Happy happy day

I find December birthdays always get lost amongst the chaos of end of school year and Christmas preparations. And despite promising ourselves we would never be as unorganised as last year, Oscars 8th birthday was less than a week away and nothing had been planned, no invites had been sent.

At the very last minute we decided to go to Luna Park. 

The odds were stacked against us, we had two days to prepare, the possibility that noone would be able to come at such short notice, an hour and a half road trip there and back and a weather forecast for rain and thunderstorms. I packed ponchos. 

Amazingly almost everyone could come, they were even all allowed to leave school early so we could avoid the worst of the peak hour traffic. We discovered Charlotte is an absolute daredevil and if she wasn't restricted by height I think she might have taken on the Wild Mouse. 

Everyone had an absolute ball, and for Oscar I think it was a birthday he won't forget for a while. 

Possibly the best party ever, or at least thats what I heard :)

And not a drop of rain fell, now what to do with all those ponchos........

around here....

We've been crazy busy this week trying to get ready for our second Olive Tree Markets in Newcastle. So excited to be going back, just hoping this rain holds off for a day or two at least.  

She never fails to fall asleep on the morning school run.

 This girl could eat her weight in plain pasta if we let her....

...but her first chocolate biscuit (snuck off her big brother while he wasn't watching) didn't live up to the excitement "no, no, I no like it!" seriously thinking she may have been swapped at birth :)

Trying to get an early start on the Christmas decorations.

It hasn't stopped raining for days.

Sweetness.

Pretty dresses for the market.

Little treasure holder.

:)

an ode to chocolate (16 days and counting.....)

Oh how I love thee........I could eat you everyday and never bore of you (in fact I do).

I love you in all of your delicious forms,

crisp and cold straight from the fridge

as a topping poured over..... well, pretty much anything really

inside a crisp candy shell

with a myriad of fillings, soft, hard, goey, crunchy

as a hot drink with 3 white fluffy marshmallows floating on top

even as a chocolate spread

though you never normally make it to the bread....

And then there's Cadbury cream egg, oh cream egg, oh cream egg, you are the most perfect, most sweetest confection ever invented. Made all the more seductive by the fact that your only available three months of the year.

Oh chocolate how I love thee.

Ok so I couldn't write a poem to save myself but I seriously do LOVE chocolate and I do eat it everyday, lots of it!! Which is exactly why I must (aaargh I almost can't type the words) but I MUST give it up.

Some very good reasons why I must give up chocolate include, but are not limited to......

• I eat it everyday and that just can't be good for you.
• I have eaten all the chocolate in the house and then in an attempt to hide this fact raced to the shops to replace the eaten chocolate, and then eaten all the replacement bars as well. 
• I have often been so desperate for chocolate that I have eaten cooking chocolate.
• The words Family block have never stopped me from consuming an entire one to myself....in less than a 24 hour period. I know, that's really bad isn't it. 
• I once watched a show about people with OCD and who are addicted to things, there was a girl who was so addicted to chocolate that she sought medical help to break the habit. When they revealed how much chocolate she ate I realised I ate more than her. 

So you can see this is truly a huge undertaking and one I don't think should be entered into alone or lightly, so I have enlisted my sister into the challenge........

30 days Chocolate and Coffee free (I have heart palpitations every time I think of it).

Starting tomorrow.................

Well we're 16 days into the 30 day challenge and there's been some surprising results.......

Firstly and most shockingly giving up chocolate has been an absolute breeze, I've barely thought about it and that's even though there has been a fairly constant supply passing through the fridge (I'm not the only one around here with a sweet tooth).

I am totally amazed by this revelation and the only thing I can put it down to is that show that I watched on the chocolate addicted girl. As part of the solution for her the Dr hypnotised her and made her imagine she  had melted down a big pot of chocolate and then she had to add all these really disgusting things into it like dirt, dog hair, maybe a little snot, toenail clippings (eeewww this gets me every time) cockroaches, worms etc. Then he asked her to eat it, in her hypnotised mind of course, just the thought of it made her heave, me too.
I don't know how it worked out for her but I do know I didn't eat chocolate for about a week after just watching it. So although I haven't gone to the extreme of being hypnotised I have been imagining a grubby disgruntled worker clipping the toenails from their fungal covered feet into the chocolate vat (which I'm sure noone would ever do :)) its working a treat so far.

Secondly the ONLY thing that will ease a caffeine withdrawal headache is a perfectly brewed, hot, steaming cup of coffee. we both lasted about 4 days with the coffee. It disturbs me a little that I couldn't give it up so I am planning on tackling it again, soon.........

Thrift bonanza

We just seemed to stumble across exactly what we needed this weekend.

The perfect chair for Bella's room.

I was a little disturbed though by the face that appeared as we painted.

A new stand for our market stall at the bargain price of $8.00. Can't beat that!

 And then Molly found this cute cupboard, perfect for all her kitchenware. A work in progress.

Sewing again

I can't remember the last time I was at the sewing machine. Well that's not exactly true, I have sat at it many times, even turned it on occasionally but I don't think I've sewn anything. It may actually not have been that long ago, I just can't remember it. Maybe it was a bad sewing experience and I have blocked it out. Either way I have finally, finally! finished something. YAY!! 

Ok so I haven't exactly gone in to mass production mode but around here this is a HUGE achievement and hopefully one that will get the ball rolling. 

We had a pretty productive weekend all round. It was warm and sunny for the most part so we were able to tackle some of the garden and even start work on a Christmas project. Aargh I think thats the second time in as many posts that I've mentioned Christmas, see that's how it sneaks up on you and before you know it I'll be talking about Easter and Autumn weather...........

Hope your weekend was filled with beauty and joy :) 

six months

I can't believe it's been six months already, I know it's such a cliche but time really does fly. It's almost Christmas again, can you believe it. Sometimes I wish it would all slow down so that I could catch my breath and let it all soak in but at the same time I'm so excited about the future and what it holds and am looking forward to tomorrow.

There are so many things we love about this sweet, sweet girl but one of my favourites is the way her face lights up when she lays eyes on her brother or sister. And then theres that dimple, I mean really could it be any cuter!

sunshine on a rainy day

It's been pretty grey and wet around here for the last week or so.

 

The weather outlook for this week is rain, rain, and more rain.

That's why I'm so glad we abandoned the many chores on our list yesterday 

and raced outside to soak up the warmth of a few hours of sunshine.

ten little happy toes.......

This morning Charlotte dropped a toy on her toe. She really doesn't deal with pain, illness or injury all that well and unlike her brother, who is a real trooper, Charlotte can be a little umm...sensitive. No amount of kissing it better, singing or bandaid application (note: she only hurt one toe but insisted I apply a bandaid to the same toe on her other foot) would soothe her pain. 

As a last desperate act and mostly for my own amusement I drew a happy face on the injured toe

"ooh look, your toe is happy now"

To my amazement the tears instantly dried up and were replaced with squeals of "other one, other one peeeease" 

and so of course I obliged because the only thing better than one happy toe is ten little happy toes.........

and ten little happy fingers which are way too quick to get decent photos of.....

Market update

We had our first stall at the Olive Tree Markets on the weekend. Yay.  The weather gods weren't on our side though and there was a flashback to the cold rainy weather of winter but even that couldn't put a dampener on our day. We had a great, if slightly chaotic time, (my family had a little meltdown in the carpark afterwards, though for us it was a seven hour round trip so I don't blame them really! hope noone was watching, we would have looked a little totally crazed.)

If you're in the area you really should check it out, such a beautiful spot and so many amazing and inspiring artists and crafters to see.

Pictionary with a seven year old.

I'm not ashamed to admit (ok maybe a little) that I am a huge fan of board games, unfortunately no one else in our family has shared that passion. That is until I discovered a very dusty and neglected game of Pictionary while doing a major wardrobe clean out. 

Oscar, who has never been a big fan of drawing, was fascinated so we had a quick (not following the rules) game. He was hooked! and has been asking to play every night since.

Finally tonight while his Nan was here we got the time to have a quick game. 

This is what happened. 

It was Oscars turn to draw and our turn to guess.

Me: A person?

Oscar: No

Mum: A boy?

Oscar: No

Me: Catching?

Oscar: Nooo!

Mum: Waving?

Oscar: Nnnnoooooo!!

Me: Oh I know, A bear!

Oscar: (laughing) What, a bear with Human feet?

This was his drawing........

And these, are human feet as opposed to bear feet......of course :)

Egg free, Nut free, Dairy free Banana Bread

This recipe also has the added bonus of being *fat free* for those who are interested in counting their calories that is.

I am not a particularly good cook (though I desperately wish I was), never clean as i go, tend to use almost every utensil in the house and more often than I would like to admit have to add as I serve "If it's really bad we can have toast."

We eat a lot of toast.

However I LOVE cookbooks, LOVE reading food blogs and watching any sort of cooking show. It's just obviously never really absorbed......
My son also has Egg and Nut allergies and I'm always scouring for new egg free, nut free recipes.
So in the interest of giving back I thought I would share a few of our families favourite recipes.

This Banana Bread recipe is super easy, so easy you can complete the entire process with a babe in arms and a toddler dangling precariously from the furniture and still end up with something edible (but a rather disastrously messy kitchen).  I did attempt to photograph the process as that's really the best part about reading a recipe but the photos I took somehow managed to make the most basic recipe really ugly and could possibly turn you off an otherwise delicious dish.

It does look a little sad I know but I also forgot to take a photo once it came out of the oven,  we were all too eager to eat it.

Banana Bread


Ingredients:


5 or 6 large Bananas
2 cups plain flour
1 cup of caster sugar *see note
1 Teaspoon Baking powder
1 Teaspoon Baking soda
Cinnamon to taste (we use a lot)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method


Preheat oven to 180C.

Prepare small loaf tin.

Mash bananas, sugar and vanilla essence in a large bowl until quite liquidy (i don't think thats a real word) sift in remaining ingredients, mix until well combined pour into prepared loaf pan. Place in preheated oven and cook for 1 hour.
Enjoy!

*note: I have a hugely sweet tooth and would never normally say no to sugar but I normally only add about a half to 3/4 cup of sugar.

This recipe was given to me by my Sister-in-law. I'm not sure of it's original source. 

Lucky Girl

To have so many lovely dresses and skirts to choose from.

Thanks to her beautiful and talented Aunt :)