An Outside Lunch Date

Today Romy & I had lunch with our friends Renee & Oscar at one of my favourite places on the Central Coast. Bamboo Buddha is a vegetarian cafe with outdoors seating where you can also buy pretty succulents and bamboo plants from their accompanying nursery. On a sunny day it is one of the nicest places I have come across in all my cafe hopping years to sit and simply just be with wholesome food and tasty coffee. Romy & Oscar seemed to like it too as they tried their very best to wriggle out of their prams and find a place at the table. The last week or so the weather has been a bit off around these parts, so it was really nice to be outside enjoying the day in a positive environment with such lovely people!

A Romy Moment

Tonight when I was feeding Romy her vegetables, she did the loudest pop off I have ever heard from her! As I was hysterically laughing (like an adult of course!), she looked at me with the biggest smile on her face and lost it too! We stopped laughing at the same time and then she opened her mouth for her next mouthful of veggies and that was that. It is one of my favourite Romy moments so far. 

Start Your Week Off With..

The Happy List by Here Comes The Sun

5 Reasons Why The 90's Were The Best Times To Be A Kid by His Little Lady

Conversations - USA by Across The Pond

This & That by Today, I'm Bobbi

Enjoy these last few days of October,

and have a great week!

Around My House

Just a little sticky beak around my house. 

Currently

Reading: I'm still re-reading 'Valley Of The Dolls', which I am slowly making a dint in. My focus has been on a logo design and illustrations this month. I am one of those people that cannot start a new book without finishing the book I currently have a book mark in. And I am really keen to read 'The Happiness Project' next, so I need to get a wriggle on with VOTD. 

Watching: I wrote a post earlier in the week about my top 5 tv shows I'm currently watching.

Listening to: Miley's new record, 'bangerz'. I didn't really have the highest of hopes for this one, but I was pleasantly surprised by how fun the songs are. I don't really buy into all of the hype surrounding her at the moment, or feel as though she is being that outrageous with her new look. I just like her cheesy, catchy songs & I am always interested in a Britney collaboration. 

Thinking about: Christmas. It really isn't that far away, and that blows my mind. Last Christmas Romy was in my belly and we were patiently waiting to find out whether we were having a boy or a girl the following day. And I remember thinking about what things would be like once Romy arrived, and just how different things actually are in the best possible way. I am really excited for Romy's first Christmas, it is just a shame that Luke has to work on Christmas day. What kind of person makes you work on Christmas you ask? A jerk, thats who!

Working on: a couple of illustrative presents for some of my favourite people. While I was waiting on a email last week I started to draw a friends baby as a surprise present in the mail to go along with a couple of handmade head ties and got into a creative flow and wrote a list of illustrations I wanted to get done by Christmas. I have drawn a couple of commissioned illustrations this year, but haven't sat down with my own ideas for a while. So this wave of inspiration and motivation has come at the right time!

Loving: Goodnight Little Spoon's mum style. Bianca is such a lovely lady, our paths crossed a few times a couple of years ago through a mutual friend when we both lived in Newcastle. I was so delighted to come across her blog when I first started blogging, and it is especially nice to read about her adventures with her super cute little family. She is definitely on my hot mum watch list!

Anticipating: my sister getting home from her work trip to New Zealand this weekend. Some funny things have happened while she has been away and I can't wait to tell her about a conversation I had with our grandmother this week in particular!

Style Lust / Hanna Marin from Pretty Little Liars

One / Two / Three / Four

Aside from the addictive storyline, Pretty Little Liars is great for outfit drooling. It is one of the main reasons I like watching the show, because even when there are the rare slow moments you can be easily entertained with outfit envy, Hanna especially. I like how playful Hanna's clothes are, and the colour popping in her outfits in the most recent episodes. 

Top 5 / TV Shows I'm Currently Watching

Last month I shared my first top five post listing my favourite albums, and this time around my top five tv shows that I'm currently watching. 

Pretty Little Liars / When PLL came out it replaced my Gossip Girl void when I started to lose interest after the tenth war between B & S, and gladly so! If you haven't given PLL's a go, you should defo check it out! It is a little tacky at first, but once you get used to that aspect of the show, the rest of it is quite interesting and more importantly the main characters have killer wardrobes! I'm getting super excited for when the Halloween episode special airs next week, especially to see how Ezra found himself in the A lair. I refused to believe he is on the A team, let a lone Big A. I think Big A is Wren. If you watch it, what do you think?

How I Met Your Mother / Are you as glad as I am to finally get to the freaking end of Ted's story?! So far the season has been quite frustrating circumstantially, but the main characters are dramatic story tellers so it is kind of a given. The season highlight so far for me was in 'The Broken Code' when Robin tries to get along with other women to prove to Lily that she likes other women besides her. And when Lily meets The Mother on the train and they share a couple of 'some bitches' together!

The Bachelor / I initially hated the concept of The Bachelor until I actually watched it with my full attention. Those damn re-runs caught me out a couple of Saturday's ago while I was trying to settle Romy to sleep and ever since I've just been really into it! There are so many 'I can't believe these girls are carrying on like this' moments for it to not be so distastefully pleasing. I'm looking forward to this weeks episodes now that Penny has gone back to her home on desperate island. 

Wonderland / When the previews came on for this new show I was keen to check it out and all of the hype killed it for me when I actually saw the first episode, and missed the following few episodes after that. They were a couple of re-runs during the week that I caught and picked up the rest for the ads throughout the week for me to get interested in again and I gave it another go. I like that it has a similar vibe to 'The Secret Life Of Us', which was such a great Australian drama. 

Beverly Hills 90210 / Now that Romy has been napping more seriously during the day I use that time to have a coffee and just only do one thing, and that one thing this week has been picking up where Luke & I left off over a year ago and with the old school Beverly Hills 90210 season three. We endeavoured to watch the entire series together, but the first couple of seasons weren't fast paced enough for Luke and not enough Dylan story lines for his liking so he lost interest. And I held out for so long in the hopes he might change his mind, but that clearly wasn't going to happen so this week I dusted off season three and fell back into the dramatic West Beverly whirlwind! 

>> Last month I shared

'my top 5 / favourite albums'

October Wishlist

Typo 'Foxy' Nice Cushy

Kikki.K 2014 Wall Calendar

Rubi Shoes Jessica Jelly Sandal

Beverly Hills 90210 Season Four

Yellow Stirling Folding Outdoor Table Set

Our Afternoon Sans Romy

Yesterday Luke & I spent the afternoon together without Romy. It was the first bit of quality time we have had together in a long time and we had a really lovely day. After a restless night for everyone, we got up relatively early so we could go out to the shops to get some things for Romy. Rather than drag the little bear around the shops with us we dropped her off to my parents house so she could spend some time with her grandparents while they weren't at work today. As soon as we got to the shops, we quickly bought the things Romy needed so we could spend the rest of our trip looking at the things we usually wouldn't have the time to look at. I bought some black jellies, a parrot brooch and next month's allocated read 'the happiness project'. Our day ended with an all night sleeping baby, season 1 of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, whiskey & quinoa fattoush. 

Start Your Week Off With..

Ginger tomato raisins by Jellybones

Honey, walnut & cinnamon non-dairy ice cream by We Live Upstairs

Pumpkin spice caramel corn with pecans by Amanda K. By The Bay

Plum crumble bars by A Life Of Geekery

Spinach & brown rice scramble by Pursuit Of Felicity

Every now and then I like to theme these collection posts.

Enjoy your week, make something to delightful to eat!

Fancy Folk (Feature Finale) / MERMAIDENS

Have you met Kailey?

If you haven't you're missing out! She is the pastel loving cute girl that blogs over at Mermaidens about mermaids, her personal style & favourite films. 

Have you crossed anything of your 2013 to-do-list?
I do actually have a super exciting, top secret project in the works for 2014 - can't wait to blab all about it!

Describe your style
Playful, pastel, and ever changing!

What would your menu be for a dinner party that you're hosting?
Ooh an excellent question! Maybe some sort of decadent fettuccine alfredo pasta with fruit and a bunch of different ice cream flavors for dessert!

If you were a cat who would you follow all day in the hope that they would look after you?
Nicki Minaj - no question!

Your perfect day would be..
Filled with delicious breakfast food, prancing around with my friends at Sephora and MAC, playing with kitties, and watching a movie with my family <3

>> The busy time of year is fast approaching,

so 'Fancy Folk' will be having a break.

Thank you to all of the fancy bloggers that featured

over the last couple of months. 

Sets-Of-Things Anxiety

Many moons ago I couldn't stand the idea of not having a set of plates all the same. In one instance, Luke broke a plate out of one of our dinner sets that I couldn't replace, so I replaced the whole set because it did my head in. Things like that used to really bother me unnecessarily. And it wasn't until our last move that I started to ease up after I developed a case of the dropsies during my pregnancy. I don't like to make changes to our dinning wares unless we're moving or changing absolutely everything up in our house, and a couple of months ago Luke & I decided to do both. When we moved into our current house we decided we wanted to fill our house with lots of mis matching things with pops of colour. Ordinarily Luke likes wooden furniture, and I like all white things so our compromise was colours and it has been a lot easier on all fronts. I don't need to over think purchases and take 15 minutes to decide whether our place mats will match our dinning set, or get sets-of-things anxiety about a plate breaking. I received lots of neat little side plates from long forgotten tea sets that my sister picked up at op-shops for my baby shower earlier in the year. Its nice having things like pizza and toast off dainty floral plates everyday. When I have finished a couple of other illustrative and nesting projects I intend on adding to my collection.

What's In My Bag

I recently purchased a bigger style tote side bag so I had extra room to carry some of Romy's things around. Now that she is getting bigger a nappy and a couple of wipes just won't cut it anymore. Now I find myself carrying around spare socks, little booties, a toy butterfly shaker, a face cloth, a pacifier, hand + face wipes and baby sunscreen. When we're just making quick trips I chuck some wipes & a nappy in my bag also, but for longer trips I have a separate zip up bag with all the baby changing equipment needed that fits in my bag nicely. Things also in my bag are my iPhone, wallet, pocket mirror, Burt's Bees & Say Yes To Carrots mint lip balms, usb stick, nail file, nurofen, hair bands, sunglasses, a pen, hand sanitizer, migrastick, chewy, keys, coin purse, Natural Instinct sunscreen & a teething necklace.

Today We

Squealed happily in the waiting room at the doctors

Bounced back after the 6 month needles

Got the last seats at the cafe outside

Borrowed Romy's blankets

Drank cappuccinos like old biddies

Played with Romy all afternoon while Luke made dinner for our friends tonight.

This long weekend business has turned out to be a sweet deal for Romy & I. Luke always has Sunday evenings, Mondays & Tuesdays off work, but Monday was a public holiday so he also scored Wednesday off. Our little long weekend break has been lovely and laid back. I even snuck out for a massage this afternoon.

Start Your Week Off With..

Roasted strawberry & chili jam by High Walls

Goals by Lark & Lace

Hand stamped clementine wall by A Beautiful Mess

Follow your dreams by Chasing Happy

Exhausted, worn out by The Beetle Shack

Enjoy your week!

Six Months

Romy hit the 6 month mark today! Six months you guys, how did that even happen? We completely missed her 5 month milestone, so today felt extra special. Romy & I set up a sea of blankets in our living room and played on them for most of the morning. She normally likes to have your whole attention, but today she was happy to just be with herself and I was able to get a lot of stuff done around the house without any of the usual tantrums. This past month we slowly introduced foods into her diet, starting off with a little rice cereal that was not well received. Avocado was the next taste and she took to that quiet quickly even though the 'spoon feeding' business was weird to her. After that we made purees of avocado and banana mixed together and she really liked that. Occasionally adding grape and blueberries mashed up.

Its been an odd transition into the solid phase, and knowing what is the 'right' thing to do. My friend Renee has been super helpful, and hearing about her solid eating trials with her little boy has been comforting in the sense that other Mums do feel the same way too. Romy has started to move around a lot more, so I can see that crawling will be her focus for the next couple of months.