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I just sat down to write a list of things to do and it's a bit long and overwhelming so I decided to write a blog post instead! My list has things like, 'curtains - book consultation', 'sort out nanny contract', 'buy moisturiser', 'kids Christmas presents'. Lots of buying things, you see - and it's not stuff we NEED, although you could argue you need curtains for insulation. Anyway. I'm thinking about Christmas presents for the kids. This year though I spied something GOOD on this topic and easy to follow and have decided to subscribe to it: Get the four following items and stick to it (this list copied from Frugal Rules): 1. Something they want 2. Something they need 3. Something to wear 4. Something to read They already have so much stuff. They get stuff all the time, not just from us but from others in our family. So I like this principle very much. The next challenge is that the something my six-year-old daughters want is a remote controlled fairy. Can you get such a thing? (it turns out you can, I just googled, pricey). My son would like a remote controlled truck. Saskia, my one year old, can't talk so that helps. Another thing I'm about to do is to cancel our vegie part of our Fruit & Vegie box which is delivered each week. We are going to live off the vegies we have already got in the garden! The carrots are not good and growth was stunted somehow, but there are some potatoes, lots of spinach, cauliflower, lettuce, kale, beetroot, beans and there will eventually be tomatoes. This makes me feel good too and sort of fits in with our Keep It Simple philosophy to cope with having four children under 7. Next stop (maybe, if we are brave enough), CHICKENS! Watch this space. Anna x  This was almost two Christmases ago. My husband broke his hip and collarbone falling from his bike a week before Christmas day. A good reminder to me going into the silly season what really matters - family.
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Nadine He said it to me in June, after the shortest day. Nadine potatoes, he said. Plant them now! So I did. A fellow Mt Albertian (is that the correct term I wonder?) had said it to me at Kindy one cold wintry morning. I was saying, 'hey, at least we've had the shortest day' and somehow we got on to gardening. People said I was crazy (but I knew my source was solid). We dug the Nadine potatoes up two days ago on Friday (November), and they were absolutely divine. Just like the new potatoes I remember from my South Island childhood, slightly sweet, so tender and buttery and delicious. I have planted lots of other potato varities here in Mt Albert - actually no I haven't, mainly Jersey Bennes - but none of them were anywhere near these in terms of taste. Before I dug them up I approached the task with a bit of trepidation because I was worried nothing would come up! At first I pulled and ..........nothing. But then my son and I dug around in the dirt and hit GOLD. It was like digging for gold. It was so much fun and Max was so excited when we found new ones. We took them over to my sister's house to enjoy as part of my Dad's 60th birthday celebrations. We still have some in the garden and so we will get to enjoy them a bit longer and next year we are planting the WHOLE vege garden with them, after June 21st. You heard it here first. Anna x  This is my potato digger, Max. Not eating the potatoes we dug. Not even wearing his own glasses.  And this an unrelated picture - a picture of Rangitoto taken from Kohimarama the other day. I love the clouds.
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