Dublin Doors

I'm going overseas next week. For work. I've never done that before. It's pretty exciting but also sad because being apart from Husbando sucks. Being apart from husbando when he has an important birthday sucks even more. Being paid to be in Dublin for a week will still be pretty good though... so my question is... do I have any Irish readers or peeps who are down with the diddle in Dublin?

{Image}

Weekend...

On the weekend, in between work, we squeezed in time to build a tent out of bedding in our room and watch Some Like It hot, whilst eating frozen yogurt (to keep cool from all that Marilyn action). Needless to say it was great...

{Making a gif}

Is that...

Yes Jasmine! Everyone is talking about the jasmine. And how the wind doesn't make your ears go blue and that smell. That Sydney, Spring smell... where even in my hood there is just a hint of the sea on the air. Heaven!

Without further ado dreamy spring outfits collected from Pinterest: 

Flea market finds

I forgot to mention this sweet little guy I found at an oppie a while back. I love pink and black as a colour combination and I have a small growing collection of milk jugs now.


More flea market finds over here.


Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Things to be thankful for*

* The feeling of being hairdresser fresh.
* Holidays to look forward to.
* The view from the Opera House green room (nernerner)
* The wealth of inspirational writers in the world
* Art gallery's
* That husband suggests buying ice cream and eating it in bed whilst watching a movie for Friday night fun (heck yes!)
* The anticipation that my sunflower is keeping me in before it bursts open (any day now...)
* Beautiful architecture.
* The smell of curry.

More thankfulness over at maxabella...

Link Love for Friday...

* Have I told you to check out Tim Coulson yet?
* iPhone app giving elocution lessons!
* I love black.
* Related people look similar!
* Sleeping on the moon.
* Where's Wall-E?

{images}

My creative space...

 

A bit of sewing! I got all inspired by blogs, tea and me and decided to make a cloud mobile for friends who have just had a baby. I take no credit for the idea of a sweet, colourful, cloud mobile. Official, buy-able ones can be seen here, here, here... Much like the keep calm posters it seems to have become a 'thing' and so whoever first had the idea is now no longer known... sorry person.

However I quite like my result. It's made from felt and a bit of stuffing. I just drew the pattern on a piece of paper and cut two of each out.

Oh and finished off with my VERY home made looking embroidery! Ha! I can't embroider at all, but I think it looks sort of errr rustic! Yes?!

More creative spaces here...

Olive

So a while back we went olive picking, several months later after sitting in salty water for months on end, we now have an edible product. Yum. But after filling up what feels like a trillion jars with olives we still had left overs. We almost consigned them to the compost and worms, but husbando checked in with Stephanie before he did the deed and bingo! Olive paste! Genius! So the following is based on Stephanie Alexander's recipe but adapted because we didn't like the flavour that resulted. We also made 2 batches, one was very smooth and more like a paste or 'tapenade" The other we made more chunky to be used as a dip.

Olive Dip

You need
* 2 cups of fat black olives, de-pitted and roughly chopped
* Handful of parsely, roughly chopped,
* 1 sprig of rosemary, off the stem and roughly chopped
* 1 large clove of garlic, you guessed it, roughly chopped
* 1/3 cup of olive oil
* 1/4 teaspoon of salt and
* 1/4 teaspoon of pepper

Then
For a paste, chuck everything in a food processor and blitz it. Taste it and see if you think its lacking anything and adjust accordingly.
Or for a more chunky dip, put everything except the olives in the food processor and blitz. Once everything is finely chopped up and combined, add in the olives and give them a tiny blitz then a slow pulse for a second or two to combine properly.
Put your result in sterile glass jars, make them sweet labels and give them away as gifts, or y'know put it in a bowl, grab some crackers and cheese and get dipping!

We turned our paste into pizza topping, we just spread it with a squirt of tomato paste over the pizza base, added toppings et voila, delish!

Monday, Monday...

What a blissful weekend. Rather what a blissful Sunday (Saturday was rainy and a bad mental health day for me). I had my boys attention all to myself. No running off to collect people's census forms (for goodness sakes people do your flippin census form otherwise some underpaid worker has to come to your house 5 times before they can FINE you. Yes it's a fine-able offence.) No running off to work. Sunshine. We slept in, tinkered with our bicycles together, got the red lady braking properly, jarred olives, had lunch with a friend, went on a walk and I found an awesome poster, went to the pub for a sneaky brew, made olive paste* with the left overs, the boy made olive bread and we made really really flippin awesome pizza, watched grand designs, read our books in bed, had sex**, and slept. So. So. Good.

And now. Monday morning. We were greeted not only by the (NOT) dulcet tones of 'Triple M' blasting from a  boom box but moments later a chain saw. Outside our bedroom window. Ahhh the city. Some days you make it hard for me to imagine leaving you, sometimes, you make it real real easy.

* Recipe to come.

** Yes I did just go there. But in very small writing...

{pictures of olive bread and the awesome poster - yes it is in the bathroom over the loo. You're welcome.}

Things to be thankful for*

 * Sunshine
* Friends that stop by because they were in the neighbourhood
* Having nothing to do.
* Blog comments (you guys make my day!)
* Babies! (and lovely people having them!)
* No  commuting this coming week!
* Records only cost a dollar but have a full album on them.
* Op shops. (thrift stores)
* There are enough people buying new cars for there to be loads of second hand cars for sale.

{Just some pics from around the garden}


More thankfulness at Maxabella...

Link Love for Friday...

 * Freak out!
* Everyone loves stripes.
* Cutest hankies you ever did see.
* Inside fruit!
* This is happening, get excited!
* Incredible contrasts, where children sleep.

{ Images are some favourites from pintrest this week. 1, 2&4, 3}

My creative space...

Does doing two loads of washing count?
No?

Okay well I made a cake yesterday. That's gotta count right?

Considering I slept on a train last night and was woken at sparrows fart by the lights being turned on and the announcement we were almost at  Campbelltown (hoo-flippin-ray - No offence Cambelltownians, but that's still a long way from Sydney) I feel I've been pretty peppy and productive today.
Emails done, invoice sent, banking done, bedroom cleaned and tidied (vacuum-ing - now there's a novel idea!), lunch with hubby, washing up, bike cleaned...
So much so that I reckon at the ripe time of 3pm I'm going to throw in the towel for the day, snuggle up in bed with my book, some music playing and this wet, grey Sydney day firmly in it's place outside my window.

{Pictures of sweet mini urchins found on the beach.}

yellow & blue

Sometimes colour just pops out at you. I noticed our coffee cups sitting next to the duck egg blue plates and then I just saw that colour combo everywhere!

Wonders of the universe

 Have you seen it? It's pretty marvellous. But how do you feel about the presenter Brian Cox. Yes he once played keyboard in D.Ream. (things can only get better... know what I'm sayin?) And now he seems to know an awful lot about physics. He's so earnest.. I find, just a bit too earnest. He is also extraordinarily youthful looking for a 42 year old. He's soft lilting Manchurian accent is sweet but still, he kinda bugs me... husbando on the other hand has a huge man crush on him! What do you think?
Oh and if it's got spoofs being made of it, you know it's gotta be good!

Flea market finds

Look at this little darling. Found at the Berry Tip shop (on the south coast weekend that I keep banging on about!) I just can't resist baby blue household appliances! Note the fan in the background, oh and we have a baby blue toaster and kettle too...

More flea market finds over here...

Things to be thankful for*

* Spring sunshine

* Civil order

* Extra work

* Free weekends

* The smell of wattle blossoms

* The joy of nice undies

* Massel vege stock

* The snack that they give you on Regional express flights

* The full moon

* Hugs from my hubby

Please note: this post is not sponsored by Massel vegetable stock. If they do want to sponsor me though…

More thankfulness over at Maxabella…

{Images from our south coast weekend}

Link Love for Friday...

* The new Gypsies., and their transport.
* Sweet idea.
* Cute way to id your suitcase.
* Genius census tweet.
* Great vego food reviews for Sydney!
* Now that's community spirit.
* Street art on a whole other level.
* What is NYC listening to?
* A great ad for STA travel (featuring a uni mate of mine!)

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

{Images by Iain Mckell}