It seems to have been a long time in the making but it certainly wasn’t started early enough. A few weeks ago I showed you a porcelain bowl filled with dried fruits and nuts soaking in brandy. And soak they did. For weeks. It just seemed to take an inexcusable amount of time to progress […]
Mum’s Christmas Shortbread and The Pageant
December 3, 2012 By 55 Comments
It’s not really a ‘pageant’. That would be an exaggeration. It’s called a ‘Christmas Concert’ but it’s really a lot less than that as well. That’s if last year’s concert is anything to go by. It’s the Christmas concert that Alfie’s school puts on but there’s so many students they can’t squeeze into the school’s […]
Dealing with PR Companies
November 25, 2012 By 65 Comments
Being a blogger involves so many things I never thought about before that first post went to air and one of the things is dealing with PR companies. As my blog is only around 18 months old I do not have a wealth of experience when it comes to PR companies but I can say […]
The Vascular Surgeon and…Christmas Coconut Swirls
November 22, 2012 By 42 Comments
I was chatting with a friend over the phone a few days ago and she was purging this story of a horrendous surgeon she had ’employed’ to remove her gall bladder. After the operation she was in a lot of pain and wanted some adequate pain relief but the doctor had only written-up panadeine forte. […]
Mum’s Christmas Whiskey Logs
November 18, 2012 By 50 Comments
When I was 12 we moved to Australia. We moved into a quiet suburban street where most of the neighbours kept to themselves. They were civil if you bumped into them but nothing more friendly than that followed. But my mother changed all of that. She is a ‘people person’ and within days of moving […]
Mini Party Quiches and Another Grand Design
September 10, 2012 By 45 Comments
There’s another grand design. It’s for a final maths class. And they’re celebrating with another class party. This time I got in first. I said, ‘Arabella, you all have the Valedictory Dinner coming up in just a few days and I know you’re all trying to squeeze into dresses two sizes too small and that […]
Christmas in July
July 25, 2012 By 51 Comments
For those in the Northern Hemisphere this may seem like a very strange event but here in the south we like the idea very much. The day is not about presents, it’s all about the food. It allows us to experience and enjoy all the Christmas fare that is best cooked and enjoyed when the […]
Lolly-Pops and Signals
July 21, 2012 By 33 Comments
The primary school I went to in New Zealand had a very prestigious offering for those in their final year at the school (which was the equivalent of Grade 5). When I was in my final year, I was all of the tender age of 10 and somehow deemed responsible enough for this prestigious offer. […]
Chocolate Slice and…A Ping-Pong Table
February 26, 2012 By 44 Comments
When I was growing up in New Zealand, my parents wanted to host wonderful dinner parties but the problem was, they didn’t have a table. They did have a small, cheap table that, being the seventies, could even have been veneer. And it only seated six. My mother wanted a proper dining room table made […]
Florentines and…’You Don’t Play with Knives’
February 8, 2012 By 35 Comments
During my childhood, a favourite outing for my sisters and me (but not for my mother) was shopping day. My mother would pile all five of us into the car where we roamed about as we weren’t strapped into car seats and we didn’t wear seat belts. In fact at some stage a law came […]
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