November round-up

NaBloPoMo, Day 30!! Finishing up with a few more items of note:

I stumbled across this bon appétit non-recipe recently (for a quick Thai-ish dish inspired by pork larb) and decided to try to wing it from the description. A keeper - I especially liked the contrast of the cold, crisp, uncooked vegetables with the cooked rice and pork mince. A good, quick summer dinner for the next couple of months....

I found this bookcase on the curb in my neighborhood and brought it home for DP, who was in dire need of more book storage. It looks somewhat fragile in the picture, but it's made out of good-quality wood and was actually quite heavy - luckily, I had my bargain hunter/home organizer adrenaline to sustain me. (Also, luckily it was in front of the house directly behind ours, so I didn't have far to go.)

Another weekend of solo parenting, another attempt at crumpet-making - still not satisfied with my results, though. Anyone have a tried-and-true crumpet recipe they'd be willing to share?

Part of yesterday's farmers' market haul macerating before being turned into a batch of mixed-berry jam....

McClure's - makers of the famous gold-plated pickles - turns up in Canberra! At my local shops, no less! (No pickles in sight, which might be for the best - I shudder to think how much they'd cost down here!)

And the last, but probably the most important event of November 2014 at casa RL: Miss B masters riding a two-wheeler. Not only that, but it happened in 3 weeks, with no drama and no training wheels, thanks to some expert support and instruction from a local "learn to ride a bike" program. It's especially amazing and wonderful when I think about how anxious we both were about the process going into it, and how well it's turned out - and especially when I see the confidence boost acquiring such a major life skill brings.

Thus we come to the end of NaBloPoMo 4.0; I missed 2 days of posting this year, but I don't think the internet docks points for that or anything. Thanks to everyone who's followed along!

NaBloPoMo 4.0

As I mentioned in passing yesterday, it's November and that means time for NaBloPoMo again. I had a long internal debate over whether to participate again this year, especially given my horrendous rate of posting over most of 2014. But I couldn't bear the thought of dropping the ball, especially for such a weak reason as "I'm too busy". Because who isn't? And deciding that I'm too busy to do something that I really, really like to do just seems like a bad way to go all around. So I'm in: I've got a list of potential topics and writing prompts, and have issued a challenge to myself to break out of my overwork-induced recipe rut and try some new stuff, so that I can post about it here. I even went back and checked the suggestions from last year that I never got around to, and they're on the list too. (But feel free to send more!)

Anyone else signing on? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Halloween shenanigans

Halloween 2014 is in the bag for pretty much everyone at this point; we're already well into the first of November here. We had a fun celebration; Miss B and I MacGyvered her costume and props over a couple of days (see if you can guess who she was from the primary prop pictured at the bottom of this post), and early Friday evening a small pack of fathers and children set off from our house to roam the neighborhood in search of loot. They came back a couple of hours later, hot and thirsty (Canberra temperatures hit the high 20s/80s yesterday) for large glasses of ice water, beer, or sangria (depending) and dinner on the patio, topped off with Halloween whoopie pies (regular chocolate whoopie pie cakes, sandwiched with fluffy buttercream colored festively orange).

Hope everyone else who celebrates had fun too! I'll be back tomorrow with more shenanigans to report, because...it's November and you know what that means!

Where's my whoopie pie?

30 November

Today is 30 November, which means, in Australian terms, that tomorrow is the first day of summer. The holiday party season has already kicked off, with one today and another tomorrow. I spent the late afternoon/early evening drinking champagne and sitting in the sunshine which, in addition to sounding idyllic, has also rendered me incoherent and incapable of intelligent thought. All of which seems like a perfect way to round off #NaBloPoMo. Hope your Saturday is tilting towards the idyllic end of the scale.

Friday pie

With full credit to Justine, from whom I have shamelessly stolen the pie idea!

Sunday snafus

The technology is conspiring against me! First my laptop crashed, and now my iPad keeps booting me out of Safari! So I'll try again tomorrow with updates on the school fete, cooking escapades, and what a small world it really is. Enjoy what's left of your weekend!

NaBloPoMo 3.0

It's that time of year again - and while the thought of blogging every day in November fills me with trepidation (especially given my recent track record), the thought of not making the attempt makes me too sad to contemplate. So - it's on. If you've got any suggestions for things you're interested in hearing about, speak up! I'll take all the topic ideas I can get.

30 days

Note zested lime wedge - for topping up the citrus sugar jar. Frugal!

It's November 30. It's Friday. And I've made it through another round of #NaBloPoMo. I think a bit of a celebration is in order, yes?


NaBloPoMo sour
This is what the CVF evolved into after I ran out of cumquat julp, around the same time I discovered that you could buy lemon lime and bitters (my favorite non-alcoholic Australian beverage) pre-made and bottled at the grocery store. Just the thing for the end of NaBloPoMo, especially when the temperature has suddenly jumped to 35C/95F.

1 shot/1.5 oz/45 ml vodka

2 Tbsp/1 oz/30 ml citrus juice (I used blood orange for the flavor and lovely color)

1 Tbsp/.5 oz/15 ml simple syrup

5 oz/150 ml bottled lemon lime and bitters

fat wedge of lime 

Fill an 8 oz/240 ml drinking glass halfway with ice, then add first four ingredients. Stir to combine. Squeeze lime and drop in glass.

Makes 1 fizzy, tart, celebratory cocktail.

Wordless Wednesday

Encouraging local graffiti - very appropriate for one coming down the homestretch of a morning run (where I first spotted it) or of #NaBloPoMo.

Freebie Friday

Miss B's first grade teacher designated Fridays as no-homework days, or "Freebie Fridays" - a concept Miss B has picked up and run with in order to get out of guitar practice, fingernail clipping, or any other obligation she wants a day off from. Not that I want a day off from #NaBloPoMo, of course! But it's been a long week, so I'm going to leave you with a link to the song that is getting the heaviest rotation on my iPod at the moment, for a whole slew of reasons. More tomorrow!

#NaBlaPoMo 2.0

Happy November, all! I had so much fun doing NaBlaPoMo last year that I'm going for it again this year. I've got no international moves on the horizon, I've already collected a list of possible topics, and I might even have induced one or two other bloggers to come along for the ride. Stay tuned!

November wrap-up

1. I have managed to not take Miss B out to sell Girl Scout cookies door to door every day this week.

2. It took me until today to finish unpacking my suitcase, after arriving home on Saturday.

3. I think my guitar teacher secretly considers me the most butter-fingered student he's ever had.

4. I have yet to buy a single Christmas present, or even make my list.

5. Nearly everyone else on my street has their lights up already. I just got around to taking the shrivelled jack-'o'-lanterns off the front steps. (Don't even get me started on the leaves we haven't raked.)

6. BUT I have put up a blog post every day in November. I have completed #NaBloPoMo! And I've had so much fun doing it that I'm seriously thinking about carrying on. (Watch this space tomorrow to see if that actually happens.)

Woohoo!

Reader question!

This morning, I found an email in my inbox from a faraway friend and regular reader which included the following question:

"What the heck is this NaBloPoMo you keep mentioning anyway?"

Which made me wonder if perhaps she wasn't the only one wondering this. So, a bit of explanation:

NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month, an informal blogging event which happens every November. By participating, bloggers challenge themselves to publish one blog post every day of the month. NaBloPoMo was conceived as a writing discipline for bloggers, along the lines of the already established National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), in which fiction writers challenge themselves to produce a 50,000-word manuscript in one month. Bloggers, however, have no such targets for length of blog posts.

One of the informational articles I read for background also notes the following:

"In some ways, NaBloPoMo is more challenging than NaNoWriMo, because NaBloPoMo participants cannot take days off or extensively modify their writing schedules: they must generate new material every day for thirty days. As a result, the attrition rate in the challenge is very high, with many participants dropping out in the first week of NaBloPoMo."

So I'm feeling pretty good that I'm past the halfway point and making steady progress--in fact, I'm finding the discipline is getting my brain working and ideas are percolating, which is just what I'd hoped for. Plus it's so nice to see that loooong list of posts under November, especially after last month, when I managed an all-time personal worst of a measly 3 posts.

N, I hope that answers your question. Thanks for following along!

Hope everyone is looking forward to or already having a nice weekend. More tomorrow!

NaBloPoMo

Every year I promise myself I'm going to do it, but I haven't even managed to attempt it yet. This year I'm going to attempt it. Yikes!