Another busy week

We've had a house guest for nearly a week much to the boy's delight, my sis-in-law has no kids of her own and is endlessly patient with my two. Despite the fact that she spent the week sleeping on the top bunk and being woken up early (by her standards, hehehe) by enthusiastically loud small children.

And, she spent a large amount of time with Master 4 putting together her Christmas gift to him, which is an Ant Mine.

Yes, it is sitting on what passes for my sewing table, the dining table and general crafting and crap-gathering table.
I'm finding the whole idea a bit icky, especially as the little buggers kept escaping through the breathing holes. Eewww, I really dislike ants inside!

Master 4 has also been creating his latest masterpiece...

A train, in case that's not immediately obvious. The poor kid is suffering a bit of a creative materials dearth, as most foods that come in boxes I no longer buy. Those boxes he used are from a bygone era, haha.

And Master 1 is having a current obsession with saws. The cutting wood kind. Not only does he want to use them, he enjoys using the word too. With many different inflections.

Saw. Saw? Saw! Saaaaawwwww!!!

In fact, I am ready to delete the word saw from the English lexicon.
Oh and he signs it too, just to make sure I know exactly what he's talking about.


One thing I am itching to do soon is a bit more fun baking, maybe some cupcakes? Problem is, I'm suffering a little bit of guilt now knowing exactly how not-good-for-you cupcakes in general are. Well I did know already, but now I know exactly and given the health issues of my extended family on one side, I'm trying to keep us on a very good path, food wise.

It's a bit of a balancing act, hey?

I did it! Aka, How to make butter the lazy way...

I've been meaning to try this for a while, seeing as I can get raw, organic milk and cream at my local farmer's market. I did try it once with raw goat's cream, but it did not work. The goat's cream was so thick I had to cut open the bottle and scrape it out, I probably should have spread it on bread just as it was.

Anyway, if you want to read about the benefits of raw milk check out this link and this one
and there is much more information out there on the subject.


So, How to?

Well, take your cream...

and pour it into your food processor.
I used the plastic whipping blade though I've heard the chopping blade is fine to use too.

Start to whip it.

Keep whipping it until it separates.
It will do this fairly suddenly....first it will look thick, then thick and yellowish and lumpyish, then it will separate.
Wa lah.

Pour off the buttermilk and keep it for baking.
Now put about 1/2 a cup of iced water in and process it again.
Tip out the water (discard it) and follow this step 2-3 more times until your water is fairly clear.
Scrape your butter into a bowl.

Mash it with a potato masher or work it with a fork until all the liquid is out. Just keep pouring the liquid off.

Tah dah!

Smear it on some crackers and enjoy, refrigerate the rest.
Mmm mmmm!

Want to read the funniest blog EVER?

I just had to put this one out there....my hubby sent me a link to Sleep Talkin' Man and I have just about cacked myself laughing at this guy a few times now.

Please check it out and read the FAQs page which is linked to on the left, Sleep Talkin' Man's lovely wife tells what it's all about.

Tell me it's funny and it's not just me...?



UPDATE


Ok, I've found another couple of blogs that tickle my funny bone, so I need to add them here, if only so I can find them when I need 'em.


Crappy pictures, which I'm pretty sure used to be Parenting with crappy pictures  is exactly that.
The best (cough, snort) moments of parenting accompanied by crappy pictures.

Possibly aimed at mothers of young children but read it and tell me it's not funny.

And...

Five kids is a lot of kids with the riveting URL of putdowntheurinalcake.
Yup, another one involving kids, but kids are just funny. And gross. And gross is often funny too.

I think any parent would get a kick out of this one and possibly those who are not parents would too, just so they can laugh loudly at those of us who are.

Enjoy...

Blog giveaway from my sis...

My youngest sister, who masquerades as The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady has posted a cute giveaway on her blog.
Except she managed to post the actual giveaway post of the 15th December, even though it's meant for now. Make sense? No? Yes?

Well here is the actual post of the giveaway and here is her recent post pointing you in direction of said giveaway.

If you have a wee girl you may want to hop on over there, it's a handmade pinafore style dress, pure cotton with a lined bodice. One side of the skirt is blue as pictured, the other is pink.

And, if you want to check out how lovely her sewing is, you can look at this one, which is actually showing her Christmas gift to me, the most glorious set of sewn table mats imaginable. And if you have a trawl through the rest of her blog you will see other gorgeous pieces dotted about here and there.

So head on over there and leave a comment before 25th of January and you might get lucky.

Yes world, I am here!

I've been taking a short, unintentional hiatus from this blog, as I try to enact my New Years resolution of organisation. Organisation is going to mean NOT wiling away so many hours on the net, so I have been staying away from my computer in an effort to get some small unfinished projects finished.

Well, Christmas was crazy and fun, the crazy part was thinking we should drive from Melbourne to the Sunshine Coast in 2 days, with 2 small children. And then drive back again.

Not my brilliant idea and preferably NEVER to be repeated.

The fun part was swimming and hanging out with my family and swimming and watching all the kids have fun together and swimming and cooking and swimming and eating and swimming and...you're getting the picture, right?

Now we're back in the real world and this year we're gearing up for 4 year old kinder (even though Master H will be 5 in April), swimming lessons for Master H, gymnastics for both boys and one day of daycare for both thrown in for good measure and for my sanity.

We've started house hunting again, though it appears prices have crept up ever so slightly more, darn it. I'd been hoping that a couple of interest rate rises coupled with the government winding back the grants would see prices begin to level off a bit. Apparently not so.

And, I've been playing with my new gadget...

I was given a food dehydrator by my delightful Mother-in-law, which is something I'd been wanting for while. I wanted it for drying out soaked almonds and peanuts but have since gathered a huge bag of plums off a friends tree and have run those through it also.
The plums come out very tiny and wrinkled, but extremely flavoursome.

I've also been making kefir, sauerkraut and sourdough, all of which means I've been spending way too much time in the kitchen on 40+ degree days! Madness!

Remember to buy in bulk

Check out my jar of CHOCOLATE.

70% cocoa, delicious and healthy.
Haha, well, apparently a SMALL amount a day is healthy.

My plan is to only ever use the good stuff so my kids get used to eating that and will hopefully reject the crap stuff.

Is it wrong of me to request of family at Easter that they only give the kids dark chocolate? It doesn't need to be the highest quality, just not the sort with lots of extra sugar.....the sort which I used to LOVE (milky bar anyone?).

My smarties obsession maybe coming to an end too, as I move on to REAL chocolate. It's going hand in hand with my cupboards slowly emptying of anything with a complicated ingredients panel on it.

I'm trying to follow the "if my great grandmother wouldn't recognise it as food, don't eat it" way of eating. I also keep hearing "if it wasn't around 10 000 years ago don't eat it".

Did they have chocolate around that long ago? If not, I'm sticking with the grandmother eating idea.

Setting up the Christmas Crib

We have a very basic Christmas Crib
(is it called that here, that's what we called it growing up in Kiwiland...)
and it consists of just a few figures that remain from a much larger set.

So the kids and I made a couple of new ones:

This snazzy looking guy is Joseph



And this bright little fellow is the Drummer Boy



Er, without his arms and his drum, which was to be made from a gum nut. Master 4 who was doing the artistic direction (hence the multicoloured punk hair and green leopard duds) does NOT want pipe cleaner arms or a drum. So it will be.

They will soon join the existing crew, see below:



Mary is on the right and Amahl on the left has been standing in for Joseph.



And sometimes they are visited by some other random lady with her baby, her puppy and her pet tiger cub. And a lego knight drops by occasionally too.

Mary and Amahl were made by my mum many years ago and are the perfect solution to crib figures for small children. I think we'll make some new ones every year, as happened when we were kids.

Hmmm, who to make next?
I have a faceless body on my work table awaiting a personality.....

These are my boys, all shaven and shorn...

Gee, I let hubby out into the back yard to shave his head.....he gives himself a no' 4 in the summer (I DO NOT cut his hair, scarred from the one and only time I DID do it...)

And this is what happens:

Ok, Mr 4 was due for his buzz cut, but my blonde fluffy haired baby!!! Check out his hair in my previous playdough post, (20 months old but still my baby...)

Oh my gosh, he does look cute, his sqidgy baby cheeks are showing up again, but still, hubby cut my baby's hair WITHOUT TELLING ME!

Oh well, easy for summer, right?

The above photo was taken just a short while after this one...

I thought 4 1/2 year olds didn't get eggs on their heads any more. Well, when they're spinning round in the kitchen and slam their head in to the corner of the cupboard, they still do.

Gee, it has been a busy, busy day, so nice to sit down in front of my pc and catch up with the world :)