Goodbye week... I won't miss you much...

Friday and time for another door, blue this time. Apparently blue is back - all because a girl called Kate wore a blue dress to match her sparkling new sapphire ring. She did wear it well and I think this front door does too. 

I'm becoming a blog bore... sorry.  There's been little time for much fun lately and a streaming cold taking up what little head space I have left. 

There's always next week. Tea and tissues anyone?

Day tripping...

This is not really a day trip, more like a quick trip to the park but heavens what a park. When I first walked up to the top of Mt Eden in Auckland my jaw dropped... that green, green grass and that incredible crater.  I finally took the boys (and my camera) back last week - a fabulous view... 

Mt Eden last erupted about 15,000 years ago. There are quite a few smaller craters dotter around the cone but this is the biggest at 50 metres deep. There are 49 volcanoes in Auckland's volcanic field and we might get another one apparently. There's a 5% chance of a new eruption in the next 50 years. I've done my research though and experts will give at least a few days warning and we'll all probably sit in traffic for three days trying to leave the city. Better that than what the poor sods in Christchurch are going through. 

All those volcanoes do make for fabulous green space in the city. Mt Eden is a great spot to run, walk or take the kids to play. Mine love to stand as close as they can to the edge of the crater.

We have to make the most of playing in long grass - I won't be so relaxed about that in Australia. Mud I don't mind so much.

A kitchen essential?

A crusty old microwave is not a thing of beauty.

I got so sick of looking at mine on my kitchen bench that I left if out on hard rubbish day a couple of months ago.  The people who'd owned our place didn't have a microwave and I'd never got round to installing ours in a cupboard.  At first I thought they were mad not to have one but I started to think I might not need one either.

Two months after throwing it out I'm convinced I don't.

I bought mine six and a half years ago when my first son was born. Contrary to all good advice I used it to heat his bottles. I know, bad mother.  I also used it to reheat all those frozen puree bits and pieces that were such a feature of his life in the early days.

In the last year or so I realised I was really only ever using it to melt butter or chocolate for brownies. Cooking vegetables in it could take much longer than simply steaming in a small pan with a dash of water.

So now it's just me and the stove top and we're getting on famously. My new best friends are my three small saucepans. You can reheat almost anything with a splash of water.  Forgetting to defrost the chicken or mince for dinner is not a disaster. A couple of ziplock bags and a sink of warm to hot water, some patience and you can fix it.

The only disaster is a rushed school morning and frozen bread you can't prise apart for sandwiches. I don't think a good soak in warm water works.

I got rid of the microwave on hard rubbish day. We live in a pretty nice area so it's the sort of event that draws a crowd.   The morning I left the microwave out  I put it down on the verge and then dashed back inside to grab my camera.

As I emerged from our gate a van with two very large men crammed in the front screeched to a stop. The passenger jumped out and looked a little sheepish when he saw me but who felt the bigger fool?

I had to ask him to wait while I took a photo. He's probably still wondering now what on earth I was up to.  Mad people, bloggers.

Busy, busy...

It's said a picture is worth thousand words so this will have to do today. This pretty much sums up the last week or so. We've had a painter in to touch up the house and it's looking tidy and terrific. So terrific I absolutely do not want to sell it. So tidy that I may keel over before the week ends. Blogging is taking a back seat along with exercise, a social life and my sanity. Ah well, who said moving was easy?

Shopping, cooking and a little light reading...

Shopping, cooking and a little light reading? I wish.

Instead we're prepping for a move, polishing up the house for a sale and researching where we might settle in the next city. Not much time for more pleasant things.  

There is, of course, always time to get distracted. 

These lovely books were released last month in the UK. Penguin's Great Food Series -  in their words twenty volumes with excerpts from the finest food writing in the past 400 years.  Sounds promising. Here's a little more about them from a Penguin publicist who's been cooking her way through the books and blogging about it. 

Paid to cook and blog? Just add sleep and it's my ideal job.

The series has been released in Australia and hopefully that means New Zealand too. I want to go and flick through the books and decide which I want. At first glance Elizabeth David, Mrs Beeton and perhaps Alexandre Dumas?

The stunning covers (by Penguin's chief designer Coralie Bickford-Smith) are reason enough to want them all but you know what they say about books and covers. If you do buy all twenty they look like this on your bookshelf. 

I'm really rather against colour coding books (akin to ironing underwear) but a rainbow would work. Just this once.

For Granny...

This flower is for my grandmother who died this week... she was ninety-four.

I have just snippets of memories of her as we lived thousands of miles apart for most of my life. I remember her shoes getting stolen on Bondi beach when I was a little girl and she was on holiday. I remember looking out for the neighbourhood cats as she was terrified of them. I remember all the lovely gifts she'd send from Joburg when she worked in a jeweller's shop. I remember her rosary beads and the bathroom hidden behind the wardrobe doors in her home. I remember the swing in her garden and I remember all the phone calls when she would talk and talk and I would struggle to get a word in.

I thought she loved yellow but Mum says actually it was blue she loved the most but she did love her little yellow car... that must be what I was remembering.  The flower is for you Granny and your two daughters who miss you so much.

The Notebook...

Time to buy The Notebook.

It is the key accessory for any move we've ever made and I'm an old fashioned girl so it's going to be a non-digital, no iGadget sort move again.

The Notebook becomes my go-to-spot for any list, phone number, email address, website, school info, house appointment, rental requirement, packers list that we have. It is my bible for the three months it generally takes to shift a family a couple of hundred (or thousand) kilometres.

At the climax of the move - when stress levels are peaking - and everything is boxed and in a container I move onto a flip folder full of paper - final bills, health documents, passport copies and bank statements. All the stuff we're going to need urgently in the new place.

I found this one here - bright is better because of course usually The Notebook goes missing right about the same time as the truck pulls in to load your gear. Luckily by then all the lists are pretty irrelevant. Mostly....