My bedroom linens have been on my make-over-radar for a while now. I’m still in love with this pretty pastel mash-up featuring one of my fave Kip & Co duvet covers but unfortunately it’s suffered some major sun fade. And that BUGS me no end. …
Don’t be scared, I know it’s early but Christmas WILL be here soon, there’s just no escaping it! To get us in the mood I’ve whipped up these super-cute gift bag toppers that you can download and print out for your own festive celebrations. Ethan …
Ahhh, the Term 3 school holidays. Full of the promise of daylight saving, spring in full effect, summer around the corner…………the reality is often drizzle, cloud and southerlies with a touch of rain.
Pessimist? Never. Realist and Auckland native? Ahhhyes.
The dynamic between my two boys is constantly changing. With an 8.5 year age gap Ethan has quickly moved past the “he’s soooo cute, let me carry him everywhere and kiss him ’til he giggles” phase and we are firmly entrenched in the battlezone that is “HELP, he’s biting / scratching / hitting / pulling my hair / breaking my stuff! Poor Ethan.
Poor ME!
Nixie is embracing stereotypical two year old behaviour with all of the gusto of a bingeing P addict. He is voracious and methodical in his destruction, his love of climbing, tumbling, wrestling and tackling (the joys of an older rugby-playing brother lol) knows no limits that we have yet discovered. I love it, his energy is infectious but he does require monitored downtime to regroup before his over-tired alter-ego comes out to wreck havoc play.
I feel very thankful to be at a place in my parenting journey where I can poo-poo the perfect mummy model and freely admit that Nixon and Ethan watch TV. Every day. Multiple times if the need arises. OMG!! I said it. Now shoot me.
As such, I’m keeping an ace up my sleeve to whip out over the holidays – NEON, I welcome you and your sweet programming onto our devices!
To be honest my (poor) kids are a bit starved when it comes to their Disney intake, not intentionally, I just really, really dislike DVD storage, clutter and the inevitable heartbreak and expense when Nix slams them in the Xbox tray and they are destroyed. This is only one of the reasons why I LOVE a good digital subscription service like NEON. No messy cases and pesky disks to inventory, plus, wonderful family movies and shows that all live ‘up there’ in the ‘cloud’ or something. All I know is the when I hit Airplay on the iPad we are in Disney heaven!
To make sure I’m ready for when the first meltdown of the holiday times itself perfectly with me making a Croquembouche or something (HA!), I’ve already made a Watchlist of 30 shows and movies so I’m not scrambling at tanty-time;
I picture our NEON time playing out in one of two ways;
Either way, the kids end up happy and so do I – provided I can get out of the bathroom as someone’s probably jammed Play-Doh in the lock again.
While I’m in self-imposed Mummy Time Out I’ll probably knock back a couple of shows myself, because I can watch NEON on my phone people! I’m thinking Girls (I’m ashamed to say I’ve not seen one episode yet!), Game of Thrones (we’ve only seen Series 1) and The Real Housewives of Melbourne (can you imagine an Aussie version of this show? I die). There’s new shows and movies becoming available all the time so binge-watchers exhale, it will be ok, OK?
You can get your own holiday contingency plan sorted quick-smart, just sign up for a 30 day free trial at neontv.co.nz and start streaming now.
To make your holidays that much sweeter, NEON and The Best Nest are giving you the chance to win a $100 Prezzy Card that you can spend wherever you want! Enter via the widget below. Competition closes Sunday October 4th at 12am.
Dave returns today from an 11 day work trip and lord that plane can’t get to Auckland soon enough. I find it super hard to parent without Dave as he’s the steady, stable half and I’m the emotionally fractious one who struggles to hold her shit …
Compared to my 12 pack of skincare products, the makeup I took to Rarotonga was much more carefully curated. I figured (correctly) that as soon as I got a bit of sun on my cheeks I would be sans foundation, blush, highlighter, contour, bronzer, yadda …
So Dave is away in Wellington for 11 days completing a project that’s been ongoing for about a year I think, resulting in many trips back and forth. Now is probably NOT the best time to be writing this as we were FB messaging this morning and he was grumbling about work so I called him to make sure everything was ok, turns out he was still in bed and hungover. What in the actual fuck! Excuse me while I go and wipe your kids snotty nose, clean chili sauce off the carpet after Nix decided to try his hand at abstract art at 8.15 this morning and try not to cry about the smashed bottle of $140 Murad skincare I discovered after Ethan was finished in the bathroom this morning! Woe. Is. You Me.
Moving on lol.
I was invited to attend the Women’s Wellness in NZ event on Sunday hosted by Makaia Carr and Julia & Libby. I SO wanted to go but with Dave away and Mum up north I was a bit stuck. E dislocated and broke his toe in a rugby tourney on Thursday (read, we were at the ER until midnight on Thursday night, sigh) so was a bit hobbly and precious and Nixon, well, usual state of affairs there – chaos.
So, I did the unthinkable for me. I asked for help. I find this so hard to do. I sat on the texts for ages, willing myself to hit send and when I finally did the first reply was a negative. Wahhhhh! I tried again and success. Nixon was all set to spend the morning with his cousin and Ethan was off to nerd out at a friends house.
It was a swift morning hustle, the usual morning routine combined with me trying to look presentable and depart the house by 9.15. On a Sunday. We did it without any kid/mummy rage and I headed east to dispatch Child #1 and then south to deliver Nixon.
When I finally got on the motorway I was overcome with IT, a sickening case of Mummy Guilt. Why had I said yes to attending? Why had I rushed the kids out of the house on a Sunday? Why had I bothered running in 3 different directions when we could be all together, cozy and relaxing? Major fretting ensued, then I woke up and gave myself a good mental slap.
I said yes to Mak’s invite because I knew I needed to go. Catching some fleeting time by yourself when your partner is away is hard. Even the drive to the event was relaxing without the boys yelling and screaming in the car! I had rushed the kids out of the house because we all needed to get out of the house – without making the beds, with dirty dishes on the bench and with laundry on the floor. We/I needed to say, who cares? I dropped the kids off with two different people because I asked for help. And that was totally ok.
I know it was ok because when people ask me for help (and they do ALL the time, every day) I say yes. I don’t think twice I just say yes. You know that old adage, “it takes a village”? Well it does, and I need to remember to knock on more doors in my village and say “please, my turn. Can you help?”.
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When we first began planning our trip well over a year ago, there was one thing Dave was desperate to do in Rarotonga – go on a fishing charter, so we made this happen. The one thing I wanted to do was to go to …
Ohhh bras. And boobs. I’ve mentioned before how I’m just not that into boobs. I’d take a smashing set of pins over voluptuous cleavage any day of the week. Boobs are just located way too close to my mid-section (especially after two rounds of 12mth+ …
I’m not going to pretend to be any kind of coffee aficionado. I drank my very first coffee about 3 months ago but have taken to this marvelous hobby like a duck to water. I’ve finally managed to shake my morning requirement of a V energy drink because coffee is just so so fab.
I must admit, I’ve been fortunate enough to be initiated into the world of coffee in the best possible way. Via my most precious appliance, the beautiful Nespresso Inissia machine.
My lush Nespresso coffee is an expensive drop however. Dave and I both adore our new ritual but we can burn through $50 worth of capsules way too quickly.
There is an alternative though.
www.mycoffeecapsules.co.nz sent me some Grande Gusto Medley Packs of Caffesso pods to try out and I’ve been sampling the varieties over the past week.
So, first impressions:
There’s extra packaging! After checking with the lovely peeps at My Coffee Capsules they were happy to report that all pods will soon be hermetically sealed in the same way Nespresso is packaged, eliminating the need for the extra vacuum sealed foil packaging and making Caffesso pods 100% recyclable, yay!
I have previously experimented with Nespresso alternatives available at the supermarket and have been less than impressed, plus, after suffering through muddy plunger coffee at our rented accommodation in Raro I was actually quite scared of discovering more coffee I didn’t like.
Not a problem thank goodness.
To be honest, I haven’t even bothered with the Decaffeinato, because, COFFEE. But I’m sure it tastes great. As for the other varieties, soooo far removed from those available on the supermarket shelves – Caffesso has successfully sourced straight up, great coffee. What’s kinda nice about opening the foil pouch is that you get an instant, fragrant hit of fresh coffee, I love that. Thankfully the aroma doesn’t stop there but continues after the brewing process is complete and your beautiful cup of barista-ish coffee is ready to enjoy.
And enjoy I do! I’m pretty partial to high intensity varieties so my two favourite blends are Indiano (11) and Intenso (12). I can taste the difference between the single origin Nespresso varieties which Dave and I usually buy and blends such as Caffesso, but I think that’s just me being a coffee snob?
Caffesso provides a comparable, delicious, smooth alternative to Nespresso at a more budget friendly price, $7.50 for 10 capsules. This is really good coffee, definitely worth purchasing to help dilute the cost of this single portion coffee phenomena that so many of us are now in love with!
Oh lord, that picture doesn’t look real does it? I can’t believe it feels so long ago already :::sobs::: I was determined to pack light for our trip to Rarotonga and that included my toiletry bag. I did pack way more skincare products than makeup but couldn’t …