This is... the contents of my handbag

I keep missing out on my Sunday this is's but I've finally made it into one, even if it is a day late.

So this is the contents of my handbag...
The wallet I bought from Mimco last year to celebrate giving up my job :)
New mobile phone that I just got this weekend and I'm excited about because it has a pretty decent camera in it so now I'll have no excuse for not having things to blog about because I didn't take my big camera along.
Sunglasses, a necessity
Keys
Ipod
Lip gloss
Diary
Little pencil case with a few pens and bits and pieces
Fold up little bag for when you need some extra space
Notebook.. I've got about five different ones that seem to rotate around in my handbag. I need these for my compulsive list making
And finally a few left over butter-menthols from a cold I had a few weeks ago

This was a fun one :) Thanks Sharon.

Monkey Magic

My cousin visited from Townsville this weekend with her husband and new little baby boy, who is just three weeks out. Such a cute little bubba, I've never seen a baby with so much hair before. He has dark brown hair thats about and inch and a half long and stands straight up on its ends, too cute :)

I made him this little fella for a present on Sunday, the pattern is from Softies. I'm pretty happy with him but I think I made his tummy a little too big cause his pants don't fit too well.


Thanks G for the proper windsor knot.. I've never learnt how to tie a tie properly.

A productive long weekend

Generally we go away for Easter, either to a rented house or away camping but always away. This year we didn't quite make it... Easter seemed to be here before we knew it this year and we hadn't made any plans so rather that stress too much about it we decided to hang out at home and get a few jobs done around the place.

Our main job was to fix up this wardrobe that we thought we might be able to use for little bubbles. We are really happy with how it turned out so we think we will be using it. Finished the job with lining the draws and shelves with red spotty paper and a trip to buy a few storage baskets and we're all ready to go.


It's good to have this job done because now we can actually put away some of the piles of baby stuff that I've already bought or been given by my mum and sister. The plan is to have everything washed and organised way before the little bean is due to arrive. This would be lots easier if we had been able to find out if it was a little boy or little girl bubbles but anyway.. I'm having another scan is 5 weeks time so there is still hope yet and I guess it doesn't really matter in the end.


The other job I've had on my list that I have wanted to get started on my first ever patchwork quilt that I want to make for the cot. I've cut out all the pieces for my blocks and sewn together the first one (I need 6) and I'm about half way through the other 5. I need to go buy some more fabric for around the edges and I'm not sure what to go with yet. I did buy some of this online thinking it might go well but when I got it the dots are a real yellowy colour rather than a cream or off-white and it doesn't really go well at all. I'm now thinking maybe a black or grey ticking stripe kind of thing.. but I don't really know. I think a trip to see what I can find at Spotty might be in order.


Other than that we had a pretty uneventful Easter hanging out with family and catching up with friends back visiting from Amsterdam :) The Easter Bunny did visit too so I've eaten way too much chocolate in the last few days.

More food

Years ago mum bought an old dining table from one of her friends and has never gotten around to getting it restored. For her 50^th birthday last year we finally got the table restored for her and ever since we’ve been talking about throwing a dinner party for her and her friends (including the one that she bought the table from years ago). Well we finally got around to having the party. My sister and I did the cooking and serving so mum could relax and enjoy the night. It was nice to be able to cook for a dinner party that I wasn’t actually throwing for once because I could keep on going with the next course while they were eating… it was a lot let stressful this way :)

Mum couldn’t decide what she wanted to serve between a few of the options so we ended up doing both and serving them alternately. We made pizzas for the entrée – potato and pecorino or garlic prawn and salsa verde. For mains it was roast pork fillet stuffed with green apple and marjoram or roasted balsamic chicken with a bunch of different vegetables and finally for desert panna cotta with rose water plums or a new recipe from Jamie Oliver’s cookbook – meringues with vanilla cream, pears, toasted hazelnuts and dark chocolate.

I think it all went pretty well.

And some more food for the café – savoury muffins with cream cheese and chutney; lamb, feta and pine nut filos and pavlova cheesecake with fruit salad.

Extras

We’ve had a few little on the side catering jobs lately through word of mouth and the café. Our latest few have all been for birthday parties – a picnic hamper for a smallish family gathering, some finger foods for a 60^th birthday garden party and some salads for a 40^th birthday lunchtime bbq. It’s been fun doing these little jobs as they give us an opportunity to try out some new things as well as some old favourites. Not sure if we’ll start to advertise that we do this yet or just wait and see how we go with doing it through word of mouth.

Our picnic hampers had to be mainly gluten free so we packed some savoury herb and semi-dried tomato muffins, zucchini slice, and antipasto platter and some friands and jelly cakes for sweets. For our 60^th birthday party we included some pancetta and goats cheese tarts, zucchini frittatas, smoked salmon frittatas and mini cheese and bacon quiches as well as a few different posh little sandwiches.

The fun part is packing it all up nicely and adding a little treat for the birthday girls.

Happenings

I can't quite get my head around how fast things are moving these days. It seems I don't have time to stop or take a photo of anything before we've already moved on, it's been a little bit hectic. And on top of it all I've had a cold that won't go away and it's no fun when you can't take any cold and flu tablets or anything like that to help you get over it.

I've been busy with the cafe and with a few catering jobs we've been getting lately which I have taken a few photos of and will post later on. Where G and I are living while we're waiting for our house to be built had the carpets ripped up and new tiles put down last week so we were back with mum and dad for a little visit. We also had to pick up some baby furniture that our lay-buy had ended on and it turns out we only have a short time before you need to return it so we had to put it all together and make sure everything was ok with it. Needless to say, we've been a little all over the place for awhile but we're getting back into it and back into posting.

We have also been shopping around for a chest of drawers for little bubbles but everything I seem to like costs upwards of $1500 and that is a little out of our price range at the moment so we have been looking for plan b. I remembered that I had this old wardrobe that belonged to my great grandpa sitting in my mum and dad's garage with my old school books and uni notes in. So we decided we might give it a clean up and see how it goes. We're sanding back all the finish on it and then we're just going to go over it with some danish oil so hopefully it will look ok. We've also bought a new very simple dull silver handle for it. It's going ok, we have high hopes for it at the moment.


I think it will also be quite handy. On the inside one side is a couple of shelves and 3 drawers and then one side is for hanging. For the hanging side I think we'll either put a few more shelves in or buy some wire shelves/drawers to get a bit more storage space and only leave enough hanging room for little bubbles size clothes. The aim is to finish this little project over Easter.

Getting in mood for Easter we also made some little cupcakes with easter eggs for the shop. With green icing like they are hiding in a garden, of course :)