Snap it {on my plate}

The last few nights we've been enjoying fresh produce picked just before dinner from our garden. The peas and broad beans are abundant at the moment. Last night Rob and I wandered around the veggie garden and selected carrots and parsnips, silver beet and cute mini cauliflowers.

I snapped this photo of the basket before taking it inside.

Rob just cooked them in a little water and butter, so the carrots and parsnips were nice and firm still but the silver beet wilted. We sat at the table and enjoyed every mouthful.

It makes us so much happier when we eat fresh vegetables from our hut garden.


Playing along with Sarah at Faith Hope and a whole lotta love.

Snap it {breakfast}

Those of you who follow me via Instagram will know that Saturday and Sunday at the hut usually start with breakfast in bed for me.
I know I'm spoilt rotten. I do appreciate it. Rob will surprise me with a tray including orange juice or coffee, and depending on his mood/inclination:

• thick pancakes with fruit and yoghurt or maple syrup
• sourdough toast/home made bread/crumpets with honey or jam
• muffins (he I have to say makes the BEST muffins, Baklava, raspberry, jam doughnut, orange, the list could go on)
• home made granola with poached fruit and yoghurt
• a full cooked breakfast.

Whilst I love pancakes and muffins, I have to say I think if I had to make a choice for my last breakfast ever, it would be something savoury. My all time favourite breakfast? Is left over spaghetti and meatballs on toast. 

If anything this collage demonstrates just how much I love our red plates and red gingham doona cover (which is fading because we wash it so frequently!)


Playing along here.

Snap it {three}

Just quickly, three daffodils.

Oh Spring.


Playing along here.

Snap it {colourful}

I'm saving most of my flower photos for Friday (finally have some flowers to share!)

But in looking for something to share in today's snap it theme, colourful, I couldn't go past my anemones. We have pink, blue and white.

Taken with my iPhone, without a filter, the pink of these is so intense.

I'll be back on Friday with some more garden photos.


Playing along with Sarah at Faith Hope & a whole lotta love.

Snap it {bright}

Yikes two posts in one week!

The theme for Snap it this week is bright.

It wasn't very bright last night at the hut when we got home around 7pm. No electricity. I had been expecting it over the weekend when we had the gale force winds (over 100kmph) but for some reason a tree fell over yesterday afternoon and took out the power in our area. A quick phone call to the power company wasn't terribly comforting, "restoration time unknown, call back in 90 minutes".

So we got back in the car and headed down the road to the local pub for a counter meal. Whilst not the most exciting meal we'd had in a while, it was warm, we didn't have to cook it, they had lights, flushing toilets and running water and a nice wood heater to sit by. Rob and I made it last as long as we could, reminiscing about when was the last time we'd eaten at a pub together. We're thinking 2009!

When we got back to the hut, the power was still off, so we lit a tray of candles, jumped in bed and watched an episode of Northern Exposure on the iPad. The power flicked back on around 10pm.

The weather has just turned for the worse again, so I might ring the power company before we drive home, just to check there isn't a reported outage in our area!


Playing along at Faith, Hope and a whole lotta Love.

Snap it {straight lines}

Sorry guys I seem to have lost my blogging mojo. Hoping it comes back soon. I'm still reading and enjoying your blogs and I hope to post that risotto recipe soon.

So a short post tonight.
Straight lines. Our hut is full of them. In fact the only curved items are the sinks in the bathrooms and the round mirror above one of them. Everything else is angular. I like it that way. The builder told us he'd never built a house with such long external walls (27m)! I love this photo of our hut taken last summer after the great terrace building. Gosh I miss those long sunny days.


Playing along here.

Snap it {small}

Playing along again this week. I'm planning on posting our risotto recipe over the next couple of days with our favourite variations.

This week's theme is small, this is another of Rob's photos of a small native daisy and bee.


Playing along here.

Snap it {soft}

Good news. Mum's surgery went really well, the best possible outcome actually. No need to remove lymph glands or follow up with other treatments. So we're all very relieved.

Today's Snap it theme is soft. You can't get much softer than Nigella's fur, especially that chestnut fluff on the top of her head. It's still as soft as puppy fur.


Playing along with Sarah here.

Snap it {yesterday}

Yesterday was chilly in Hobart. I worked in my office all day and only popped out at lunch time.
So the only photo from yesterday is this one I snapped whilst I waited for Rob to pick me up.
I wore quite an eclectic ensemble.

My tan boots from here.
My bargain raspberry red skirt when we visited Cygnet earlier this year.
A blue knit top from my new favourite online store.
My moleskin blazer (that is actually a mans jacket) from here.


Playing along over at Sarah's today.

Snap it {cold}

Better late than never.

We've had a few frosts over the last few weeks. This photo is from the most serious one so far.
Our car was covered in tiny little icicles. A few people thought this was carpet when I posted it on Instagram.

Snap it {everyday}

I have fallen off the Snap It bandwagon, and I miss it.
So I'm back this week. This week's theme is everyday.
Sometimes everyday chores are made easier, or more enjoyable by something useful or beautiful.
Yesterday one of my online purchases arrived in the mail. Actually a few online purchases arrived, but I'll save those for later! Drying glassware, as we don't yet have a dishwasher, can be quite disappointing with a cloth that smudges and makes streaks on the glass. I've been lusting after one of these 100% linen glass clothes from here for awhile. It is both useful and beautiful.
I love the feel of natural fibres, linen, cotton and wool.


Playing along here.

Can't wait to go and visit your Snap It post.

Snap it {red}

I saw today's theme and knew this would be a cinch for me.
Inspired by Sarah and Ally. I decided to do a collage of my favourite red photos.
As you can see red features a lot in our hut, I'm trying to find some more red for my wardrobe too (today I'm wearing a new red skirt).
I look forward to checking out some of the other red links later today.

Playing along here.

Snap it {inside plants}

Today's Snap it theme is inside.

Excuse me while I become a botanist for a minute.
When I used to demonstrate in the undergraduate practical classes with Rob, one of the activities we did a lot of was hand sectioning of plants.
This was something that takes a little practise, to get a perfectly even slice of stem or leaf with a razor blade (and not slicing the top of your finger off). The plant material is sandwiched in preserved carrot to make it easier to slice. Then once all your little sections are swirling around in a bowl of water you would pick out a few nice ones, pop them on a glass microscope slide and apply some Toluidine blue stain. This stain is taken up by the different cells and if a cell wall contains lignin it will go sky blue or pectin it will go purple. A cover slide was placed carefully over the top and then onto the microscope platform to examine. That's when the fun begins, identifying the cell types and drawing them. This was the bit I used to help the students with.
Australian native plants have to deal with a very harsh environment. Examining their anatomy (how their cells are arranged) you can find out how they adapt to combat the stresses they must overcome to survive. Hiding stomata in furrows so that the plant doesn't lose too much water, thick waxy cuticles to reflect light, increased numbers of lignified cells to create hard leaves that protect the plant from wilting.
Here are a few of the resulting sections through various plants. I think they look stained glass windows.

Playing along over here today.

Snap it {black & white}

I have some great night photos of the hut that Rob took during the amazing light of the supermoon that I'm dying to share, but perhaps tomorrow.

I don't take a lot of black and white photos, I rely on the subject and colour to make a photo memorable.
I'm a one trick pony, this is a photo I recently posted on Instagram for Fat Mum Slim's photo a day challenge.

These are our Neil Poulton designed Surf uplights.
When the lovely sales person suggested them, we were doubtful. Would three of them (with some task orientated lighting in the kitchen and over the window seat) really light up the whole 12 x 4m area in our main room?
The answer is yes. Not only yes, but they light up the whole cathedral ceiling in a way that our proposed down lights would never have done. During the day they disappear as they are white like our walls. Although I baulked at their price, I have not regretted them once.

As an aside, the spiders have been happily making webs up in the peak of our ceiling. Over summer as we left windows and the bifold door open zillions of tiny flies and bugs flew in, and those that didn't roast themselves on the Surf lights ended up in the spider webs. It was starting to look a bit untidy.
Rob let me know he had a genius plan for removing them, he would attached the vacuum cleaner to some 4m lengths of electrical conduit pipe and suck them up! I did express some doubt about this plan. I knew I wouldn't be game to wave a 4m pipe above my head without fear of marking the ceiling.
But on Sunday he proved me wrong, I admit. It seems the pipe was made for it, as the vacuum cleaner brush fitted neatly on one end and the nozzle on the other. Webs and flies all gone, but our friendly spider was determined to stay, so he's up in the corner above the window seat biding his time!

Playing along here.

Snap it {yellow}

Looking back in my albums I found a little bit of yellow. I need to see these photos, it's a grey old day here in Tasmania. Unsurprisingly all were photos of flowers!

Playing along over here today.

Snap it {water}

Water to me is the beach.
We don't get there as often as we should. Particularly as Nigella and Claudia love it.

But in picking some images for this weeks Snap it, I went straight back to the 2008 folder. Long before we even thought of a second German Shepherd. We always head up to north-east Tasmania to visit a friend at Christmas, and he has a dog called Genghis. Nigella and Genghis have always been great mates. We always take them to the long dog beach nearby and they go nuts running in and out of the water, chasing each other, or other dogs, chasing sticks. It never fails to make us smile.

These are a classic series of their antics, and this only touches the surface in terms of the number of photos we have of them together.

Playing along here.

Snap it {sweet}

I have eaten far too many of these in the lead up to Easter.

They're so addictive, and sweet.

Might have to have a break from chocolate for awhile though now.

Playing along here.

Snap it {favourite}

My favourite kitchen gadget.
Not particularly useful, but tied to some favourite memories.
Of my grandmother making her five grandchildren milkshakes in this.
It never seemed to matter if she ran out of milk, and it was a bottomless cup.
I can remember watching as the milk frothed up with bubbles, and sitting outside with a glass in the sun.

Over the weekend, I noticed a few bananas past their prime, giving me an excuse to bring out the Breville Dairy Bar. Banana smoothie, ahh.

Playing along over here.

Snap it {green}

Nigella a few years ago now.
She is a beautiful dog (both in looks and temperament).
We were on our way to a beach holiday and visited Hollybank forest reserve. Nigella happily posed on top of this stone BBQ.

Playing along over at Faith Hope and a whole lotta love.

Snap it {up close}

This weeks theme is up close. Being a botanist and married to another, we tend to look at plants up close. That's how we can tell them apart, and whilst I can appreciate a whole forest, or a particularly majestic or gnarled tree, I think the true beauty of plants is most appreciated up close.

I can take no credit for the following images. Rob loves to take macro photos of Tasmanian natives, and has an eye for finding something a little unusual up close. The following are just a selected few (from the 90 images he forwarded to me) and of the several thousand he has.

All images Rob Wiltshire