A Lego Mat

I've kept hold of a box of Lego that has been hanging around our house for years. It usually comes out when we have visitors and each time I take it out I'm reminded how difficult it is to pack it away, how much it hurts when you step on a stray piece of Lego and how the box that it's in is just not doing the trick. The Lego only just fit in the box and because the box has handy handles, bits of Lego would inevitably escape through those handy handle holes.

Last week I was given a couple of dinosaur doona covers for a single bed. Hamish is a long way off using a bed and it was a lot of free fabric. I decided that I would cut up one to make into a Lego mat. It looks great! The Lego is now nice and tidy, hanging from a hook on the top of our bookcase.

I've done a step by step photo tutorial below. Pretty much I folded the fabric in half, quarters and then eighths and then cut it in an arc. I hemmed it and measured the circumference of the circle and then bought 5.5m of blue cord and a toggle. I used a safety pin to thread the cord through the hem. Attached the toggle and then tied the cord afterwards. Tipped the Lego into the middle of the mat and then pulled on the cord to tighten the bag around the Lego. Hung the bag up. Simple!

Cleaning is bad for your health!

Running around cleaning this morning I picked up a cloth that I had left on the ironing board yesterday. I had used it to clean the iron with some new iron cleaning stuff. It worked really great on the iron!

So I thought I had washed my hands well but apparently not as well as I thought. I rubbed my eye and my eye started hurting a lot. I rinsed it under the tap but it was burning more so I got David to rinse my eye out. It was very red and it looked like it had a blister on my eye. I called the community nurse number and she thought I should go into emergency.

At the triage counter the nurse sent Me straight through and had a litre of saline squirted into my eye. Not comfortable at all! The doctor then checked the ph level of my eye which was at a 9 and considered quite high. To do this he stuck a piece of paper on my eye. Ouch. He wasn't happy with how much moisture he managed to take from my eye so he did it again. Double ouch.

Then more irrigation. More wet hair and ear and everything else. I think I left with a very clean ear. The doctor then put yellow dye in my eye to check that my cornea (the see through bit on the top of your eye) wasn't damaged. It wasn't luckily, but it does make you realise how quickly you could lose your eye sight. Scary.

We're getting eye drops from the chemist and a take away coffee to cheer me up and then we're off home. Eye is still stinging but much better than before. When I got to the hospital it felt like my eye was on fire. Not nice.

Wizzy world

This morning we had planned to go to the Harry Potter exhibition at the Power House in the city. The only problem was that when we tried to get tickets on-line for today they were sold out. Frustrating. David booked and paid for the tickets for next weekend so we don't miss out altogether. I was disappointed and so were the kids. So what do we do today? We didn't really know. I googled 'what's on today in Sydney' and found a few things on but nothing that excited us. So after Hamish woke up from his nap we got in the car and went exploring. First off we went to Roseville Chase to check out the national ark under the bridge. Very wet. And no coffee. Not so good for us that needed a caffeine boost to get through the rest of the day. Hamish started getting cranky because of his teeth and so we stopped at the closest place to where we were for some afternoon tea. Whizzy World. It was noisy and full of stinky, sweaty children but there was coffee and a relatively comfy spot for our bottoms while the younger ones happily played. Bliss for parents. Josh and Sammy were less than impressed. We sweetened them up with cordial and biscuits.

New hair dos

Sammy has been asking me for a couple of weeks to have her hair cut. She desperately wanted a fringe again. The last time she had a fringe was when she was about 4. I was worried that she'd change her mind and then have to spend ages growing it out. Well after a couple of weeks of badgering by her I finally succumbed to the pressure and let her have it done. It cost  $10 and made her very happy. She also looks gorgeous with a fringe and SO much older. She suddenly looks 16! How did I end up with such a gorgeous girl!

My beautiful girls.

Josh's hair seems to have a life of its own. It just grows so quickly! I wish my hair would grow quickly. Since I had Hamish and a ton of my hair fell out I've been waiting for it to grow back. It's finally starting to grow, but it looks like baby hair and Hamish is now 10 months old. So you can see how I would be getting impatient. Well Josh's hair has been getting curlier and curlier the older he gets. He really doesn't like his curls at the moment and always wants it cut really short. Maybe one day he'll appreciate the curl and grow himself a huge afro. But in the meantime we try and keep on top of it by keeping it very short. That way the curl can't be seen. Josh is also looking very old. And what a lovely young man he is growing into.

Josh with his newly cut hair.

Craftiness

I've been trying to organise a craft day on a Thursday since last year and it really hasn't gotten off the ground. Part of the problem has been this stinking weather and then the other part of the problem is crafty stuff is just plain old daggy! But I LOVE it!!

So over the last two weeks I've made some stray twine covered balls and a recovered a couple of cushions. I'm very happy with what they look like and the way they've made my home a little more homely!

Here are the photos.

French macarons

I had a wonderful friend offer to make chocolate macarons with me last Thursday. The weather really sucked and so they weren't wonderful, but luckily the company was. I even froze the finished product and then ate them the next day. Just gooey and sweet. Good but not a macaron. I WILL somehow create the perfect macarons before the end of the year. It is one of my new years resolutions after all.

Craft and firsts

Today Isabella was drawing beautiful pictures for the family and also wanted to write some letters and numbers which we worked through together.
She needed a box to put her precious things in. Thank goodness for cereal boxes!! They make perfect boxes for precious pieces of paper and are fairly easy to cover and decorate. We used contact I had lying around from covering school books, ribbon I had from making hair clips and a little person we tore off of a greeting card.
And with all of that business Hamish has decided that learning to crawl is a waste of time and he is now standing at every available opportunity. That means when I put him down to sleep he's like a jack-in-the-box and a spring loaded one at that! It took 2 hours to get him down last night. Such a fun game standing up in the cot. He stands, can't work out how to get down, screams until someone saves him and lies him down and then up he gets again. He thought it was very funny. Me, not so much.

Yesterday was the first time Hamish crawled properly for a distance. I think it was because he had a play date with an older friend who has the crawling thing down pat. They were very cute together and I'm sure will be great mates. They'll be going to the same school when they're finally ready in another 4 years or so. I'm sure the time will fly by.

Lemonade Scones

From www.recipes4us.co.uk

There's nothing like a scone with jam and cream, think devonshire tea. Very English and very delicious. We've made them twice in the last week and a bit. The lemonade scone must be the easiest scone in the world to make. Even I managed to not mess them up. The last lot I made I even had to leave the house to pick up Isabella from school before they had finished cooking. I had to leave the house, so what would you do? I turned the oven way down and left the scones in the oven for another 40 minutes. AND they still turned out okay. Yum!

I used 1 cup lemonade, 1 cup cream and 3 cups of self-raising flour. I mixed it with a knife until barely mixed together and then tipped it out onto a floured surface. The oven was preheated to 200C and I baked the scones for 20 minutes or so. I cut the scones into circles and put them close enough together so that they would be joined together when they cooked. I brushed them with milk. Super easy and super yummy.

I saw this Aussie site on food called ChocolateSuze.com and she mentioned the lovely lemonade scones. So I had to link to her! Plus she has great photos of the scones.
Here is that page.

Hair clips and a timetable

A new menu

I've been very busy settling everyone into school and blogging has been right at the bottom of my todo list. So I thought I'd try and get back into it.

Today I made a new menu board. The last one was just made out of the biggest photo frame I had lying around at home. This time I actually went and bought a frame. It cost $10. Pretty cheap and nice and big. I was finding it hard to fit our weekly menu into the space I had!!

Well I rummaged through my scrapbook supplies and found some letter stickers, flower stickers and paper. It took me about 10 minutes to put the board together and it's made it much easier to write on and see. The kids actually noticed it as soon as they got home from school today.

I've been plodding along with my menu planning and only missed a week when we got back from our holidays. I should try and write them down so I can reuse the meal plans that worked. I'd like to plan a whole terms worth of meals for when I'm back at work. That's 10 weeks worth. We'd probably do a 3 week rotation of easy meals that just work. It'll be one less thing to worry about! I need to find some more no-fail recipes now.

Work...

I don't even want to think about going back yet. I'm just enjoying being a mum who coffees, lunches and organists play dates. Lol it's not quite as easy as that, but that would be the ideal.

Valentine Date Night

Dave and I had our second date night with Josh looking after all the kids. Last Tuesday we went to a restaurant in our street and Hamish and Isabella behaved beautifully and they both slept while we were out. It was wonderful to spend some time together with no kids around! This last Tuesday we weren't quite as lucky. We had just started on our mains when there was a call from 'home' that put us both into high alert mode. Dave answered with, "What's wrong? Is Hamish okay?" (We told Josh if anything happened he should call us, even if it was minor. It didn't stop us from stressing when that phone rang.) Luckily all was well but Hamish had woken up and Josh was unsure of what to do. We told him to hold him and watch TV quietly with him on the couch and the lights down low. We told him that we'd be back shortly. The restaurant was about a 4 minute drive from our house. We then finished our dinner, had a quick dessert and hurried off home. It was a set menu and so we had to pay for dessert anyway so we decided to stay and eat it. We told Josh to call if Hamish started crying. Josh had said he was fine and just lying with Sammy on the couch. When we got back we gave Josh a little extra money for coping with a more stressful situation. I have to mention too that Josh made dinner for the girls and him both last week and this week. Last week was omelettes and this week he cooked cheeseburgers. I'm looking forward to our next date night. Maybe we'll be able to go and watch a movie. If we're brave.

Isabella's first day at school

Isabella has now been at school for just over a week and has made herself a little friend. I was hoping that she'd make herself a nice little girl friend. Am I sexist to want her to have a girlfriend? The little person that she's made friends with is a little boy by the name of Tom. Better known as 'Tommy Tom-Tom'. Isabella says that he doesn't have a bad attitude and that he says nice things about her drawings. So cute. I talked to Tom's mom and she said that Tom had told her that Isabella is an artist! How funny! I've managed to organise a playdate for them after school next week. Isabella is very excited and Tom said that it doesn't matter that Isabella is a girl. I think that was supposed to be a compliment. Aren't they so sweet at 5!


Isabella has been getting herself ready the night before school just like Sammy and Josh. She gets out her uniform and then we get her lunch and recess ready together. She has had a go at spreading butter on bread and is getting better and better. She sees her older siblings getting their lunches ready and so she wants to be just the same.


The only problem we've had is trying to find interesting things to eat at school. Today I made zucchini, sweet potato and cheese muffins which Isabella thought were very tasty and that will make a great addition to her lunch box. Breakfast cereal is another great snack, nutritous and tasty (Nutrigrain). We've also made weet-bix slice, crunchies and chocolate pikelets. All of these have been things that I ate as a child.

Looking gorgeous in her uniform.

My bumblebee and Hamish.

Isabella's first lunch at school.

Newcastle Holiday 2012

As you can see from the heading I'm finally going to post about our recent January holiday. We actually hadn't planned on going away during the school Christmas holidays because of the expense, work commitements, too many of us, etc etc and I'm really so glad that we did!

Newcastle is only an hour and a half from us and is almost too close to be a holiday destination. That didn't deter us though. We figured that if we were to go away somewhere warmer it would be at least a four hour drive, which you could easily multiply by four now that we have Hamish with us as well. So we decided that somewhere close would be much better. I don't really know Newcastle well and Dave would really like us to explore more of Australia, so we really killed two birds with one stone. Plus to top it off, we had a great time and came back well rested and recuperated.

Here is a few slide shows of our time.
Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

We took a 1000 piece puzzle with us and managed to complete it over the week. We left it at the holiday apartment for someone else to enjoy. It was a great quiet activity for the older people in the family.

It was a great holiday and of course I can't wait for our next adventure.

First day at high school

My baby girl started high school today and she was braver than me!! It is a new school for me too and so it was much harder than Kindy!! In Kindergarten Sammy went along to where Josh was, but now they're in different high schools and it's all new. I got a children's sore tummy today. I wonder what that says about me?