Winter Wednesday - 5

Brrrr...we had a very cold start to the day this morning.  If we were lucky it was a chilly 1 degree.  There was a beautiful frost - although I'm sure the plants wouldn't agree.

But you know, there's nothing better than a cold winter's night.  After tea and tidying up I love getting into my pj's and settling down on the couch.  Sometimes I read, sometimes watch tv and sometimes, just sometimes, I watch the inside of my eyelids.

When I was little I'd have nighties cause that's what mum bought - she was a nightie sort of girl.  I couldn't stand them - twisting and riding up all night.

In my early twenties I went through a all-in-one pj phase.  Not very practical and bloody stupid when I moved to the cold hills.  Going to the loo in the middle of the night was a very nippy affair because you'd have to unzip it and expose all your bits to cold.

These days I'm much more concerned with warmth than anything else, so it's pj's for me.  I love the soft feel of the flannelette and then you put on your bed socks and you're all ready for a cosy night.

Yes I do love winter...pop over to Hazel's and see what she loves about winter.

Meet Gilbert

I bought a little piece of furniture today.

This is Gilbert.

I haven't quite worked out where I will put Gilbert yet.  He's little, only 110cm high, so that means I'll  be able to put "stuff" on top of him too.

The next question of course is, what will I display on the shelves?  I'm wondering if my blue and white chinamen will fit on the bottom shelf? I suppose what goes inside will depend on where I put him.

One of the Kindergym mums and her friend have started a facebook business called Foundabout.    

 'At Foundabout we pride ourselves on bringing you beautiful, unique "they don't make them like this anymore" pieces.'

They only started last week and I'm looking forward to popping back and checking out what new items they add.  An empty cupboard is a good excuse to look for some new china. 

Hope you have a happy week.  xx 

A little bit of action in the vege garden

Finally the veges have realised that their job is to grow.

The cauliflower has grown just a smidgen more but now

has a faint tinge of purple to it's colour.

Potato leaves are getting bigger.  Am I meant to be putting dirt or

something on top of them?

The brussel sprouts which I had forgotten were brussel sprouts

are growing too.  Murphy's law says that they'll grow the best

because no-one else but me will eat them.

Snow peas

Red cabbage - yummy coleslaw

and green cabbage too.

We're expecting a warmish weekend - well it won't be

freezing cold, so they could just keep growing more.

And

I'm also happily reading my friend's book.

"Prohibited zone"

by

Alastair Sarre

Winter Wednesday - 4

Winter Wednesday is on again today with Hazel.

I love winter, especially now the boys are bigger and less inclined to go jumping in puddles and mud - one would hope so at 15 and 17 years.

I don't think that there are many things more beautiful than a rainbow after a winter rain.

www.horizontalimage.net

www.missouriskies.org

www.cartoondollemporium.com

www.planetpals.com

Why wouldn't you love winter when you get to see rainbows more often.

(Sorry I couldn't find my photo disc with photos of rainbows I've taken but I hope these are pretty enough.)

Wild and windy

We're expecting a wild and windy night.  Tom says that the CFS warning is for 120km winds, thunderstorms and hail.

In the garden the Chinese Elm is still hanging onto some of it's leaves.

I wonder how many leaves will be left in the morning?

I thought I should pack away all the bits and pieces before the wind got too bad.  While wandering around the garden I noticed the rain water tank had sprung another leak.

We've plugged up previous leaks with magnets but I think that maybe this beauty is coming to the end of it's life as a water storage unit. 

Itsy bitsy teeny weeny...

I took a quick peek in the vege garden and to my surprise I found an itsy bitsy teeny weeny cauliflower head.

I've got my fingers crossed that it gets bigger because at the moment it's not even big enough to feed the bugs.

Hope you have a wonderful week and for me it's only 3 weeks until school holidays come around again. 

Let's get serious

I've been trying to master bread making using the Thermomix without much success.  Then finally yesterday I discovered what I think is the problem.  I've been reading the recipe wrong.  It clearly says bakers flour and I've been buying a bread mix - not being a baker I'm hoping this is what the problem's been.

So today I decided to get serious and bought 5kg of bakers flour instead of my 500g of bread mix.

I've been promising Michael home made pizzas for a few weeks now. So tonight we made pizzas.  I made the dough in the Thermomix and we added our toppings.

The boys had a bit of everything, well except for the feta cheese and olives, fortunately I'm the only person in our house who likes them.

and 20 minutes later...

It might not of been perfectly round in shape, nor look particularly pretty but it made up for any short comings in taste.  I'm full as now and can see that in a short while I'll be resting my eyes while supposedly watching tv.  Oh well, looks like the ironing will have to wait another day.

Practically perfect in every way

I went out for supper with some friends tonight - mmmm lovely triple chocolate mousse cake - and we got to talking about the first movie we ever saw at the theatre.

I remember mine very clearly.  It was a big day out with my Mum and I had a dress on and little white socks - sticks out so clearly in my mind.  Mum bought me a chocolate covered ice cream as my special treat.  We sat in the first row of the upper seating area.

And....we saw Mary Poppins.

I so wanted Mary to come to my house and take care of me.  I especially wanted to jump into pictures on the footpath too.  Imagine having tea with penguins serving you and as for riding a carousel horse in a race, well how exciting could you get.

Many years later my young nephews were watching the movie too.  My youngest nephew was quite taken with the measuring tape scene.  You know...she measures the children and sums up their personality and habits and then measures herself and say "Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way". 

One night after a family dinner my nephew grabbed my mum's measuring tape and starting measuring us and saying cute things.  All was going really well until he measured one family member and call them fat.  Needless to say (after much laughing behind hands) that was the end of the measuring tape game and it's never been played since.

Wishing you a practically perfect in every way day tomorrow. 

Winter Wednesday - 3

It's Winter Wednesday with Hazel today.  Every time I woke during the night I started thinking about why I love winter and then today at work every so often my mind would wander off to what I would blog about.  Then just to tax my brain further I realised I hadn't planned anything for tea.

So I joined the 2 trains of thought together and "bibbidi bobbodi boo", I had my blog for tonight and tea worked out too.

Why do I love winter? 

Because I love soup.  A lovely thick, yummy, hot soup.  I don't enjoy soup in summer, it's just not the same.  So at the start of winter I can't eat enough of it and by the end of winter it's nice to have a break.

Here's tea tonight:

Pumpkin soup - yummy and just to help to fill the boys up I made some chicken and herb balls with some garlic bread.

Mmmmm, I love winter food.  Who am I kidding, I love food fullstop...any season will do.

And the fog came rolling in

I took Julius out this morning just after six and as I was standing outside waiting for him the fog started rolling in.  It's such a weird thing seeing a mass  of little droplets of water surrounding you.  It was easy to see them as it was still dark outside and in the light of the security lights you could count each droplet, well if you felt so inclined.

 

Richard met the people who are building down the end of our block on the weekend.  They haven't decided on a floor plan for their house yet, just trying different designs pegged out on the block, and they don't anticipate it to be a 2 storey house - lucky for us.  They did ask if they could chop down part of our tree tho.

Michael and Richard had already chopped off a lower limb earlier in the morning that was hanging over the fence but the new people want to chop off a lot more than one limb.  All the up high ones that hang over the fence.  Richard is quite attached to his trees but there's not much you can do.  I've got my fingers crossed that they don't leave gapping holes that are obvious from our side. 

Winter Wednesday with Hazel tomorrow but our Chinese Elm doesn't even realise that Autumn has finished.

A perfect Sunday

We all hopped in the car this morning, dogs included, and headed off to visit Richard's sister and husband.  They live in the country, besides some farms and a weather station there's not much around.  It's a beautiful place but it's either very cold or very wet and today it was icy cold. 

Julie and Michael have recently welcomed a new member into their family and once we saw the photos we had to meet him too.

Meet Paddy, a 3 year old Irish Wolfhound.  He was born in Dublin on St Patrick's Day.  Isn't he beautiful?  Such a gentle boy who just melts your heart.  He's found a lovely home with Julie and Michael and other family members.

Richard and Sophia - Julie and Michael's other Irish Wolfhound

This is Laz, the older gentleman of the house and then we have

the four alpacas and some cows too.

Our dogs Lulu and Julius had a fantastic day with their "cousins".  There were 8 dogs in total today.  They played, ran, ate all day.  Towards the end of the day Julius got a bit "overtired" and started getting a bit snitchy so we decided it was time to go home.

Oh and our real kids had a great time too.

And some more photos of the day.

Sophia and Julius

Helping in the kitchen

 

Year 12 Formal

Finally the Year 12 Formal tonight.  Tom was being pretty cool about the whole affair but once he was "suited" up and Josh arrived the excitement was a bit more obvious.

He put his suit on last night so Richard could see as Tom would be gone before Richard got home from work tonight.

I was a bit worried that he'd chosen a really pale grey but fortunately it has a little bit of depth to it.  I was going to drive Tom and some of his friends to Crafers where he was catching the mini-bus that some of them had hired for tonight but then Josh decided to drive.  I was a little disappointed because I would of liked to see a few more of them all dressed up but hey, what would you choose at 17 - a lift with your mum or your mate?

Tom and Josh

Tom and Michael - my big baby and my little baby

My big baby and me

Two too cool boys

All this Formal stuff has bought back many memories of my own Year 12 Formal.  I had such a special dress - pink with frills - what more could a girl ask for??  My Dad bought me some beautiful high heels to wear and I wore Mum's pearls.  Dad dropped me off at my friends in the afternoon and we got dressed there and had our dates pick us up from there too. 

Tom's school has a rule about attendance tonight - only Year 12 students from their school can attend.  I went to an all girls school so it was a good thing we didn't have the same rule.  Would of made for a very boring night.  Of course I had to dig out my photos and have a look.

I still have the dress in the back of the wardrobe.  I've worn it several times with fairy wings as a dress-up for work.  I've also been a fairy at my friends daughter's party - that was a lot of fun.  Sadly tho I'll wear it no more unless I lose a few kilos. 

I've still got that 17 year old girl inside...and she'd really love to be dancing at that formal tonight...instead she's home alone.