winter

 

You know that winter has officially arrived when the frosts start. This was the frost that we had on Thursday morning here, we've had a few better ones since.

As much as winter chills me to the bones and makes my arthritis ache like no tomorrow, there is something amazing and beautiful in those little icicles that sit on our grass every morning. It really makes me sit back and think about the beautiful world that we live in.

The other way you know that winter has officially arrived is that it becomes soup season. Each week, after I do my groceries, I love to make up a big batch of soup and this week was no exception.

This week's soup of choice was zucchini and potato. 

(3 Zucchinis, 3 Potatoes, Onion, Garlic and chicken stock all simmered and then blended up.)

It was supposed to go into the fridge to make up some lunches this week. But it looked and smelled so fantastic that we ate it for dinner that night. 

I really am a sucker for soup.
What is your favorite flavor?

time

If there is one thing that I have always struggled with it has been time management. I often will have a huge deadline coming up and just ignore it until the last minute and end up stressed out and exhausted ensuring that I get everything finished on time. Yes - I always do get things completed, even when I manage my time poorly but this is not the point.

One big thing that I learned when I was off on my teaching rounds it was time management. This is something that I have vowed to continue to do and am doing very well at thus far. I am currently overloading at uni. This means that rather than completing the normal prescribed study load, I am doing an extra subject so that I can complete my degree earlier than I would have otherwise. I am able to do this because I don't work, I have very self-sufficient children one of which is at school full time and the other goes to kindergarten. I also set myself goals that MUST be completed. I keep a big cork board with my study planner and time table on it - I also keep a diary...

 

This is a fresh one for the new financial year.

I am finding that managing my time means that I am much less stressed at the end of the day, because I know exactly where I stand with each upcoming deadline and I know that I have used the time that I have had to work on each thing to my best ability. You can't do much more than that! Achieving my daily study / housework / sewing / fitness / kid oriented goals really puts a smile on my face.

Here are some photos of what I have gotten up to today in my well managed time.

Oliver and I made apple leather using Kate's instructions. He thinks he is a master chef and he loves to spend time helping out in the kitchen. I love to cook, so his desire to help me makes morning activity time quite easy to organise.

I worked on calisthenics head gear for the little miss. I have actually almost finished all of her costumes for this year. Hooray!!

And good old lesson plans for assignments. I actually love the kinds of assignments that I have to plan lessons for rather than just write an essay - they seem so much more relevant.

Anyway - back to it!

What are your tips for managing your time?

Sunday Snippets

 

A few snippets from this week. 

What have you been up to?

Playing along with tinniegirl

how are you starting?

I am starting this month playing along with #reverb12 over on I Saw You Dancing. Kat sent me a message here on Sunday last week asking if I would like to play along and I really think it might get me out of a non-blogging rut that I have been in the last month or so.

So today's prompt is "how are you starting this month?"

The first thing that I did this morning, to start this month, was send my gorgeous sister Carmel a birthday message. It's her birthday today and we wont be around to help her celebrate as she lives in Brisbane and we live in Melbourne. But we are excited to give her real hugs at Christmas time when we will see her.

I am starting this month busy. December is always a busy month here at our place with Christmas just around the corner and all of the organising that goes along with it I am looking forward to Christmas day to actually just sit down and relax.

I am starting this month in a festive mood. I've set up the Christmas tree, the kids have decorated it, and it is beautiful! I love when my kids decorate the tree, and this year the decorations are much more spread out than last year when they just put the decorations right in front of their faces and we had very well decorated sections of the tree.

 

How are you starting December?

Have you set up your Christmas tree yet?

Blogtober 5th: an icy treat

The weather is beginning to warm up here in Melbourne. (Finally!!) And it will soon be the days where children are asking for icy poles every 5 minutes and you just need something cold to cool you down.

I am currently embracing a clean eating lifestyle and eliminating additives and hidden sugars from my food to encourage a healthier me, but I do love a cold treat when the weather turns hot. 

The other week I stumbled across instant icecream somewhere on the internet (don't ask me where, I wasn't paying much attention at the time). This sparked an idea in my head and I decided to try making instant frozen yoghurt. It turned out a treat so I will share of course.

The Ingredients:

Frozen berries (or other kinds of frozen fruit if you prefer) I used about 2.5 cups.

Plain yoghurt. I used about 2 cups ,but it was very fruity, so Id suggest adding a bit more if you want it creamy.

The Method:

Put everything in your blender (or in my case a bowl with a stick mixer).

Then blend it up until it resembles frozen yoghurt.

Then all you have to do is eat it!!

 

I stored mine in the freezer until we ate it later, but you can eat it immediately from the blender if you want. YUM!!

What is your favourite icy treat on hot days?

Have you signed up to blogtoberfest yet??

Blogtober the 2nd: thumbs out again

I've mentioned before about the colour of my thumbs. I am far from a good gardener, and until recently I have left the majority of the gardening around here to the MR. 

I am starting to take more of an interest in the state of our garden now. Is it that I have more time on my hands? Is it that I want to teach my kids how to look after the earth? Is it that I am sick of seeing my ugly garden?

Probably a bit of each basket to be honest. 

I love getting out in the sunshine and pottering away doing some work in the garden. Mr-O and I tend to garden on Tuesday mornings but today was immunisation day for my big brave 4yo boy, so we saved the gardening til this afternoon.

We moved some of our seedlings into the garden bed because they were ready. I had my camera on hand too to take lots of photos. Mr-O had his with him as well because let's just face it, Mum is awesome and everyone wants to be like her especially this boy.

We did some watering.

We even watered the fence. Very important for optimal fence growth.

We also checked on the growth of our seeds. Some more will be ready to go into the garden soon. We now have some beetroot, some beans and some peas all in the garden bed. We are waiting on our tomatoes and watermelon to be ready to go in too.

It is nice to see green things growing in our garden after a long period of nothing but weeds and dirt.

I also made the decision to attack this today. This is the pathway that leads from our laundry to our clothesline and I NEVER use it. The trees are overgrown, there are dead leaves and spiderwebs everywhere and I am terrified of getting eaten by a spider. I have been asking the MR for a while now to cut it back as he usually does it for me so I am not attacked by any Amy-eating spiders. I made the decision to do it myself today (OH yeah sisters!)

There was a lot of grunting to try to get through branches with my cutters and I had to brave the spiderwebs with my outdoor broom which is the longest cleaning instrument I could find. And then there was the sweeping... gee there was lots of old dead leaves on that ground!! But two bags of green waste later I had this..

No spiderwebs, only a few branches that I simply could not cut with my cutters and a beautiful clean path. I can use this pathway now! All I need for perfection is one of those laundry trolleys so I can get rid of the old kids table sitting at the clothes line for me to sit baskets on so I don't have to try to bend right down to the ground (quite difficult with metal rods in your back I have found).

What are you up to today?

Do you have gardening rituals like us?

Are there dark paths at your place that you simply don't use because of the spiders?

Head over here to see what Blogtoberfest is all about...

a special birthday

The first of Blogtober (October) marks Mr-O's birthday each year and today we are celebrating his fourth birthday.

the birthday boy

We celebrate today that he did this to my body.

37 weeks pregnant

The day we celebrate this moment that made it all worth while.

 when we first met

This morning we had special buckwheat pancakes with bananas, strawberries, yoghurt and honey as per Mr-O's order followed by the opening of presents.

And yesterday we had an awesome party with a few friends, dancing and cake was involved which made it all so much fun.

We are so blessed to have this little boy in our lives. He is intelligent, cheeky,  creative, strong willed, active and easy going. He just an amazing kid to be around as he takes everything in his stride and makes me laugh so much.

Happy birthday gorgeous boy.

Want to get involved in the blogtober festivities? Head over and sign up!

Sunday Snippets

 

The cat is away, but the mice will still play. 

Hope your Sunday has been fantastic

food glorious food

For those who know me, you will know that I am currently addicted to healthy, mouth watering, delicious food. Food that looks and tastes delicious, but has no hidden nasties.

roasted vegetable salad

I have learned that cooking is essential as I have food allergies and I like to know what goes into my food so that I don't get sick.

this became mixed berry frozen yoghurt

I do really love cooking though, and serving up meals that make me drool from the smell and the way that it looks is really something that I enjoy. The eating is pretty good too though!!

mountain bread pizza

The other day I was craving spicy food. The kids were (and still are) away at Granny's farm for the week and I thought, well here is my chance to make something really awesome that I know they won't eat.

So when I was doing my grocery shop, I looked at a bunch of different marinades in the spicy section of the supermarket. There is one common ingredient in most spicy marinades... lemon. I am allergic to lemon. So rather than resigning myself to not having my spicy food that I so craved I had a look at the other ingredients on the packets and made my own. 

 

YUM!!

 So this is how I made my super delicious, droolworthy chicken that night.

I put about 500g of chicken thighs in a ziplock bag with a chilli, a can of coconut milk, some coriander, a good amount of tumeric and some other spices I found in the cupboard (I made mine pretty spicy, but you could tone down the spiciness if you really wanted to). I wanted to put in some garlic, but there's not much Australian garlic selling in my local supermarket at the moment, I must get to the fruit shop!

I sat that bag in the fridge all day. Probably about 6 hours. 

After letting it sit in the fridge, I put everything that was in the bag in my brazier pan to sear the chicken. And then chopped up a red capsicum and put it in there too. 

Once the chicken started to get a bit of colour, I put the pan in a moderate oven, uncovered, for about 20 minutes.

While that was cooking, I drank some wine, chopped up some veggies to steam and cooked some rice.

The end result...

SMELLED AMAZING! 

LOOKED AMAZING! 

TASTED AMAZING!

Oh it was so so good. And was well received by the MR. I think the kids would probably eat it too. You should definitely try it!

Do you like to cook?

What is your favorite food to eat?

on graduating...

We are super excited at our place at the moment because Mr-O is now dry overnight. This is an amazing achievement for him and we are congratulating him with lots of kisses and cuddles. This means that our little man is now graduating from nappies!

 For those who know me, I am a cloth nappy addict to the core and we have now used cloth nappies for just short of 4 years on our little man. It feels like an amazing achievement.

We have used them at daycare.

We have used them in hospital.

Used them at night and during the day.

I have been called amazing and crazy for using them all of this time.

But I'll let you in on a little secret... it wasn't that hard...

Cloth nappies are not like they used to be, there was no folding or pinning or soaking or even buying of those awful PVC pants that went over the top. To care for them I just had to do a load of washing and hang them out on the line (or when I was lazy just put them in the dryer).

They didn't smell. Well unless there was a number 2 in it, and generally you change the nappy then anyway. I'd say disposable nappies smell more.

My cloth nappies went on just like a disposable. And yes, you need to put the number 2's in the toilet, but if you read the back of a disposable nappy packet you are meant to do that with them too. Human waste does not belong in landfill. 

I did have to touch poos... yes... but unfortunately that is just part of being a mum of a baby I hate to say. I used disposables part time with Miss-R and I touched plenty of it then too. 

My nappies rarely leaked. In fact I think I got less poo-splosions with cloth than I did disposables. 

I think I am going to miss using nappies. I am going to miss that fluffy little bottom to pat. I am going to miss asking Mr-O "what colour this time??" and I am going to miss seeing them hanging on the line. But this is all part of growing up, and I am so excited for my little boy to be moving past the baby and toddler stage and into that wonderful age of childhood when he will learn a number of fantastic and exciting new things.

Now on to storing them away for the "just in case" third baby that I wish I might have one day although probably wont get to. 

What kind of nappies did you use?

Do you get excited when your kids are getting bigger?

Has anyone got any storage tips for cloth nappies?

midweek musings

When I step outside my house at the moment, I smell Spring and it is beautiful.

Spring time makes me think of New life. Promises. Warmth. 

We go for our morning walk and we smell flowers growing and freshly cut grass. We hear birds chirping and frogs singing to each other. We see our noses all red from the crisp air as it is still quite cool here when the sun is behind clouds.

We go for a drive and a few streets away we can see the baby lambs in the fields.

I go out in our back yard and I see that the trees are growing new shoots.

New flowers are growing on the branches too.

Our beetroot is also getting bigger and should be ready to move into the garden bed in the next few days.

Springtime makes me think about how grateful I am for the four seasons that we have. After the cold, fruitless winter, comes the spring, the promise of new things to come. The promise of growth. The promise that it wont stay cold forever.

We're still wearing our jumpers and track pants, but Spring brings the promise that soon we will swap our boots for thongs and our jumpers for singlets. For now I am enjoying the smells and sounds and sights of the beautiful season that is upon us. I am enjoying the promise of the growth and fruitfulness that is to come.

What is your favorite thing about Springtime?