Let the ‘makin’ begin

I love the way our girls interact with each other when they are home together. I love the fantasy’s they create in and around our home and the energy that they bring to the house. All three girls are creatively generous and love ‘makin’ things for each other.

We spend a lot of our time ‘makin’. Makin cubbies, makin fairy houses, makin friendship bracelets, makin cookies….. you get the idea.

Today Chantala and I made dolly’s for her little sister. They are gorgeous. Some wool, little dolls pegs, glue, cut out crowns and shoes and a couple of artificial flowers for skirts. Chantala did all the ‘makin’, I lent a hand with the glue.

Here we have a ballerina, a mermaid, and of cause, a princess.

They are the perfect size for the wombats tree house and she spent most of  today playing in the corner with her new dolly's.

I said I wanted babies, not teenagers.

Having a birthday so close to Christmas means that you end up with a 5 – 6 day long celebration. You don't a always see everyone on the big day so in dribs and drabs people catch up and more pressies are opened and more cakes are made and then Christmas creeps up and more pressies and more cakes and more people to kiss and cuddle. We do the big birthday day though, just the five of us, together, every year.

Last week my free ranging chicken turned twelve. Twelve is such a  magical age. Not a child and not a woman. Starting high school, hormones racing, identity fully emerged, conscious of friendships and relationships with different people and really being ready to sink into exactly who you are.

She is our first born and I used to spend a lot of time thinking  about the type of person she would become and about our influence on her as parents. I should never have worried. This girl has strength. She is as kind and honest with the people blessed enough to know her. Her carefree and fun-loving spirit is felt when she enters a room. People want to know her, you can see it in their eyes, they want to be around her energy, around her smile and emanating warmth. She is amazing, and her birthday was spent laughing, smiling, running, jumping, bouncing, and in side splitting hysterics, in true honour of who she really is …..

                          I truly feel blessed in knowing her.

Oh where is my sole mate???

Being a self taught knitter has had its ups and downs, (knitting tutorials on U Tube is my guru) but if I think back on the reason I actually started to knit, I'm fairly sure the inspiration came from socks. Knitted socks have a feeling about them that no other wintery piece of clothing does. So cosy and soft on your feet, much like a warm spa for your toes.

So when I decided to start knitting, I began with some easier projects thinking id get into the swing of socks soon enough. I started with a square, that became an afghan, then I moved onto scarf's, hats, jumpers …. and the rest is history. But those darn socks have always alluded me. I've brought books on knitting socks (yes an entire 135 page book just about socks) I've joined knit a longs and brought the yarn and the required needles (“its not me… its the wrong yarn…”) but still no socks.

So when I brought some noro yarn I decided enough was enough.. I cast on 57 stitches with this beautifully soft and gorgeously dyed yarn and didn't look back.

I KNITTED ONE SOCK

Now before you say anything, yes, technically its probably not really a sock, more like a slipper, and technically it probably should have been longer in the foot and tighter around the ankle. But that's all fine by me, I feel like I conquered  some great fear and now I've opened the flood gates or rather the doors of the secret society of sock knitters. So I apologize to all those people that I love in advance cause now instead of beautiful hand knitted shawls and scarves….. YOUR ALL GETTING SOCKS!

Christmas Photos

Yesterday we attempted The Christmas Photos. These are the best of the lot.

and my personal favourite…..

Gifts from friends

This is a cucumber, (stating the obvious) it was a gift from our wonderful friends around the road. Lovingly fed and organically grown in their backyard and hand delivered into my kitchen. This may look like any other cucumber, but I can tell you it is not. This is in fact, the BIGGEST cucumber I have ever seen, store bought or backyard-grown. It is a whopping 72 centimetres in length and 27 centimetres in diameter. This cucumber is so big, it does not fit in my fridge! I had to cut it in half to get it into the vege compartment!

We were a little concerned it would be lacking in flavour because of its size, but not so. It was so crisp and flavoursome and full of cucumbery goodness. We had it in salad’s, I made cucumber chains for the girls lunchbox’s, the wombat had cucumber sandwiches, and I had cucumber with salt (I know…. really really bad) and now that the cucumber has been devoured, all we have to remember it by is the seeds drying, waiting to be planted so we can in turn enjoy the fruits of a gigantic cucumber, and maybe share our excessive organic produce with someone who will appreciate it as much as we did.

Ps… our hearts go out to you Braise, we hope your sister is back on her feet soon and barking at the front gate as she should be xx

Friday Feelings

Friday is…..

…….Finding a Crayfish in my shed. Seriously, a wild, fresh water crayfish in my shed….

…….peeking at the capsicums

…… cutting off the tip of my thumb cooking dinner (I knew this housework caper would end in someone getting hurt)

……. having a good cry, because its every woman's right to just wale for a few minutes if she wants to (and its every mothers right to blog it)

How's your Friday Feeling?

Friday Feelings

Friday is

…….rain for the garden

…….rain for the turkey

……rain for the soul

……..indoor craft

……a sweet story for your little sister

The car went down the hill

He forgot his monkey

The finish of the book

How's your Friday Feeling?

An Eggless Life

Being vegetarian and being small is hard sometimes. All you ever want to do when your small is blend in. You don't want to be different from anyone else or have to explain why you are who you are.

So when the birthday party invitations started coming in for free range chick no 1. and the realization came that she would miss out on the birthday cake as it was bound to have eggs in it, I decided to start asking the mothers if they minded me making some cupcakes. The triple chocolate cupcakes were always received well by eager little hands and mouths but often there were a couple left over.

I started paying attention to the food that was being served at the parties and I noticed most of the time there was a double up on cupcakes.(the ones Id made and then another batch from the host mother.)

I needed an eggless alternative to a cake that wasn't a cake or a cupcake. So the ‘lamington chunks for a birthday party’ tradition was born.

Lamingtons are another of our families firm favourites, and my personal, absolute, no questions asked, always on the table for my birthday, favourite! I found that small people love them as they are not something that is normally at a birthday party and the parents devour them as they are curious as to what a eggless sponge tastes like.

This is my mother in law’s – lets call her Nana - recipe for eggless lamingtons. She is by far the best vegan/eggless baker I know. The variety of cakes and biscuits she makes is amazing and her cakes are always beautifully soft, moist and risen (which is actually an art all to its own, to get an eggless cake to rise.)

I have slowly attempted her highly admired recipes in my own kitchen and had many failures but recently more and more successes. Following her recipes to the exact detail and failing only led me to realize the one ingredient that she adds that she forgot to tell me I was forgetting.

LOVE.

To succeed in veg*n baking and veg*n cooking you have to love what you are creating. Your food is made from scratch, no one has added preservatives flavours or additives to your food, you create the flavours and textures yourself. A love of natural food and love for those you are feeding is the most important ingredients in your baking. The rest is practice, advice from a wonderful woman that will share her tried and true recipes (thanks as always Nana) and of cause the people you love, to praise your efforts, even your massive failures, and wash the dishes when your done.

Eggless Sponge

· 200mls of canola oil (or sunflower / vegetable oil)

· 1 tsp vanilla essence

· 1.5 cups white sugar (I used Xylotol which is a found naturally in corn)

· 1.5 cups natural set Greek style yogurt

· 5 cups of White Self Raising Flour (SR spelt will work here too)

· 1.5 cups milk (or soy milk or rice milk)

Sift flour 3 times into a separate bowl (this makes the cake really fluffy)

Beat oil, vanilla, sugar & yogurt until really creamy

Add flour & milk and continue beating for around 3 mins

Put into a lamington tray

Bake at 150 in a fan forced oven for around 25 mins (my oven is a commercial sized fan forced oven so I cooked this cake for about 35 mins on 160, just keep checking with a skewer)

Lamingtons

· Icing Sugar

· Cocoa

· Butter

· Hot water

· Desiccated or shredded Coconut (the girls prefer desiccated)

Mix the icing ingredients to a chocolaty strength your family likes, my girls prefer a lighter colour to the traditional dark chocolate lamingtons in the bakery)

Cut the sponge into chunks of cake and ice

Put coconut on a flattish plate.

Roll chunks in the coconut.

The icing and the rolling is really messy business, my girl’s luuuuurrrvvvee this part and I happily hand this job over to them. Don’t put all your coconut on the plate at once as it does get goopy.

Friday Feelings

Friday is

…….Quacking at the ducks 

………Travelling by bus

for the very first time from school (yes I was really concerned whether they were old enough and could manage to get on the right bus and off at the right place and if the driver would be nice, and drive slowly around the bends, and if the big one would sit with the medium one or if the medium one would have other friends to sit with and leave the big one to sit alone and ……) and they managed.
 

……… Just Hanging

 with the constant adoration of a younger doe (doe is the name the wombat gave her sisters, they are both doe’s, we don't know where it comes from, or why she says it, but its really endearing.)

………a little craftynoon

Our new addition Plurbit from the ever wonderful ‘softies’ book was created this afternoon with a few changes and a wonderful new pair of pinking scissors that I've been asking for, Thanks Nan.

 

How's your Friday Feeling?

Swelsh speak

Keali : wazzzat mumma? (What is that you are making mum?)

Me : Its a skirt for you Keali!

Keali : Is Sooooo Pretty Mumma! Is more? (its so pretty mum, did you make me any more?)

Me : No but I will if you like.

Keali : Meme is soooooo pretty on girt mumma, wazzat for more mumma? Meme loves yoooooo mumma (I look so pretty in this skirt mum, please make lots more, I love you mum)

Oh be still my beating heart, the wombat likes her new skirt!         Please never let me forget moments like these.

This really is an easy pattern, and the skirt is just so sweet.  http://www.oliverands.com/blog/

Free Range Chicken

Today was one of those magical days.

One of those days when you notice something in your child change, something so small that only a mama would notice. One of those days when you realize your little one took a step, a HUGE step but the change was so subtle. Today Chantala read her book with out pointing at the words. When she points to the words she reads each         word        with       a      pause      after. Today while she read she didn't point, and the words flowed together. She actually read a story. I didn't prompt the change, nor did she notice anything different after the story had finished, although I did. She is growing, and learning, this wonderful, strong minded, free-spirited girl just changed slightly before my eyes. And I noticed.

Mother Nature

Last night at around 5pm, Mother Nature impressed us here in the Tweed Valley with a beautiful lightning storm. It finally feels like spring here when you watch the huge storm fronts roll in over the valley.

The deep green sky behind the grim, grey cloud cover.

As we quickly battened down the hatches and brought in the seedlings and various children's play equipment, the winds picked up and the rain began to fall.

With my camera safely tucked away from the wet, I missed capturing the girls outside with their faces up to the sky, mouths wide open catching large drops of rain. I did the same thing with my brothers when I was little and I hope they can watch their children do the same.

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, Its about dancing in the rain

Tiffany Wilson

Friday Feelings

Friday is

……Finding the beat

and wearing a now-t0oo-small hand  knitted beanie…. (in 32 degree heat???? notice the rosy cheeks)

…... Creating Sims characters

while mum thinks your researching the layers of the rainforest

…… Finding the dog on the beanbag…

while he pretends he’s not there

…… Dreaming of the abundant future

apples, apricots, mango, blueberry goodness arrived from Daley's

 

How is your Friday Feeling?

Here’s what I know

A few of the things that we learned in the last four days:

1. Jumping Castle’s are not as soft as they first appear

  2.     Next I learned that Maleka’s bones are breakable. She broke her bone between her shoulder and her elbow and fractured the bone between her elbow and her wrist. 

3.   Next thing learned: that when the doctor in the emergency department says ‘Don't be late’ to a 7am appointment to have the cast set, what he really means is ‘everyone with a broken bone has the same appointment as you and they see you first in first served so maybe you should camp out the night before’

4.  And lastly:  That it doesn't  matter how old you are, Flowers, Chocolates & stuffed animals will make you feel better