fuzzies.

Sometimes it's good to step back and smell the roses, and realise that having a job where you get to hang out with little ones like this isn't so bad after all.

I haven't posted for a while because there's nothing to post about, nothing happening except the two of us trying to keep warm, leaving home in the dark and coming back in the dark and spending the weekends trying to find our house.