This week - concerts, books and flowers

Well. This has been a very difficult week. My mother's funeral was yesterday, and that's pretty much taken up  all my waking (and sleeping and insomnia non sleeping) thoughts. But rather than think about sad things, I'd prefer to think about the good things that have happened.



Firstly, our house is filled with flowers. We have been so lucky to have so many lovely friends send us bunches that I have literally run out of surfaces to put them on. Some came from my favourite florist in Adelaide - if you ever want to send some flowers, here are the florists I recommend:



Poppies flowers - mixed bunch of ranunculas, roses, ivy, sweet peas in my large alvar aalto vase









Adelaide Flower House - they did my wedding flowers 12 years ago, and people still talk about how beautiful they were. I ordered the flowers for mum's funeral from them - Connie did such a beautiful job with masses of pink roses and sweetpeas, lilac and hyacinth. This bunch were from some lovely friends. I should probably wrap a leaf around the stems in the vase, or something artistic like that, but I am a beginner blogger, so you'll just have to forgive me this oversight.










In some good news this week, our approval came through for our extension! Hooray! Now I'll do a few posts on our plans. I didn't want to jinx it and start posting things before the approval, but we're hoping to start demolition in January. 





Mr AV and I went out on Tuesday night to see the Australian Chamber Orchestra play. They had a baroque music program, which was lovely, and as it was the night before the funeral, it was better to be out and listening to beautiful music, rather than sitting at home and dreading the inevitable. We went out for a drink beforehand at Press in the city. It's all very cool there. Mr AV had a G&T with some fancy French Saffron infused gin. He is now on a mission to source some for himself.










I had a glass of champagne, served old school style. I have to say, while I like the look of these glasses, they are actually quite difficult to drink from. Or maybe that's just clumsy me?









The Town Hall - Adelaide's town hall is lovely, all very 19thC grandeur, although when we were in Melbourne we used to go to concerts frequently at the Melbourne Recital Centre, which is spectacular. Very modern, and perfect acoustics. We had nose bleed seats up the back, as I figure you don't need to see the faces of the players up close, and I'd prefer to save the ticket price difference for the babysitting money.







Mr AV loves to point out that we are the youngest people at concerts by around 20-30 years. The gap is slowly narrowing, but he is right - there is a lot of grey hair in the audience.



I found a few new cookbooks to add to the collection today. Hardcover Nigella's Christmas heavily reduced, and Karen Martini for a reasonable price. If you're in Adelaide, Dillon's bookstore on The Parade had a stack of the Nigella's, and at that price, you don't need to buy them from online.









Also I have a stack of mags to get through - the design ones from a lovely friend as a thank you for taking her to a concert a couple of weeks ago (Mr AV pulled out due to being interstate that day, so she was my backup attendee. This happens fairly frequently)










And lastly, I picked up some trim today for the long awaited cushions on the sofa in my bedroom. It has been cushionless since it arrived shortly after we moved in. Faux Fuchsia would be appalled. I'm a little nervous how the cushions will go, as the cushions in the Study are rarely found on the actual sofa, rather they are on the floor, and they are now looking a little the worse for wear. This is not caused by the children, but Mr AV. Hopefully I'll retrain him in time. The trim is a fluffy brush fringe from Designers Guild to edge the plain blue (it's been a bit squashed in transit, but it's not as deeply navy as it looks in the photo) and it's very lush feeling, and the other fabric looks a bit missoni-esque (but better) to me. I've just got to get it to the workroom now....