Must chill out........

I really have to work out how to chill out and relax. I always begin to, but before I know it i'm back to doing 90 things at once, and none of them well. Cooking and gardening work well, even better when you combine them. Forrest going off to bed early has certainly helped tonight-I can actually feel myself relaxing, with the aid of a bit of JBT as background music.

The girls are obsessed with 'the olden days', and have wanted to make bread by hand for a while. As i'm still working my way back up to full bread production even with the assistance of the breadmaker we used it for the dough and did the final kneading, rising and shaping by hand. They had a ball bashing the bread around and seeing how much it puffed up.

The final result-a spinach and parmesan bloomer, made with malabar spinach from the backyard. A bit burnt on the outside but that's the oven-I hate scabby landlords who think a $500 oven will be great for their rental. They suck!

Tomorrows chill out can be to help the kids plant their flowers out-the seedlings are starting to outgrow the tray.

Fluffy mail time (oh how I hate that phrase!)

These started winging (trucking?) their way to Cairns today. They've been excruciatingly painful to make so you better all enjoy them!

Pockets

Covers

And here's one of our covers on Shorty at nearly three years (next week!) and around 13kgs, with a trim fitted under.
And Frosty, at 10 weeks and about 6kgs, with a big fat terry flat under.
Can't believe no-one chose the rainbow print, it's awesome!

Wow, my kids are getting big

Birthdays galore here ATM-my eldest is five, my twins are four and Shorty is three in a couple of weeks. So we've been getting sugared up-luckily breastfeeding is working as a no-work weight loss plan! So after gawking at aqua's cake blog I decided to blog mine-i'm not sure why either, they look pathetic in comparison!

G wanted a fairy party, so we did the house up with garish pink everywhere. She adored it. This was the best I could do cake-wise with a four week old babe-a simple butter cake with coloured sugar for the fairy. As it was it nearly caused a sleep-deprived stress overload meltdown, it wasn't taking much at that stage.

Sparkles and Lols decided on an under the sea theme, and picked a whale and a frog (yeah, I know, you don't find many frogs at the beach. But try telling that to a three year old, water is water!) Butter cakes again, with butter cream icing. The whale was much neater, until A fell on it and squished his tail and smeared icing everywhere *sigh*

I've convinced Shorty he would like a pirate ship-it looks very impressive and dead easy, i'll leave it until next year before volunteering for something complex again!

Christmas in March?

Well, my belated Christmas post anyway. I have lotsa kids (they're great for blaming procrastination and absent-mindedness on). We decided to do a craft each day in December and i'm proud to say we actually out-crafted them! They'd stopped asking by the 17th so we didn't do any more after that-these are the children who nagged me to 'do craft' everyday before that! I didn't get pics of all the crafty stuff, and we ate the shortbread and white truffles too quickly for pics. The best bit was I didn't go into labour and miss Christmas (my due date). That was a big worry.

These took two days and glittered the entire house.

They girls found the angels tricky and Shorty found them totally impossible, but they did pretty well for 2-4 year olds.

Christmas crackers, with a homemade paper crown in each one (and other stuff which i've totally forgotten). Typically, the crowns were the hit of the day, better than any presents.

The Santas, and the hands and feet reindeer. Shorty's are especially cool :P

The masses of paper chain that I spent all December ducking around-it continued up the hallway.
Little ornaments from pipe cleaners and lace.


My contributions to the handmade gifts-fairy skirts for the girls, a cape for Shorty and wands all round. The husband made a funky dolls house but would probably kill me if I stuck up pics of it.



My favourite-that messy Santa trekked snow everywhere AGAIN! I love Christmas with kids.