Late Xmas giving

Yes it has been over a month since Christmas, I  am aware. I actually gave this gift a few weeks ago and had forgotten about the pics that I had taken weeks before but had not been able to post yet. A personalised apron with a touch of pink (her favourite colour) for my MIL. I have recently taken to wearing an apron while baking with the kiddies. Things tend to get a bit messy sometimes and it saves me having to change my clothes 2 times each day, which equals more washing (not so bad), more pegging out (getting worse) and folding (BAD!). Not only does it save me washing an extra set of clothes each time, but I get to prance around in frilly creations.



 I am loving this pink trim and brought MORE than enough to get the 6" I needed for the trim with plenty left over. I'm thinking a nice swimmer coer up, Kaftan, tunic kinda thing. Have you seen any great patterns around? I love the cover up from Rae here but with no pattern it would be impossible for me, and the tunic from here and also this one from sew liberated. So have you seen anything similar to these? i just want to make sure that I look at them all and don't turn around half way through sewing and stop because I found another that I love more...

Auditions

Today we came home realising it is only 11 more sleeps until the big day! The FIRST day! The beginning of a whole lotta schoolin'

I still need to get another shirt and shorts pair but other than that we are READY! Excited much.

But today we just couldn't wait another 11 more sleeps we just had to try all that new stuff on.
New shoes, new socks, new shirt, new hat!

I LOVE that you LOVE school and I can't wait either. Love you Monkey. X

BUTTONS!

I found today the cutest of cute buttons. Very Cool. Not sure what will inspire me as to what to do with them, any ideas?
I love to buy the whole container of buttons, it makes it so much more organised when I get home.


I do know a cute little 'flirty girl', so I just had to buy these.

Mother of 2 boys means skulls rock my world! And why the hocus pocus? Coz I love purple!!!


Happy Australia Day 2011

Oh and what a hot day it was today! The wind was blistering so it didn't even matter if you were in the shade, it was 'rotten hot' as Big Brother would tell you. We have been lucky so far this Summer, not having very hot days at all, but I do hope that it doesn't continue for much longer...
'Stealing' kisses from Mum is so much fun! Cheeky
 




AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE! Oi Oi Oi

Progress

I have a very healthy respect for the stay at home parent. It is hard work at times, anyone who says it isn't probably hasn't tried it for a long period before. So naturally when I went from working full time to being at home full time I knew there would be an adjustment period. Mostly for me.

It is listening to other parents and discovering things that seem so obvious to me now but didn't at the time. Now I'm not going to deny that I kinda like things to turn out exactly like I planned (hard to do when everything you do involves a 2 and 4 year old) but I'm learning.

Normally when we make scones such as here, Mum measures the ingredients into a container and the kids tip it all in. Then Mum gets her hands dirty and the boys 'assist' me to cut out the shapes. I have let them cut by them selves a couple times before and they were definetly not gentle with the dough nor were they bearing a nice 'cut' edge that is required for scones to rise. So I took back the reigns and they were allowed to help my hand cut.

I know writing this makes no sense at all, they are kids they should be learning and having fun getting messy and all, so thanks to a little inspiration from a few friends I decided to give them a ball of dough each that they could pick their own cutter and shape it how ever they wanted it, meanwhile I still had a lump of dough myself that I could form the perfectly scone shaped treats for me and My Man to eat. Kids were much more involved and I was still a happy Mama, with a little more mess to clean up but still a happy Mama.

And anyways their scones turned out fabulous, they were just as big as mine and I bet that, for them, they tasted even better becuase they had made them all by themselves.

As I grow I am happy to say that I am learning every day.

Happy Tuesday.

Nyngan...

...was a an experience.
We headed out yesterday lunch time for Nyngan, our first campout with the new trailer since we got it before Christmas. All set for a fun filled, family adventure. We knew, being our first camping adventure that it would be a learning experience. But really? Did we have to learn so so much in just 24 hours?
Lesson 1 – Be sure to pack the gas bottle. I’m sure this seems obvious, especially since they have those nifty little holders on the sides of the trailer but hey, I’m just saying, check that you have that little bottle of ‘dinner’ firmly attached.
Lesson 2 – Always inspect childrens play area, with them well away, by bashing the bananas out of it with a big stick, if a large swarm of wasps DOESN’T come out and bite you and your babies all over, then send them in, it’s SAFE.
Lesson 3 – Ice makes wasp bites better
Lesson 4 – Do not determine your camping spot based purely for shade. Even if the chance of rain is slim to none. Large dips are not good places to be.
Lesson 5- If your can makes a buzzing sound, you are not just being paranoid, there might actually be a Bee in there.
Lesson 6 – If you are camped by a beautiful river, then go swimming first. It just might be awesome and the absolute highlight of your trip!
Now I did add a few more points to my list of things that need to be repacked in a better position for us but these are the biggies that I think might apply to others as much as they applied to us.
I am pretty sure that this is the kind of camping trip that could make or break establishing new family traditions but we (I) am willing to give it another go. But if our second trip is this chaos (and pain) filled then I will swear off camping and be selling off an almost brand new camp trailer.
We didn't check out these play areas before the kiddies headed off, while we unpacked, but in hindsight I should have.

 The dreaded slide that harboured a wasp nest and stung me moments after I took this picture on  my back and leg, and then poor Big Brother was stung 3 times on his feet and once on his back. Little brother was screaming and crying too but no bites could be found on him, thankfully.

 This was the sting on my back after it happened.
 This is the sting today, still very swollen and sore. Man these guys hurt.
 And then it rained, who am I kidding, it POURED!
 Our nice shaddy spot under a tree, but in a dip.
A good chance for the boys to run and play in the rain and puddles though. Definetly a highlight.
Then to warm up we headed to the shower, which was home to many little green frogs. Fine by me, but not so fine by Little Brother who screamed through his whole shower and mine. There weren't even any frogs in our shower at the time, it was just the fact that they were next door. But by the end of the camping trip he was very gently, with wet hands of course, patting the little critters. Talk about leaps and bounds!


Some of our other froggy friends who tried to come home with us. Check out that little teeny tiny brown frog. Camo or what?

The caravan park are home to a dwarf shetlan pony, many colourful birds and a friendly guinea pig or two.

A lovely swim in the river before a BBQ lunch, then the long drive home.

 But I had to show hubby that I had not just become a paranoid worry wort from the swarm of wasps. When my can of drink made a buzzing sound I just had to tip it out into a bottle to show him that there was in fact a bug in my drink. Not just a bug though, a BEE. Like I hadn't been stung enough already.
Home Sweet Home

Have you been camping lately? Please tell me that you trip was better than mine and give me something to look forward to...

Pies

Ah ha, you thought I had been making pies didn't you? You saw the blog title and started dreaming about what flavour pie it could be! Oh how I wish I had made pies and that was what this post was all about. Well these pies I definetly won't be eating, these are of the MUD variety, no not Choccy mud, JUST MUD. Well that's probably not entirely true, I'm sure that there are some sticks and or bugs in there too.

Which means that the kiddies had all the fun making them, destroying them and showering each other in mud, leaving the Mamma to do the hosing down, washing up and washing off all that mud. Yuck. I really am a bit of a Nancy when it comes to getting my hands dirty.



YUCK!

Playing with Angels

I am not sure what has happened to my time, although it seems that everytime you gloat about something it changes. Kinda like when you say, "our baby boy has had dry night nappies from 2 weeks now! Yay, lets try those big boy undies" and then he wets 2 nights in a row... hmmm. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned that I felt I had oodles of time and was pumping out the creations. But here is a link to what I've been up to, but beware, what you are about to see may be addictive and cause waves of ohhhs and arhhhs. I love this quilt.


You have been warned!

Have a great Thursday!

Afternoon Tea - updated

It seems that I have runs on things and then won't eat/want it for ages. Well at the moment my run is with SCONES! They are so delicious, and quick to make too, with a minimal clean up. The only problem with them at this time of year is that the oven heats the house. The boys love scones though, so it is an aftenoon tea that they eat readily and I don't have to bribe them with stamps or the like. I am trying to be very vigilant at the moment with Big Brother starting school in a couple of weeks. Eating only at Breakfast, morning tea, lunch and then having to wait until 3pm (home time) for afternoon tea. No snacking in between! Imagine coming home from a long day at school to a just out of the oven scones waiting for you...  So I thought I would share our scone recipe with you.


50g Dairy free Margarine
225g Self Raising Flour
30g 15g Caster sugar
120ml Soy milk

Rub together the margarine and flour until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Add the caster sugar and stir in with a knife.

Pour in the milk and stir with a knife.

GENTLY make a ball from the dough and flatten out to 3cm thick.

I simply cut the flattened ball into 8 segments (just like cutting a pizza) and pop it into a pre-heated 220 deg Celcius oven for 20 mins. But you could do the traditional glass/cutter and make individual round scones.

When I put it into the oven I put an extra tray on the shelf below the scones to stop the bottoms getting burnt.

Remove from the oven and cool on a rack, but not too much, nothing beats nice warm scones with margarine (you might say butter) and jam.

Enjoy

Homemade Sweet Chilli Sauce

Today from the garden I scored a bounty of chilli’s and had a super idea to make it into a Yummy, Oh so scrummy, Sweet Chilli Sauce. I love the generic stuff that you get in the supermarket so of course homemade would be even BETTER! I began to look for recipes on the net but due to internet crashing I only managed to get the list of ingredients; chilli’s, vinegar, water, sugar, garlic. I had no idea of quantities so I just had to wing it. My Man loves his hot chilli sauces and I love the chilli/sweetness, so I figured that if it turned out too chilli, he would eat it and if it turned out really yummy I would help too. I am already dreaming of the wedges that I will dip into it... mmmm
Firstly I had to cut the chilli’s open and remove all those pesky firey seeds! No problems there.
 Then I had to process them into little teeny tiny bits...  mmmm teeny tiny bits. Now up until now things had been gong smashingly until... What’s that you have an itch, well scratch it ‘Whoa hold on girlfriend, not with your hand use you wrist! That doesn’t have any chilli on it’ WRONG! First my nose felt like I had smeared chilli all over it then my eyes began to burn and then who knows what, because I was only capable of screaming in agony. My Man was very quick to get me the milk from the fridge, to wash, rub, snort, gargle, inhale, whatever just to stop the noise (for some reason he thought it might be distressful for the boys so see Mummy screaming in agony!) Ye-ow-sa! He was very quick to get the camera out and start snapping pics saying "you are going to blog this, right?"



So then I decided to take the pot outside and boil/simmer it away out there. I figured that this would stop the house being consumed with deadly chilli pot fumes. It took me over an hour of simmering to reduce it till I was happy. The first time I didn’t have enough water/sugar in there and it was just a pot full of chilli with no sweet at all. So I had to add more sugar/water and start boiling again! Meanwhile my hands are still burning, my fingers are currently still too swollen to wear my rings.

So at long last I had produced a large bottle of homemade, full-o-goodness, Sweet Chilli Sauce. My Man was the first to try it, he stuck his finger in and was like “yeah, it’s ok” so I stuck my finger in and then made a screaming dash for the kitchen (again) as my tongue melted away. Not what I was expecting at all, I put so much sugar in it but it really didn’t have much sweetness at all.  I wonder why people started eating chillis back a long time ago. I mean they are red, which doesn’t that mean ‘stay away’ when you are looking for bush tucker? And they really aren’t that great to just pull from the bush and munch into.  Do you think it could have started as a war tactic? To feed the enemy local ‘fire plants’ and then attack when they were rolling around like twits? Maybe eating chillis became a Super Power! Now you are probably wondering if I feel that it was all worth it in the end, to have a jar of homemade goodness and that sense of accomplishment? Well...

Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, no questions asked, I am 100% sure that the answer is NO!
I will be purchasing my sweet chilli premade in a jar thank-you very much!
So tell me, because I know your Saturday was better than mine, what did you get up to today?
Enjoy the weekend folks.

Visitors

Thanks for stopping by and checking out our


We have been lucky enought this week to have Grandma and Grandpa visiting. Although it has been very busy and I haven't had time (poor excuse) to pick up the camera much!


The boys love it when they bring their Puppies, not only are they small enough that they can walk them by themselves (without being dragged along behind) but THEY GET ONE EACH! Awesome!

We made a trip out the Mt Grenfell. Notice that none of us are wearing trekking shoes? I felt so organised, I made scones for morning tea, sausage rolls (to be heated in the engine bay) and packed lots of water! It has been a good many years since I've been out here and once upon a time you could drive a bit closer to the site, well not now, so proper walking shoes would be recommended. I am so paranoid of snakes, I even found a snake's trail that slithered right across in front of me! and am always on the look out. I felt very uneasy with everyone in sandles and thongs but look at what arrived 2 days later...
Yay. These are never going to leave my feet they are so comfy!


But all good things must come to an end and while Big Brother was choosing to pretend that they weren't leaving, Little Brother waved them off.

Thanks for visiting, Love you