What I'd like for Christmas please

Now I've got most of my Christmas shopping done (including the shopping I need to help my mother-in-law and brother-in-law do), I've been thinking what I would like for Christmas.

While a new black handbag would be nice, what I would really like is some Bison ceramics. My Mum gave me a beautiful big teardrop vase like this for my birthday recently - it's a grey green colour, and it looks fantastic with glossy green leaves in it.



I would love one of these beautiful platters ... but they are on the expensive side. And anyway, I happen to know that my very generous Mum has already purchased a bright blue platter from one of my favourite shops (Market Import) for my Christmas present.


So I'd be delighted to receive some of these bowls. I already have plenty of bowls in different shapes and sizes, but there's something about the shape of these ones, and their weight, that is so delectable.




I'd be just as happy with a selection of these little milkbottles to put flowers in.

Really, anything Bison would be just lovely. But which of these juicy colours would I choose? They are all delicious.

Magazine review: Living etc

I had a tough day at work yesterday (we're moving floors so we had to pack, two of our staff members are away, yadda yadda yadda), so I was pleased to be able to treat myself to the latest issue of my favourite British homes magazine, Living etc, when I zipped out at lunch to grab a sandwich.

This is the annual issue focused on colour - they also do a white one every year. It's an enticing mix of real homes and design ideas, albeit with people with money to spend.

I particularly like Joa Studholme's home which is featured in this issue (it's the November one). She uses white in such a great way, and I covet her dining table: it's the contrast between the wooden base and the zinc top.

Happy birthday house

We moved into our house 11 years ago today. While it's not perfect - the family room faces west, and we could do with another bedroom and a garage - it's served us well and we all love it. Although, my eldest son (aged 13) tells me that he wants to live somewhere big and modern.







(These photos are old, taken when we renovated four years ago. How I wish the walls were this white now!)

Of course, a house is just a house. What really matters is what happens inside it. The walls may be a lot grubbier these days, and we may be running out of space now the kids are getting older, but there's a whole lot of memories here. When we moved in we had one small two and a half year old boy, and I was six months pregnant. Our daughter and another son have been born since we moved here, and we've acquired a much loved cat and rabbit - and about a gazillion toys - along the way.
We've celebrated many many birthdays within these four walls and in this messy garden; everything from a first birthday to a 90th (and yours truly's 40th). There's been many Christmasses, barbeques, a post-funeral afternoon tea, and lots of overnight visitors too. We've had many happy and some sad times here, and will no doubt have many more.

Christmas is coming

I love Christmas. Always have, and hope I always will.

My love for Christmas comes from being part of a family that has always really celebrated it. We're big on traditions - what we eat, what we do, and what we enjoy. And I'm really enjoying sharing these traditions with my own three children now.


It starts each year with an advent calendar. Over the past five years or so I've been lucky enough to have a Matthew Rice advent calendar - here is the one we have this year.

They don't seem to be available in Australia, and while the Emma Bridgewater site does mail order, her postage costs are ridiculously expensive. (Emma Bridgewater, one of my very favourite china designers, is illustrator Matthew Rice's wife.) My source of calendars is my own family - if anyone is travelling to the UK in the latter part of the year, we always request that they bring several of them home.

And my kids love them too, fighting over who gets to start them each year (my ten year old daughter was the one this year). Although I suspect they would like them better if there was chocolate lurking behind each of the little doors...

Cookbook review: Good Food by Neil Perry

This one was a gift for my birthday earlier this month. It's become a much-appreciated gift too.

Good Food is one of those cookbooks that I wouldn't have even flicked through, let alone thought to cook from. That's because I thought that Neil Perry's recipes would be far too fussy and chef-y. He is a highly successful high-end restaurateur, and celeb chef - all QANTAS first class menus and his own line of commercial products. (I must admit that I really like his mayonnaise, and I usually hate commercial mayonnaise.)

So it's been a very pleasant surprise to find that I have made about seven different dishes from Good Food in the last month. His recipes are very straightforward, with easily sourced ingredients, giving great results.

We're having a very strange November weather-wise here in Melbourne. Very hot days. Very wet days (thankfully!). And some very cold - as in get your boots out again - days. So most of the dishes I've made so far from this book have been transeasonal: spaghetti with veal meatballs and tomato sauce, pan-fried chicken breast with tzatziki, and my favourite, pumpkin, sweet potato, pea & chilli risotto. I haven't made proper risotto for years (all that constant stirring can be challenging with three kids running around), but I was so pleased with this recipe.

A special mention too for the incredibly easy chicken & macaroni salad, which I made for The Hubster and me to take to work for lunch over several days. Yum. I left out the cherry tomatoes, as my youngest son had gobbled them all up before I got to them, but the finished recipe was still wonderful. (I did roast a chook for this one, which ends up cheaper and tastes better, plus provided us with chicken for the kids school sandwiches as well.)

I've only had one so-so result from Good Food - the saffron chicken & rice. It was OK, but not delicious enough to get me making it again.

Recommended. You can also see a preview of the book here.

Dusting

I started this blog 18 months ago, posted a few times, and then promptly neglected it.

Time to dust it off. Stay tuned.

Cushions and firewood

I've made some more changes to the living room today. I found a pretty grey felt cushion at Ikea (I went looking for something completely different of course - storage jars). It's hand stitched with multiple coloured wool, in a very simple style, and finished off with two wooden buttons. I wasn't sure how it would work on our dark brown leather sofa, but it looks very fine. It's also soft and squishy, and therefore perfect for cuddling up to.

And I solved a very old problem today. Our house has only one fire place, and when we moved in, it housed an extremely ugly electric heater. We had it removed when we did our renovation a few years ago, but since then we've had a big gaping hole in our living room, so we placed an old 1940s firescreen in front of it. But it's continued to be a problem, as heat has been escaping up the chimney, and, well, it was pretty clear that we had a big hole in the living room.

Thanks to one of my favourite magazines - Living etc, which is British - I got the idea of filling the gap with firewood. I went to an old fashioned timberyard today and bought two sacks of firewood, and plugged up the hole. It was like doing a big three dimensional puzzle.

It now looks terrific. And it only cost me $28 and 45 minutes of effort (I had to plug the base of the hole up with some leftover bricks first).

So the livingroom is really coming together. I still want to find a lamp, and we need a coffee table (I never see reasonably priced ones that I like). It's my favourite room right now.