Calling time...

Why (oh why) are the phone companies still producing these and dumping them on thousands of doorsteps each year?  At least Auckland's directories are half the size of Sydney's. Should save a few trees.

Unsurprisingly the people who sell the ads in Australia's Yellow Pages insist people still use them. Well honestly, really?

Fine. Keep the yellow ones then but ask before you deliver.

Surely the white pages are of no use to anyone?  As a child I used to take great delight in scanning through the white pages on holiday and finding the handful of residents with my rather unusual surname. But that, as my son would say, was in the Olden Days.

This week's delivery is resting on the sideboard on the way from the front door to the recycling bin. I'm open to any  ideas about what to do with them instead.

Door love...

One of the nice bonuses about going away for a few days is getting back to the blogs I usually read every day and reading four or five posts at once.

It's like saving up your Easter eggs and then eating them when everyone else is done. Of course I was never that kid.

So to end a very short week for me, some Friday front door inspiration. I'm actually not a big cat fan but he or she looks thoroughly happy here and rather adds to the scene. Not that I would recommend getting a cat to enhance your front door mat. That would be wrong.

I could, however, stain my stairs just like that. If we had stairs.

Going places...

Sydney was wonderful. Shopping, wandering, chatting, laughing and lingering. Loved it.

Getting there and back was not so good.

I turned up for my flight on Thursday evening at Auckland airport to be greeted with the words. "Is that the passport you'll be travelling on?" Shiiiiiiit. I had handed over my son's passport. Mine was tucked safely in the draw at home, forty minutes drive away.

I am what I would call an experienced traveller. I travel often, probably too often. In my work days I used to do it with a couple of dozen bits of camera gear. Now as a mother I travel with two hindrances (boys) and more cases than I can carry.  I am also, at times, an idiot.

I spent the next hour perched on my suitcase hoping for sympathy while waiting for my (heroic) husband to zoom home and back. He did it in record time but I was booked on a cheap flight with the Australian budget carrier Jetstar. The girl was nice but not nice enough to let me check in 7 minutes after their check in had closed. Budget airlines you see are rigid about check in times.  It's just that usually they're late. This flight was on time.

Tears.  Husband to the rescue. I bought another flight and got to Sydney only an hour late and $300 poorer. Thank you Dear Husband.

So after a lovely weekend on Sunday night I dropped off my car at the airport and turned up to the Jetstar check-in early to head back to Auckland with the right passport. Drum roll.... FLIGHT CANCELLED.

Oh the irony. The budget airline that would not let me on a plane seven minutes late on Thursday was now telling me they would fly me home a whole 26 hours late.

Aaaaah. I rang Husband who sounded like another 26 hours as a single father might kill him. I raced through the airport to find the free internet, kicked a nine year old off it (nicely) and then raced to buy another new ticket with another airline. I got one of the last ones. I felt like a finalist in the Amazing Race.  I didn't feel so much like a winner.

Four international air tickets later, did I enjoy my weekend? Well, hell yes. But I won't be going again for a while.

Door love...

Friday and a little bit of villa love to end the week. 

A little trendier than last week... I see high heels, gin and tonics and designer furniture behind this door. No doubt dark floors and whiter than white walls.

Love that grey and black with lashings of white. The door knob is pretty 'on trend' too. 

Hell, as if I know... pass the gin will you, it's Friday after all... 

Baby steps...

Childhood is a series of milestones some big some small. Sunday was a big day. Dummy Deal day. 

We struck a deal to chuck the last dummy in the bin and then go and buy a BIG RED TRUCK (shouted excitedly every time it was mentioned). Of course it took a couple of weeks to plant the seed, then a few days to iron out the details of the plan and then jump when the moment seemed right. We've had practice - son number one swapped his dummy for a Tonka truck at the same age.

Step one. Dummy in the bin. 

Step two whizzing straight out the door with the whole family to go shopping for a BIG RED TRUCK. Only there were none... just this BIG RED MODOBIKE which he pounced on in the shop, clutched in the car all the way home, slept with on Sunday night and hasn't really looked at since.

I don't mind at all. $9.99 and another little baby step towards being a Really Big Boy.

Now I am just praying that there isn't a random dummy tucked away in a toybox... or rather praying that I find it first.

Syd-er-ney!

This week will end well.... in Sydney. I am off to my old home city for a weekend of dining, wandering, shopping, sipping and chatting with two of my oldest school friends. One is flying from Tasmania, the other from Queensland and we're meeting in the middle without the seven children we now have between us.  These girls can shop and I suspect I'll be left flailing in their wake... or sneaking off for a swim!

Everyone has their own list when they hit a city like Sydney. Mine is pretty firmly focused on catching up with old Sydney friends and then tripping about my old suburb Paddington and those surrounding it - Surry Hills, Woollahra and a little further away, my favourite Bronte beach.

I'm going to stop at cafes and eat at the Bourke Street Bakery - their savoury rolls are worth crossing continents for... and even their website is worth a look - it's beautiful...

We'll have cocktails and dinner on Saturday night and a quieter catch up on Friday. If I can squeeze it in then the Bondi to Bronte coastal walk or a circuit of Centenniel Park will ease the guilt - actually I don't get food guilt  - but it will clear the mind.

I'm going to shop for shoes and linger in boutiques. I'm going to try things on and get honest opinions from old friends and not miss the little boy pulling Houdini-like moves underfoot in the cubicle.

I'm going to indulge my love of battered/pre-loved/vintage bits at very unthrifted prices. I like my tatt well styled - at least when browsing. Doug up on Bourke is a goldmine of Australiana and other collectable and covetable bits. I have always had a thing for shoe lasts and wooden spools.

Ici et la oozes French vintage style with an industrial edge. They also sell the most wonderful striped fabrics, deckchairs, cushions and stools.  Tres chic.

For old times sake I'd like to pop to Paddington Market on Saturday, we used to have a hot chocolate and play on the playground most weekends - all the shoppers took up all the parking in our street, I don't miss that so much.

I'd hover over Samantha Robinson's stall eyeing off her ceramic loveliness. Now she has her own shop and exports here to NZ.

I have a couple of cups (blue and white of course) but never bought her paper thin ceramic candle holders - I just couldn't imagine them surviving all the moves we do. Perhaps one day...

I also like the look of Bison.

It's a new arrival on Oxford Street - well new to me... just up the hill from Dinosaur Designs and the sushi at Toko, the chocolates at Just William, the window at Collette Dinnigan, the cafe food at Alimentari and the walk down to Five Ways, the houses in Jersey Road and the back streets to Woollahra and genteel Queen Street with its banker wife blondes and dapper gay men in cashmere.

The list my friends goes on and on...

Door love...

Each Friday I thought I might close the door on the week (sorry) with one of the villa doors that has caught my eye in our patch of Auckland. Remember this copper door? And this rather retro number just around the corner?

I love this deep brick red door.  It's not particularly 'on trend' or even freshly painted but it looks warm and welcoming and like a family with a nice life is nestled behind it. 

The wellies seem to be a permanent fixture on these steps.  I now own a pair - and three rain jackets. Auckland is wet and Auckland soccer grounds are wet, muddy and rather miserable places for ballet flats or converse in winter. Soccer training starts next week which must mean our lovely endless summer weather will end soon. Just not this weekend please.