Loving it - week twenty two

Posting twice in one day, must be some sort of record!

This post is basically a shout out to my garden, which is coming along rather nicely. Ben and I went kinda crazy a fortnight or so ago and now have three raised beds out the back, plus seedlings waiting to be planted out, a strawberry patch, various herbs in planters and a really pretty lavender bush!

We have eaten some of our spring onions, and a lettuce and the bok choy needs to be picked.  I am totally loving being able to go outside and just grab stuff that goes straight into the pan, onto the plate and into our bellies. So much fun!

The girls have spied a couple of strawberries well on their way, so now the race is on between us and the birds to see who will actually get to eat them.  Chances are Olive will get in there first and muck everything up anyway, she is obsessed with the strawberry patch.

I have so many big plans for these fruits and veges - chili oil and relish, tomato sauce, ratatouille, strawberry jam, rhubarb crumbles, fresh peas in my pasta -oh my god, the list goes on.....

Anyhoo, that's me for week twenty one - a happy lady with dirt in her fingernails and probably a slug or two on the dinner plate.

Other things worth a mention...

Loving date nights as per usual - this week Ben and I went to Shaolin Kung Fu Noodles for dinner and then to the movies to see Legend. I thought it was OK, Ben really liked it. My vege and egg fried dumplings were a personal highlight of the evening.  So, so good!

Also, went to a BBQ to celebrate my friend Kiara's nine year stint in NZ (woo hoo Kiara!!), which was really enjoyable and a great nod to the coming summer and all the yummy barbies that lie ahead.

I had my hair coloured last week as well, which immediately makes me feel a million times better and I bought a new moisturiser, which I totally believe will make me youthful again (honestly, that's what the packet says....)

Another birthday....

I am now the lucky mother of one very sweet eight year old.  The last stretch of September and the beginning of October are a fairly busy time for the Russell family, with my birthday and Harriet's birthday in September and then my niece James, my dad and Mila all together at the beginning of October.

On Friday the ninth, Mila turned eight and had a sleepover party at her dad's, which, by all accounts, went very well. I got my hands on her on the Saturday, which happened to be my dad's actual birthday and he was up staying with us so that was a bonus!

We headed out to Mission Bay for some playground fun and a picnic lunch with bacon and egg pie (Mila loves pies) and veges and raspberry suckies and other such yummy things. We also set up Mila's new soccer goal and had some fun kicking the ball at it and whoever had the misfortune of being goalie. But the weather wasn't overly pleasant, so we moved on kinda quickly.

Next stop was Lilliputt, where we all played minigolf on the original course, which was way quieter than the T-Rex one. Both girls got a hole-in-one on the first hole, so that was a pretty good way to get things started.  Ultimate winner was Ben, with Grandad a close second.  Us ladies were a little off the pace, it's gotta be said.  Still it was fun and I think the girls enjoyed it, although Mila did look set to throw her club on a few occasions.  

We headed back towards home after that, stopping for ice cream at the Tannery.  I had a golden syrup flavoured ice cream, which was delicious. June-bug went for chocolate, Mila had cookies and cream, Dad had a lemon curd one and Ben opted for strawberries and chocolate. Overall consensus is that Kohu Rd ice cream is the biz.

After that it was just home for some gardening, more football, chicken curry for dinner, birthday cake and a movie.  All in all a pretty sweet way to celebrate a pretty sweet kid's big day.

I swear, I can't face my children's birthdays without thinking back to the day they were born. For Mila that means memories of an atrocious labour that seemed to last an eternity, being admitted to hospital and then finally having my little girl wrapped up beside me (actually, not so little, a whopping 9+ pounds). 

I remember looking at her and feeling the weirdest rush of emotions- she at once seemed so alien and familiar. I thought she was weird looking but also the most beautiful thing I had ever clamped my eyes on. 

I wasn't great at parenting a young baby its gotta be said, but it didn't seem to put Mila off. She has been my staunchest supporter and ally from the get go.  She gives me the best cuddles, and the best advice when I lose my way.  She is great for a laugh, she loves a practical joke (as long as she's not the butt of it), she loves family, friends and most of all every kind of meal be it savoury or sweet.  Everyday I think how lucky I am to have her. 

Happy birthday Mila!

And it's been a while, but here some things I've been loving over the past month

* My new yoga course at The Yoga Ground.  I'm halfway through the eight week course and starting to feel like i'm finding my feet... or hamstrings, or glutes, or triceps.....

*Our vege garden, which is slowly starting to take shape.  Dad has helped us plant some seedlings and we have built a couple of raised beds to accommodate a lot of veges over the coming summer months. I'm so excited!

*Tacos.  Specifically the mushroom one I had at Mexico, when we all celebrated my friend's 40th and the pulled beef one I had at Miss Clawdy's where we went for a bang-up meal for Dad and James' birthdays.

*Friends, wine, summer plans.  Dreaming and scheming about New Years Eve and camping fun over a glass or two of wine in the late afternoon sunshine with a friend, is the perfect way to round out the weekend imo.

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.