A catch up post (again)- week sixteen and seventeen

Once again, I'm playing catch up!

Quite a bit has been happening over the last couple of weeks, I started my new job with Auckland Libraries last Monday, which has been pretty time consuming and exhausting. I honestly come home so tired, I feel drained of energy. But, I figure that once I learn the systems things will be come a bit more normal and i'll stop being so goddam sleepy!

Last Friday Ben and I went out to celebrate the end of my first week, which was fun. We went to The Cav on College Hill, then Bonita in Ponsonby for a drink and finally stopped in for dinner at Mekong Baby, which was super delicious and I can't recommend highly enough.

The previous weekend was fairly low key...the girls were with Anton and Ben and I hung around the house and went up to his parents for Father's Day dinner on the Sunday. On Monday, after school, the girls gave Ben his 'step-father's day' present, which was a pie magic- kind of a present for all of us really... We made bacon and egg pies, which featured the silverbeet Bug had grown in our vege plot.  They were pretty tasty.  We have also been eating a lot of the broccoli out of our garden, so we are achieving to an exceptionally high gardening level.

I've got quite a lot to love at present, though my positive thoughts vibe is clearly a little skewed as I somehow managed to incur two speeding tickets within an hour of each other on the first day of my week off. Furthermore, that entire work-free week I carried around an annoying head cold that wouldn't quit and I ended up on the couch watching telly for half the time.

Ah well, you can't win them all I guess :) Thankfully, there were some highs to celebrate among the lows.

To start; I checked out Kim Gordon's autobiography Girl in a band  and I'm really enjoying it so far, she's an awesome writer.  Also, we went to the museum with the girls on the weekend and I hadn't been for ages. It was cool, I liked the special Auckland exhibit currently on as well as old favourites like Wild Child and Auckland 1866 (the old school town set up with the apothecary and whatnot).

A couple of weeks ago I went out for lunch with Viv, Luca and Liz at the new Scratch Bakery in Milford, and Viv and I did a spot of shopping afterwards.  I got myself some new pants from Topshop and a couple of of plain tees from Glassons.  I always love getting new clothes! I also went out for lunch with Ben and his mum on my week off (I've been lunching a lot of late) and I got some new dinner plates from Deco to Retro as well as two second-hand Elton John records- score!

I'm also loving my new coffee spot Elsie on Mayoral Drive, the novelty of using public transport for the first time in ages, working with a bunch of cat mad women, watching Bug throw herself into her swimming lessons (finally), catching up with my pals at a baby shower, getting to goo and gah over little people and lastly I'm loving the anticipation of the long weekend that lies ahead in honour of my upcoming birthday....hurrah!

Loving it - week one

Hi. It's my first ever post here, so I thought I might as well make it about things I'm loving right now. If you want to know why I have decided to start blogging (pretty sure the reasons mimic thousands of other 35 year old women...) then click here to read a bit about me.

This will be the first of many Loving it posts so hopefully I'll see you back here in 52 weeks time to see what I'm loving in a year.

And yes, the end of May is a completely random time to suddenly start having New Year's-esque resolutions, but that's when I had mine, so there you have it....Week one is now!

First up, I'm currently loving our brand new vege garden, which my dad helped me plant a fortnight ago when he came up to stay. This is the first of hopefully three plots we will have so that we can pretty much sustain ourselves vegetable wise (over the summer months, anyway). We have planted pak choy, spring onions, broccoli and one lonely silverbeet plant, which June-bug grew from a seed at kindy.

Secondly I'm loving new shoes, of which I have recently acquired two pairs! The first pair are boots from Topshop, which are little pieces of clunky perfection at the end of my jeans (also a convenient waterproof option in these wetter months, which heaps of my shoes are not) and the others are a present from Ben; Nikes he picked up while he was in the States. These are super comfy and another exciting addition to my ever-growing sneaker collection. He also bought the girls a pair each too, so now we are the most stylishly shod crew in Avondale (maybe...?).

Last but not least, this week I'm loving hot chocolates, ones made with extra dark cocoa powder from La Noisette to be exact.  Since I've tried to cut refined sugar from my diet, I've basically eaten no chocolate, which actually kind of sucks for me because I love chocolate more than pretty much anything! I also love baking and eating cakes, muffins, donuts, slices, biscuits.... you get the idea. Anyway, sometimes, usually at work in the afternoon, my desire for sweetness takes over and no amount of raw almonds in the world are ever going to cut it.  At times like these I head over the road and get a hot chocolate.  It's made with really dark chocolate so it's not exactly sweet, but there's something really comforting about about the drink.... I'm kinda addicted.