June

Wow, June. How did we get here? Time is flying by and I honestly don't know where it went!

We have been busy getting ready for the arrival of baby and have now chosen most of the big items we want (cot, buggy, carseat etc) and either have them here or they are on order (fingers crossed they arrive before baby does!). We've also been attending antenatal classes and only have 2 left to go. We've already done the tour of the hospital and have a box of nappies ready to go so we are almost prepared!

I've found I've really had to slow down lately and am often tucked up in bed at 9 or 9.30pm most nights (what a nana!). Undisturbed nights are well and truly in the past and I'm often awake a few times in the night trying to get comfy. I'm trying to see the good side of this - it's getting me ready for being up and down in the night with baby!

I'm also feeling a little less creative and full of ideas lately. I think my brain is busy focusing on baby related things and everything else has gone out the window.

I've been notoriously bad at taking photos and without photos I don't have much fodder for blog posts. I've had a look at what's on the camera today and then headed out into the garden in the rain to get some photos to share so I could finally update the blog. All flowers today - some brightness and prettiness to take away the winter blues.

It's been quite cold here some days and the fire is on most nights these days. I've taken to lighting candles and putting the fairy lights on to make the most of the darker nights with some twinkles!

I still struggle with the turnabout of the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere and it's weird to think Graeme will be celebrating his birthday next weekend in winter. I still have to buy his presents and am currently deciding whether or not to bake him a birthday cake, birthday muffins or birthday cupcakes...in fact I might go and have a peek through my reciep books just now to get some ideas.

And I'll promise to try and leave less time between posts next time :-)

Autumn skies

I've been snapping away photos of Autumn colours as I've seen them the last couple of weeks. Capturing the leaves on the trees changing colour. I love autmnal colours. I'm sure it comes with being an Autumn baby. I hope to share some of the pictures once I've got a few more.
Tonight though it was the sky that caught my eye. What beautiful colours and looking very much like autumnal colours. Enjoy :-)

The Coromandel (our honeymoon)

We had always planned to have a honeymoon once all our guests went home. It seemed silly to ride off into the sunset while they were all still here so we spent as much time with them as we could while they were here and planned for a honeymoon a little further down the track.
There were many ideas flung around for where we could go for our honeymoon but in the end we decided to stay here in New Zealand and have a new adventure in a part we'd never been to before.

So we packed up our car and headed to the Coromandel Peninsula. It's a long drive so we stopped overnight in Taupo on the way. We went the week leading up to Easter which turned out to be a genius idea because the roads weren't yet full of Easter holiday traffic.

We stayed 3 nights at the Crows Nests Apartments in Whitianga. It was beautiful. The start of Autumn so not particularly warm and in fact it rained a bit - but it was still lovely. We strolled around the town, took the wee ferry to the 'other side' and explored over there and drove a bit further afield to see what was nearby.
We particularly enjoyed Hot Water Beach It was a little like Disneyland in that it was full of tourists. There's hot water springs under the beach so at low tide the place is swarming with people with spades of all shapes and sizes, digging holes, looking for the hot water. On this particular day it was raining quite heavily so everyone had waterproofs and jumpers on over their swimmies. As soon as warm water was struck - off came all the outerwear and everyone swarmed into the hot water pool. Very strange but lots of fun!
We also attempted the walk to Cathedral Cove but some parts of the path were slippy and steep and given I was 21 weeks pregnant at the time we decided not to take any chances once I'd lost my footing once!

All in all, a lovely, relaxing time away. Unfortunately it seems a long time ago now (isn't it always the way just a couple of weeks after you return from holiday!) but will be a lovely time to remember in years to come.

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

One of my favourite muffin flavours is raspberry and white chocolate muffins but I've only ever bought them from cafes. After eating a particularly nice one whilst on holiday (more on that later!) I declared to Graeme that I would attempt baking my own version. Graeme found me a recipe online which I adapted slightly out of sheer laziness and for quicker mixing times!




Here goes....

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups self raising flour
• 100g butter
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg (lightly beaten)
• 1 cup raspberries (frozen or fresh)
• 1/2 cup white chocolate bits
• Icing sugar (for dusting)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190degrees (I have a fan oven so set it at approx. 170degrees)
2. Lightly grease muffin tins (I use silicon trays so spray them lightly with spray oil)
3. Add the flour and sugar to the bowl and mix
4. Melt the butter in the micowave (for approx. 40 seconds if the butter is chopped) and pour into the dry mix
5. Add the milk, the egg, raspberries (straight out the freezer) and white chocolate bits
6. Give it all a stir until mixture is just moistened (don't mix until completely smooth)
7. Spoon into muffin cups
8. Bake for 20 mins (I checked them after 15 and they definitely needed the extra 5)
9. Stand for 5 minutes and then turn onto a wire rack to cool
10. Dust with icing sugar
11. Eat and enjoy :-)

The original recipe suggested rubbing in the butter to the flour but that seemed like too much effort to me and they came out fine with melted butter instead.

They are truly delicious and were particularly tasty warm.

This recipe makes 12 (large-ish) muffins.

Crochet

I'm wondering if this post falls under the "NZ adventure" theme of this blog but hey I'm excited about it!

Ever since finding the Attic24 blog I've been wanting to have a go at crochet. Which is how I ended up adding 'Crochet Something' to my http://kandgnzadventure.blogspot.com/2009/11/28-things-aged-28.html.

My friend Laura was a crocheter and showed me the basic stitches last winter but after September last year things got very busy and my new-and-still-shiny crochet hook was cast aside.

Now, unfortunately for me (but fortunately for South Africa where she is volunteering as a teacher) Laura doesn't live round the corner any more to mentor me in my new crochet hobby.

The great thing is though that there's heaps of inspiration and help on the internet. Along with the Attic24 blog there is another blog I've found very useful now I've decided to pick up my hook again. The blog is Little Tin Bird and Heather who writes the blog recently posted a pattern for granny squares. At the weekend I had my first try at granny squares using Heather's pattern. Here's my first attempt...

And of course - once I got started I had to try a couple more....

Aren't they gorgeous! They are made with cheap wool I'd bought ages ago to practice with so I doubt they will amount to anything other than being my first attempts!

The plan from here though is to buy some lovely soft colourful wool and make lots of granny sqaures and turn them into a baby blanket! We'll see if I get that far before August but I figure it's a good hobby for sitting down and making myself rest when everyone starts telling me too. If I make any progress I will keep you posted!

Favourite Things

Well I did kinda manage more than one post in a week given my last post was Monday and today is Saturday. I'd hoped to post earlier but it's been a bit of a rough couple of days.

My allergies have free rein because I'm not taking any medication due to being pregnant and they are slowly getting worse and worse.

On Thursday night I think I managed 2 hours sleep and spent quite a few hours worrying about how difficult it was to breath and trying not to wake Graeme with all the sneezing and coughing. We went to the pharmacy on Friday first thing to see if they had any suggestions and I was sent straight to the doctor.

It turns out I have developed asthma - probably as a result of being all blocked up from the allergies.

I found this quite alarming but after speaking with the nurse and a colleague it turns out it can be quite common and normally only lasts the length of the pregnancy. Weird huh?

So now I have an inhaler which I am to take every 4 hours when I'm awake.

And I'm still sneezing and coughing with annoying regularity.

So to stop myself feeling too sorry for myself I want to focus on some happy, cheerful things. The camera has been quite neglected over the last few months but this week I've been taking a few snaps here and there and thought I'd share some of my current favourite things...

1) homemade nachos...tortilla chips with salsa and cheese (melted) and then a big dollop of sour cream on the top. I have a feeling baby will come out with a taste for nachos after the amount of these that I have been eating lately. And it's a very quick and easy to prepare meal too!

2) non-alcoholic Malibu flavoured chocolate (which my wonderful husband spotted in the supermarket)...lovely for a nibble every now and again. I also picked up Baileys flavour but haven't tried that yet.

3) this carrot cake recipe which I printed ages ago and got around to trying last weekend. No yucky sultanas or cream cheese topping in site. It wasn't as carroty as I would have liked but I put this down to me using very small carrots. Will try chunkier ones next time.

4) which leads on nicely to my favourite blog (where the above recipe came from) - lots of colour and inspiration and cheerfulness. It's made me want to have fresh flowers in the house all the time and try my hand at crochet!

5) beach-hut napkins, half price and I used a wedding gift vouchers (we bought other kitchen-ey stuff too but these are my favourites). I love beach huts and beachey scenes and may try my hand at getting this image onto a canvas

So there you have it - a few things to make me smile. I must remember to keep the camera handy and keep snapping as part of my 28 things list is to capture the seasons and document and summer is almost at an end.

Garden Helper

I've not been much help at all in the garden lately. It's too hot, I get sleepy really quickly and I can't lift anything heavy!


But the good news is that G has another helper whose always keen to assist in anyway he can...

There's also a video but I can't for the life of me get the embed code to copy across properly. Here's the link if you want to have a look... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL9FL-0jCaY

So as Graeme trims the branches from the trees, Rhett pulls them across the lawn and shakes them (I think it might be to make sure they are dead?!) and then the branches are pulled to bits until he finds a nice chewy bit to sit and chew...for hours.

It sure helps us fit the debris in the green waste wheelie bin but makes a mess of the lawn!

I think he might be a bigger help than I've ever been!

I might be trying something new this week - more regular posts - I have a recipe to share and some general chit-chat so I'll try and post at least once more this week.

News

I'm not sure this will be new news to anyone as the phone lines, skype sessions, facebook status' and tweets have been a buzz this last week or so....
But it is, after all, the next stage of our NZ adventure so I will share it here.
Bubs is due on 9th August. We had a scan at the start of this month and all seems well.
Other than extreme tiredness, unpleasant nausea and a ridiculously sensitive nose I've been keeping pretty well.
We are very excited and of course, a wee bit apprehensive about what changes this will bring...but we can't wait to meet Bubs :-)