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Introducing my baby!

May 21st, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

Well I did it! Giving birth was by far the most excruciatingly painful experience of my life, but at the same time, so enjoyable and amazing – I got to have the home birth I wanted (but only just!), and gave birth to a gorgeous (albeit massively cone-headed) baby boy weighing in at 7lb and 5oz, way less than I was expecting.

He is the most alert little guy ever. He came out with his eyes wide open and looking around, no crying or anything like that, just breathing well and taking everything in his stride. This photo was taken right after he was born and before he had even been cleaned up! So fresh and new to the world. The first photo was about an hour after he was born and on the bed he was born on!

I’ve stuck my birth story after the jump if you want to have a read. It’s pretty long and involved and sort of TMI but there you go… » Read the rest of this entry «

Welcome to my new life

March 24th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

Its been a long long time since I have updated. I’m so slack. I don’t even have a good excuse.

I’m still a long way from the lovely country I call home, New Zealand. While everyone there enjoys stunning summer days and long evenings, we have rain, sleet, snow, and darkness at 4pm.  The last 6 months have brought an entirely new way of life for me, and one major unexpected change.

You know that saying about plans going astray, well, yeah, I can verify that is true ;) Still, my life is very nice right now, just a bit different from our plans of just a few months ago. We always had planned on coming to London for a few years to work. We planned on having a baby at some stage and coming back to NZ to settle. Little did we know that I was already pregnant when we left glorious New Zealand! So that was one small spanner in the works. I looked for work solidly for a few months once we arrived, but there was just no software development jobs going. In hindsight I should have given up looking a lot earlier and worked in a cafe, but I didn’t, and well, then it became too late because I sprouted a somewhat huge baby bump. Thankfully my husband landed a sweet job very soon after we arrived (and they love him, he has just had a promotion!), otherwise we would have been on the next plane home.

on the tube, blissfully unaware of the baby growing in there

So, here I am, jobless, and growing a baby in my belly. People ask me what I do and I have a hard time answering – what on earth do I do? Well, I spend a lot of time on eBay, that’s for sure. Having a baby has increased my addiction even further and opened my eyes to the designer baby second hand clothing market. Thankfully we also bought a car that turned out to be a piece of crap, because I spend lots of time fixing it or visiting our mechanic, who I am getting to be quite good friends with haha. I go for walks, I go shopping and have hot chocolates, I cook and sometimes I even clean.

Yeah. My life is pretty sweet. And on top of this I seem to have been blessed with the worlds easiest pregnancy. I haven’t had any morning sickness, or anything weird like that, and I’m only just getting to the uncomfortable stage where I walk the poor baby into door frames and stuff.

31 weeks pregnant

31 weeks pregnant!

What else is going on….

» Read the rest of this entry «

Birthday Cake for Melissa

November 10th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

This was a cake for my friend Melissa who turned 12 years old last week.

Pink Candy Cane Cake

Inside the cake was what I normally bake when I am not sure of someone’s preference, layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with a chocolate buttercream.

Happy Birthday Pink Cake Stripes

melissa and her cake

Ladurée at Harrods

September 20th, 2009 § 1 comment § permalink

macaroon2

I have only been in London a few weeks and already I have hunted down two French patisseries for the sole purpose of buying macarons. Last week when we were in Canary Wharf for interviews I stumbled upon Paul and bought a giant macaron. Unfortunately no one was sure what flavour it was, and even after sharing it and eating it neither of us had figured it out. The texture however was devine and it was far richer than the Ladurée ones, but obviously very bland. I think the huge one from Paul was 2 pounds something, and roughly equates to 3 or so of the little Ladurée ones which were 9 pounds 80p for 6 + a pretty box. Ouchie.

After discovering last night that there are two Ladurée shops in London – First stop today was Harrods. Which of course is packed full, mainly with tourists, and looks to have quite a cool food court with people chowing into these amazing looking gelati/sundaes.  But I wasn’t there for any of that and in fact we made it through the ground floor in possibly record time to end up in Ladurée.

macaroon1

Hubby helped me pick out 6 little macarons – here is my verdict. (L-R in pic above)

Orange Blossom – hubby chose this flavour and although I wouldn’t have done so myself I quite like it. The green ganache slightly put me off but it does taste very floral.

Salted butter caramel – Third place? Almost sticky ganache, with a scorched caramel flavour.

Vanilla – rich with vanilla seeds, although tastes slightly pasty almost. On second thoughts the aftertaste is of an amazingly rich vanilla icecream.

Chocolate -Thick and rich with a nice deep ganache. I give second place to this guy. I think this may actually have been bitter chocolate, they didn’t have both available and this is light and not so sweet.. I wonder.

Rose – amazing rose flavour, super fluffy ganache almost like whipped cream, consistency too thin for my liking but still devine, strongly rose scented and tasting like turkish delight.

Pistachio – My favourite, densest and delicious, with a nice texture. Mmmm.

All in all amazing! If you want to make me happy – buy me macarons. Pistachio ones if you are too scared to choose :P

Is it sad that my goal is to try all the flavours? Haha. The berry ones, and of course lots more pistachio ones ;) And to be fair, I must of course compare with all the ones from Paul and then Pierre Herme when in Paris!!

Macarons

September 19th, 2009 § 1 comment § permalink

One of the reasons I didn’t mind so much moving to London was that Paris was apparently so close by. Now I am yet to discover that nor see any cheap way of getting there, but I made an amazing discovery, there are not one, but two Ladurée stores in London. Ladurée and Pierre Herme may or may not have been two of my biggest driving factors to go to Paris…

image from http://www.laudree.fr

I’m really annoyed I missed seeing bodyworlds it closed just before we arrived here. There is an exhibition on at the welcome collection called “Exquisite Bodies” which is sort of not really similar, well, its wax models anyway and has the added bonus of being free.

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