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 thirteen and fourteen

Another double whammy coming at ya, because as per usual, I coudn't get my a into g last week!

I feel like I have had a busy two weeks of not doing much but feeling exhausted nonetheless - ever have one of those?

The weekend before last, my dad came up and we went and watched the All Blacks at Eden Park. It was heaps of fun, they totally wasted Australia and we had great seats. Kingsland was crazy busy that night; we got a lift in around 5pm and it was impossible to get in anywhere pretty much. Thankfully we managed to squeeze in at Citizen Park and have a few drinks before the match.

Ben and I made haloumi burgers on Friday night for dinner, which were really good.  We have made them quite a few times and always reckon that if we ever had a burger making biz they would be our go to vege burger option. They are pretty simple but so tasty- portobello mushrooms, haloumi, roasted peppers, mayo, onion and a green. 

I took dad to swimming on Saturday and thankfully June-bug got over her sudden water fears and got involved with her lesson. The last couple of times had been kind of pathetic on her part; a lot of refusing to hop in and then refusing to participate- so annoying when you know she can swim pretty well for a four-year-old! However, this weekend just gone by,, Anton informed she once again refused to get in the water and to quote Anton "Bug is done with swimming".  UGH.  I'm gonna take her this weekend and push her in. Maybe.... probably not! It is tempting though.

This weekend just gone by was pretty low key. I worked the Saturday and babysat my nieces, who are little well-behaved blonde angels. We ate brisket, which Ben had smoked all day in his weber with coleslaw, bbq sauce in fresh bread rolls and we watched Guardians of the Galaxy at the girls request (I may or may not have dozed off for the most part).

On Sunday, Ben and I had one of those 'get shit done' type days, which involved markets, supermarket, briscoes for a toaster, rebel sports for a yoga mat and Real Groovy for some record perusal.  I bought two rippers (as pictured) for a whopping $7.  What a bargain hunter.

Anyhoo, here's some stuff I have been loving of late, listed in no particular order...

First up, I have started watching The Walking Dead's first season and subsequently have had a whole series of zombie apocalypse extreme survival-type dreams.  

At a glance this would not seem like the series for me, but I'm totally hooked on it. The new spin-off series starring Cliff Curtis starts tonight and I'm pretty amped on that too.

Some other things I'm grateful for this week include: having my girls for an extra night this week (thanks Anton), rediscovering chocolate ice cream, my daily eight thirty coffee, hot water bottles and topshop tights (honestly, they are the best). John came off his medication a week ago but is doing remarkably well. So well, in fact he is heading home today to continue his respite care at home. Another week with John about is definitely something to love.

Also, Little Sister in Henderson is a recent discovery and it is so good. I would recommend anyone who finds themselves in that part of the world to head there asap for Kokako coffee, great breakfast options and the most enticing cabinet food you've ever clapped eyes on.

Also, whileIi'm giving a shout out to yummy places to eat, I have to mention Musashi in New Lynn as well.  Ben and I went there for date night on Fri and it was so good. We sat at the back at a long granite bench and got a shared menu for two with Beef Sukiyaki, green salad and Agedashi tofu as our mains.  The presentation of the beef had extremely high novelty value- it comes in a little pot and cooks down at your table.  It was all really tasty, prettily presented and worth the money (imo).  Also, it's BYO which always gets a big tick from us!

And there you have it, two weeks of stuff rolled into one little ole blog post. Have a happy week everyone x

Loving it - week nine

Well, it's practically week ten but I've said it before and I'll say it again- better late than never!

I'm trying hard to stay positive at the moment but the stress of having an uncertain job future lying ahead of me has taken a toll on my body somewhat and my pbs has flared up.  Having a chronic condition is a real pain in the ass.... like totally.  I have been pain-free for quite some time after months of prolonged discomfort and 'flare up' after 'flare up'. So as you can imagine, I was pretty upset when I was struck down on Tuesday. I ended up crying on the couch, pumping myself full of nurofen and hugging a hot water bottle. Ugh.

Anyway, the thing about chronic conditions is that you're stuck with them, so at some point you have to make peace with it.  I've spent too long envying other people their ability to eat anything and drink anything, to never have abdomen pain that feels like fire in your lower belly. Getting stressed about the situation only makes it worse, so now I try to be as zen as possible about it. But sometimes that's easier said than done.

Still, making my list of things I love serves to remind me that life 's not really that bad and of course they're all things that make me happy, so the stress levels drop and the pain reduces - score :)

The pics above are all of  a cake baking session Mila and I had when we hung out during the school hols.  We made a chocolate cake on Bastille Day in honour of my nana Sylvie, who died earlier this year.  July 14 is her birthday but I couldn't really think of anything particularly French that my nana would like (she was a pretty fussy eater). She did love chocolate cake though so that's what we went with.  A little bit of tweaking was required as I didn't have exactly the right ingredients (happens to me all the time) but Mila and I were pretty stoked with the end result. The cake we made was adapted from a recipe from the book Gran's Kitchen by Natalie Oldfield.

Other fun things we did on our day together, which I'm loving, include watching make-up tutorials for ages and trying to achieve a 'smoky eye' (we didn't) and also doing a couple of yoga videos thanks to the lovely Adriene from YWA (she's awesome, youtube her). So basically I'm loving the internet, days off with my daughter and chocolate cake!

The International Film Festival is on in Auckland at the moment and I've managed to check out two films so far. First up was The Lobster, which was the opening night film.  It was so good, but so weird. On the weekend we took the girls to see Enchanted Kingdom in 3D, which was an Our World-type nature doco about Africa.  It was pretty cool to and was narrated by Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from the Wire), which for some reason made me giggle.

On the Thursday we saw The Lobster, Ben and I also went to Little and Easy for an after work drink and checked out the Street Food Collective for dinner; a pretty sweet date night all in all. I'm definitely loving the Street Food Collective and am keen to head back to try some more stuff.

And well yep, I think that sums up what I'm loving at the mo.... onwards and upwards I say xx

Loving it - week three

It's been a funny kinda week out here in Avondale...  After the long weekend slipped by, my grandmother also slipped away and then suddenly it was a Tuesday and only four working days stretched out ahead of me and at the end of the road there was meant to be a kitten.  But alas!  The following forks in the road followed... Illness and a sickie on Wednesday threw a spanner in the works and then on Thursday the cat breeder rang to say our wee poppet has really bad diarrhea and couldn't be collected on Friday after all and we would have to wait till Wednesday. Ugh!  Major disappointment.  Still, despite this, I have managed to find a fair few things to be thankful about this week.

First up is the unexpected fancy breakfast you can allow yourself to have when you are 'sick at home'  (no honestly, I was sick). On Wednesday, once my early morning school run was done and the emails had been sent and the coffee drunk, I turned my attention to making a bang-up brunch and I was completely satisfied with the end result. One piece of multi-grain bred, some feijoa chutney, delicious ham, avocado, rocket and a fried egg - what's not love about that?

The next thing I'm loving is a Friday night date with Ben, which really just consisted of wine, burgers and the telly at home... So good though! Sometimes it's all you need to kick a shitty week to the kerb. We made epic cheeseburgers with ingredients we picked up from Farro in Grey Lynn (a spot we don't get to much, now we're westies) and we listened to the new Florence and the Machine album while we cooked, which was another thing worthy of some lovin'. Long live child-free, slightly boozy, food-filled Fridays I say.

Last but certainly not least, I wanna give a shout out to family fun times, a concept I reckon we in our tri-surnamed household have down pat.  Today it was a trip to Avondale markets before home for a cooked brekkie and then out to the art gallery and later Silo Park. The girls love the art gallery and we spent an easy hour there checking out the new Laurence Aberhart exhibition and the Lisa Reihana work on the second floor.  They also loved the interactive light display in the kids section on the mezzanine and the gift shop (naturally). After our art gallery fun times, we headed down to Silo Park, which is another cool place for little people. The girls went nuts on slides, astroturf hills, swings, sand pits and what not and we also got to check out some cool photography festival exhibitions in the silos. Lunch was fish and chips form the seafood market; salty, crispy and drenched in vinegar and tomato sauce - perfection.

(Shout out to Ben for taking great pics at the gallery today xx)

Setting trends and all that jazz

The Documentary Edge Festival is currently on in Auckland and there are heaps of great films to see. I've only nabbed tickets for a couple, one of which was Trend Beacons. This film looked at people who worked as trend forecasters, taking what they see happening around them now and then predicting how that translates to fashion two years down the track. The other one we plan to see is Sweet Micky for President on Thursday. There are heaps more that sound really good, like Deli Man and Actress for example, so if you're in Auckland you should grab a programme and check them all out. You gotta be quick though, it finishes on the first of June.