My mum is an avid gardener. I think that not only her thumbs, but all her fingers are green. I never thought i’d inherited that gene from her until hubs and I moved into our home and I saw the potential of our lovely large balcony. While it faces west which, in Australia is not ideal due to the super harsh afternoon sun, I felt compelled to fill this space with green. I vowed that this year, I was going to learn how to garden. So this will be a little series of posts that document my growing balcony garden with triumphs and the (hopefully not too many) failures.
Step 1 was to go to bunnings and buy a bunch of tiny terracotta pots to fill with seedlings of Violas, Lettuce and a large pot for a Mint bush. You might remember my utter joy at planting this mint from my post about mojitos from the end of summer. I also bought a big bag of potting mix, some cute pink gardening gloves and a cheap plastic trowel.
Every month I see Tara from Vegetaraian posting about the things that she has loved. She posts such interesting ideas that it always leaves me thinking about the things that i’ve loved in my kitchen (and life!) and thinking that I should really stop being so selfish and share them all with you!
So, this month i’m loving
#1 The cutest sieve ever.
Hubs and I bought this sweet little colander from Villeroy and Boch at Peters of Kensington when we first moved into our apartment in February. This one is a little bit late but I love it every damn month and use it all the time. Particularly now that its winter and we are steaming and boiling all the veggies for dinner. Not to mention all the pasta we make that needs to be drained in this little baby. I thought it would be super exxy because of the label but it was only $24 and then it was on sale further! Run, don’t walk people.
P.S. I know that my hand looks like it belongs to a child. Oh well.
Up until recently I didn’t really care that there were other types of flour other than the normal plain and self raising. Then I read this post by Heidi from Apples Under My Bed and, suddenly, it was something I HAD to try. So I played around with the recipe a little and came up with this Spelt Quince Cake which is perfect to warm your belly from the winter chill. This flour does something special to make a springy crumb and adds a lovely nutty flavour to the cake. Ive been using it in everything now to just see what magic it can impart on all my usual recipes. I’ll keep you posted!
#3 Freezer Meals: Nana’s Lasagna
Between work and uni and life in general, hubs and I really struggle sometimes with finding nutritious meals that don’t take too much time to cook and don’t sacrifice flavour for speed. Luckily my fabulous mother in law and hubs’s nana keep stocking our freezer with delicious pasta bakes and lasagnas! Hooray! We just pop them in the oven for half an hour and its all easy peasy. Thank god. These dinners have been a real life saver and i’m certain that they taste so good because they’re made with so much love. And cheese.
#4 Pecans
These little beauties came fresh from the farm. There is a post coming about the lovely day that I spent with hubs and his family picking pecans and eating damper. They are a real pain in the butt to shell but the taste is so much better than the ones that you buy in a packet from the supermarket. Now all I need to do is figure out how I can shell them without tearing all my fingernails off in the process because they’re so damn tasty and so damn nice in everything i’ve baked with them so far. Again, stay tuned!
So my lovely readers, you know the part where I got married last year? That thing that is incredible but also super expensive? Then I moved out of Casa KB that I shared with my lovely friend B and into the new Casa Salerno with hubs. The moving part was also kinda expensive. And then we realised that other than a bed and a fully stocked kitchen… we really had no furniture. And our apartment has almost no built in storage. Oops… all that meant a diminishing bank balance and spending lots of…
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
So we were trying super hard to furnish our place to make it comfortable and cosy for as little as possible. I’ll share some other decorating decisions with you all later but today I want to show off our sweet pantry that hubs scored from Gumtree for $80!
And in other news, this week saw the craziest storm I think i’ve ever seen in my life. They forecast snow. In Sydney. It was a Stormageddon. When I was on playground duty I legit thought the metal roofing was going to pop off the building I was patrolling. Thankfully, we survived relatively unscathed. Nevertheless, I feel that todays favourite needs to be something a little bit frivolous to lighten the mood and soften the blow of the fact that there are still eight weeks of term before the next holidays. So, I thought i’d share the newest addition to my headband collection.
but first, can we please talk about how cute this hat is?
Pink and warm and just the cutest freaking cloche hat ive ever seen.
But its a hundred bucks and therefore over budget.
still… maybe it will go on sale?
But this is what I ended up purchasing from Alannah Hill for $20
Too cute right?
I wore it to dinner that night and got asked for ID. I’m taking that as a compliment!
This was the outfit plus headband that got me carded.
Clearly too cute for an adult!
So what are you loving this Friday my lovelies? Are you a headband fan? Got any recommendations for me? Please share!
