Anknel and Burblets

dreams come out my ears and go round my head and i read them.

  • All the cakes I’ve been baking

    Hard to believe I’ve never baked a chocolate cake but usually all I ever bake is my 1 cake 100 ways. And this required a new method. I used the Donna Hay recipe from Modern Classics 2 although it didn’t come out at all moist which I suspect was due to my baking it for…

  • A delicious weekend

    This weekend I made hot chocolate each morning for myself and the girls. Saturday Edith made big tall towers of the old kitchen containers while I cleaned and filled the beautiful new Le Parfait jars to take pride of place in the pantry. In the afternoon we went to fabulous Lakeland out by Brent Cross…

  • The living room

    Back in June when we were in Provence the whole interior of the house was painted. So far I still haven’t styled the house to my satisfaction. No matter how tidy it is, the girls come along and mess it up. Three steps forward, two back. Always. At times like this I remember Melissa’s sewing…

  • The wrong pants for gardening

    Oh good lord it was too cold to go in the garden yesterday. But garden we did. I wanted an activity the girls to do at home to shake off some energy so I could sneak in some more photo editing. But in the end I erred on the side of being out there to…

  • Happy fifth birthday, Astrid

    Astrid turned 5 this week. Five. Five years ago in New Zealand on a Summer’s evening and there she was. End of 2006. That was the time I began writing this blog. It was a time to begin documenting our lives with the children. We’ve made family albums. I’ve not done the last two. The…

  • A winter kitchen

    I’ve taken delivery of the amazing and beautiful Nigella Lawson mixing bowls. Amongst other things. The brilliant secret sale compares only to the Le Creuset half price sale of sky blue cookware a few years ago. I spent all weekend rearranging and clearing the kitchen. This evening I briefed Joelene our nanny on where everything…

  • First ballet recital

    The other Sunday we went to the girls’ first ballet recital. I can’t remember why there wasn’t one last year, although last year I went to see their final ballet performance and I went to end of year festival for Astrid. This year I did neither. I’ve taken so much time off lately while we…

  • Parts of rooms

    Now the house is slowly beginning to take shape I’m taking photos of part of rooms. A couple of people have said they’ve seen my house photos on the blog but they still can’t really tell what the house is like; just very small zoomed in bits of it. So I’m branching out a bit…

  • Nigella Lawson secret sale

    Today I came across a Nigella Lawson secret sale on eBay totally by chance. Today I spent such happy piles of money at their amazing sale they refunded my postage. The best thing about this secret sale is that it’s full of Nigella Lawson Living Kitchen things – in Rosebud PINK. Yes, pink. I kid…

  • Party season

    When I was young and sociable I used to often host afternoon tea parties with canapes and bubbles. I still make the same food. The party now starts an hour later at three and I definitely don’t wear fancy dresses like I used to. But I can bake better than I used to. And I…

  • Eight years on…

    When I met Kevin, a friend of mine, Mark Matthews, asked whether Kevin knew I’d dump him within a year. We laughed about that. Kevin laughed too. I think. Six months later Kevin and I had moved to Auckland. Set up Transcend there. Renamed ourselves Uniform. Became addicted to Kingsland coffee and brioche. Got ourselves…

  • Autumn by the Heath

    Photos from my Lovely UK flickr stream Well. It would seem we are having an indian summer. People are posting images of the weather forecast on their blogs and twitter streams. Melrose and Morgan have invited us up for coffee and cake. I have fallen off my diet. But who cares because the sun is…