Things We Love Thursday

I don't know who Rita is, but I sure do wanna be like her.

Lauren Loves: 

Being Inspired: Things that have inspired me this week – the National Young Writers' Month event: In conversation with John Birmingham and Benjamin Law, which was pretty wonderful to see (a video of the night will be uploaded sometime soon) – Getting Organised: around me people everywhere are keeping schedules, rocking daily plans and ticking off to do lists, so I’ve decided to go full throttle ‘every minute is planned’ style organised…I’ll let you know the results – Reading wonderful books and articles – Travel Magazines – Budgets (you gotta earn it to spend it!) –  the generosity of others (see free fringe trim at awesome hairdresser).

Sloooowwww Cooking!: Last week I bought a slow cooker. This week I slow cook my way to glory. Because I and the girls I live with tip regularly from the busy to the crazy section of the organisational spectrum, it has become apparent over the last few weeks that something has to give and it looked like it might be cooking. We all love to cook and we all love to eat, but none of us has enough time to continue creating lavish meals every evening. The solution: the mighty and wonderful Slow Cooker of Awesome. Last night we ate a wonderfully warming lamb casserole (there are leftovers which will keep me in lunch for the rest of the week) and tonight it’s time to give Julie Goodwin’s Spaghetti Bolognese recipe a whirl, a household favourite when made on the stove top, which Julie assures us will taste even better slow cooked. Slow cooking is perfect for me because I don’t go to my ‘out of home’ job until the afternoon, so preparing a meal in the morning is easy as pie. Pie, which in fact, may just be our next slow cooked experiment! (Can you slow cook a pie?)

Little Things I’ve Loved: reading Little Women and being reminded of how much my sister and I loved the movie when we were children, making plans to visit my sister in Sydney, seeing June and July book themselves up busy, picking my first ever ripe tomatoes to go into tonight’s slow cook spaghetti, understanding the ways in which to get future plans happening and knowing they’re achievable, donating to Ell’s Live Below the Line challenge, wearing cosy cardigans and drinking warm ‘sleepy’ tea before bed, finding friendly new blogs to read.

Ell-Leigh loves:

Normal things that seem so awesome when you're sick: Earlier this week my nose was running like a tap, and I just chalked it up to allergies. Alas, here I am now with a rather fierce cold, downing cold and flu tablets, cough drops and chugging Berrocca. Last night I actually managed to sleep through most of the night, which was amazing, although in most other situations this would just be normal. Similarly, breaking our Below the Line challenge to get some pumpkin soup would usually be rather lame, but was so necessary and down right amazing because I felt so very crap and pumpkin soup is one of the most comforting foods known to mankind. I wish we could have made it to the end of the week, but alas, the virus that is now bullying my cells had a different idea.

My new Filofax: On Tuesday my friend Georgie and I went for a bit of a shopping trip in the city and visited the soon to close (cry!) Borders, where I met my true love, my new red Personal size Filofax. I spent the afternoon hole punching bits and pieces to put inside, and writing inspiring quotes on matching red love heart post-its and putting them on Mondays. I feel so organised and stylish, yay!

Writing Down My Goals: On Sunday afternoon I spent a few hours working on figuring out my goals and how I'm going to achieve them. I used Gala Darling's Love and Sequins 5 "How to Set Amazing Goals" to help me set them and my new Kikki K Goals book:

...to document them all. I feel so motivated and inspired... Get your hands on a copy of chapter 5 of Love and Sequins, just do it. For reals. It's really, really brilliant.

Little things I'm Loving: seeing how many home remedies for cold and flu I can pack into one day, sleeping in and resting, not being as snotty as yesterday (tmi!), taking my cold and a few other crazy things that have happened this week as the universe testing to see if I'm serious about my goals, Angry Boys, eating Raw Vegan Choc-Mint Cheesecake made by Carrie On Raw (it's amazing! So minty!), daily affirmations and meditation.