This Week’s Small Pleasures: episode 11

Here we are on Monday evening, and time to look back at this week’s small pleasures.  Thanks once again to Mani over at A New Life Wandering for this lovely idea.

1 Dance

On Friday evening I went to see the choreographic season at the New Zealand School of Dance, which was a great evening of dance by young talent that I wrote about in Saturday’s post here.  Even better, I had a second evening of dance on Saturday with the New Zealand Dance Company’s Lumina, a triple bill of works that showed a revitalised and energised contemporary dance scene in New Zealand.  The three works choreographed by Malia Johnston, Louise Potiki Bryant and Stephen Shropshire were well-crafted and performed, and made for an excellent evening of dance.

The programme for Lumina

2  Flowers – outdoors and in

It may be autumn here in the southern hemisphere, but it doesn’t stop the flowers blooming.  For the next couple of months, the garden will become full of bright pink flowers to brighten up the dull grey days.  I also bought some tulips to remind me that it is spring in the northern hemisphere.

This is always the first bush to bloom

Tulips from above

3  Cooking

I tried out a new recipe on Sunday for dinner – Devilled Sausages (recipe here and a better picture than mine from Annabelle Langbein).  The gravy was a tangy delight, and the dish went perfectly with a potato and kumara (sweet potato) mash, steamed silverbeet and roasted baby carrots.  I even made a rhubarb and apple crumble for desert.  Well, Sunday dinner should be a treat.

4  Being Lazy

Sunday was so cold, that we tucked ourselves up with blankets, made tea and just read, watched some TV and blogged a little, before making dinner.  It was so nice just to stop and charge up the batteries for the week ahead.

Brrr…..cold autumn day outside, but warm and cosy inside

5 The small things

Every morning walking to work, I rub my fingers on a lavender bush to release its perfume for a fleeting moment.  I opened a new bar of soap with an intoxicating scent and found a table runner in a box that I had forgotten. And what is better than the first cup of tea, taken in bed on a Sunday morning?  These are the small pleasures of everyday life.

Left over Sunday crumble on Monday evening – another wee pleasure

Finally, a big thank you to Hummingbird Redemption for a Respect Award – not just for the mention, but for also introducing me to some other blogs to explore.  It was a lovely thing on a Monday morning.