the baby has been showered

i would not usually be the 'baby shower' type, but i am the decorating type.

so i threw fancy to the wind when it came to baby girl hutchins' baby shower

my friends were so generous and baby girl has been spoilt with beautiful

outfits and things to play with.

here's a couple of photos from the evening...

post script

this card made my night

what to do when your husband is working and you're home alone at night

google pictures of guys who look like him

this guy's from parenthood, but we're on a personal basis with that show, so we call it the 'hood (because yes, we're that cool).

this is the guy from it's complicated.

eh? i know, right?

cook some salmon. it was my first time, i was rather dubious nervous about the whole thing. but like any well educated house wife, i looked it up on youtube first. the sentence prior to this was written before i had cooked it. i just cooked it and ate it (talk about real time blogging). woah! salmon is my new favourite thing out of the sea. it was incredible. season the salmon with salt and pepper and cook the salmon each side in a medium to hot pan for two minutes per side, then make a sauce of equal part lime juice and honey, pour it over the salmon in the pan and let it cook with the sauce 90 seconds, serve and eat. you can thank me later.

watch the 'hood. i'm julia, nick's joel. is that weird?

oh and recovering after my trip to the supermarket. i went on the way home from work to buy ice cream and pva glue (separate uses, don't worry) and oh my! you would think the apocalypse is coming by the way people are storing up food (in what i can only imagine would be their underground bunkers). for those in the states, it's a public holiday tomorrow, so no shops are open. hence the completely irrational need of nine tenths of society to buy uncontrollably in the last remaining hours of our consumer driven thursday

oh an making a new blog header. funny story that. starting a blog was a very spur of the moment thing. i started one mainly because i wanted to document our lives, from the mundane to the flippin sweet stuff that happens. i trawled around blogger world to see how other people had set out their blogs therefore the design of the old header was kind of copied borrowed from another blog i like to read. i know, not cool right? so i finally got around to doing my own. and hence i am now an officially legit blog.

of the weekend

my weekend consisted of.

catching up for dinner and drinks with friends old and new

having brunch with mr hutchins, mmm raspberry croissants. which consist of cream cheese mixed with 2 tablespoons castor sugar and lemon zest, shmeared onto a croissant, add some raspberries and toast in a sandwhich press. try it, all your christmases will come at once.

and finding the below idea on poppytalk, i wonder if i can pull this off for easter?

raspberry deliciousness

made some raspberry cake this week, yum! if anyone is interested i've included the recipe

before it went in the oven

Raspberry Cake

100g - Plain flour
160g - Almond meal
2 cups - Icing  sugar
180g - Butter, melted
6 Egg whites, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons - Vanilla extract
1.5 cup - Frozen or fresh raspberries
Extra raspberries and whipped cream, to serve

Method 

Preheat oven to 160 C
Combine flour, almond meal, icing sugar, butter, egg whites and vanilla in a bowl and mix until smooth. Fold half the berries through and spoon into a greased 18cm round cake tin that has been lined with non-stick baking paper. Sprinkle the remaining berries on top of the mixture and bake for 1 hour or until cooked when tested with a skewer.
Serve the cake warm with whipped cream with extra raspberries folded through. 

a weekend of brunch

we lucked out this weekend, with not one but two chances to attend brunch with friends. 

the first of which was prepared by a lovely friend of ours who went all out and made so many delicious things i just didn't know where to start. we're talking raspberry french toast (which is my new favourite thing to eat), pancetta baked eggs and bacon & beans.

the second of which was to celebrate another friend's twenty first year on this earth and it was just a a perfect sunday morning affair all round.

as someone who loves food and any opportunity to eat food, this was basically my idea of a perfect weekend. i mean brunch, brinner, whatever it is, if it's delicious, bring it on! 

i am thankfully still at that stage of life where my metabolism allows me to indulge this love of food. i am sure this will slowly fade away in the next ten years, so the way i see it, i should eat while i still can!

a quiet night in

sometimes it's nice to have a quiet night in with my favourite food (delicious salad with procuitto, mozzarella and basil chicken and cookies yum!), favourite man and favourite apron, which i just don't get to wear enough.

friday nights are also office nights! yay. getting to hear gabe say "isn't this the perfect romantic getaway, erin? sitting on a desert island in dog costumes. i'm gabe and i'm a weirdo" just makes my night.

of the weekend

apart from the sweltering heat, this weekend turned out to be rather nice indeed. my particular favourite was the delicious homemade pizza we made for dinner on sunday night, and nick agreeing to play scrabble with me, which is a rare occurrence in our household

a little homemade calendar

our market stall at glebe

basil, prosciutto, mozzarella and homemade pizza sauce

little dates

in the peak of summer, going outside is almost unbearable so we hit the road and headed up the mountain for some cooler air, thrift shopping, lunch and general good times.

favourites for today

$6 suitcase, mint condition, bargain

my focaccia containing chicken, camembert, avocado and cranberry (have to make this at home)

nick's ultimate nachos fail. no one can eat them and still look cool

finding a street called happeny lane, i just love the word happeny.

not so favourites

finding a book for 50c that i paid $18 for last week. i bought it again anyway

common ground, my most favourite place to eat in katoomba being closed (on a saturday, who knew!)

what a lovely date

before the deluge

a class act

it was a BIG day for little nick. in fact upon getting home he promptly went upstairs and put himself to bed for a nap. but he gets a free pass today, cos he gave blood this morning (i like to think he gives blood for the both of us)

who closes on a saturday?

inside mr pickwicks, the most comprehensive used book store i've ever seen

i LOVE thai food

my husband and i love thai food. if given the choice of restaurant we will always pick thai. the problem is, we always order the same thing, pad thai. here is the issue, we know we like pad thai, so it's not a risk. while the menu might be full of weird and wonderful things, none of them come with the guarantee of deliciousness that pad thai comes with. hence us always ordering the exact same thing every time. i have been trying to perfect my home made pad thai with a recipe i found in one of my mum's cook books. it's getting better each time but still a long way from guaranteed delicious restaurant style