Today I took the babies to visit my Mum. She's having her house renovated and had collected a few things to pass down to me. As well as scoring a food processor (easier baby food!) and a glass blender (smoothies!) she handed me this box containing some old Nelson pottery and... this gigantic orange tupperware bowl! (Isn't it great that I now have bakeware to match my formica kitchen bench? When we first moved here, I never thought I'd be able to say that!)


The best thing about this bowl are the memories. Mum always made her Christmas cakes in it. And being an early devotee of baking, I would do the mixing, clinging on tight to it's plasticky goodness. My little sister Tamsin made Anzac biscuits all the time in it. (All recipes were doubled, because there were seven people to eat the baking in my family.) Hence such a large bowl I suppose. Sometimes Tamsin's mixtures went slightly off course, and we'd take the orange bowl up to the hen-house to feed them the uncooked mixture. (Sorry Tamsin! Your baking is amazing now!)


Mum also gave me these dressing table-type pieces that used to belong to my grandmother, Joan. The china cups belonged to her mother-in-law, but there's no date stamp on them so noone knows how old they really are. Mum and Dad found them about ten years ago in a boarded-up cupboard in their home. I love holding them and thinking about all the Victorian tea parties they attended.

This morning I made a new friend- a fellow Nelson blogger! Rhiannon and her beautiful son Aesop met us at Smalltime, a pre-schooler's programme at our public library, and then we had chai at Yaza cafe - while Arlo chatted to our new friends incessantly. And drank his 'fluffy' of course.
So Rhiannon is going to come along to our Tuesday Stitch n' Bitch which is exciting news- I can't wait to see some of her work in person! You can also find some for sale on the aforementioned Etsy site right here.

I've been getting a really overwhelmed feeling lately when searching the internet. There's SO much I love, so much to get inspiration from and so many bits that lead to a trillion other interesting bits...
That's why I almost laughed when I came upon this

Perhaps I'll have to start a notebook where I write down all the ideas and beautiful things I see. Or maybe I could just record some of them here.
Just two for today. I'm sure i'm the last person that likes craft who has discovered Etsy. Man. I just love the idea that (if I had a credit card), I could purchase any of these artworks easy as pie. A spot of craft-market shopping anytime of the day, right from this desk while the babies are asleep, for example.
And then I found The K Bear and fell in love with those illustrations and their amazing use of colour.

But my favourite piece of crafting today has to be these embroidered political portraits (scroll down a little) by Georgia at On My Mind. So inspiring... now I just have to think of who my New Zealand political hero is, so I can create a local version. Hmmmm.

I've recently had a telling-off about not drinking enough milk. I've been pretty slack about my diet since having Keira- the whole eating-for-breastfeeding thing doesn't really cross my mind most days (please don't tell me I'm alone here?) and so, today I decided to make a big batch of muesli. Having this around means milk-intake in the mornings so at least one meal a day is healthy!
I thought I'd include my recipe in case you don't have one. It's quite a fun thing to make, and fills the house with a comforting smell...

Quiet Cricket Muesli

 

Really it's just a set of rough amounts of ingredients, and you can totally change it to your taste... such as more/different nuts, dried fruit and grains...

1.5 kgs rolled oats
4 cups coconut
1 cup wheatgerm
1 cup chopped peanuts
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1 cup sunflower seeds
2 cups bran flakes
(if you have wee ones, adding 5 or 6 crushed Weetbix along with these ingredients makes the cereal go all sort of mushy when the milk is added, and in my experience, they really like that!)
3/4 cup honey
1/2 cup vegetable or grapeseed oil
2 cups sultanas, chopped
1 cup chopped, dried apricots
1 cup yoghurt-covered raisins

Spread the oats, coconut, grains and nuts into two large roasting pans and roast at 100 degrees C, stirring often, for about 1/2 an hour or until brown and toasted.
Turn off the oven.
Combine honey and oil in a small saucepan and heat gently until both liquid and runny.
Divide evenly between the two pans and stir each mixture well until all the grains are covered in the honey mixture.
Put back in the warm oven for half an hour or so, until the oven has cooled.
Add the chopped dried fruit then the yoghurt raisins when it is completely cold. Store in an airtight jar.

 

 

Last night I watched A State of Mind on dvd.

Good things about my weekend:

1. the smell of cut grass through our house when we get home from a night staying

2. here:





3. recommending a book to someone that they end up loving


and most importantly,

4. Not living in Iraq

Arlo loves to make cupcakes.

I finished them while he had his afternoon sleep.

I've been having a fair bit of trouble trying to access my blog this week, hence the lack of postings. And there's been so much to write about! My good friend Arti came to stay from Wellington while she was on a business trip here. I hadn't seen her in nearly three years, because she's been living in Japan and teaching English there.
It's so good to have her back in the country! Arlo made instant friends with her. Mostly because she agreed to read him excessive amounts of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' stories. (Tom and I find these books slightly tiresome, but it could be because we've read so many of them...) Here they are reading our latest op-shop find: an old Gwenda Turner farm animals book.

Arti's stay coincided with our regular Tuesday sewing circle- about which I've not written before. About seven of us meet here to sew, knit, make jewellery and crochet- keeping our fingers busy until late into the night, but don't underestimate the quantity of talking and eating that goes on also! Last Tuesday Lisa brought me a fantastic present. Can you guess what it was from this close-up?

No, it's not a lie detector! It's a Brother knitting machine, vintage 1970s I think... watch out friends and family, knitted items are coming your way this Christmas!
(If I can work out the first thing about how to cast on! Sorry that I'm such a s-l-o-w learner Lisa!)

Yesterday we took a picnic lunch to the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival held at Nelson's Miyazu Japanese Gardens.

I watched a calligraphy demonstration by a woman named Akiko, a master calligrapher who has been teaching her art at a university in Prague. I had met her previously at a party at Tom's parents' place- Akiko now lives down the road from them- she is a sweet and modest woman- but very capable and completed her presentation in style. She used a brush as long as her arm and thick enough to soak up a big bowl of ink in one dip. I would love to learn more about this craft!
There were lots of other activities going on too, Arlo's favourite being a fishing game for children. He won a little boat as a prize even though he didn't catch any fish. He screamed when it was time to leave, and talked about fishing non-stop for the rest of the day. Ahh, two-year-olds.