Quebec City

Last weekend, I was surprised with a trip to Quebec City for my 35th birthday. It was one of my fave birthdays ever. It was so French-y and we just spent the weekend wandering around the city, stopping off at boutiques (well, I did, but Carl was a very willing birthday concierge and happily followed me), drinking good coffees (no Starbucks to be seen), and eating frites ('fries' sound so much more glam in French).
And the best bit - both mornings, the boy whipped out while I was still dozing and got croissants and coffee from the bakery round the corner. Collecting himself in the process, many, many husband browniepoints.

Apparently this is the oldest grocery store in North America. It was ah-maaaaazing!! We went there twice for a perve at all the delish food stuffs. It was like a deli/liquor store/museam. They had doileys under the spices in the spice section. I mean, it was perfect!

We sat outside the walled part of the city for a while, overlooking this hotel, enjoying the sun and people watching.

Gorg little houses, I'm always a fan of a window box with flowers.

Me, proudly trying to poke out my little preggy belly, happy as a pig in muck to be 35, pregnant, in Quebec and married to the best boy in the world.

Moving soon...

So, in about a week, we are moving...upgrading from a dodgy graduate student accomodation, to, well, slightly-less-dodgy graduate student accomodation.

I am quite excited about this though, because the new place is actually an old place, and has some lovely  features like wooden windows and wooden floors. Thankfully the 'old' part doesn't extend to the kitchen and bathroom, which are actually pretty decent.
So it will be goodbye ugly alumium windows and dark blue carpet (Yuk! It turns out, actually, money does buy style.) It's all a bloody good excuse for perving through interiors pics (as if I need one) and trying to implement some semblence of style on our extremely limited student budget. (However, please refer to point made earlier re; money and style).

I'm thinking of going for a Scandi-cottagey style...because I think I can do this fairly cheaply (Oh, hello Ikea), and it feels quite homely. We can also do the minimalist part pretty well, what with having next-to-no furniture 'n all. Here's my inspiration...

Baskets and B&W Ikea fabric.

Image: Kristina Stark

Interesting postcards grouped together as art.

Image: Poppytalk 

Simple fluffy rug and gorg bedding is all you need for a stylish comfy bedroom.
Image: Remodelista

Back!

Back from one month of the one of my most fave holidays ever. Carl had a month off school, so we went to NYC for a pre-Christmas jaunt for a few days, then back to Boston for Christmas in the snow. Then down to Florida for some fishing, Miami-beaching and Disney World fun in the sun. To top it off we then went back to NZ to sort out some NZ admin, and I snuck in an extra week to head to Welly to hang out with my family, who are all back in Wellington for the first time in years, and stalk my dog.
What a magic start to the year. It feels like 2011 is going to be a goodie.

 Florida Keys

 Miami Beach Art Deco Building

 Oslo the Wonder Dog in Welly

 Macys, NYC

Christmas faffing

Here's some of the stuff I've been faffing about doing in the lead up to Christmas...

Making cranberry & apple chutney.

Recipe from here. This is being paired with some cheese from here for US Christmas gifts.

Making Pistachio & Lemon Gems.

I used Martha Stewart's basic cookie recipe, added some pistachios and dotted some lemon curd in the middle. YUM!

Decorating the apartment. It's feeling nice and Christmas-y, especially with all the snow outside. I'm pretty pleased with my Christmas tree as well, which in a bout of stubborness I personally carried home (I wanted the tree now!)(yes, I did look like a crazy woman carrying a tree home) and made lolly garlands for. It's covered in lollies and candy canes and doileys (oh yeah) but strangely (??!) looks really gangly and naff in photos. Hence no photos of the tree, just our NZ wall and Christmas cards.


Making Christmas cards. These took ages and the bloomin' US postal service charged them as a parcel (but of course I wasn't going to lose the cute bells as suggested by helpful postal guy,) so fingers crossed they get there OK.

It's here! It's here!

So my grizzling and whining paid off! We got back from a couple of days in NYC last night to find Wellesley covered in snow - what an awesome Christmas treat!

C'mon snow!!!

Am totally hanging out for snow. I don't know what the snow equivalent of a rain-dance is, but if I knew it I'd be doing it. For weeks it's been barely scratching above freezing, and yet have we seen any snow yet? Nope. C'mon snow! I'm awarding you a 'must try harder'.

image: Dreamhouse

More halloween snaps

Fall/Halloween snaps

The colours around the place and the halloween decs are awesome at the moment. There's a house down the road I keep meaning to take a photo of, it's this big posh house, and they have like 3, 6-feet giant spiders hanging off their house. I'm loving it.

Halloween fever

Halloween fever has really hit, and there are pumpkins everywhere, including Dunkin' Donuts offering Pumpkin Lattes.... yes, Pumpkin Lattes!!

Anyway, I'm getting amoungst it by attempting these two recipes...

 Caramel and chocolate dipped apples from here

Chocolate pumpkin cake from here. I'm actually entering a 'Fall flavours' cooking comp with this cake. If it turns out looking half as good as this picture I'll be chuffed. The reason I'm fascinated by this cake is not that it uses pumpkin (in a cake?), but it calls for canned pumpkin. You're not in Tairua now, Toto.

Start spreading the news...

 I'm leaving today... I want to be a part of it... New York, New York...

Seriously, I had this song going on rotate in my head for the whole 3 days I was there. Here's a couple of my happy snaps.

 Cool shop window in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

 The NY skyline from across the Hudson.

Oh yeah, pimping it up on Madison Ave.

Am I getting bored? I don't think so...

Whenever people say to me..."How are you filling your days, are you getting bored?", I'm like "Noooo way!", but then go slightly blank when I think about what I actually have been doing, and start to try and justify how 'busy' I have been. So, because I clearly have a crap memory, and because I know I will try to re-live these glorious days of 'waiting for my work visa' when I have some shit house job and have to get up first thing in the morning (not my besttime of day), I'm going to start writing down some of the glorious things I've been faffing about doing.
Like yesterday for example, when I spent a good 4 hours in the kitchen, making the most of an $US8 chicken by trying to get 4 meals out of it. I roasted it, made stock, made pastry (the easiest ever from delicious magazine; just 125g butter, 1 2/3 C flour, rub together, whack in an egg yolk and 2 Tbspn cold water, and refrigerate half an hour), made a chicken and mushroom pie, then made some mexican chicken and corn soup. Only interrupted by lunch with my lovely neighbour, it was a bloody great way to waste an afternoon.
A similar thing happened on Monday morning when I lost a few hours making another mess in the kitchen; making ginger crunch, trying to make Jo's caramelised onions and making and delivering (!!) lunch for Carl. Spent the afternoon joining the library and salivating at all the cookbooks they have in there that I can check out - seriously, I'm sorted for the next 2 years.

Happy as a pig in muck, making a mess in the kitchen.

Wellesley-vegas

Here's some snaps I took last Friday on my stroll into Wellesley, of some of the houses I walk past. It feels a little bit like living in a town full of the kinds of houses you see on those old-school cake tins; they're outrageously quaint.
I did feel slightly stalker-ish, and I didn't want to raise the ire of some paranoid American, so I didn't take any of the houses with the selection of say, four European cars outside to choose from (and there are quite a few of those).

Digging the American flag...

The tree-lined streets of Wellesley, complete with cars driving on the wrong side.

Oslo's public toilet.