Sunday Film Fest: The Ancient Worlds - The Spartans

Do you have almost two and a half hours to watch Bettany Hughes being excited about Ancient Sparta, and particularly about the role of women in Spartan culture (cf. to the role of women in Athenian culture of course).

You should MAKE THAT TIME. I have watched this three times now and I can almost look past Bettany Hughes' breathiness it is so good.

 

Let me tell you about my budgeting spreadsheet

A Google spreadsheet is much more manageable.

My obsession with budgeting has been fairly well established by this point. But! I’m always making new discoveries, increasing my budgeting accuracy, and trying to find new ways to save.

In an effort to have a much better understanding of how I am spending my Mad Money, a few months ago I reincarnated my budgeting spreadsheet. I’m really keen on having such a minutely detailed record of my spending - firstly, it tickles my lizard brain and secondly, I now have an answer when I ask myself two days before payday: where the hell did all my money go this week?

In fact, keeping such a spreadsheet enables me to tell you that for the period 12-26 November I spent:

• 24.21% of my spending money on food
• 9.51% on coffee
• 10.31% on booze
• 38.50% on clothes (An anomaly. I must have been feeling rich.)
• 1.46% on homeware
• 13.14% on presents or donations.

I made my spreadsheet on Google Docs so that I can make updates on my phone in real time. No collecting receipts! I can make my entry on the spreadsheet between ordering and receiving my morning coffee - so no excuses for not keeping the spreadsheet up to date. (Of course, I’ve been horrible at keeping it over the fortnight before Christmas. But I am back on that bandwagon and feeling smug. Aw yeah.)

Because I am quelle generous, I have made a shared version of my budget spreadsheet that you can download and keep. The cells that are highlighted in yellow are for you to plug in your own information - there’s a space for the date and a space for the amount of money you’ve allowed yourself per fortnight. You are of course welcome to make any changes you like to your version of the spreadsheet - mine has some pretty specific categories and the pay period might not suit you.

Another recent budgeting triumph

I have some regular appointments that were annoyingly skewing my budget and leaving me broke at unfortunate times. So in November I worked out how much I spend every two months on all the appointments, and then how much I would need to put away each fortnight to cover them.

I opened another bank account for the Appointments money - and I set up a function that automatically sweeps any money over $300 straight into my savings account. It’s like magic! Magic savings.

The whole thing has been going swimmingly. Best idea ever.

It seemed like a good idea but didn’t really pan out that way

I had a plan to reward myself for not buying coffee by putting that money into my savings account every day that I bravely and maturely made the decision not to splurge.

However, this never really happened. It was a good idea though - and, at any rate, it would show in a very real and visceral way how much I could be saving if I wasn't frittering my money away on coffee. You should try it and let me know how it goes.

Sunday Film Fest: Hoplites! Greeks at War

Do you like Ancient Greeks? Do you like vases? Do you like geekery with your animation?

May I interest you in this video. It's pretty great, brings back many memories of high school Classics classes (this is an animation of a black figure vase, in case you were wondering).

The guy who made this animation has made a bunch - this is the longest, the rest are usually less than a minute. You should watch some more now.

What is making me happy: Christmas week and summer holidays

Two Christmas trees are not enough. Also, please note my artful(!) use of vignette: I should not be allowed to play with filters.

I am on holiday now - three weeks of glorious me-time; cooking and sewing and knitting, and planning for Christmas and next year’s projects. Yesterday I put up our beautiful tree, I’ve made some simple mincemeat and we have a fancy free-range ham in the fridge for Christmas Day.

After New Year, Shannon and I are going on holiday for a week with the ever-lovely Nat and Mark - Taupō and then maybe Tauranga. Sunshine is nigh! Exciting because until very recently, Wellington has been proving itself true-to-type in the weather department. *Sighs as though her heart would break* *looks wistfully out the rain-smeared window at the rain with chin in hand*

Related to Christmas planning: I’m also enjoying planting succulents in teacups/stoneware goblets/dessert glasses.

READING:

• Naked by David Sedaris - I bought a copy of this for Nat for her birthday and then borrowed it off her - only to discover three essays-in that I had definitely read it before. I had a look on Good Reads in the vague hope that I’d actually made a note of it and it turns out I'd totally read it in August last year! How about that.
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - long conversation with Mon after I’d read this about loving everything that Margaret Atwood represents but then not really loving the books themselves. There was so much I liked about this book, but I did feel it was a bit laboured.
• The Portable Dorothy Parker - dipping in and out of the short stories, and skipping over most of the poetry. Not keen on poetry, even the comedic rhyming couplet type.
• Always sitting in my reader and making me feel dismayed with my lack of commitment to Serious Reading - Middlemarch and Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography.

WATCHING: A lot (SO MUCH) of Nigella Lawson. On Saturday I watched two series of Nigella's Christmas Kitchen in a row, six episodes in all. I am totally Christmassy right now. I want Poinsettias.

Also! Last night: Home Alone which was better than I remembered.

FAVOURITE PODCAST EPISODE: Fugitive Waves (the Kitchen Sisters) - the Nights of Edith Piaf. SO.GOOD.

The Kitchen Sisters are amaze, also I am fascinated by Edith Piaf's life story. I love a mostly non-narrative/non-editorialising podcast with lots of oral history and primary sources - so: A+++.

KNITTING: I bound off a pocket of my tunic dress and have put it away until next year.

Finally, I began swatching for my Featherweight in Madeline Tosh Lace and the tiny stitches are basically quite terrifying.

SEWING: I have many plans, lots of patterns and a fairly hefty stash - but an empty cutting table. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LISTENING: Michael Buble’s Christmas album is on high-rotation at the moment. I enjoy his unabashed cheesiness mightily at this time of year.

Wednesday List: Fabulous things from an amazing weekend

On Labour weekend Shannon and I ran away to Martinborough for a mini-break and it was quelle amaze. This blog post is late, but also the whole experience was so fabulous so I feel totally justified in bragging about it still.

Here are some of the best things. (Non-listed best thing: Shannon. Because that goes without saying ❤, vom).

Tandem bicycles and boozy vineyard tours

Have you ever ridden a tandem bicycle around a vineyard with your lover? If no, may I recommend it to you?

The bicycle situation was pretty great. While we biked with increasing danger from vineyard to vineyard, casually drinking and buying wine, the people we hired the bike from rode around after us and collect our wine purchases.  So.decadent.

Fascinatingly, I found that my tandem-riding abilities increased with the amount of wine we “tasted".

So much delicious food

Did we eat and eat and eat? Yes we did, and it was pretty great. Highlights include the scallops at Pinocchio, a delicious roast lamb platter at Cool Change, and the inevitable fish and chips at the Lake Ferry pub on the way home. I was very sad not to have a pie at the French bakery cafe in Greytown but I guess we can't eat all the things all the time, because time just doesn’t work like that.

Chinoiserie all up in my hotel room

Shannon was lucky enough to be given a voucher for one night of our stay at the rather swanky Martinborough Hotel - hence our decision to stay there (nay, take a mini-break).

The Martinborough Hotel is a big old pile that's been renovated in a terribly tasteful style and is smack bang in the middle of the town. We stayed in the Bidwill Room and it was decorated in tres pretty Chinoiserie. There was also a small table with a silver jug of white blossoms that were artfully losing their petals.

Stonehenge Aotearoa

Stonehenge Aotearoa is worth a visit for the novelty alone. DID YOU KNOW it is not a mere replica of Stonehenge in spray-on concrete and chicken wire, but rather a perfect astronomical clock, reversed for the Southern Hemisphere and incorporating elements of Māori astronomy? DID YOU KNOW it is run by a group of enthusiastic local astronomers who also run tours and have made a lovely video guide you can watch in their auditorium? DID YOU KNOW it is beloved as a venue by local Wiccans and Druids?

Entry fee was $8, and I have no regrets.

Here is a photo of two different Stonehenges, can you tell the difference?

Spend less, save more: eating your income

Lately I've been committed to recording my weekly spend, and one thing has become painfully obvious - I eat or drink most of my money. Between grabbing a coffee and a scone on the way to work, and buying my lunch or dinner, I spend about a third of my mad money on food each pay period.

Food is good and food is important, and it's important to buy food and eat it. At home we put aside a good amount of money each week to buy food for the house and we eat really well - something for which I’m always grateful.

What I'm trying to address here is the additional money I spend on food each week, which is nearly always frittered away on snacks and food that I don’t really need. I want to avoid that feeling three days before pay day when I realise that I have have three dollars of spending money left and nothing really to show for it - not even a super fun night out. And I want to help you avoid it too. We can do it together!

So, while acknowledging that food is my one weakness, here are some suggestions - some of which I follow on a semi-regular basis, and that maybe you could follow more frequently - to stop us eating our money.

Fancy coffee is a treat

While cutting the coffee will not kill debt in itself, making a decision to drink less fancy coffee can make a difference to the amount you can save or repay. It's terrifying to think how much money I must have spent on coffee over the years. As an individual I'm sure that I've effectively propped up the entire Wellington coffee industry*, or at any rate, drunk the equivalent of a house deposit.

These days I try to make sure that I always have the makings of delicious coffee at work. If you're working for a more generous employer than I am, you'll probably already have some kind of coffee banging around the staffroom. But even if you're bringing in your own bag of fresh roasted beans, making coffee - rather than buying it - makes for a substantial saving.

Because being completely puritanical about espresso doesn't work for me, I get a coffee from a cafe once or twice a week. My work-local has a surcharge for takeaway coffee cups which encourages me to remember my Keep Cup, and thus, save the planet as well as 30 cents a pop. The upshot of this is that if I have to go back to the office to get my cup, I will stop - think about the coffee I already have available - and choose not to buy the espresso. At least, that’s the theory.

Better still, I use the infrequency of bought coffees as an excuse to take some time out and have a sit down before work or at lunch time. Not only do I get the caffeine, but also the atmosphere, the comfy seats, the access to glossy magazines, and the people watching. More bang for my buck, and makes it a treat rather than a habit.

Bring the basics

Keep the basics in your bag: fill a water bottle, bring a piece of fruit and a small container filled with nuts or some other kind of sustaining treat. We’re just aiming to make it from lunchtime to when we get home without blowing ten dollars on afternoon tea or buying a drink that we don’t need.

I’ve just started making Bliss Balls which are crazy delicious, but in the past I’ve also made muesli slice or biscuits that I take to work as an afternoon treat. Dried fruit and nuts or bought muesli bars are easier to keep on hand, and something that’s kind of fun if not actively completely macrobiotic is a small container of sprouts - I’m really into sprouting at the moment and sprouts are crunchy and delicious, so, win.

A moment too, to appreciate how annoying it is to buy a bottle of water - creating waste and paying far too much money for something you can get for free? Ugh.

Leftovers and freezer food

Three bean chili, rice and accoutrements

The big daily spend on food is buying lunches during the work week. I love sandwiches, but it can get boring when you’re bringing cheese and bread everyday.** I try and remember to bring a big container of leftovers, and keeping this in mind can dictate what I’ll cook at home - we eat much more bowl food and things that heat up and travel well.

I try to allow for days where there are no leftovers available by making a slow cooker pot of dal or chill beans once every fortnight or so, dividing the food into lunch size portions, and freezing these. In winter, soup is a good option - I used to work with someone who’d make soup with leftover veges (i.e. whatever was left over from last week) and then freeze the soup in resealable bags.

The problem with this plan is that you need to be fairly organised, and if you’re having a super busy weekend it’s just not going to happen. But I find cooking really relaxing, so I’m happy to prep and potter on a lazy Sunday.

These are the slow cooker recipes that I’ve used lately

• Smitten Kitchen: three-bean chili
• Cafe Johnsonia: Slow Cooker Red Lentil Dal

These Budget Bytes home-made frozen burritos and quesadillas also make good, simple lunches to keep in the freezer.

Dinner out is a social exercise

In another attempt to control my spending, I’m trying to make any dinners and lunches in cafes and restaurants social exercises. I get to enjoy both delicious food and delicious company!

Once again, the plan is to move away from considering expensive pre-prepared food a necessity and towards thinking about eating-out as an event on which it’s worthwhile to spend my money. That is, I want the experience to be one I savour and that is memorable. Not too much to ask?

Spending less on food is an ongoing project for me - do you have any suggestions to help?
Also, here is a 2010 post about the same thing: Money and the fine art of Not Frittering It Away on Food.

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*Only a tiny bit of hyperbole. Really.
**This is a lie. Cheese and bread are two of my main food groups, and I can happily eat variations on them every day. For the purposes of this blog post, however, let’s pretend that it can get boring.
***I really love doing this.

Wednesday List: Some recent archaeology finds I'm keen on

See me geek out at Stonehenge on a very dark day

While I'm not (yet?) elbow deep in dirt, I can still get my archaeological kicks from reading up on the discoveries that real-life archaeologists are making.

Here are some finds or analysis of past finds that I've read about, and that have made my skirt fly up in recent days.

1. The hairstyles of Ancient Egyptians. Amazingly and awesomely, a dig at Amarna in Egypt has uncovered at least 28 bodies with intact hairstyles. These include that of a woman whose (probably posthumous) 'do included over 70 different hair extensions, and another of a woman who hennaed her hair - perhaps to cover her greys. It turns out that the locals were also into braids in a really big way, and styled their hair with various fats. So, not that different from today.
   
   Extra awesomeness: Amarna is the desert city of the renegade pharaoh Akhenaten, who drastically overhauled Egyptian religious practises during his reign, and changed the focus (albeit for that period only) from polytheism to monotheism.
   
2. Neolithic child goldsmiths. New research on finds from the Bush Barrow burial mound near Stonehenge (so, on an amazing plain that's FULL of neolithic religious sites) indicate that it was children as young as ten who executed the really fine goldsmithing found on the artefacts. Check out the image of a dagger handle covered with over 140,000 tiny gold studs, overlapped to look like fish scales. Quelle amaze.
   
3. Hand holding skeletons at the Chapel of St Morrell, in Hallaton. This one has been kind of big news, because nothing says "sexy history" like 700 year old hand-holding skeletons. But the other details are equally fascinating: the Roman artefacts found beneath the chapel site, the six bodies found with stones on top of them (to "hold them down"), and the name of the Chapel site itself - "Hare Pie Bank" - and it's associated history of bottle kicking competitions.

Have you heard of any awesomely awesome digs recently? There's an extensive dig taking place in Gallipoli at the moment which looks pretty fascinating.

Wednesday List: alternative future professions

Here is a list.

A list of future professions.

Future professions I could possibly undertake in my next career-life.

In no particular order:

• Archaeologist. Slight difficulty in pursuing this in New Zealand given that I'm not really that enthusiastic about either MIDDENS or VICTORIAN RUBBISH PILES. In my hypothetical future career as an archaeologist I am also basically one the cast members from Time Team, so have more access to things like Medieval Castles and Tudor Gardens.*
• Related: Food historian. Because food and history are two of my favourite things, and food history is another of my favourite things. And you can tell the history of nearly everything and everyone through food. *nods sagely*
• Rare breed pig farmer. My love of pigs is well documented, and have only increased since I saw this documentary on YouTube about pork and rare breed pigs. It's presented by Clarissa Dickson Wright; I watched it after I went on a Two Fat Ladies journey of discovery after her recent death.
• Cider maker. I like my cider DRY and tasting a bit like FEET. Sadly in New Zealand the "cider revival" has concentrated on very sweet, RTD-style ciders and I am out with those poor excuses for a beverage. If you need something done properly you'd best do it yourself.
• Own my own online/local fabric shop. I really like fabric, especially some of the super-gorgeous Japanese fabric that I keep seeing online. And Petone clearly needs a fabric shop to complement the yarn shop, two sewing machine repair places and haberdashery.
• Make artisan mustard. Yum. Mustard.

*Related: everywhere I have mentioned Time Team on this blog.

Wednesday List: podcast recommendations

I play podcasts any time that I'm sewing, walking around, doing something that doesn't require much brain power at work, commuting, shopping at the supermarket, cooking, cleaning... I like the radio, I like human voices, and I also like self programming. 

Of course, most podcasts are only issued at intervals - once a week (if I'm lucky), bi-weekly or monthly. This means that my listening capacity far exceeds the capacity of creators to make content and so, I am constantly discovering, subscribing and re-listening.

Gentle reader, I have listened to MANY podcasts, and now I would like to share some recommendations with you.

Some awesome stories

I think that actually attending a story-telling night would be a little bit too much like going to see stand-up comedy (true story: I pretty much hate stand-up comedy). However live story-telling makes great radio.

• The Moth podcast is a well produced show of live recordings from story-telling events in the US and Canada. There is some variety in the awesomeness of the stories, but as a rule the podcasts themselves are well-curated and have a good spread of experiences.
• RISK! is Moth-esque but about 300x more risqué.
• Spark London is a story-telling podcast from - obviously - London. A bit more raw in production compared to the other two.

Podcasts that are centred around telling stories outside of the context of a live story-telling event make up the core of my listening. Even better: when they include primary sources (be still my beating heart).

• The entire catalogue of the Radiotopia network. I am especially in love with The Stranger, Love + Radio and the Radio Diaries (see: the Radio Diaries Strange Fruit episode which is disturbing and a truly amazing piece of radio).
• This American Life (a given).
• Radiolab has been in constant rotation since my earliest days as a podcast junkie. It's a blend of science and story-telling and, like many of the Radiotopia shows, has some really interesting sound work.
• Everything is Stories has amazing content and is beautifully produced. This is one of my favourite podcasts at present and I am extremely excited because as I started writing this I discovered a new episode had just been released. 

Je suis un History Geek

I listen to many history podcasts, some of which are very hit and miss and very geeky and some of which have terrible sound. In an effort to respect that your geekery may not be as well developed as mine and to preserve your sanity (such bad sound!) here I suggest the better ones.

• Sawbones is a comedic look at medical history presented by a married couple - moments of genuine hilarity. Also! History!
• Stuff You Missed in History Class, which is can be really interesting and is always well researched. The hosts tend to do a very broad sweep so the relevancy of a particular episode to your interests may be hit and miss. Also, in recent years I think the episodes have become too short and with farrrrrr too many advertisements. I recommend using your powers to skip these.
• Last Stop to Nowhere covers the more obscure aspects of Australian history (Somerton Man!) but isn’t afraid to look at the more difficult and painful aspects of Australian history like the Frontier Wars.

Radio drama

Listening to old Agatha Christie radio dramas lead me to the love of Golden Age detective novels. Current favourite radio dramas include

• Welcome to Nightvale, which is simultaneously completely left field and utterly formulaic. I think it helps to listen to the series from the beginning as oppose to jumping in halfway through, because of character development and understanding of in-jokes.
• BBC Homefront - which is an ambitious attempt to create a four year long radio drama dramatising life in England during the First World War. Extremely gentle programming, the episodes only last a few minutes each. Soooothing. Also, we're only a few episodes in so it's not too late to listen to the entire series!

Special mentions

Too good not to mention, but falling outside of the categories above.

• The Call Your Girfriend podcast, which makes me miss Bex, but also feel like I'm living inside The Toast or The Hairpin. Feminism! Robyn! Rants!
• The Sporkful is hands down the best food podcast that I listen to, and makes me think about eating delicous food but not also agonise over the kind of oil I'm using (which is a very real problem form me)
• Finally, shout out to Pocket Casts, my podcasting app of choice, which is so much better than iTunes.

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Brief life update

Right now I am writing this in bed, in advance, on a Saturday. The weather is fairly shit, and I'm not really loving my job at the moment so the weekend is a blessed relief. 

 

Also: drinking my second cup of coffee and obsessed with Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium piece which is an English Renaissance choral work for 40 voices singing 40 separate parts.

REPOST: Spend less, save more: making a spending plan

This post was originally published in June 2013, the first in an intended series about money and spending. I still have those posts in draft, and I fully intend to publish them. Thus, this repost serves as a refresher.

Back in 2010, I started paying back my debt with a vengeance and it became a pretty substantial blog project for me. I wrote up a bunch of interviews with people who I thought dealt with money well (Nat, Lizzie, Lake) and a series of posts about how I was dealing creatively with not spending so much. I think 'money' is probably one of the most used tags on this blog.

While I'm not blogging about it as much, spending less money and being out of debt/saving myself some dollars is still very much part of what I do on a day to day basis (witness: savings tower). I am nauseatingly proud of this and should not be engaged in conversation on this topic. Just ask anyone.

Having refined my savingsy/frugally ways over the years, and boring the pants off of everyone I know, I thought it was timely to revisit some of the most helpful things I've found to do to spend less and save more. I hope that someone else finds this useful - I know that in the beginning stages, reading blog posts about people in the same situation as myself was incredibly helpful and kept me on the straight and narrow.

I'd initially planned this as a single blog post, but realised that I had so much that I'd learnt and wanted to share into the ether that it made more sense to make it a series.

Thus, the first logical step:

Get your foundations sorted: work out a budget.

The concept of budgeting has such a stink of deprivation around it that most people are disinclined to look into their budget until they're absolutely at the end of their financial tether. I know I was.

Because I'm now saving, rather than paying off debt, it's something I rather enjoy these days (how horribly smug of me). I like to think about it as my spending plan, rather than my budget.

The questions you're trying to answer with your budget are: Where is my money going? How much do I owe? How much do I want to save?

1. Where is it going?

It's super hard to work out a budget without knowing how you're spending your money already.

There are a couple of ways that you can collect data about what you're spending your money on. The most straightforward way is to collect receipts and enter your daily spend into a notebook or spreadsheet, categorising each transaction as you go. Alternatively, you can use some kind of software or app that will pull information from your bank account and put it into categories based on your definitions (you can use something like Kiwibank's Heaps or, if you have access to it, Mint). I've used both the receipt and electronic methods - and sometimes a combination of the two.

Even once your budget is sorted it's good to keep an eye on your spending, as it helps to see how you're tracking against your budget and if you need to work more on the plan that you've nominated. It's not always easy to keep up, but it is worthwhile.

At this point, you can also rationalise your spending. Work out what outgoings are fixed: bills, rent, food, transport costs. I don't do this now, but I used to include my ration for coffee in my weekly fixed costs (they now sit under 'fun'). It's up to you whether you want to do this, but be aware that it will affect any capacity for saving or paying back debt and sometimes considerably. For example, I drink soy flatwhites which cost $4.50 each a day. If I budget for my daily coffee, then I am budgeting for $31.50 each week or $63 a fortnight. Or $126 a month. (Eep). I'd rather spend that on my trip to Europe, thanks awfully!

2. How much do I owe?

Since you're looking carefully at your bank account and spending, you should also work out how much you owe - add together ALL your debts, even the little amounts.

Calculating your debt seems crazy scary, but finding out the worst is better than being hazy on your debts. I've found the reality is rarely a friendly number, but it's a matter of 'better the devil you know' when it comes to debt.

When I first worked out how much I owed, it was truly the first step in having a sense of ownership of my finances. It was also a rather large number.

3. How much do you want to save/at what rate do you want to pay off your debts?

You can work out the rest of your budget - what you'll save, how you'll pay off your debt, and what you can spend for fun - from this point.

I've been trying to save or pay back my debt at around $400-500 pw, so I'll nominate that amount to go into my savings and look at whatever is left over for fun money. If I didn't have an aim in mind, I don't think I would be saving at such a steep rate.

I believe you should be paying off your debt before you begin to save, as saving money at the same time as paying off debt is self-defeating. Interest rates on credit cards and overdrafts are really high and unless your savings are in something like a term deposit, the interest you're earning on your savings won't make up for the interest you're paying on your debts. I know that there are arguments to the contrary, but I'm yet to see a convincing one!

Lately I've been keeping aside around $200 for fun money - 'fun' includes things like haircuts, coffees, social evenings, clothing and knitting/sewing stuff. I also try to make it cover medical expenses, although it's nice to know the savings are there to cover in a pinch. If I know I have a big expense coming up, I'll adjust my other expenditure accordingly. For example, I'm planning to get my haircut this week and pick up a pair of boots from the repairer - so eating lunch and dinner out is off the agenda.

I know from past experience that I can have a totally acceptable social life on around $100 a week - and I'm planning to scale back to something closer to this for the next few weeks of saving before my trip. It's nice to know what my absolute minimum limit for fun spending is (while having a not-hermit existence), and that I can scale back to this at any time.

I was reading the comments on a Stuff article about budgeting a few weeks ago, and the general tenor seemed to be: "that advice is all very well, but not buying coffee doesn't save me much money or fix my immediate debt problem". The point is, you can't fix your debt immediately, it must be done incrementally. And the true cost of debt is time.

Finally, it's important to remember that budgets aren't static! Some weeks are simply more expensive than others, while others allow for more money to be put aside (I saved heaps when I was glangey). Be honest about what you're spending and re-examine your budget on a regular basis. It's basically a hobby of mine.

I will never get bored with talking about money, and how to save it. Do you have anything super helpful about budgets that I haven't covered here?

Next time: Cheers for all that. So, how the hell do I stick to this budget?

Let me tell you about this Victorian Dinner I made in the weekend

Delicious desserts: lithograph from 'Beeton's Book of Household Management', 1879 Photo: THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY.

A couple of months ago I changed jobs. In the inbetween time, I immersed myself in geeky Victoriana – Lark Rise to Candleford, Victorian Kitchen, and Victorian Farm.

There were two immediate results: I became obsessed with knitting Victorian-style crossover shawls and I decided that I wanted to make better use of my copies of Mrs Beeton's Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book and Mrs Marshall's The Book of Ices. (These were gifts from members of my family who clearly know me pretty well to have anticipated this.)

AND SO IT WAS that in the weekend, after much planning and shopping and preparation, I had my almost Victorian dinner party with a hand selected bunch of fabulous people. It all went down pretty well! The reviews have been good, at any rate.

What was actually eaten

I aimed to make dishes that were representative, a bit weird for the modern palate, but basically pretty delicious.

I made four courses altogether :

• Julienne Soup 
• Beef a la mode with Potatoes a la Maitre d'Hotel and beetroot and onion salad
• Cucumber Ice Cream 
• Muscovite of Oranges 

And then Stilton and port to follow.

Dinner on the table, photo courtesy Katherine.

Also! Lashings of red wine

Shannon and I bought a couple of bottles of the ubiquitous Victorian claret which is evidently just a Bordeaux red, so, less exciting than previously imagined.

Shannon made a Claret Cup which was actually pretty dull, partly due to the ambiguity of the recipe and partly because Claret Cup is basically red wine and fizzy water. I think it would be improved by having rather less soda water than claret, as oppose to Mrs B's half and half approach. Or perhaps by replacing the soda water with lemonade. At any rate, we live and learn.

Also also! Disasters

Things I would do differently include trying to achieve some kind of dinner party service zen - I get strangely panicky during service, and end up making silly decisions designed to save time but that rarely pay off.

On this occasion I made a series of terrible rush decisions that ended with my “Muscovite of Oranges” - a kind of orange jelly - collapsing spectacularly all over the bench. Unmoulding a jelly is hard and I if I was to meet, say, Mrs Patmore, I would be worshipping at the altar of her jelly-unmoulding skills. Because O-M-G.

Bonus recipe

The Cucumber Ice Cream was the star of the show. It's possible that it was made wrong - it's not entirely clear whether the cucumber should be pureed with it's cooking liquid or not...

From Mrs Marshall's The Book of Ices (1885)

Cucumber Ice Cream

Peel and remove the seeds from the cucumber and to 1 large-sized cucumber add 4 ounces of sugar and half a pint of water; cook until tender. Then pound and add to it a wine-glass of ginger brandy and a little green colouring and the juice of two lemons; pass through the tammy, and add this to 1 pint of sweetened cream or custard. Freeze and finish as usual.

My book has modern conversions written in for the ingredients and methods:
1 large cucumber
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups water
Pound: Puree in blender or food processor, or with finest grid of food mill
2 Tb ginger brandy (I actually steeped some fresh ground ginger in regular brandy and then strained it)
The juice of 2 lemons
2 1/2 cups of cream or custard*

*I used the 'Very Rich' custard base:
1 pint of cream, a quarter of a pound of castor sugar, and 8 yolks of eggs.
Put the cream in a pan over the fire and let it come to the boil, and then pour it on to the sugar and yolks in a basin and mix well. Return it to the pan and keep it stirred over the fire till it thickens and clings well to the spoon, but do not let it boil; then pass it through a tammy or hair sieve, or strainer. Let it cool; add vanilla or other flavour, and freeze. Mould if desired. When partly frozen, half a pint of whipped cream slightly sweetened may be added to each pint of custard.

Modern measurements:
2 1/2 cups of cream
1/2 cup sugar
After boiling, cool cream slightly
7 egg yolks
Optional: 1 1/4 whipped cream

A philosophy of Christmas

A couple of years after I moved out of home, my parents broke up.

Christmas immediately became awful. "Christmas won't be the same!" I would agonise, still relying on Christmas traditions that had been established as I was growing up. Thus, five years of hating on Christmas followed, as each year would roll around and I would have to negotiate the guilt-filled minefield of Christmas day. I was totes grinchy. I was "bah humbug". I mourned the loss of family Christmasses and was jealous of the Christmasses of other people.

The grinchiness was a major about-face given that my entire life I had been a Christmas geek, a legacy handed down by my Nanny. Even when I was in my teens I would leap out of bed at 6am on Christmas morning  to see whether Santa had visited. How could things ever be the same if my parents weren't scheming to fill my stocking with oranges together? Christmas was ruined forever.

After an extended (and probably excruciating) period of Christmas hatery, I had An Epiphany. I realised that only I was responsible for my enjoyment of Christmas. It wasn't my parent's job to make Christmas amazing for me and if I wanted Christmas to be amazing, it was time for me to take responsibility for my own good times.

And thus, over the last four years, I have been working at making my own traditions and restoring my inner Christmas geek.

In the pursuit of geekery I have been persuasive in flats and tyrannical in my own house. I am committed to real trees, making my own Christmas mince* and Christmas cake**, drinking egg nog and making Christmas playlists. Christmas Day is an unknown quantity - between Shannon and I we have three or four sets of family to visit - but I can control the peripherals. Thus: croissants and coffee for breakfast and an unaccountably early start to the day.

But, most importantly, I am committed to just generally feeling Christmassy - the feeling of anticipation and infinite possibility that I used to have as a child - and to sharing my Christmassy excitement with the people around me.

My Christmas philosophy then is that you are solely responsible for giving your Christmas the best possible basis it needs to be a good day. You choose who you spend it with, and how you spend it. Even choosing to spend it with obligation people is a kind of choice - albeit not necessarily a great one, in hindsight.

And with that final note, I shall proceed to listen to All I want for Christmas is You on repeat.

* from the recipe given to me by Lisa after a blog post where I mentioned the grossness of suet.

** this Hungry and Frozen one but without the marzipan icing.

A week Two weeks in SCP history (June 3-17)

An amazing Andy Warhol polaroid of Liza Minelli

Oh hello there! I have dropped off the face of the planet, blogging wise. I wrote this post a while ago now and during a transfer from blogging clients it some how ended up full of junk html (aside: if you know of a good blogging client for Ubuntu, please let me know!).

At the point where I realised that the formatting was all up the whatever, I felt too exhausted to do anything about it - and then for the next month I fell into a funk/anxiety haze where I felt mostly too exhausted or stressily het up to do anything much of anything, really.

But I am feeling more regular, and so will publish this post in preparation for something more substantial later this week. I have been making lots of things!

It looks as if June has often been a fairly prolific month here. Although I have nothing to report for this week from 2010-2012, I was posting substantively over the rest of the month during those years.

I’m putting this June enthusiasm for blogging down to the longer, colder days of winter, when nothing is more desirable of an evening than to cosy on down. (In fact I am ALSO internally cosy at the moment - full and relaxed on mulled wine. SO.GOOD.)

2009

• Cycle Rant- I am mad about the attitude towards cyclists as expressed in a Dom Post article. (I am often still mad about the attitude towards cyclists).
• You need to see this - I will knit for tattoos.
• Fashion bloggers v Pam Hogg - Fascinated by a now-ancient fashion blogger controversy.
• Saturday morning trauma - More about cycling in Wellington.
• Roller skates and roller skating - I hurt myself again at roller derby.

2008

• Roller Girls - watched Roller Girls for the first time and became deliriously excited about roller derby.
• Wednesday List: Liza Minelli - Liza Minelli is fabulous and awful. Yay Liza!
• A tour of my Kaikohe hotel room - the most retro hotel room I have ever stayed in.

2007

• Tongan Police Brass Band - heh, this is pretty awesome.

2006

• How serendipity on instant film - some thoughts on Polaroid film, which I still deeply love. Where can I buy cheap Polaroid film in NZ, people?
• Existing in real time - a list of things I happened to be well into at the time of writing.
• The World Cup has stolen my boyfriend - hilariously, I recently found a draft for a post about much the same thing that I’d written before the Rugby World Cup in 2011.

2005

• International Woman of Mystery - writing my first blog post in Australia.
• A Series of Observations: things that blow my mind - stuff in Adelaide, including the local passion for flavoured milk, the coins, and the crazy lack of people.

Do June and July fire in you the passion to do nothing but sit around at home and do indoorsy things, like blog?

Spend less, save more: making a spending plan.

Back in 2010, I started paying back my debt with a vengeance and it became a pretty substantial blog project for me. I wrote up a bunch of interviews with people who I thought dealt with money well (Nat, Lizzie, Lake) and a series of posts about how I was dealing creatively with not spending so much. I think 'money' is probably one of the most used tags on this blog.

While I'm not blogging about it as much, spending less money and being out of debt/saving myself some dollars is still very much part of what I do on a day to day basis (witness: savings tower). I am nauseatingly proud of this and should not be engaged in conversation on this topic. Just ask anyone.

Having refined my savingsy/frugally ways over the years, and boring the pants off of everyone I know, I thought it was timely to revisit some of the most helpful things I've found to do to spend less and save more. I hope that someone else finds this useful - I know that in the beginning stages, reading blog posts about people in the same situation as myself was incredibly helpful and kept me on the straight and narrow.

I'd initially planned this as a single blog post, but realised that I had so much that I'd learnt and wanted to share into the ether that it made more sense to make it a series.

Thus, the first logical step:

Get your foundations sorted: work out a budget.

The concept of budgeting has such a stink of deprivation around it that most people are disinclined to look into their budget until they're absolutely at the end of their financial tether. I know I was.

Because I'm now saving, rather than paying off debt, it's something I rather enjoy these days (how horribly smug of me). I like to think about it as my spending plan, rather than my budget.

The questions you're trying to answer with your budget are: Where is my money going? How much do I owe? How much do I want to save?

1. Where is it going?

It's super hard to work out a budget without knowing how you're spending your money already.

There are a couple of ways that you can collect data about what you're spending your money on. The most straightforward way is to collect receipts and enter your daily spend into a notebook or spreadsheet, categorising each transaction as you go. Alternatively, you can use some kind of software or app that will pull information from your bank account and put it into categories based on your definitions (you can use something like Kiwibank's Heaps or, if you have access to it, Mint). I've used both the receipt and electronic methods - and sometimes a combination of the two.

Even once your budget is sorted it's good to keep an eye on your spending, as it helps to see how you're tracking against your budget and if you need to work more on the plan that you've nominated. It's not always easy to keep up, but it is worthwhile.

At this point, you can also rationalise your spending. Work out what outgoings are fixed: bills, rent, food, transport costs. I don't do this now, but I used to include my ration for coffee in my weekly fixed costs (they now sit under 'fun'). It's up to you whether you want to do this, but be aware that it will affect any capacity for saving or paying back debt and sometimes considerably. For example, I drink soy flatwhites which cost $4.50 each a day. If I budget for my daily coffee, then I am budgeting for $31.50 each week or $63 a fortnight. Or $126 a month. (Eep). I'd rather spend that on my trip to Europe, thanks awfully!

2. How much do I owe?

Since you're looking carefully at your bank account and spending, you should also work out how much you owe - add together ALL your debts, even the little amounts.

Calculating your debt seems crazy scary, but finding out the worst is better than being hazy on your debts. I've found the reality is rarely a friendly number, but it's a matter of 'better the devil you know' when it comes to debt.

When I first worked out how much I owed, it was truly the first step in having a sense of ownership of my finances. It was also a rather large number.

3. How much do you want to save/at what rate do you want to pay off your debts?

You can work out the rest of your budget - what you'll save, how you'll pay off your debt, and what you can spend for fun - from this point.

I've been trying to save or pay back my debt at around $400-500 pw, so I'll nominate that amount to go into my savings and look at whatever is left over for fun money. If I didn't have an aim in mind, I don't think I would be saving at such a steep rate.

I believe you should be paying off your debt before you begin to save, as saving money at the same time as paying off debt is self-defeating. Interest rates on credit cards and overdrafts are really high and unless your savings are in something like a term deposit, the interest you're earning on your savings won't make up for the interest you're paying on your debts. I know that there are arguments to the contrary, but I'm yet to see a convincing one!

Lately I've been keeping aside around $200 for fun money - 'fun' includes things like haircuts, coffees, social evenings, clothing and knitting/sewing stuff. I also try to make it cover medical expenses, although it's nice to know the savings are there to cover in a pinch. If I know I have a big expense coming up, I'll adjust my other expenditure accordingly. For example, I'm planning to get my haircut this week and pick up a pair of boots from the repairer - so eating lunch and dinner out is off the agenda.

I know from past experience that I can have a totally acceptable social life on around $100 a week - and I'm planning to scale back to something closer to this for the next few weeks of saving before my trip. It's nice to know what my absolute minimum limit for fun spending is (while having a not-hermit existence), and that I can scale back to this at any time.

I was reading the comments on a Stuff article about budgeting a few weeks ago, and the general tenor seemed to be: "that advice is all very well, but not buying coffee doesn't save me much money or fix my immediate debt problem". The point is, you can't fix your debt immediately, it must be done incrementally. And the true cost of debt is time.

Finally, it's important to remember that budgets aren't static! Some weeks are simply more expensive than others, while others allow for more money to be put aside (I saved heaps when I was glangey). Be honest about what you're spending and re-examine your budget on a regular basis. It's basically a hobby of mine.

I will never get bored with talking about money, and how to save it. Do you have anything super helpful about budgets that I haven't covered here?

Next time: Cheers for all that. So, how the hell do I stick to this budget?

The week in Self-Conscious Posturing History (May 28 - June 2)

pedrofins.net

Last week I announced that I was surprised with how little embarrassment I felt with that week's archival selection.

Lest you think that I'm some kind of paragon of self-acceptance, allow me to assure you that I managed to make up for last weeks sangfroid with the selection below. 2006 is particularly embarrassing: I am so angry and pretentious. Ugh, so pretentious.

But, in the spirit of self-acceptance and without any further ado, I present this week in SCP history:

 

2010 (could be also called: the Tumblr years)

• Sunday Awesome - (that's a great picture btw).
• Wednesday List of Ten Things in 2010 updated - I was making a list of ten things I wanted to do in 2010 and crossing them off! I am notoriously bad at this kind of thing, but it's interesting to note that I did in fact manage to achieve most of these.
• Gratuitous Picture of Yourself Wednesday - this was such a thing at the time.

 

2009

• A list of things that are possibly quite awful but that I have really enjoyed doing lately - four years later, I still enjoy doing most of these things, but have run out of unread/listened to Hercule Poirot mysteries.
• Crochet bicycle seat cover - OR Further Adventures of a Crafty-Beserker - still think this is pretty cool too.

2008

• Tasks overdue: everything, all of it - I have no idea what was happening here.
• Mmm tastes like achievement
• North island road trip - Tokomaru Bay - that was a great trip, and Tokomaru Bay still rocks my socks.
• What I have eaten - the week in review - includes a recipe for a delicious cheesy garlicky polenta, that I haven't made forevs and wish to make. Like, now.

2006

• This enigmatic comment: Nothing is more dangerous than an evil freak. 
• A Polish engraving of a tui that I rather liked.
• Last night - I am embarrassed about some imagined faux pas (I'm sure it was my insecurity that was the most socially awkward aspect of that evening).
• New Zealand Content Review Part 1: Dostoevsky's The Idiot - I decided that I was going to review a series of 'classic novels' from their NZ content, or lack their of. This is a dreadful exercise in pretentiousness, but, as I've said before: WHOOP there it is.
• Reading my flatmate's books part 1: Singer's The Slave - not quite as bad as the other one.
• Help me help my stalker - behold, the awfulness of my 24 year old self. The only post that I've seriously considering just deleting. Please don't judge me, I am not such an awful person now.
• 20 hits form a site I've never heard of - leaving aside the fact that I used the term 'hits', why the hell am I so angry?

2005

• Not enough hours in the day - moving to Australia in six days and I was freaking out.

Any idea where this "Nothing more dangerous than an evil freak" quote comes from? Did you ever GPOYW? How do you feel about leading questions?

Oh and: happy birthday Queenie.

The week in Self-Conscious Posturing History (May 20-27)

Another one of these! I am trying to get to bed early at the moment to prevent any glandular fever relapses, and between early nights and having to work (ugh) I have basically no blogging time. In the weekends, I'm sleeping in to prevent glandula fever relapses, FYI.

I actually feel a little less self-conscious about this lot. Either my exercise in acceptance of proto-Sarah has worked, or these are generally less embarrassing. The Sarah the Muffin Thief entry I remembered as being an early (2005) triumph, and it is actually a lot better edited than - ahem - most of my blog posts

Also, I keep thinking it will take less time than writing something from scratch but I spend forever fixing the formatting on posts past - a bunch of them seem to have had their formatting screwed by Blogger at some point or other.

Is it for this that I cowdled thee as a mommet?

It was in May 2009 that I discovered how much I loved Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. A truly great moment.

2010

• In which I bemoan my knee. And then suck up the moan and get on with it y'all - actually, I think the injured knee was the final straw when it came to my derby injuries.

2009

• I have been doing things - an early post about craftiness.
• Blah and urgh - read about me having a shitty day

2008

• Things I would do if I was in Europe - shamelessly promoting Urbantramper.
• What I have eaten - the week in review - includes my scone-dough pizza base recipe, never boring.

2006 

All of these posts were written while I was living in Melbourne and struggling with my (very formative) depression.

• My desire for tofu knows no bounds and Oprah get your hands off my spirit - mm tofu.
• Today is Wenerei
• Dance magic dance - features too much info about someone else's medical condition.

2005

• Tumeke!
• Sarah the Muffin Thief - AN EARLY TRIUMPH?!
• Flooding in Whakatane - an account of a pretty great interview I heard on Radio New Zealand.
• Green Peanut and You - this post is partially about my love of wasabi peas, and partially about swimming with jellyfish.
• Whoop! There it is - I was thinking about this the other day, and if the doctor told me I had the Hundred Days cough, I just had regular whooping cough, right? That's what the Lower Hutt community paper told me.

The week in Self-Conscious Posturing history (May 13-19)

Filing cabinets, taken for Kenyon Brand and Riggs in 1978 by K E Niven and Co commercial photographers of Wellington. Image held at Tapuhi, accessed via Digital NZ.

I started this blog in 2005, when I was 23 years old, before I even had a MySpace page. I followed the trend of writing a blog that was simply an online journal, but I'd read enough about the dangers of writing material that could be discovered by friends, family or colleagues to be careful to not reveal everything. This means that most of the drama that I wrote about was more ancillary drama than the actual drama itself. I wrote around my own drama, if you like - and in the process frequently wrote some pretty bizarre and nonsensical things.

For some time, I've toyed with deleting basically everything from 2010 backwards. However, that would be ultimately futile (we all know the internets are forever) and a little like trying to delete bits of my own past. Despite my decluttering ways, I don't through out my hand-written diaries - I might have been a dramatic little bitch during my teenage years, but that dramatic little bitch was still me, albeit a proto-me.

And in the spirit of Being Ok with the proto-me, I present: spit-polished and with some additional commentary, a weekly retrospective look at Self-Conscious Posturing, from 2005 to the present day. I've fixed or removed broken images and tidied up some of the worst of the mistakes, otherwise it's pretty much as it was before, mouldering away in my archives.

In 2005, I wrote a fair amount on this week - basically because I'd just started blogging and it was still quite a novelty. I was also into writing about nothing and staring at my navel *teary eye at habits of blogging past*.

• Why I love the bird calls on National Radio
• Why I have a love/hate relationship with the Bucket Fountain
• I just saw Peta Mathias
• A moment at work - includes poem in rhyming couplets about punters at the City Gallery's Rosalie Gascoigne exhibition. I'm sorry.

In 2007 at this time I was mostly concerned with procrastinating and finding a flatmate (if I remember rightly, the flatmate I actually ended up with was kind of a dick).

• Procrastination
• Fabulous dining opportunities on your doorstep

In 2008 I was really insecure and self-hating, so sorry if these posts make your skin crawl. Since that time I've made a VERY large effort to be more positive on Self-Conscious Posturing - and if not positive, then at the least, constructive.

• Au revoir fave boots
• Wednesday List - evidently did not engage much brain while writing this.
• Faux pas - so insecure
• Taking care of your blisters is very important
• Tres emotional

And there is nothing for 2006 or 2009-2012. I was writing these years, and often in May, but not in this exact week.

If you had diaries for the last eight years of your life, would you share them online? Is this an exercise in ridiculousness? Should I give more of a fuck than I do?

What I know about Beau Brummell

Sunday I went to a lecture about Regency dandy Beau Brummell at Te Papa, given by Ian Kelly, an English actor and Brummell's biographer. The lecture was put on by the Friends of Te Papa and held in the Soundings Theatre, at the not inconsiderable sum of $25 at ticket for non-members. 

I do have vaguely directed interests in both Regency History and the history of costume, but it was the marketing genius of the lecture title that sold it to me: Undressing Mr Darcy: sex, suits and shifting cultures 1770 - 1820. Naked Mr Darcy!

Ian Kelly was a very entertaining speaker, and gave a lecture that was informative without being too specialised but wasn't patronising either. The tone was a little bit naughty. Titters abounded.

The only issue I had with the entire experience was with this horrible old bat who sat next to me in the five minutes before the lecture was due to start. As the speaker was introduced, this woman turned to me and said: "Are you going to write throughout the entire presentation?"

Me: "Ah - I thought I'd take a few notes...?"

HOB: "Well, I find it very distracting. If you're going to write, you should go and sit over there - " indicating single, lonely seat in the corner by a giant pole.

Me (fighting my "respect your elders upbringing" and horrified by the rudeness of aforementioned HOB): "Well, if you find it distracting, perhaps you could sit over there."

HOB ignores my comment. I ignore her and start making notes, but I'm boiling with anger and guilt. In the end I decide that I can't stand her giving me the evils from the edges of her pince nez , and I flouncily gather up my bits and begin to move away.

HOB (sniffily): "Thank you."

Me (hissing): "Spectacular rudeness." Which was neither particularly mature nor very respectful to my elders, but did allow me to have the last word. Ha.

I then preceded to sit on the lonely, sad person seat where I was unable to concentrate on the first ten minutes of the lecture because I was furious and kept coming up with a million better comebacks than spectacular rudeness.

Anyways, what I now know about Beau Brummell:

• He was born at Number 10 Downing Street (then Number 5 Downing Square). His parents weren't married and his mother was a courtesan.
• His parents had a country house with a flint hermitage. They advertised in a London paper for a hermit to live in their hermitage. Tom Stoppard makes a reference to this in one of his plays (Arcadia?).
• His entry into society, as it were, was as the child subject of a Joshua Reynolds painting called "The Brummell heirs".
• The Prime Minister Lord North (his father's boss) sent him and his brother to Eton where he began working on what would later be known as "the Brummell look" - i.e., mostly monochrome, with sexy skin-0tight pants.
• Some of the wearers of these skin-tight pants (Lord Byron was mentioned I think?) definitely did not wear undies, probably due to VPL. This can be deduced from their laundry bills.
• Brummell was the Prince of Wales' (later the Prince Regent) best man when he (George) disastrously married Caroline of Brunswick. Marriage fail!
• He resigned his commission from the Hussars when the regiment was posted to Manchester, claiming that he couldn't be seen anywhere so unfashionable.
• Brummell and his tailor at Meyer and Mortimer are attributed with the invention of the full length trouser.
• He bathed every day which was a scandalous innovation. The bathing took up one hour of the three it would take him to get dressed every morning. A second hour of the dressing process was spent tying his cravat perfectly.
• Peeps, including the Prince Regent, would come and observe this process. Because Beau Brummell was just that fashionable.
• Ignominious end: he fled the country because he insulted the Prince of Wales (short story - called him fat), and also because he had mountains of debt.
• Annnddd.... he died in Northern France in 1840 of tertiary syphilis sans hair and sans teeth, hallucinating about having Regency celebrities over for parties.

My favourite conclusions though were around what parts of the Regency lifestyle can be seen as contributing to Victorian standards of morality and the Victorian obsession with insanity and depression. And what it comes down to (at least, according to Ian Kelly) is that  the attendant venereal diseases (especially syphilis) of Regency promiscuity left a super-nasty taste in the mouth of the aristocracy and upper classes, no family of which had escaped unscathed. Lots of congenital madness and what not. 

CONCLUSION: Horrible Old Bats aside, lecture was good. Future idea for Friends of Te Papa lectures: find a seat far away from the main entrance.

Another New Year and 365 Days of Peta

Happy belated New Years to All the People! Yesterday I spent most of the morning recovering from New Years dinner and drinks with Bea at Chap's parents' house, and the afternoon putting together 365 Days of Peta, the Julie/Julia style-project that I mentioned in my last post. I'm pretty happy with how the site looks at the moment, although I have no doubt that I will spend much time tweaking it in the future.

At the moment I am baking a Tarte au Citron as part of my first 365DOP cooking experiment, I have some gorgeous little lamb loins marinating in espresso coffee, sugar and various spices, and a box of Jersey Bennes waiting to be lovingly boiled and coated in butter and fresh mint from the giant bush in the back garden. I'm considering cooking the lamb loins on the barbeque, if the weather stays nice (PLEASE STAY NICE). I am using my brother Tom coming around as the perfect excuse for cooking this mountainously decadent meal, but really in the actual fact, it's ALL FOR ME.

Mostly, I've spent the last week of my holiday sewing and adjusting various op-shop pick ups. I made another full gathered skirt similar to previous ones that I've shown off, this one out of some vintage fabric that I picked up via the ubiquitous Trade Me. Quelle fab, non? Blue roses are the perfect flower.

Also, I finally made adjustments to this dress that I picked up in July when we went up north. It's red and has a jaunty white with red polka-dot Peter Pan collar. Delish, and I think probably appropriate work wear.

Finally, I am excited because lovely Bex has had her adorable son! Congrats to you and to Sebastien and to bubs. I am gagging for pictures lady.

Christmas Holiday and plans for next year

I'm writing this from Shannon's grandparents' house in beautiful, sunny Tauranga - where I have just spent the last three or so hours sitting out in the sun, drinking very large gins and reading a narrative biography of the Curzon sisters (who were all, frankly, appalling). The summer up here is about twenty times better than what Wellington was offering, and while smothered in sunscreen and permanently topped with a large sunhat and sunglasses, I am not trying to keep out of the sun at all *sips gin*.

S and I came to Tauranga via Kawhia Harbour, which is a somewhat circuitous route. We spent two nights in Kawhia and went to Ocean Beach where we dug our own hot pools (a la the Coromandel's Hot Water Beach), boiled ourselves and then ran into the sea. The site we were given at the campground was right on the edge of the harbour - which is really more of a large tidal estuary. Shannon walked from our tent to the other side of the harbour while the tide was out.

Other things That Are Good include my new job, in which I am learning and being challenged and have lots to do, and finishing school. My final assignment is online and operational: you can see it at Lake's web site (urbantramper.com). The thing that I'm most proud of on the site is not visible to the casual user for it is my content management system - I crafted it from scratch and I think I did a fabulous job. Still ironing out some quirks, but a fabulous job nonetheless.

In the New Year I'm undertaking a new blog project - Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days of Peta. The easiest way to describe it is that it will be a Julie and Julia style experiment, where I will be the Julie and the ever-fabulous Peta Mathias will be the Julia. However, there's a little bit more to it as Peta writes about all sorts of things in addition to Food - relationships with mothers and men, travel,  France, and What You Should be Wearing. I'll be doing my best to make a bunch of her recipes, but I'll also be taking cues about, amongst other things: eating in general, drinking, dressing, interior decorating, music, ageing, and hopefully travel. I think that it will be a very fun experiment. At the least it should satiate my Peta love while keeping me out of mischief over the course of the year. I'll probably be a big-lameo and cross-post most of my posts.

So, tell me: did you have good holidays?