Jo and Annabel come to dinner.

Way back in June I blogged about my girl's weekend at Jo Seager's Cook School in Oxford.
Then I came home and talked about it to anyone who would listen, and promised a Jo Seager dinner party.
Well I've finally done it! But I had to invite Annabel (Langbein) along too because she has such lovely photography in her cook book, and I just make her flat bread recipe ALL the time.

It's great to have with hummus with drinks before dinner.

These are my most photogenic deserts. Lemon roulade, lemon possett (in Grandad Darcey's best crystal glasses), and mint truffles.





This is Annabel's bread with hummus and my fav, blue cheese. No -one else likes it, so there's plenty for me!

Coriander chicken and basmati rice.

Close up of the deserts, which I am slightly biased towards!!!

Dinner parties are not really my thing, that's partly why it's taken me so long to get around to it. I feel slightly self conscious about it, because i remember my Grandma Ida's in the 1970s, which were truly stupendous, and my Mum's with the baked lemon trout and pineapple pudding (not sure if they appeared on the same menu??)

And I worry that my lemon roulade might be quite tame in comparison.

Certainly coriander chicken would have been laughed out of town in the 1970s!

But Jo and Annabel are the new Doris and Audrey in my book.

Both glamorous in their own way.

Both icons of New Zealand culinary culture.

History will prove me to be right, I am sure.

Little Chicken Feather.

I have a brand new Great Niece called Rebecca.

I hadn't made anything in preparation this time, because I didn't know if we were getting a boy or a girl, and mainly because I just wasn't so organised this time.

So when she was born, a little lightbulb went off in my head and I thought I'd use my favourite bag pattern (super nappy bag I thought). And Little Chicken Feather, whom I just adore.

So if you don't want to spoil the surprise Emma, don't read on!

This is my favourite design from Little Chicken Feather.

I had just the right fabrics for a girly bright gelato looking combination, and there had to be some yellow. Just about everything has been recycled or a left over from some other project, which is handy when inspiration strikes you at 2 o'clock in the morning. A bit difficult to nip off to the shops then.

I've been sneaking round to my Mum's house to sew, because I have packed my sewing machine up here.

Isn't she gorgeous!

I love it.

Open to View.

I am having such trouble sleeping at the moment!
My mind goes around in high revving circuits continuously.











I am mentally placing our furniture in our new house, my washing on that clothesline in the meadow.



My concrete chook in that garden.




I remain in a holding pattern, in house limbo.

Reflecting on how I will miss this house, but in my mind I am already gone.





I've been looking back on some of my favourite photos. Favourite memories.
Of each season in the garden, the Christmas my brother rode the kid's scooters up the drive way, flat out as fast as you can with a prosthetic leg,
coming home after 7 weeks at Starship after Callum's first kidney transplant. All those homecomings.











All those first flushes of spring.



















Re-decorating as each child left home, as a kind of compensation package for losing them.









All those tea parties.

And all the faeries I may or may not have found at the bottom of the garden.

Things I made with this house in mind.

The start of so many creative processes. The formulating of "Magpie Chic".

Luckily it is all movable, transformable and re-inventable in a Provencal Farm House kind of way.

Our first open home was on the sunniest day in February, so everyone was doing lots of other stuff and not coming to open homes LOL!

We had two people! But we've had quite a few people through during the week. Early days say the Real Estate ladies. I think this is what's keeping me up at nights reading blogs and watching the living channel, trying to avoid watching Christchurch or hearing about it on the radio. It is so awful I just can't even bear to talk about it.

I feel so lucky that my Mum and sister are no longer living there. I feel so lucky to be thinking about houses in such a way, when the people of Christchurch will be thinking about houses in an entirely different way. There's something about the guilt of the survivor about it.

I just feel so lucky.

I am making things again! I'm sneaking round to use the granny's sewing machine and making a mess at her house. Because you can't have a mess in house limbo.

Here at the Magpie House we are always "open to view".

One Must Always Balance One's Frills.

On a recent "ladies shopping" expedition with she who is proficient at separating eggs and he who looks better with his hair cut (who came a long because he had nothing better to do and takes a macabre interest in the psychology of "ladies shopping"), we stumbled upon one of those little pieces of advice that have become family lore very quickly.
"He" was heard to remark to his sister that the items she had assembled had a few too many frills. And apparently it is his observation that you must balance your frills.

So today I am the enviable recipient of a special tea party apron. Designed for me by my sister Jo, who received her initiation into the art of the tea party while on holiday here last month. And the advice about frills has obviously taken root.

It is a bespoke apron (love that word!!!), if such a thing can exist. No-one else will have one. Not even the Granny. Because apparently the frills on mine were so potentially injurious to sanity of the maker that she vowed to stick to the pattern when making one for the Granny!

The lists are taken directly from my favourite tea party menu.

I remain devastated that she didn't have any Doris Day music on her ipod the day of Granny's birthday tea party.

I myself being way too un- hooked from technology to own an ipod on which to put my own Doris Day music onto!

The last item on the list is of course a reference to our fine Taranaki weather!

The apron looks so "House And Garden" hanging on the apron hook, and is sure to be the thing that sells my house after the first open home on Sunday!

People will stop and admire it!!!!

As do I, every time I go past. I can't wait to actually wear it! With some Doris day music in the background of course! As you do, when your frills are properly balanced

Magpie Jam.

Our old plum tree produces a great crop of damson plums every year. Goodness knows how with that huge hollowness in the middle of its trunk. Not quite sure what's holding it up.


Perhaps the bora holding hands?

It's where the kids had their tree hut (cut down from the cab of an old landrover - as you do in this part of the world).

The tree hut blew down one night in the big storm of 2004.

Lucky no -one was stationed underneath it at the time.

This tree is one of the many things that I'll miss about this house.

But as the saying goes, you can always make sour plums into Magpie Jam!

Which is what we shall do. Or rather, what the Granny will do, because she alone holds the key to the mysteries of making jam set without much sugar.

AND she didn't go to Hogwarts either - or Jo Seagar's cook school for that matter.

You'll be pleased to know that i had plenty of supervision today as I painted the shed window and harvested the plums with my ladder.




First open home next weekend blog chics, so it has to be perfect.


I edited the advertising copy and added a few of my magpie chic photos to their catalogue and culled a few of theirs. They had done an ok job, but it was all in Real Estate speak and i needed to add a little House and Garden speak, and give them photos framed by trees, and photos with the rose in the foreground looking at the deck.


They are very accommodating with all my editing and Magpie Chicing of the portfolio. I think they just probably raise their eyes and smile. But someone will just fall in love with this house if it's presented as i see it in my mind's eye.


It will just be serendipity of course.