Prefab

December's Taste Magazine runs my piece on Bridget and Jeff, the talented pair behind Prefab, one of Welly's newest and best cafes (click here to read).

If you happen to find yourself in the vicinity of this place, DO NOT go past the asparagus with grilled haloumi and chunky beetroot relish. It's like a kiss from an angel on a summer's day.

   

Tubby Smurf

Those of you who know me know my life operates on a 'dogs not kids' policy.

So it might surprise you (as it did me) that I would spend my Sunday evening watching littlies - and not so littlies - prance up and down the stage at their end of year dance recital. My friend Lorna owns the dance school and over the past few months, I've heard all about the show on our weekly dog walks. Keen to support her, I put aside my allergy to rug rats and yesterday evening we trotted along to Wellington High to watch about 200 of her students go through their paces. And it was a lot of fun - the adult tap, jazz and modern dancers were Glee-like quality and the costumes were fantastic.

However it was the young ones who really made our night, especially the three and four year olds dressed as Smurfs who used it as an opportunity to bust out moves entirely of their own making. The real star of the show was a wee girl who hadn't yet said goodbye to baby fat and was 10 steps behind everyone else. Bless her though, she wasn't about to let a small thing like a lack of co-ordination or rhythm stop her: she threw herself into the dance with wild abandon and cared not a jot that her moves bore little relation to anyone else's. I was laughing so hard I thought I might have to leave the room.

It reminded me of when my mother used to drag us along to her school's end of year concerts to make up the numbers - her five year old students would spend the whole time waving to their parents, or wandering off the stage or, on one memorable occasion, wetting their pants in front of a crowded hall.

Sadly we had to leave last night's concert at half time as we had an appointment with Japanese food. But oh my god, it was the most fun I've had for a while.

Even sadder is that I have no photographic evidence of the event so this image of a tubby Smurf, found on a half-arsed trawl of Google, will have to do.

       

The Long Walk to Freedom

The Hound hasn't been feeling well this week (long and tedious story involving vet visits, antibiotics, blah, blah, blah) so we cancelled a BBQ we'd scheduled with a few of the Animator's friends.

Instead, we quietly christened our new barbie with the help of our neighbour Andy. She's originally from South Africa so it was interesting to chat with her about the death of Nelson Mandela, to confess to her that while watching the news last night big, fat, salty tears escaped from my eyes. Madiba wasn't my President or the father of my nation, and I loathe the jumping-on-bandwagon type stuff that has fuelled social media since his death, but there was something about Mandela's quiet dignity and his capacity for forgiveness and peace that marked him out as one of the most outstanding men ever to walk the earth. A good old man is gone and everyone should be allowed to remember him in their own way.

     

Inside the Tea Pea

The December issue of Homestyle Magazine runs my piece on Meg's lovely Khandallah shop, Tea Pea (click here to read).

Famous on FB

Our wee man is again the star of Sparkles the Dog's cute-as-a-button 'Around the World in Seven Days' series.

Sometimes I just want to eat him up (check out the social media star here)...

OUR HOUSE IS FINALLY IN PRINT!!!

Apols for the shouty caps and excessive exclamation points but a year after filing this story on our place, Your Home & Garden Mag  published the piece (click here to read). And although I wrote it, it's my mother's maiden name that graces the byline (it would be too weird for one of their long-time writers to be seen crafting a piece about her own home!).

Anyway, I reckon my two boys look fantastic, and it's a great credit to the Animator's hard work in renovating the house.

  

Our visitor from San Francisco

Our gorgeous friend Sheryl arrived today - fresh from a week's diving in Hawaii.

Thankfully, the God of Good Weather travelled on her tail-wind, and we were able to eat pancakes, visit beaches and sit in our backyard in blazing sunshine catching up on a year's chit-chat (she was here about this time last year).

Sadly, Sheryl's visit was all too fleeting, and she heads off on a three-day kayaking trip to Nelson tomorrow. What she left was this amazeballs bag of goodies from my second favourite store in the world, Sephora (Zara being my first), and this bag of doggie cookies which apparently had the Customs dudes at Auckland Airport shaking their heads (but, thankfully for Bristol, they deemed acceptable).

No pics of Sheryl herself ("After 24 hours of flying from a small Hawaiian island, I look and feel like crap") so you will have to make do with these instead.
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