This Week I Want To...

I guess the honeymoon period of having a new baby is coming to an end, and day to day life is getting slowly back to normal. Sort of. Anyway, keeping that in mind, these are a couple of things I really want to do this week. Just putting it out there.

Photo by Charles

Pilates

I am really looking forward to doing some exercise again, other than walking the dogs, and pilates is one of my favourite things. I'm planning to start easy, I have a pilates for pregnancy DVD that includes sessions for post-pregnancy, in the early weeks after baby is born. So that's the plan. A couple of sessions would be good!

Vegie Garden

I've barely been out to the garden for over a month now. It's a bit depressing right now. There are still remnants of summer plants, the chooks have been in and made a complete mess of the beds, and the soil is still bone dry [we are still waiting for rain]. Anyway I need to spend some time out there and give it some love. A little bit each day is what I'm aiming for.

Solo Trip into Town

When I say solo, I mean me and William. We've ventured out in the car as a family three times now, but I'm yet to go anywhere with just me and William, no Charles. But now that Charles is back at work, I need to reclaim my independence, so me and this little boy will need to sus out this whole going into town thing for ourselves. It will probably be Friday as I'll keep finding ways to put off doing it.

What have you got planned for the week?

This Week We...

Slept when we could - enough said. Drank tea together - blissful moments to stop, talk, relax. Ate too much Easter chocolate, and then wanted more. Did copious amounts of washing, our new reality. Getting through our second week of parenthood. I think it's possibly the toughest week we've had together. But we're still here, and we're happy. And our little one is beautiful and precious and amazing. I wouldn't change a thing.

I hope you all have had a great week!

This Week I Enjoyed...

Can you believe we're so far into March already? I'm torn between wanting the days to speed up [getting impatient for our upcoming addition to the family] and wanting to hit the pause button, and just make it all stop for a while. Anyway here's a few things I've enjoyed this past week.

Raspberry leaf tea. Suggested by my midwife, apparently it's a bit of an old wives tale, or maybe not. 

Apparently it helps to 'tone' the uterus. It doesn't have an overly distinct flavour, and it's quite drinkable. I'll stick with it for now. I'm holding off using Clary Sage in the oil burner though... maybe next week.

Chocolate cake in a cup. Inspired by this post. Initially I read it and thought yum, but we sold our microwave at the Community Garage Sale. Then Katie updated the post for making it in the oven, so I had to try it.

The verdict? Not bad. Somehow it still tasted like it was made in a microwave. Oh and I completely modified the ingredients, based on what I had on hand. Plus I added chunks of dark chocolate. If I were to change anything for next time, I would add more chunks of dark chocolate.

Last tomato harvest. There aren't too many more out there that are still any good. In any case, George is doing his bit to eat them up.

The roma's really came into their own late in the season. We made a beautifully simple pasta dish using lots of these - onion, garlic, tomato, pinch of sugar, salt and pepper, some tomato paste, oregano, bit of water and let it do it's thing for a while. So simple, so good. Don't hold back on the parmesan.

I just realised that all of these things are food/drink related. I guess that's an indication of where I'm at right now! What have you been enjoying this week?

This Week I... Got Married!

I've kept pretty quiet about the whole getting married thing here on the blog. But it's true, Charles and I got married just yesterday. We both wanted a small and simple wedding, so that's what we did. Eight guests, a simple ceremony, a lovely lunch for 10 people at one big table, a cake made by my sister-in-law, and all in a delightful location in the heart of Melbourne. We are back home today, rather than on a honeymoon somewhere, as despite searching and searching, we didn't find a honeymoon that was appropriate right now and that appealed to us. And then we realised we were only looking at doing it because that's just 'what you do'. So, as with the rest of our wedding, we decided to suit ourselves and do things our way. 

We're very excited and happy to have taken this step and made this commitment to each other. We had our wedding day exactly as we wanted to, we got to share it with our close family and we didn't stretch the finances too far in the process. I'll share some more details about how we celebrated our simple wedding in another post to come, but for now, I'm off to enjoy being a newlywed.

By the way, have you entered my first giveaway yet? It closes on Sunday night, so don't delay!

This Week I... Made a Necklace!

A long time ago last year, I bought these stones from different Etsy sellers. The long blue stones are lapis lazuli and the small round ones are turquoise. I had always been meaning to make them into a necklace, but they ended up in the pile of things to be done on my desk, and that's where they stayed for months.

Finally this week I did it! Now I'm no jewellery maker, I'm just saying that now, but I did manage to google 'how to make a necklace', find a good tutorial [I followed this one], take a trip into town to collect what I needed from the craft shop [a surprisingly successful mission] and put it all together into something that, for all intents and purposes, can be worn as a necklace.

I like how it's turned out. I love the combination of the two different stones, both in colour and in wearing the two of them together. I always feel special wearing lapis lazuli, it makes me imagine that I'm in ancient Egyptian times or something. It feels very regal. Turquoise is also lovely. I'm waiting on some turquoise stone plugs for my ears [also from Etsy] to turn up in the mail, I wonder if they'll go well with this necklace.

I love crystal jewellery. Do you wear any? What resonates with you?