Friday Favourites Catch-Up

Hi friends and welcome to Friday Favourites! Today I’m excited to catch up and share some favourites from the past few weeks. Between the holiday festivities and my brief blogging break. I’ve got a few faves that I want to tell you about. So let’s jump right into this Friday favourites catch-up post!

It’s no secret that I love lots of delicious froth on my coffee and hot chocolates (in winter). My lovely cousin got me this frother for Christmas and I have been enjoying some deliciously frothy coffee breaks over my summer holiday.

I’ve had my eye on this beautiful Marimekko tealight holder, and I finally decided to order it online. I came across it while browsing for Christmas gifts for my boys. Does this happen to you too? I often discover things that I love and get a bit sidetracked while shopping. Oops!

Marimekko is a Finnish design company (for some reason I used to think it was Japanese!). Anyway, it’s well-known for producing vibrant iconic textile patterns and they also have gorgeous home goods. I love my tealight holder, it radiates a warm glowing light and it looks like a small lamp when I light it. Merry Christmas to me!

I was excited to visit a Marimekko store in the city when I went shopping with my friend back in the first week of the school holidays.

I’m still on track with ticking off some household chores and trying to stick to doing one thing a day. The other day I gave the fridge a good clean. I’m not sure if I love this method or if I prefer to smash out all these chores over a couple of days. But I am happy to get them done so I guess that’s a win!

We had our first Cousin Connect dinner last Saturday and I cooked up some Italian food.

Caprese pizza and cheese board for an entree.

Meatballs and roast chicken (I forgot to take a pic of the chicken) for the mains.

Panzanella and pasta (forgot to take a pic of the pasta) as sides.

Baked nectarines with Italian trifle for dessert.

It was fun eating in our small courtyard! I had a playlist full of fun Italian music playing in the background creating a lovely vibe.

It’s ok that I forgot to take photos of all the dishes individually because here they all are! I tend to over-cater, maybe because I always have my mum’s voice inside my head saying ” Ruth! Are you sure there’s enough food?” Haha, she always over-catered too. We had leftovers for the next couple of days. We love leftovers!

After dinner, it was our usual board game madness.

One of my favourite things about summer is all the delicious fruit. We have been so lucky with the berries and grapes as they have been so sweet this year. Sam even commented about how this year’s summer fruits taste better than ever. I always think of Kramer from Seinfeld who claimed that “fruit was a gamble”. I totally agree because sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t!

We played some super fun Christmas party games which I shared in my Christmas recap post. For the reindeer hands game, where every player had to wear red plastic cups on their hands and pass a ball. I needed some rubber balls or tennis balls. However, they turned out to be expensive and I needed quite a few. I had a lightbulb moment and opted for a bag of fresh oranges and they worked perfectly!

Then about a week or so later I juiced all the oranges and we had delicious sweet orange juice!

I’m going to finish off my favourites catch-up post by sharing with you someone very special and one of my most favourite people in the whole world. My uncle Bill.

Today marks the tenth anniversary since he passed away suddenly, leaving us all utterly devastated and missing him every single day. He was my mum’s youngest brother and the kindest man you could ever meet. He wasn’t just an uncle; he was like my father, my go-to person whenever I had a problem and my hero. Words cannot describe how much I loved him. I know that I’ve been incredibly blessed to have had such an amazing uncle. I just miss him so much.

Today, I am going to visit his grave with my aunt (his wife) and say hello to my mum too as she’s buried not far away. Then in the evening, we are getting together to have dinner with his kids (my cousins) and remember the good times we shared.

Thanks so much for joining me in today’s favourites catch-up. I hope you all have an amazing weekend and please give your loved ones an extra big cuddle!

I look forward to being back here on Monday.

Linking up with Andrea and Erika.