Hold on tight (blog-o-rama).

I have a truly wonderful husband. The other day, I had a crappy day at work. I mean, really crappy. So of course came home grumpy and generally annoyed at life. I was greeted by a giant hug and instructions to go look on the coffee table. On which I found....(dun dun DUN) my new birth ball (for doula stuff, that he'd gone and picked up for me), a GIANT bag of yarn (he'd gone to the thrift store and basically bought everything they had), my singlet from Toast (ok, he just got that out of the mailbox but it was still exciting) and these two amazing books that he'd found in the alleyway and thought I might like. Look at the cover illustrations, I love them! They are; '429 Great Gifts To Make all year around for just 10c to $10' by Anna Marie Doherty and the Editors of Family Circle Magazine (1977) and 'Sewing For The Home' by Mary Brooks Picken (1973). Actually, the second one was originally copyrighted in 1941, which of course is why it has such gems in it as 'A bride naturally expects to mark her linens or to have them marked. The linens she has before she is married and those presented to her for the hope chest should, of course, have her own initials. A bride who does not wish to do a whole monogram may quite safely use the initial of her new name. Often regulation household linens are marked with the single initial of the husband's name, as B for Brooks, or V for Valentine.'

Naturally.

There is actually a lot of really good patterns and ideas in both the books, although I'm not sure that I'll make a full on bedspread. I would, however, love to make these/be these glamorous women. I love that not only are their aprons wonderfully long, but that you also get to recline while wearing them instead of cook or get messy. The 70's must have been a wonderful time.

Another recent alleyway present was this little treat. Apparently he found it near our house on his way home from somewhere, so grabbed it and re-strung it for me! I left my acoustic at home when I left NZ, so Im excited to have one to play now. Plus, its pretty darn cute and rather old from what we can tell. Lucky me.

In other news, for quite some time now Richard and I have been talking about making better use of our growing cook book collection. Our schedule isn't very conducive to hang-out time, as I get home around 7 most nights and then he leaves for his night shift by 9 (sigh), so it's usually a quick dinner and chat before he's out the door. What we've decided to do is, each one of us has a designated night of the week to make a new (one neither of us has tried before) recipe from one of our cookbooks. That way, we get to eat a nice meal together and we also make sure we're cooking up something other than our 'go t0' recipes twice a week. I also just like food, so it's perfect really.

It was my turn first, so last night I whipped up the above Hazelnut & Chard Ravioli Salad from 101 Cookbooks. I know it technically isn't one of our cookbooks, but I do use it quite often and of course I hadn't planned ahead far enough so looked this up at work and got the fixings for it on the way home. I must say, it was bloody good. Really easy, but tastes fancy (my favourite kind of recipe) and although I didn't really have time to make the croutons like Heidi says, I just popped the squash cubes in the oven and roasted them while I did everything else - which worked really well! I think you should all try making this, the lemon (even though I used lime...) totally makes it - Yum.