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28.11.11

Off to the Horn of Africa

After lots of planning and the odd hiccup, in a few hours Curtis and I will be off to the mystical and intriguing land of Ethiopia...


Three and a half weeks of local buses, plenty of walking and I'm sure some 'once in a lifetime' experiences are ahead of us!

That also means that there will be no posts for a while, but there will be an abundance upon my return :)

25.11.11

Ummm, a bike... yes please!?!

Lucky Pony is having probably the one of the biggest giveaways I've ever seen! Im actually kind of waiting for it to all turn into some kind of sick joke, and crossing my fingers, toes and other various body parts that can be crossed, hoping that its not...

All you have to do is leave a comment here and then join the ranks of people tangling themselves up :) Also do yourself a favour and check out Starling & Hero, they are mother-frikkin good at what they do!

Markets Markets Markets

At this time of year specifically, loads of little christmas markets creep out of every corner and suddenly on one Saturday there is an overwhelming lot to choose from! If this was some super established blog or just a different  kind of blog, I would go on to list my "Top 10 Favourite Christmas Markets" or write a "How to find the best buys during the Christmas Craziness"...

Instead, I will tell you about my one favourite, year-long running market. It has no designer labels, and no plethora of delicious organic food but is the best in its simplicity and truthful nature: The Boeremark in Silverton, Pretoria.

Full of home style rusks and bread, locally grown fresh produce, fresh flowers (including the 'protea guy' who always has an amazing selection of fresh proteas), old farm-style brewed coffee and the list goes on.

We try and go a twice month, and more often than not we succeed! Here is a peek into the Boeremark from 2011:










23.11.11

Boys and a Bubble Machine






I couldn't resist putting up these photo's Curtis took of his nephew and brother...
Yes 25yr old Curtis has a 3yr old brother: thats giving laatlammetjie a whole new meaning!

22.11.11

Holiday Pastimes

One of those glorious things that I doubt I will ever get tired of is the three month holiday at the end of every year - a definite perk in the life of a student!

I've been spending my time excitedly planning for our trip to Ethiopia (which includes an unforgiving amount of vaccinations). We leave on Monday - are going north of Addis Ababa and then south, in just under a month, and thats about the extent of the itinerary as it stands :)

Besides stocking up on Rehydrate, 'just in case' antibiotics and some new walking shoes, I have been making some new jewelry - more on that soon, drawing for the Portrait Project  that Lucky Pony is running, enjoying early Christmas celebrations with Curt's family, who will be all over the country closer to the time, going to the my favourite Saturday morning spot - the Boeremark, and spending lazy mornings in bed.

Oh, and if it was not evident I haven't been spending a lot of time with the camera... oops!

14.11.11

Must Love Coffee

If I find myself in the situation of being single, and I decide that putting a 'looking for love' ad in the paper would be  good idea (if that even happens anymore??), my "must love dogs" line may just be "must love coffee"...
If you have no idea what I am on about, and the movie reference went straight over your head, insert [I really really like good coffee] instead of all of the above!

Alrighty then, so what this post is actually about, you guessed it: coffee!

I do believe that there are very few places in Joburg that make extraordinary coffee! Good coffee - yip there's a few, great coffee - ya I could name some places, but exceptional coffee - very very few!

At the moment I think my 'search' has narrowed down to a toss up between Bean There at 44 Stanley and Post at 70 Juta.

vs


Go visit and let me know what you think, and if you think there are other contenders, who and where are they?? I would love to try them out!

Please note that I am not referring to where the coffee is sourced and its allegiances to fair-trade and so forth, that would and could be a whole other, very interesting search, but rather the skill of the barista in creating heaven in a cup!

28.10.11

Po - va - teet - sa

Would you ever had guessed a pronunciation of Po-va-teet-sa, from Povitica?? nah me either, but heck it doesn't matter how you pronounce it because its one hell of a tasty Eastern European treat either way! I've never been to Eastern Europe but if this is what I'm gonna get... it's moving up a few places on my endless "Places to Visit" list!

The Daring Bakers' October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European dessert bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

This bread has been more commonly named, by more common people as swirly bread! I think my attempt at Povitica shows you why:






26.10.11

Meet Onyx

This little/not-so-little-anymore kitten of ours is the worlds greatest procrastinabler (word??)
His favourite spot is pretty much anywhere that is in the way! 



...and its near impossible to chase that face away.

24.10.11

Watermelon Lemonade

How divinely refreshing does this look/sound?!


Can't think of a better day to have this... because its flipping 38 degrees outside!
Apparently we are experiencing a heat wave, think I'm gonna go get me some watermelon and make this tomorrow!

"Recipe" can be found here, and for another refreshing drink, try this Lemonade with Raspberry Ice Cubes.


20.10.11

Please Sir, can I have a Sir Juice

Have you noticed the new packaging/branding (insert correct lingo here if you're in the industry of such things) of Sir Juice?? its so awesome!

They seem to have flooded the shops and are definitely first choice when looking at the juice fridge! I was going to attempt some descriptions but I think these do all the necessary talking:








These are the flavours I've tried so far - delish! Its just good, wholesome, yum juice with some fun stories, clean design and rad illustrations!

Pictures are from here and you can read all about the rebranding at the Sir Juice site.

19.10.11

Dreamy Paris

If this doesn't make you want to explore Paris then I don't know what will...


Check out some other "Live the Language" videos here.

18.10.11

Depeapa and Lucky Pony

This is one giveaway not to miss out on...

Depeapa is a spanish creative who spends her time making beauties of many shapes and sizes!
Go visit Angie over at Lucky Pony to enter to win one of Depeapa's amaze-balls items! (yes I just said amaze-balls).

Tough to choose but these would def be in my top three choices:




Careful though, its tempting to just order the lot online, lucky for me in this instance I'm still an untrustworthy student, with no solid salary, who isn't allowed a credit card in my name!

Photos are from the Depeapa etsy shop.

17.10.11

selah

A truly inspired Cape Town based artist that goes by the name of Selah is worth noticing!


Not only is he extremely talented with an eye for graphic, geometric style illustration but spends most of his time "writing hope in the dust"...

In his words, Selah "draws symbols and texts in the margins of society: alleys, townships, street corners and rusting refuse - to write the story of their hope and bravery" - a beautiful description for beautiful work by a beautiful soul.






All photos and quotes from his blog: http://selahmade.wordpress.com/

12.10.11

aaaah its amazing

Joanna, over at the infamous A Cup of Jo, put up a post of Ivy covered houses! I LOVE ivy, well wall creepers of any kind really but these were just breathtaking so I reposted some of them from here to, well right here:



5.10.11

A moody photo for a moody mood...

My beautifully handsome love...



A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do! And in this case its showing off my Curtis.
Ok and in truth the moody mood I am in and the moody mood of this photo are very different but alas, I like this photo!

27.9.11

Délicieux

"The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-­ blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!"


 There was no playing games with this recipe - I followed the entire process to the T (not as my mom taught me which was a much more 'dash of this', 'splash of that', eat half the mixture before its cooked' kind of approach). It was worth every knead, every layer of butter, every long wait between rises, because they were darn delicious!


They were perfectly light and crispy on the outside, buttery and flaky on the inside and divine with some cheese and jam.


The proper camera was in Pretoria with Curtis so I had to make do with my extremely outdated little point and shoot, I think it actually has less megapixels than my phone (which is not of the smart phone variety either!) so the photos don't quite do them justice but here they are anyway... 




23.9.11

Exploring

I think it was the Getaway Photographer that I read a brilliant article in a while ago about urban photography and Curt and I have always thought trying out our urban photography skills would be fun... both being nature lovers (for lack of a better/less cliche phrase), up until now all our ''photo expeditions had been centered around the outdoors. So we decided to start small and spent a few hours one weekend exploring Wits, here is the result...









Wits is somewhere I spend my entire week but it somehow becomes completely new when you are not working up a sweat speed-walking up "the hill" (Witsies you'll know what Im talking about!) to get to an 8am lecture on time or some other very banal varsity past time.