A Few of My Favourite Things !

Living in the Malvern/Glen Iris locale meant I was spoilt for choice when it came to good coffee and sweet spots to sit down for a chat – The Pour Kids, 30 Mill Espresso, Third Earth, Thread Cafe, Mr Foxx, Sissi & Co just to name a few. Since moving to the Blackburn area a month ago, I have been searching high and low for a local place to hang out at.

Word of mouth led me to Red Cup Cafe. While they have a huge following in the area, I wasn’t nuts about their coffee or service. It had lots of seemingly new waitstaff hanging around waiting to be told what to do and although the coffee was okay, I didn’t want to drive all that way just for okay’ish coffee. Similarly, Coffee Hit and The Block by Coffee Hit at Doncaster Westfield had coffee I really enjoyed but they are even further from me. No, I was simply looking for something not more than a block away that I could drop in on.

Well, here is a place that I am nuts about. I’m nuts about their coffee, the ambience, the play area, the service. Appropriately, it’s named Nuts About Coffee (or Nuts Meet Beans Cafe depending on which business card you take, so even the name is a little nutty) and they serve fair-trade organic coffee as well as a wide variety of nuts and beans, grains and dried fruit.

Mike, the owner, knows how to pour a good coffee and it comes with a sticky fruit & nut slice that will have you licking your fingers. The coffee is extremely well priced at $3 – most places round here will charge $4 as a good coffee (or just coffee in general) is hard to come by – and babycinos are free (unheard of). There is a kiddy corner that will keep little ones entertained as they flick through the books, cuddle the dolls or listen out for the train going past Blackburn Station. There’s angled parking right outside and more spots behind the shops.

(doesn’t that giant bear look exhausted?)

Nuts About Coffee
80 South Parade, Blackburn Road 3130
9894 1458

We prayed for a beautiful day for EJ’s birthday party, and lo and behold, it went from a week of high 20C’s to a sunshiny 24C with a cool breeze. Absolutely perfect for a little teddy bear picnic!

On his last overseas trip, A. had brought a bear cake tin home from William Sonoma so there was no question of what kind of cake I should bake, just how I would dress him. After receiving an inspiring idea from my websearch on how to decorate my cupcakes, I decided that the big bear would be dressed simply in a pair of blue speedos.

Balloons, sausages, tables, falafels, cupcakes, cake all made it to Speaker’s Corner at Birrarung Marr before 50 friends and 20 or so children gathered for the celebration. We ate, talked, laughed while the kiddies ran around and got grubby in the dirt. What a day! (and what a year it has been!)

You can’t see the wording, but ‘Speedo’ is written across the back of his swimmers.

The little girls at the party couldn’t decide which cupcake to pick! My niece ended up with one of the two green mermaids. I also laughed when a friend’s little boy told his daddy that there was a boy bear on his cupcake and one with boobs!

Look at what a gorgeous day we were blessed with. I love this shot of all the little girls running after and hassling the one boy.

This post is a wee bit belated, but…

With our son now crawling around and very ably pulling himself up on all the furniture around the house we decided not to put up a Christmas tree, mainly for the tree’s sake. I found a solution around the problem of wanting but not being able to have a tree though, and I have to admit that I LOVE our ‘tree’ of wild hypercium berries and pine tree cuttings. After collecting our decorations from storage one morning, I happily spent some time trimming the tree before continuing with my Christmas baking.

Looking for a child-friendly place for brunch, a friend recommended the Auction Rooms as a great place that had room for a pram. So, we wandered up to Victoria Market, purchasing some groceries on the way, then made our way to Errol St in North Melbourne. Not quite knowing where Errol Street was, we asked directions from three blokes chatting in from of a pub. Two of them, who appeared to have already well on their way to being sozzled, informed us to keep walking in that direction but that Errol Street was 2km away. Fortunately, their estimations were quite a way out and we were there within 15 min., stumbling upon it right after passing Fandango.

My idea of a perfect breakfast – miso soup with silken tofu, fried tofu, carrots, shimeji mushrooms, wakame, one beautifully-cooked still-runny poached egg and a riceball on the side. Ahhh, bliss on a Saturday morning…

Before EJ, I had no idea how daunting the task of motherhood is. I don’t know how I would have survived the first three months without the support of all those mums out there so this is a visual thank you.

These look really professional but are dead easy to make. Put together the cupcake batter of your choice, fill some flat-bottomed cones two-thirds of the way up and bake as usual. Whip up a buttercream frosting and decorate with colourful sprinkles, hundreds-and-thousands and cute animal or flower motifs.

Right on term at 38 weeks, EJ arrived on the morning of Tuesday 19 February weighing 6lb5oz. We are blissfully enjoying his presence despite the interrupted sleep – I just can’t take my eyes off him!