365 days

It was exactly one year ago today that our darling little girl was born sleeping.
Much too early. Much too small, but still so perfect.

I miss you everyday.

Roast pork belly with braised fennel

Tom made this last weekend. It was seriously one of the best meals I have ever had in my life. We don't eat a huge amount of meat around here but I think this one is going to become one of our favourites.

Pork belly is a surprisingly cheap cut of meat and don't worry about the fat.. It all cooks off after about 3 hours in the oven, so you are left with a very tender and lean piece of meat. Tom used this recipe (Oh Jamie, where would we be without you?)

The fennel is roasted under the pork belly and covered in wine so it stays nice and tender too. If you eat meat, you must try this recipe.. you will thank me afterwards I promise!

Feelin' hot hot hot

Oh, it's about 42 degrees in Perth right now. Apparently it's the hottest week on record in over 50 years.. and it is killing me! I like hot weather, I really do.. but this? This is unbearable. It is actually to hot to leave the house!

Last night we headed down to the river to watch the Australia Day fireworks. A huge storm came over the city and everyone just sat there in the rain.. getting some relief from the heat of the last few days.

Mother nature decided to out-do the fireworks display by putting on the most amazing lightning storm at the same time. I couldn't get a decent picture on my phone, but I found this one. It was pretty amazing.

Watercolour

Sophie painted this for my birthday. It's a vase with flowers in it..
Such a clever little thing she is!

Ric-rac and a cucumber

Tom's step-mum gave me this present on my birthday. It was a beautiful linen bag made with fabric from India, but I just love that she wrapped it in ric-rac and added a cucumber from her veggie patch! That's my type of present!

29

Tom made my (beetroot sourdough) toast into a love heart this morning.

I wish I could say that I had big plans for my 29th year, but I actually hope to be lying around in bed for most of the year (quite literally).

I started the day opening presents in bed. Tom bought me a lovely robe (because I plan to spend most of this year in my pyjamas!)
We had some of the family over for breakfast and then had more family over for lunch. We then headed to Matilda Bay in the afternoon and then to a friends house for dinner. It was a very relaxed and very lovely day..

I think 29 is going to be a very good year!

I hate this picture, but I love it too.

In a couple of days it will be my birthday. This is a photo of me on my birthday last year.
I was 21 weeks pregnant with Grace.
So happy. So blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.

I wonder if my birthday will always be a sad day for me from now on. Will it be my happy birthday or will it be 10 days before Grace died? I guess that is a choice I have to make.

28 sucked big time. But 29 is going to be the best year of my life.
(PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE).

Amanda Blake print

In the latest issue of Frankie there are a few pages of paintings by Amanda Blake. I fell so in love with this painting when I saw it that I ordered a print from her shop straight away. I originally thought I could put it in Sophie's room but I am now thinking it might be a bit dark for a little kids room. What do you think?

Other yummy things..

That we have made lately.

*All photos were taken with Instagram, you may have noticed that I have become slightly obsessed with Instagram. I can't believe that we spent $2000 on on DSLR and my iPhone takes better photos!

Home made gnocchi

You can hardly see them in there, but Tom and Sophie made the most delicious gnocchi the other night.. It was one of those nights when there were hardly any groceries left in the house and Tom just knocked this up with whatever was left in the fridge.. the man is crazy (in a good way!)

Lovely Christmas things..

These are a few of the cool presents I got for Christmas.. Being married to a guy with 2 sets of parents (dad/step-mum and mum/step-dad) plus 5 sisters means that I get spoilt rotten every year.

This year I got lots of cool things including a lovely Gorman top, a necklace from Pigeonhole, a ring and candles from Mr.Sparrow, an embroidery book, the milk jug and a very pretty dress.. plus loads of other things that I still have to photograph. (I can't wait to show you the dress that one of Tom's sisters made me!)

What lovely things did you get? Please share..

Soh. Pie.

Sometimes Sophie writes her name as Sohpie.. I think it's so cute I can't stand to correct her.
Sophie is starting primary school in a few weeks, I cant believe that she is off to school already.. It's so sad!
Kids in WA start school a year earlier than they do in Sydney so I was not prepared for her to start this year (at 4 years old!)

Although.. this might be a good thing as fingers crossed I will be on bed-rest for a large part of 2012!

(Delicious) mini carrot cakes

Tom's little sister made these mini carrot cakes for Sophie's birthday a few weeks ago.. they were soo good. I do love a good carrot cake, especially one you can fit in your mouth in one go. You can find the recipe here.

Esperance (Paradise)

When we drove across Australia in March last year we stopped at a little place called Esperance on the south coast of West Australia for a few nights.. and it was there that we found paradise.
If you ever happen to be near Esperance you must visit Cape Le Grand national park. These photos were taken at Hellfire Bay and I have not retouched them in any way.. this is actually what it looked like!
AH-mazing! I still have dreams about this place!

Japanese sewing books

Does anyone else have an obsession with Japanese sewing books? I just adore the patterns and photos and have based most of my designs for 'Snowpea' on them. I am so glad that they have just started to publish a few of them in English.

Speaking of 'Snowpea', I really wanted to launch my little business before Christmas but things got really busy and I realised that this was supposed to be a hobby for me.. I am not doing it to make money, I am doing it so that I have an excuse to buy pretty fabric and spend all my spare time sewing. I don't want to be there till 5am every morning just to get it all done..

So, at the moment I am just doing a little each day and I am just going to play it by ear. I would like to have my little shop up and running in the next month or so but I'll see how I go.. 2012 is all about taking it easy for me!

lazy town

We just got back from a few days up at the farm and so far 2012 has been pretty damn good to us.
We spent the last few days eating delicious food, doing lots of baking, having afternoon naps, reading books and generally being lazy.. quite perfect if you ask me.

A rose by any other name

I have been thinking about changing the name of my blog. I sometimes think it is silly to have a blog called Grow. Cook. Sew. when I don't really have enough time to do any of the above. And one day soon (fingers crossed) I will be on full time bed rest and won't be able to do anything but stare at the ceiling! What do you think? (Maybe 'days of boredom' is appropriate?!)

Also, I have been doing fat mum slim's 'January photo a day challenge'. You can follow me on Instagram @katie_porter (Oh, how I love instagram!) and on twitter by the same name.
Please follow me, I am so sick of writing tweets that no one (except my husband) read.

In other news, Sophie let me do her hair.. like actually brush it and everything. Milestones people, milestones!

two thousand and twelve

Firstly, I'm really sorry for my last post. I hope that I did not scare anyone off! I really wanted to write that post before the new year so that I could start fresh in 2012. Tom was really upset to read my last post and (being the eternal optimist that he is) said "What happened was tragic. It was completely heartbreaking and always will be, but you have two choices.. You can let the grief overwhelm you and give up OR you can realise that we are so lucky in so many ways and charge ahead knowing that life is going to be great. And actually, you don't have the option of giving up because we have Sophie and she still needs her mum and dad to be full of life." (or something along those lines).

And I agree with him 100%. Now, that does not mean in anyway that I am not allowed to be sad, to feel pain, to have days when things feel hopeless.. but, it means that I need to stop living in my little bubble of 'life is really cruel to me' and start appreciating what I do have. Tom's dad actually said something to me the other day that really stuck.. he said "every single day you get closer to the day that you will be pregnant".. and that's so true! I never looked at it like that before.. but today I am closer to being pregnant than yesterday and that is great.

(I think that it's been so hard for me because when I fell pregnant with Grace I had already been trying for years to fall pregnant again and had already had two miscarriages. I thought it could not get any worse.. and that was 2 years ago! The next time I fall pregnant will be my 5th pregnancy. I will have to spend the entire pregnancy on full bed rest and have a stitch put in my cervix that has a high risk of causing a miscarriage at 11 weeks. It's actually funny that I am so obsessed with falling pregnant when that is only the very first step in a very long journey!)

So anyway, I still would like to write about Grace and infertility and all those things, but I really don't want this to be a 'dead baby blog' and I just wanted you to know that.


Secondly, These tomatoes came from Tom's mum's garden yesterday, there are hundreds of them (or at least it feels that way).. Pretty awesome hey! (Tom gives me a hard time for having a blog called Grow. Cook. Sew. when we don't actually grow anything at the moment.. so this is for him). If I was allowed to use emoticons I would insert a face with a poking out tongue here.