Books for new babies...

Our friends are having babies... lots of them, pink ones and blue ones. Most are on to their second or third child and I think their houses are already full to the brim with cute baby stuff.. clothes they grow out of in a month, a gazillion soft toys or those infernal bits of battery powered plastic that still litter my place.

I now mostly buy books as gifts and I don't necessarily buy those designed for babies to chew the edges.  It's lovely to have a shelf of books for a child to grow into.

This is a favourite.

Written by Ursula Dubosarsky, The Terrible Plop is about a rabbit who discovers that not everything is as frightening as you first think... it all starts with an apple.

It's wittily told and beautifully illustrated in a rather retro way by Andrew Joyner.  He has very kindly  given this little tutorial on his blog on how to draw your own bear. I am going to try it but I won't share the result. Too scarred by school art classes.

Another favourite? This...

It's a simple little story about friendship.

An Australian author, Aaron Blabey's has written other books about other kids, the charming Sunday Chutney and his latest, Stanley Paste. Here he introduces you to Stanley.

If he looks familiar to Australians (Aaron, not Stanley) it's because he's been on the telly a fair bit in his other life as an actor and won an AFI. (Australian Film Award to the non-Australians...)

According to his publishers, Aaron likes 'old armchairs, lovely sharp pencils, the way trees look when their leaves fall off, mayonnaise, his unfashionable record collection and looking scruffy'.  No wonder I like his books...

(Both books published by Penguin. Images from here and here.)

Villa love...

We took the boys for a walk over the weekend down to the small beaches that line the harbour front in Auckland's Herne Bay. While they were running and bouncing along with Daddy I was house shopping. Just browsing of course.... Herne Bay is rather nice but pretty pricey.

I've shown you the villas in My Villa Life before and thought you'd like to see more. You'd have to agree the details are to die for. And how do you like this colour for a front door? I would have skipped past it in a colour chart but it looked divine with the magnolia blossoming in the garden.

Once I'd started spotting doors, I found more and more I rather liked...  

I'll go for a walk again sometime soon and show you more.

A weekend walk...

The road to nowhere...

Thank you for your kind wishes over my very womanly battle with man-flu. I am now chock full of antibiotics and am back on the bike.

Not le Tour de France, le Tour de Legs.   I'm talking about spin class and I'm strangely obsessed.

It's totally ridiculous of course and made all the more ridiculous by all the wonderful images flashing past me on our television as my sport mad husband keeps up with the Tour antics.

I like the Tour - I like it for the scenery, the villages, the mountains, the drug scene, the days when a dog dashes out in front of the peleton and they all go down like nine-pins. I like it for the sheer grit and guts it  must take to do it. I liked Lance Armstrong's first book, I like the cyclists and their crazily defined legs and groovy gear. I like Paris on the final day.

But all that has nothing much to do with my new thing. You see in spin class you ride in a sweaty peloton but you're going nowhere. Fifty odd people pedalling their hearts out, sweating up imaginary mountains and not moving an inch.

In 500 years time when they're carefully excavating the ruins of Auckland (a la Pompeii when one of the city's volcanoes finally blows its top) they'll laugh their space-helmeted heads off at the sight of all the dinky bikes in a row with no wheels.

But ridiculous or not, I am into it.

I am not a gym-going kind of girl. I've flirted with it in the past - aerobics classes at uni  and a couple of years membership of a flash London gym where it was warm and almost felt sunny with nice reception staff who gave you a fresh white towel when you arrived.

This gym is a gym-goers sort of gym. Nice people, rubbish showers, sweaty rooms, packed studios and me. Sweaty, slightly trimmer and grinning like an idiot.

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(First three images from here)

Stow it...

It's an endless search... finding the right bag, basket, bench, bucket for all the things you want stashed neatly away. You might have gathered that I am not naturally tidy but I do rather like a tidy home.

We have cleaning frenzies which are actually really just races to tidy the house - mostly in the evening when I have had ENOUGH of tripping over lego, cars, puzzles and race tracks. Or sometimes about fifteen minutes before guests arrive - yes I'm trying but Flylady's CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) still rules some days. My sink is clear though.

Of course  most of our guests have children so an even bigger frenzy is required when they leave. Then I use the I MEAN BUSINESS kind of tone and my five year old jumps to it.

But he has to have a place to jump to... and we're getting there. We have a drawer for paper and sticker books, a lidded box for the growing collection of big boy lego, a car basket, lots of snap lock boxes for small things and I've just bought a couple of these.

Not the kid, the bucket. They hold the lego and the Thomas train set... but they're also good for lots of other things. Tubtrugs are cheap, strong, green (100% recycled plastic) and come in all colours. We are right into red.

I also bought these at Ikea on my last trip to Melbourne... and lots of other equally useful stuff of course!

I didn't quite see they'd be used like this...

But apparently a sword (or plastic Star Wars light saber) and one of these and you are quite the Knight in Shining Armour. Might give one to my husband...

Monday-itis

It's Monday and I have man flu. You know the sort of illness I mean. Normally it afflicts the weaker sex (men) and is a mild, sniffly, coughy, chesty thing that leaves the sufferer with a total inability to do anything but groan a lot and haul themselves around like a ten ton lumpy sack of potatoes hoping for sympathy...

Being a woman I have been soldiering on and ignoring it for three weeks and it does not seem to be working. So today I may give in and see a doctor. I may lie around a little and make myself some soothing sort of lemon drink. I will ignore the washing and wait for ants to clean up the leftovers my kids have flung down around the dining table.

Tonight the latest series of Masterchef Australia finally starts on New Zealand television. Perfect fuel for man flu. We can all watch that instead of actually cooking...

By the way the image is from this lovely UK shop. Even better than a lemon drink.

And yes I don't dish out much sympathy. There has to be blood and lots of it before I'm really interested. It's genetic.

Day tripping...

I couldn't end the week without sharing a few more pictures of our weekend away on the coast north of Auckland. It has been a gloriously sunny July week for the school holidays. We have been too, too lucky.

We went to Pakiri Beach at sunset. The drive down through a steep, wooded and oh-so-green valley was breathtaking.

 At the bottom is a white, white beach with that sand that's so fine and clean it squeaks when you walk.  We're going back earlier in the day next time  - and with our swimming gear when it warms up.  

The sharp eyed among you may have noticed I have been playing with my blog layout. When I started this blog I did a bit of a DIY job and thought I'd fix it rather sooner than I have. Now I have a professional on the case - my much more talented brother who is a graphic designer and has a far more hip and funky approach than moi. Stay tuned. And let me know what you think!