daily photo #29

Ok so I'm very far behind on my daily photo posts but I am going to go back and catch up soon!  Sarah is back in Cape Town now - we had a wonderful 4 weeks with her, and we miss her very much!  Here is a picture taken at the airport just before she boarded her plane back to South Africa, via Singapore.

daily photo #16

Today was Anika's last day at her Montessori preschool.  Next term she will join Talya in the Montessory primary class at Huapai District School.  She is very excited about the move and very ready to take on this new challenge! 

As a little farewell to her old friends, we baked some cupcakes and took them along for afternoon tea.  The children sat in a circle and ate their cupcakes in complete silence!  Here's a picture of Anika after presenting Fale, the head teacher with a parting gift.

daily photo #15

After a night of heavy rain, high winds, thunder and lightning Sunday morning dawned bright and relatively sunny.  We headed off to a 3-year-old birthday party (Pirate's Ahoy!), and afterwards paid another visit to our sweet puppies.  They have grown so much in the week since we saw them!  It is going to be tough choosing which little girl will be ours (we pick on 24th July when they are 5 weeks old).  Here's one of the little girls.

daily photo #14

I spotted the green lipped mussels in the supermarket today and decided that Sarah needed to experience this New Zealand delicacy.  I cooked them in a creamy garlic white wine and tomato sauce and we ate them with spaghetti.  Glenn and I thought they were delicious but Sarah wasn't convinced (she's not a big fan of shell food and these didn't change her mind!).

daily photo #13

New Zealand is in the grips of a 'classic winter storm' (according to the papers) and it's set to be a wet wintery weekend.   But the best thing about being stuck at home, with nowhere to go is that the kitchen beckons.  Today we made pizzas for dinner.  I tried a new pizza dough recipe which Sarah had found - 500g self-raising flour (we added a little wholemeal flour as we didn't have enough white), 1 340ml bottle of beer, 1 tsp salt - mix, knead, roll out and spread with your favourite pizza toppings!  Bake in 190degC oven for 15 minutes. Molto Delizioso!

daily photo #12

It was another grey day, with not many photo opportunities. The sun made a valiant attempt to shine this morning but by the afternoon the storm clouds had rolled in once again and the rain came down in horizontal sheets.  But rain or shine, New Zealanders love their coffee.  We were out and about this morning and stopped for a flat white at The Coffee Club in Henderson.   My first ever soul sisters post included a photograph from the very same place!

daily photo #11

Today can be described in many ways and most of them begin with w - wet, wild, windy, wintery... and as my cold had really taken hold we decided it was a perfect day to be at home, with some knitting! 

For lunch we had a delicious roast pumpkin and bulgur wheat salad with a sundried tomato dressing and I remembered to take a photo before we gobbled it up...

daily photo #10

Today we ventured over to Devonport, an historical village on Auckland's North Shore. There are many quaint shops to explore there including Wild and Woolly Yarns which is bursting with beautiful yarns and inspiring projects to tackle. It is very difficult to leave there without committing to one or more knitting projects! (We did).  After our purchases we stopped at Little & Friday a quaint little cafe in Takapuna.  Their display of cakes make choosing extremely challenging. In the end Sarah and I chose to share a lemon cake and Anika had a jam and cream filled donut which was smothered in powdery icing sugar. We sat ourselves down outside at a lime-green painted crate to devour these divine creations along with their superb coffee.  The red moose was our table marker. If this was our neighbourhood cafe I'd be there every morning!

daily photo #9

Today was cold and windy, and I seem to have caught myself a virus. So after our Monday morning yoga class, we came home, made a pot of soup for lunch and watched The King's Speech on dvd.  What an inspiring movie about finding your voice (although I seem to be losing mine).
I didn't take any photographs (I meant to snap the soup but it got eaten before I a chance!).

daily photo #8

Last year our 12-and-a-half year old German Shepherd passed away and we've recently started thinking about getting a puppy. This afternoon we went to see a litter of beautiful German Shepherd puppies who are now two and a half weeks old (3 boys and 4 girls). They are just starting to find their feet and stagger around. Their mother, Andi, was happy to let us hold her puppies - she had such a lovely nature. Here's a photo of one of the boys in Talya's arms.

p.s. we've decided to get one of the girls - she'll be coming home mid August!

daily photo #7

Every Saturday morning Talya plays soccer in a mixed under 8's team called the Norwest Sharks.  This morning they were up against another Norwest team called the Sabres. The Sabres were a skilled and aggressive team of under 8 boys and the Sharks defended well but lost the match 2-5.  Talya played goalie for the first half and attack in the second half.  Here's an action shot, taken by Sarah.

daily photo #6

This morning dawned bright, clear and very, very cold!  There was a thin layer of ice on the car's windscreen as we drove to school - the first frost of this late start to winter we are having in Auckland.  After dropping the girls at school, Sarah and I headed out past Helensville through Kaukapakapa to the Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens - a 'unique sculpture trail set in a tranquil, rural garden oasis'.  More than 60 sculptures by artists from all over New Zealand are on display.  It was a perfect day to wander through the beautiful gardens, breathing the fresh clear air and taking in the display.  Here is one of my favourites 'Kereru' by Darryl Fagence, created in stainless steel and ruby lustre on glass.  The kereru is also known as the New Zealand pigeon.