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.