Sunday Awesome: I'm not entirely sure who Gordon Pinsent is...

But I did quite enjoy this. I have to say, however, that as a rule canned laughter diminishes my enjoyment. Of life.

Arohanui: Loudly, and with Feeling

FORTE FORTE LOVELIES!

Here is a list of things I am all loving on, quickly and in no particular order:

♥ QUITTING FACEBOOK! Huzzah, kiss it FB!

♥ Discovering that I love the yoga place next door. J'adore cheesy guided relaxation so much xxx

♥ Cherry danishes as a Friday breakfast treat.

♥ Surprise visits from my Dad.

♥ Surprise cheap eat dates with my Boy.

♥ Vege garden is going nuts!

♥ Emails from Bex and Lizzie.

♥ Telling my Dad that my Auckland trip is not possible (no moolah). SUCH A WEIGHT OFF MY MIND.

♥ I've paid $2000 off my credit card debt!

♥ Making progress on the French knicker front. Need silky bits now.

♥ Anticipation: my Lady of Leisure week, more sunshine, becoming increasingly flexy through yoga.

EDITED TO ADD: You should totally read this item too.

Something that happened in the weekend

Hello lovelies, I hope that you had a good Labour weekend! Or if you're not in New Zealand or had to work on Monday, I hope that your regular Monday was good and that you had a good regular weekend. I went over to the Wairarapa on Monday and had a wonderful picnic of smoked salmon and homemade bagels at the Pinnacles (about ten minutes drive before Ngawi). Then Shannon, Jo, Mark and I walked up the riverbed to look at the rock formations themselves.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get sick of the rocks and the shingle scree, turn around and walk back to the car to drink cider and read my Agatha Christie autobiography alone in the sun. Now that's what I call a holiday! For reals though, I suddenly got all hating on people for talking and being jolly, and I needed to be alone PRONTO. The Social didn't work so well just then.

Can I just say that I used to be quite the Social Young Miss. Sometime over the last couple of years this has shifted, leading me to my almost hermit-like existence of the last few months. Don't get me wrong - I am super happy to be squirrelled away sewing French knickers, knitting socks, baking bread and watching episodes of Time Team. But it's rather a strange thing to reflect upon in hindsight. I feel like I should say that I need to get out more - but mostly I think I should finish that second sock. And get my driver's license so I can go solo on a road trip. Heaven.

I booked a week off work in November and I am HANGING OUT to sit around at home and be a Lady of Leisure. It shall be so nice! I hope that there is sunshine and that I can sit around all day and write and read in the aforementioned, hypothesised and much desired, sunshine. Fuck yeah sunshine. And being a lady of leisure.

Aaaaand that's all I have today my lovelies. Except, may I note how nice it is to have a bunch of new season's carrots on my desk, for munching? I read this article in the Stone Soup and decided to try and eat more vegies. I'm pretty shit at it.

Crimes against Hugh's Manatees

This comic is great. Here are two of my favourites.

Sunday Awesome: My first favourite New Zealand film

I loved this film when it first came out. It was the first New Zealand film I had seen that really resonated with me. Unfortunately this version has an American narrator, but hey ho.

If you get the opportunity to watch it you really should.

In which Ginger meditates upon the role of Facebook, wine and biltong in her life

I spent the first two days of this week at the National Digital Forum at Te Papa, soaking up the smart digital people rays and thinking very hard about the Future and the Sector. It was super inspiring y'all! The key note speakers were great - Michael Edson from the Smithsonian, Dan Hill and Nick Poole from the UK Collections Trust. I felt Inspired, verily. This inspiration has translated into

1. lots and lots of thinking about what I'm going to do after my course next year 
2. lots of thinking about who I need to talk to and how I need to talk when I'm talking to them
3. an increased desire to get off Facebook. FUCK THAT FUCKING PLACE.

I am so over Facebook. I've been thinking about leaving a lot lately and really I can't see that Facebook serves any real purpose in my life. If anything I find it a little depressing - like standing in the corner at a really crowded party full of terribly exciting people that I don't know very well. It makes me quite socially lazy. Examples: I have the strange idea that I'm keeping in touch with people when really all I'm doing is following their "public" comments; I find myself RSVPing yes to all sorts of things that I have absolutely no intention of attending; I keep in touch with people I met once and thought were kind of cool, but then never take it any further than a relationship of Facebook-stalking. You never have a true impression of the lives of the people you actually give a shit about either - nobody posts anything difficult, and to be frank I would be revolted if they did. It's just too public a forum for anything approaching real relationships.

And the fact is, I already keep in touch with the people that I genuinely want to be in contact with: I email, text, or Skype them. And if I'm not keeping in touch with them now it's because of Facebook. As I wrote above, it makes me socially lazy.

And so, I'm not doing it anymore. I thought that I would disconnect in six weeks but to be honest, I don't know if I can even be bothered waiting that long. It seems to far away! Two weeks seems about right. Will revise.

Similarly, I tweaked my Tumblr so it's a Ginger Hub. All my social media bits will feed into it, and then if you really care enough you can follow what I'm doing from there. It's bound to be as boring and as self obsessed as Facebook, but at least I'll be boring and self obsessed on my own terms. EAT THAT FACEBOOK DUDES.

(Similarly, the lovely Rebecca at Thrifty Chick has blogged about that new movie about Facebook, and it looks as though she's gone ahead and disconnected herself. JEALOUS).

And now, back to food: I'm so.into.biltong. at the moment. I periodically have these times where I'm more obsessed with eating delicious dried meat than others, and apparently I am crazy nuts about it at the moment. The main issue with this is that eating a lot of (especially garlic flavoured) biltong will upset your stomach, and make you rather unpleasant to be around. True story: I've eaten huge amounts of garlic biltong on two separate occasions with the same result. I find other flavours to have little or no effect.

Other foods I'm obsessing about: sesame crackers, tamari-flavoured almonds, baguettes. And cheese, of course. I made a lot of muesli for a couple of weeks, but it was for everyone else in the flat really and I ended up eating more of it then I'd initially intended too. Although having breakfast was so good...? I struggle with the whole breakfast thing, keeping enthused about eating in the mornings et al.

The "only one" change in my drinking habits is working quite well. I forcibly gave my flatmates white wine last night because I thought that otherwise I would probably drink the whole bottle by myself which would be no good at all. I think I had two-ish glasses in the end, but it was rather delicious. There is just something about having a whole bottle open that makes me super keen to finish it off. I've decided the best answer to this age old problem is to only buy alcohol in separate vessels (i.e. six pack), drink at cafes and bars (where I can't afford to drink too much anyway), or forcibly share my wine bottles. I'm sure the people around me are most upset by the latter decision.

The Anxiety Meds thing is better now. I've changed my pattern of reduction so that it's less of a shock to the system and it seems to be working rather well - my seratonin levels are much better (thanks for asking). It also helps that I had some sleep, saw some sunshine and that my period finally arrived. The pre-period times are the worst aren't they? At any rate, they don't mix well with the non-seratonin times. Take my word for it.

Unfortunately, my Boy has been sick since Monday! Poor darling. I have been mopping his fevered brow and bringing him offerings of tea and water. The Gudwif indeed. There is nothing more miserable than a sick Boy.

Finally: Lizzie sent me this picture by Maira Kalman. I think it's pretty awesome.

Wednesday List: Five Changes That I'm Really Proud of Myself for Making

via All Things Amazing

Come join me on my self-congratulatory binge! It feels great!


♥ Making changes in the way I'm spending, feeling about, and looking at money. This has been a huge achievement for me. For the first time in years, I feel completely in control of my finances. Of course, there's no doubt that I'm still in debt, but these days I don't get that horrible feeling of pure dread whenever I think about it. It feels manageable, and I'm in control of it. For the first time in my life I'm actively making plans for two years in my future and they don't feel impossibly far off and dream like - I'm taking my plans seriously and not just idealising. I'm all: FUCK YEAH. I can save enough for that.


♥ Creating positive habits. The whole habit-making thing for me has been in the past a litany of "bad-habits", including but not limited to: pot-smoking, nail chewing, staying up late and looking for things I don't want on Trade Me. However, in the last six months I've worked really hard to establish some really positive habits; and I'm really proud of how far I've come. Apparently it takes 21 days to form a habit, so I mayn't be there yet but I'm definitely making inroads. The most important rule? If you slip up, just get back on the wagon the next day. My two best positive habits so far:

1. Flossing. Dudes, soz if this is TMI, but I HATE flossing with a passion (I love brushing so I'm not entirely devoid of dental hygiene). Every time I go to the dentist I get a lecture and a huge bill apparently related to my non-flossing, so I made a decision a few months ago to floss every evening (those bills are killer), and I'm finally working flossing into my life as a daily habit. I feel so responsible! It seemed so much more doable to say to myself that I would make it part of my pre-bed evening routine than telling myself that I would do it every time I brushed. And you know what - it's beginning to seem like far less of a pain in the arse.
2. Morning Routine. This really has made a positive influence in the way that I approach the day. I'm a hell of a lot more cheerful when I arrive at work (I'm actually awake) and I'm really enjoying doing something I like before I have to start my working day. It makes the day feel like it's mine.

♥ Making difficult changes, speaking up and asking for what I want. This is a huge challenge for me. While I'm very good at being opinionated when I can stand alone, I have a pathological fear of confrontation. When I feel strongly about something I tend to close in on myself instead of doing anything about it. It's still in a babysteps stage, but this year there's been a number of situations where I've had the courage to make changes that I need to make - leaving Derby for one, saying hard things in my relationships for another. It's defo something I'll have to continue to work on, but I'm super proud of the what I've achieved so far.


♥ Getting rid of my need for stuff. The lack of appropriation of stuff really stems from my need to save money, but I'm also quite obsessed with minimising the stuff I already have. Every time I get rid of a bag of books or clothes, I feel as though I'm removing another weight from around my shoulders. I've said before that I'll never be a minimalist, but I have discovered a new appreciation for having less, and really valuing what I do have. Minimising my things gives me the same frisson that acquiring things used to.


♥ Crafty patience.  At some point this year (I think during the obsessive lace making or underwear making) I discovered the value of patience in my crafty endeavours, and it's given me a whole new perspective on what I'm doing. Enjoying the process while knitting is not really that new for me, but sewing is something that has often made me INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATED - I think because, with sewing, I'm solely focused on the finished product. Patience and enjoying the process has translated into a less frazzled Ginger and far nicer finished products. Awesome.


Are you as obsessed with resolutions as I am? Do you find them hard to follow through? And are there any that you're really proud of following through on?

Sunday Awesome: Watch the Monkey. Watch him!

Via Ffffound

Anxiety Meds

ello my darlings. I've been terribly quiet this week, although I confess that I had a post ready for Wednesday (about changes that I'm happy I've made). However, given my epic meltdowns of Monday and Tuesday I didn't feel I could post it with any degree of honesty. I normally steer away from being negative here so... SILENCE.

I think essentially the flatness issue comes down to the fact that I'm in the beginning stages of coming off my anti-anxiety meds. My seratonin levels are all over the place and I feel blaaaaaah. Blah like my Melbourne times. I'm sure it doesn't help that I am also pre menstrual and the weather is gross.

And that's it! I'm sure that rest and stuff will be good for me.

Cats and Hearts

Apparently, cats do this kind of thing enough for me to store up a bunch of images? I added the Celestial Moggies because they are fabulous, and lets face it, one can find almost anything in the night sky. There are probably hearts there if you look carefully enough.

via Ffffound, Ffffound, Zippora Lux via Kitsune Noir, We Heart It and We Heart It.

I made these AMAZING chocolate puddings

And because I've adapted the recipe I feel totally entitled to share it with you.

So, Nat and Mark came over last night for a barbeque, and I decided to make individual squidgy chocolate puddings for dessert. When I was shopping for ingredients I had in mind three recipes: a Stonesoup Recipe, a Canelle and Vanille recipe, and a recipe that I had hidden away in my green clearfile. I have no idea where this one came from - I think it was stuck on the wall of the flat in Maarama Cres that I lived in something like three years ago. Anyways. I bought almond meal and *ahem* three blocks of Whittaker's Ghana Dark chocolate, came home and realised that I was going to have to bastardise something or other because I'd ended up with half the ingredients for all of the recipes, and I really wanted to use the almond meal.

This is my final product:

Amazing Chocolate Almond Puddings

200g dark choc (I used Whittaker's Ghana Dark which is a 72% choc)
50g butter
4 eggs
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
2 tsps vanilla extract
1/4 cup ground almonds
1 tbsp cocoa

• Melt butter and chocolate in the microwave and stir together until smooth.
• Beat sugar and eggs in cake mixer or with electric beater for about five minutes - until thick and pale. Add vanilla, ground almonds and cocoa, beat for another two minutes.
• Add melted chocolate and butter and beat for another five minutes.
• Spoon into muffin tray (I used a silicon tray that seems to have super small muffin cavities - thus I have enough for 12 small puddings).
• Bake for 10 minutes in a 180C oven. Puddings should be very soft and gooey to the touch.
• Serve while still warm on individual plates. I served these with plain yoghurt.

I didn't bake these right away, but put them in the fridge in the muffin tray until we were all ready for dessert... the recipe said I should add two minutes on to the cooking time, but to be honest our oven sucks so I just cooked them until I was done.

DUDES YOU SHOULD TOTES MAKE THIS.

That is all.

Sunday Awesome: ANGRY PANDA

This panda really wants you to eat cheese.

This post went up at 10:10 on 10/10/10. HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT?

Arohanui: in which Ginger gets down with her loving self

It's Thursday! My, this week has moved rapidly. As I write I am sucking rose-flavoured French sweets (yum, aniseedy centre), and listening to Hindesmith: Kammermusik. I am feeling not-ragey! And well rested! It's incredible.

So, in no particular order, here are somethings that I'm loving on.

via the whinery

♥ Anise de Flavigny rose bon bons. See how pretty the tin is? I just found out that this kind of sweet has been made in Flavigny since the 700s. COR BLIMEY.

♥ Going to the library and finding new music. I've spent something like three weeks becoming increasingly frustrated with my music, and I've finally done something about it. So much listening ahead of me this weekend.

♥ Crusty French bread with butter and ham and a good cup of coffee.

♥ New morning routine, reading before work and drinking lemony hot water before my first cup of coffee.

♥ One glass of wine! The power of "only one" is intoxicating. But not as intoxicating as the many glasses of wine. Which is good - because the lack of intoxication is pretty much what I'm going for.

♥ Being loved.

♥ Sending thank you emails to people I don't know and getting wonderfully friendly replies.

♥ My herb garden, and the little bits of new growth that even now are beginning to come through.

♥ Bag! So capacious! So wonderful!

♥ Stretching out in bed when the Boy is away for work.

♥ This quote, from anthropologist Marshall Sahlins:

❝One can be affluent either by having a great deal, or by not wanting very much.❞

♥ Sunshine for SO MANY DAYS IN A ROW.

♥ Sunday night barbecues.

♥ Paying $1700 off my credit card, and otherwise being on top of my finances (so.stoked.)

♥ Citrus fruit and cake in my bag for lunch.

♥ Being rested.

Many kisses for you my lovelies! Hope that you are all going well x

Some things about beards

My Boy has a beard. I'm quite fond of it.

Marc Johns via Paper Tissue, Marc Johns via Flickr, Beard History via Online Schools, Toothpaste for Dinner.

Monday evening, post-weekend, an Oxford comma, and some links

I'm sitting at the dining table, looking out over the unweeded garden and drinking slightly flat beer and buttery vegemite toast. AFTER WORK SNACK OF CHAMPIONS. I spent all day stuck inside. Boo! The sun was shining but I wasn't even warm for most of the day - our office doesn't appear to respond well to sunlight. In addition, I wore shoes that shredded my feet on the way to work and spent the whole day wearing emergency slippers that I keep in my desk (not professional, but hey ho).

The weekend though was fabulosity. Not only did I complete most of my things on Friday's list, but we also had our first barbeque of the season! (I'd say summer but I'm afraid I'd be courting disaster. Clutching wood as we speak). My newly weeded herb garden looks great, and I refreshed the soil with the help of the Boy and planted some new thyme and chives. BEHOLD - the difference.

I'm awfully proud of myself. I'm not renowned for my gardening abilities, so we'll see how this all pans out. Last year my garden was mostly snail provision.

Lacking in enthusiasm today, but here are some links - I've been saving them up for a while now.

• Some pictures of a lady grooming her snake
• Iconic photographs examines the myth around this iconic image from England's Poll Tax riots
• Absolutely incredible colour photographs from the early last century - Pre WWII America, and Russia
• Hercule Poirot bemoans the way technology is taking the fun out of country house murders (and who could blame him?)

Friday - sunshine - navel gazing

Aleks Sennwald via Supersonic Electronic

The weekend is rolling around again, the sunshine is out today and I'm hoping for a beautiful weekend of pottering and making and planting. In fact, the Metservice says it will be sunny until next weekend, which is heavenly. Think of all the sunshine I will loll about in! I will be some kind of SPF-30-wearing basking-shark.

I had big plans for the weekend in terms of making myself a bunch of sexy undies, but it seems like a waste of beautiful weather to hide myself away in my room. Gardening would be good I think. For serious, I get overwhelmed by weekend options sometimes and I want to do everything at once. I need two weekends! One for doing what I want to do, and the other for doing boring chores. Otherwise this ridiculous anxiety about not being able to do everything I want with my weekend will just continue. WOE.

I've instigated a new morning routine, because my previous one was entirely not working for me (as in: I was frequently late and horribly rushing). I've been going strong for the last two mornings, and it's really nice feeling awake and functional when I arrive at work. The routine is still undergoing some tweaking, but essentially it involves: getting out of bed at 7; giving myself half an hour to sit, read or write, and drink a couple of cups of hot water and lemon; taking coffee and toast back to bed and having breakfast with the Boy; showering and putting on make up; and then telling myself to leave for work fifteen minutes earlier than I used to (I NEVER leave on time).

This process is easing me into the day, which is what I was missing I think - the mornings have been crashing upon me dramatically and forcefully for far too long. There is an element of control in my mornings now, and I am nothing if not a control freak (YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST).

I had the most horrific series of toasted sandwich experiences at lunch time. I was hoeing into my delicious cheese-piccalilli-salami toasted sandwich, when a huge squirt of cheese flew out and all down the front of my white t-shirt. I rushed into the loo to try and sponge off the combined turmeric stain/grease spot, but of course the sponging merely rendered my t-shirt mildly pornographic.

Seconds later a second squirt of piping hot cheese dripped all over my fingers (coating them) and gave me third degree cheese burns. This was almost as painful as that one time I burnt my face with hot tomato juice and had a red blister on my chin for days.

Thus, despite the aforementioned delicousness, I was not very happy with my lunch. Toasted sandwiches = love/hate relationship.

I'm extremely excited because I'm commissioning a couple of illustrations (including a banner) for Self Conscious Posturing! This will be the first time I've spent money on the blog since the ill-fated vanity URL issue of last year . This isn't entirely dead as a concept but I think that I will use a '.co.nz' suffix in the future though. OWN THE NZ).

Anyways, the lovely Rebecca Ter Borg (who doesn't appear to have a website - you can see some of her illustrations here though) is going to be doing them for me! I'm so lucky because she's crazy talented, and   I love her work. I just need to do some homework now myself. Another thing to add to the weekend list?

WEEKEND LIST

• Coffee with Jo (ex roller derby)
• Plant out herbs in the front garden
• Make some progress on the sexy undies
• Brainstorming for blog illustrations
• Writing
• Reading
• My Laundry (I love doing laundry)
• Bask in the sunshine

♥ Looking like: I'm trying to embrace my aesthetic direction for the summer - white t-shirt, brown cable cardigan, green flower print skirt, brown cowboy boots. And fishnet stockings, which I (apparently) believe go with everything

♥ Listening to: Dudes, every time I get to this bit I bemoan my static music collection. This week I *shall* do something about this.

♥ Fad a la Mode: Having a single glass of whatever is on offer. This is surprisingly liberating as well as being a hell of a lot kinder on my pocket. Viva la ONLY DRINKING ONE GLASS!

♥ Watched this Week: Boardwalk Empire. AMAZING series. I love the costumes, but the whole thing is as compelling as Deadwood. In fact, it's quite a lot like Deadwood, but set during the Prohibition. And with Al Capone! And flappers!

Also, I've been re-watching Pride and Prejudice. The 1995 version obviously, because the more recent movie version is a laughable conceit given Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth's supremacy. Oh, and Mrs Bennett and Kitty and Lydia are so fabulously dreadful! Stoked because I still have two episodes waiting for me before I've finished the mini-series.

♥ Reading: I have a bunch of things on the go at the moment - The Surgeon of Crowthorne (Simon Winchester), A Literary Passion (letters between Anais Nin and Henry Miller) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which I never quite got around to finishing when we read it at book club.

♥ Webreading: My new fave is Daily Pep Talk from a Best Friend. Bless her, she also has a mobile site so you can get a pep talk on the go.

♥ Anticipation: Sewing to my little heart's content, sitting in the sun, exhibition opening at Te Papa tonight!