A sneak peek...

Of the beginning of our banner for the market. Looking a little rough now, but trust me, it's going to be Awesome! I should have taken photos of the process, but with Rainbow and my two nieces dipped in green and brown paint my SIL and I needed all our hands free for damage control!

Miracle pie!

Miracle 1) it was made with the ingredients of a very bare pantry and fridge! It has torillas as the crust, and the filling is eggs, cheese, tzatziki, tomato, spring onion, parsley and zucchini. All the vegies were from my mum's garden, and as for the tzatziki, I was a little sceptical myself, but it needed bulking out a bit and my choices were the dip or mango yogurt! Anyway, it was yum, but miracle no 2) is the big one. RAINBOW ATE IT! Not just ate it but downed in quicker than I've ever seen her eat, then asked for more! She normally eats like a little bird, tiny amounts and vegies don't really come on to her list of edibles. Miracle 3) was when crystal finished but had left a circle of zucchini on her plate and Rainbow leaned over and grabbed it and shoved it in like she thought someone would stop her. I wonder if I can get away with cooking this pie every night? Tempting!

You may never see me again!

I've made an important decision. You may remember one of my New Year Decisions was that my house would be cleaner? I thought it would be easy! With all my new found free time! Who was I fooling?? It's actually been worse than ever, really really untidy and that's fine if you're into mess, but it makes me feel out of control and depressed. So after one too many unexpected drop ins that leave me blushing, my very important decision is that I will not get onto the computer unless the lounge and kitchen are clean. And if the play room and bathrooms aren't clean I won't stay online for more that half an hour. And if the bedrooms aren't clean then I won't stay online for more than and hour. I think that sounds pretty reasonable! If I make myself promise not to go online unless my house is spotless it just wont work, I think this way is far more do-able! Just to prove I'm living by my own plan, here's my kitchen and lounge.

Ok, so the lounge is a little messy, but the pile of stuff in the corner is a car seat that I'm sewing a new cover for tonight so I need it there under the sewing machine and a huge bag of goodies I'm taking to the market on Sunday. That's my defense and I'm sticking to it!

And now I think I better go. Obviously I'm on a half hour time limit at this point! Messy MESSY floor!

Cleeeean!

I have emptied and cleaned out my pantry, freaked out by the prospect of little mice sharing our food, and boy, what a difference! I discovered that yes, I do have some coconut, don't need to put that on the shopping list. In fact I have about 3 kg of coconut. I think impossible pie will be on the dessert menu from here until eternity! Also have 3 tins of beetroot, as well as the container in the fridge. And enough curry paste to last me at least 6 months! Other than that my cupboard is pretty bare, I'm in desperate need of a big bulk shop but I haven't done one for ages. Now I have room to! I've organised the pantry like this:

TOP SHELF LEFT TO RIGHT: cereal in the glass jar (we don't eat it for breakfast, it goes in the girl's lunch boxes, the big red tin is for bread, followed by spreads, snacky type things - wasabi peas and pepitas etc, soups (I have a secret cup of soup addiction. I know they are horrible and full of chemicals but they are so yum! I don't give them to the girls though!) next to that is sauces, worchteshire, ketchup manis, soy etc, the pink basket is full of curry paste sachets, the hello kitty packet at the front is nori cut into hello kity shapes, my brother bought it back form Japan I don't want to eat them because they are too cute) then next to that more curry!

SECOND SHELF LEFT TO RIGHT: baking stuff, bread mix, baking powder, cocoa, about 3 types of sugars, all that jazz. Next to that coconut, semolina, polenta, felafel, brown rice, pastas, red lentils in the big jar and brown in the small.

THIRD SHELF LEFT TO RIGHT: the black tins are full of bulk things - flours, rice and rolled oats for our porridge, then the tinned section which is looking rather sad at the moment! We have beans, lentils, tomatoes, spaghetti, beetroot, spinach, water chestnuts, coconut cream.

So that's it! It seems a bit indulgent doing a blog post on my pantry, but I figure I'd like to read someone else's blog on their pantry so why not! I'm a curious type! I might do another pic when I've done a shop though, it is looking so sad and bare. But cleeeean!

I vaguely remember I agreed to no more pets...

Indigo and Jemima
Crystal and Ginger. I didn't name the kittens, I would have gone with something a bit more exciting than ginger! But Ginger is Crystal's cat. His name originally was Sleep Night because he apparently will sleep at night (can't fault the logic there!) but she changed her mind so now he's Ginger.

But it was so long ago, how can I be expected to remember all these thing? We have a mouse problem. Not just a little odd mouse in the cupboard but a full blown cable munching (stereo, salt lamp, tv and one electrical outlet so far) problem. At night I can hear them scurrying, When I sit in the lounge at night and all is quiet I see them dart across the room, and I hear them squeaking when I try to sleep. One morning we found one in the bath. They are horrible disgusting little vermin and I want them out of my house! Yuck! I set traps, but they're smarter than me, in the morning the traps are unsnapped but all the peanut butter has been licked off. I got one of those high pitched noise electrical plug ins, THEY DO NOT WORK PEOPLE! I even went so far as to look at chemicals and poisonous baits, but I couldn't do it. Partly because I don't want chemicals in my house, partly in case Rainbow found one and munched on it, and partly because I don't want to stress every time the rabbits are in the house. What to do, what to do? Then it hit me - I needed a cat! When we had a cat we never had a mouse problem! Simple! So after looking at the trading post (nope, don't really want to spend $500 on a pedigree that would probably think mouse hunting was below it's class level) gumtree (lots of free kittens, don't really want to drive a few hours to go collect them though) I finally found some on freecycle that were not too far away, so I picked Indigo and Crystal up from school and surprised them by going to get a kitten! But when we got there they were SO scrawny and wild I felt sorry for them and I couldn't leave one behind so we came home with two. So welcome to the family Ginger and Jemima! We hope you have a long happy life with us and we hope your farm upbringing means you are going to enjoy living here where there's mice a plenty.

dentist time

Ugh, the dentist. Last year I had a tooth that needed to come out but wouldn't after 2 hours there was still roots in there and the dentist had to just stitch my mouth up and tell me I'd need surgery (which I chickened out of so if I end up in lots of pain it will be my fault) So I have been putting off and putting off taking the girls even though Crystal has quite bad teeth - really crowded, she'll be a braces kid before too long. Indigo has always had lovely teeth, straight and white and hole free, I wouldn't let her brush her own teeth until she turned 7, as recommended by the dentist, so she has fabulous teeth. The thing that spurred me out of my reluctance to take them was when we were in the pool one day, laughing and to my horror I saw Indigo had a black spot on two of her teeth, a few back from her front. Then I remembered how she'd always get food stuck between those teeth. And how I wouldn't know now if she still did because she's been brushing her own teeth for the last 2 1/2 years. Whoops. So off we went, to the public dentist that we hadn't used before and I must say, really un child friendly! Each girl had a separate dentist, both female (I thought that was cool!) but neither really seemed to know how to calm a frightened child. Crystal went first, and she hadn't been frightened going in, she was bounding to get in there! This is the same child who when she needed a needle once asked for another one in her other arm. Weirdo. But she needed a hole in her baby tooth filled :( and cried when she had the needle. Indigo on the other hand was TERRIFIED and hated the whole ordeal, poor baby needed a filling but to reach the tooth the tooth next to it, which was wobbly, needed to come out. Not nice. It really highlighted the difference between the two girls, Crystal, although 3 years younger than Indigo was stoic and brave. Indigo at 9 was hysterical. It took every inch of self control for me not to say "Why can't you be more like your little sister? She didn't throw a massive tantrum and refuse to open her mouth!" But she's not her little sister, she's Indigo, and a true Indigo child in her temperament. I was scared when I went to the dentist. She was scared. I don't want to teach her that when she's scared she has to lie there and take it. She can scream and cry if she wants. The funniest moment was when the dentist put her tooth in a little bag and said "The tooth fairy will be happy to have this tooth" and Indigo shouted "You're a liar! There's no such thing as the tooth fairy!" She hasn't forgiven me yet for laughing at her.

Tiny dancer!

Rainbow had her first dance class today! She was so excited last night she wanted to wear her fairy dress to bed. She was a little nervous at first, but Indigo got up and stood next to her and danced too, and before long she was having a great time. My little baby is growing up! Sniff!