Thursday, November 15, 2012

Decluttering and Organising - Project 2

The hot drinks cupboard.
 
This one I've been putting off for around two years. This was a 10 minute job. What? I can't believe I look in here at least 3 times a day and didn't just take the time to sort it.
 

There was some completely random crap in there. A broken thermometer, some bread bag tags (?), a little bottle of perfume (??) and face paint crayons that I haven't seen since they were wedged up the back of the top shelf around 3 years ago.


Most of the stuff had to go back in and I migrated some other things from the adjacent cupboard, but all in all a success. Hurrah!


As a side note, my wonderful sister in law Paula made me these awesome "shoe" cupcakes for my birthday. She's not only a great sister in law, but a truly amazing friend. They were very yummy....all gone!


An update on the baby that's nearly one. She's a climber. First of my three to climb at such a young age. But wait, she's a genius too, will make steps by pushing toys around to achieve getting to her location of choice. Clever cookie.


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Decluttering and Organising - Project 1

The Wardrobe.

Bearing in mind the following "before" photo is condusive of what happens at the end of Winter and again at the end of Summer every damn year, I'm only expecting the "after to last maybe another 4-5 months. However, I will enjoy my little organised wardrobe whilst it lasts.

There are a couple of people that I could call upon to testify that I've always been lazy unorganised where my clothes are concerned. But I'm sure just by showing this next photo you'll get the gist of it yourselves.


It didn't take as long as I thought to get it sorted out, probably an hour and a quarter max. Why I haven't done it before now I don't know. That box of clothes on the left has been lying there for weeks.

Don't get too excited, but here is the after.....*drumroll*......



I didn't have a purge of clothes like I probaby should have, nor did I sort through my numerous shoes - many of which I haven't worn for years. But a girl never knows when she'll need a fancy pair of heels again does she?

One day, I'll get rid of all the shoes I haven't worn for a long time, but for now, I'll allow them to continue collecting dust.



Keep checking back for Project 2 - I may just be on a roll here.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Some long overdue organising...

I'm back. Life with three kids so hectic that you think you haven't blogged for two weeks and realise it's almost two months!

I've been inspired by this blog Raising Colorado to get my a into g and sort out those little areas of the house that piss me off on a daily basis, but never get around to blowing up sorting out.

I'm not saying I'll blog on a daily basis and this might be very boring stuff for you mum those who read this blog. But I am commited to starting something that I can be proud of.

Here's a list of the few areas that currently annoy me and need some attention;

  • My walk in wardrobe - between seasons, messy, almost embarrasing; but I'll show you and I'll get it sorted out.
  • My freezer - Would. Gross. You. Out.
  • Numerous drawers around the house.
  • Kitchen areas - namely the plastics drawer. More like a Tupper-night-mare-ware
  • Master Leo's Wardrobe
  • Miss Cora's Wardrobe
  • Too many to mention corners of the house that have dust accumulating.
  • My washing machine drawer for powder. Seriously, I don't think I'll even show you a before photo.

So you get my gist?

I'll do a before photo, if I'm brave enough and the after.

I know these little jobs won't take very long. But I think when the sum of the parts is HUGE then the jobs appear insurmountable.

I'll be back tomorrow. I think i'll start with my wardrobe. Yuck Yay!

p.s. If you look up procrastination in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of me.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Getting over the bugs...

Of course I succumbed this week to the sniffles after the kids having a fortnight of coughing, sneezing and such. The crappy weather didn't come to much, bit of a hail storm and an overnight frost, so thankfully the garden's looking okay. Sun out today and I'm doing the first watering of the Spring.  Off to have a lie down as I think I'm getting a migraine ;(

SO, hopefully back to my bloggy self in the next day or so. 

Got some lamb shanks braising in the oven for tea, hoping Master Leo will eat dinner tonight. Having some battles with him and this meal at the moment.  Back to sticker reward charts. Hope it works...promise of a McDonalds for 7 stickers. We'll see!

In the meantime, here's a song and video that I've been loving this week...I think this guy's just so groovy and he just makes me smile. Dance like nobody's watching ;)



Catch up soon.

Stef

Monday, September 10, 2012

Typical!

What usually happens where we live in NZ is that you get some lovely start of Spring mild weather where all the plants, flowers, trees and bulbs go "yipee" and start to burst into flower and growth.


What also usually happens is that we will almost always get a late frost or cold snap and they don't recover.  So for tomorrow we have this forecast....

Tomorrow 11 Sep
High 11°C
Overnight 2°C
Hail
Sleety showers, snow to 200 metres. Cold southwester.

Given that we are at sea level we may escape the snow, but there's equally as much chance that we will get it.  And for Wednesday that lovely overnight frost......

Wednesday12 Sep
High 9°C
Overnight -1°C
Hail
Sleety showers clearing. Icy southwester dying

This is how our garden looks today and if the forecast is correct then they may not be quite as perky after Wednesday.






 

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Lazy Sunday...yeah right!

Having the in-laws over for dinner and after flicking through my folder of recipes I thought I'd make a super simple and easy lemon roulade. My friend K gave me the recipe and I've made it a few times, it's pretty foolproof and very yummy! 

 

The lemon curd recipe makes 3 cups and you only use 1/2 cup for the filling so plenty left over for the fridge. The sponge only takes around 8 minutes in a hot oven and cools pretty quickly too.  No creaming butter and sugar.

Lemon Curd

200g Butter
1 cup castor sugar
Juice and zest of 3 lemons
4 eggs

  • Melt butter on medium high heat
  • Whisk in sugar, lemon zest, juice and eggs
  • Whisk continually on medium heat until it just begins to boil and remove from heat immediately.
  • Cool
Sponge

4 eggs at room temp
1/2 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup SR flour

  • Beat eggs and sugar until thick and creamy.
  • Sift flour into mixture and fold together.
  • Line a 25cm x 35cm jelly roll pan and spray with a light coating of oil
  • Bake on 200oC for 8 minutes or until risen and toast coloured.
  • Turn out onto a clean sheet of baking paper and cool completely.
To put together

150ml cream
1/2 cup lemon curd

  • Whip cream until thick, fold in lemon curd.
  • Keeping sponge on the baking paper score approx 1cm along the long edge of it.
  • Spread cream mix over entire surface of sponge.
  • Fold in the scored edge and use paper to wrap your sponge into a roulade; using the paper to roll it like you would a sushi roll.
  • Dust with icing sugar.

Yum!

This is in the oven right now and I'm just chilling with a cup of coffee before my in-laws arrive.


Are you having a relaxing Sunday?

Thursday, September 6, 2012

A rough week...

It's been a bit of a tough week. Ella was vomiting on Sunday night with a raging fever and off school Monday and Tuesday. Leo was up on Tuesday night with a raging fever in the night and we played musical beds for most of the night. He's very off colour with temperatures and up and down in temperament too. Day off pre-school today. Cora been coughing all week and off her food a bit. Thankfully, still sleeping through the night.
 
So needless to say, I'm a bit buggered!
 
We've been negotiating and coercing our big girl to brave it out and pull the front tooth and wiggly number three, out by herself or by me, but to no avail.
 
Until last night.



An hour and ten minutes from bedtime at 7pm she finally yielded and started flicking it with her tongue, which progressed to touching with her finger, to finally pulling the damned thing out!  There was much begging and pleading from us as she has been coughing so much that you could see when she was breathing in, that tooth flicked back quite spectacularly. We thought that rather than having to visit A&E with her having aspirated a tooth, that we'd persevere and it worked.

The tooth fairy was very generous with lots of coins, a hand written letter and a little pot of bright pink nail polish.

She did write a wee disclaimer at the bottom to say that this was the first and last time she would be so generous...coins only in future!



I'm looking forward to next week in the hope that all the kids are well again and I feel more rested.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Tuesdays

On Tuesdays the kids and I usually have an easy dinner as Antz is at band practice.  Tonight was no exception, apart from the fact that we're all a bit tired. Ella's got a flu bug that had her vomiting on Sun night and off school for the past two days with fever and now a cough. Cora has the sniffles and is generally a bit more clingy than normal. I was up at midnight, 3am and 5am this morning to each and every one of them, so yes, an easy dinner tonight was a blessing!

Without the distraction of daddy coming home, I also usually manage to get them all to bed a bit earlier than normal which is great.
 
Tonight we had pizza. I make my own dough at lunchtime usually when I've got plenty of time, so 5pm tonight was a quick construction effort and into the oven.


Dough rising
 
I used a new recipe tonight from the one I usually use which is from The Pioneer WomanThis is the new recipe and it's okay...not sure which I like best, both much of a muchness to be honest.
 
I usually put the same ingredients on top every time as the kids like it and I suppose then it's nutritionally complete as a meal. 

Caramelised onions
Diced leftover chicken
Diced red and yellow pepper
Grated cheese

To caramelise my onions I dice a whole onion and saute with some olive oil for a few minutes on a medium low heat. The key is to soften the onion without colouring it to allow the natural sweetness of the onion to develop.

 
I often add in a small sprinkle of brown sugar and a drizzle of balsamic to give a bit more depth of flavour then keep it on a medium heat for a few more minutes stirring continuously until ready.
 



Et voila! Some tasty onion to add to your pizza.
 

 
Not the best photograph...taken in haste whilst the kids were begging "where's my dinner!".
 
 


Saturday, September 1, 2012

the pleasure and curse of toys

I'm sure we're just like most other homes with young children, and we certainly don't spoil our kids, but I tell you, kids toys can be a curse sometimes!

Our kids are 6, 3 (almost 4) and 9 months old and in order are girl, boy, girl. This makes for interesting times in the house whereby the rules at the moment are;

Ella's toys....stored in her bedroom.

Leo's toys....split between bedroom and main living area where the cars with wooden garage/road/rail are kept. This is because both he and Ella play with them and nothing is too small or dangerous for little Cora.

Cora's toys...mostly in our second living area that we call the toy room, where you could say that hubby's toys are kept too; paino/trumpet/flugelhorn. Sheesh! 

This was this afternoon when I tried to start sorting Cora's things into one box. You know, to be honest she really doesn't play with that many things as she's so busy watching her brother and sister play.

I feel like we're at so many varied stages with toys that we never get to the point of putting one lot into storage permenantly.  I love that the kids have access to playthings that can be tidied up quite quickly and put in a corner of a room, but it seems like every room in the house is used for play and is constantly in need of tidying.

Please tell me i'm not the only one!

Friday, August 31, 2012

A Spring in my step



Tomorrow is officially the first day of Spring, but the weather this week has been so good you wouldn't believe it was the last week of Winter.  The sunny weather just inspires me and gets me so motivated. Somehow Winter hasn't been that long, but the longer brighter days just bring a different kind of energy to me.

These jonquils are one of my favourite Spring flowers. They are so fragrant and I just love the green/cream combination.



I've just realised that the bright green colour of the flower stems is one of my favourites at the moment. So much so, I've got little snippets of it in different corners of the house. I just love it!

 

 
For those in the Northern hemisphere, the first day of Spring for us tomorrow will mark the first day of Autumn for you. Hopefully there will be a few more weeks of reasonable weather before the leaves start to turn.
 
Have a great day!
 

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

My day in pictures









 
 
 
1. A queue of folded washing waiting to be put away.
2. Homemade bread rising - lunch at home with friends
3. Nose wiping
4. The constant job of dishes
4. The finished baby quilt for sis, folded and ready to post
5. Playing cars
6. His favourite.
 

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The boy in my life.

This wee one loves to play the Wii and in particular the flying game on Sports Resort.  When we bought it for the kids last Christmas we thought it was the compromise between no gaming consoles in the house at all and the kind that they blob in front of staring in to space and only engaging the thumbs.

This just goes to show, that no matter what the intention, kids will always test the theory and find a way to redefine it.



He's so cute, this video below is a conversation between us and I was caught completely unawares whilst trying to get some cute footage of Cora to share with family back home.  I think I avoided the subject quite well...?

 


How do you answer these questions, I'd be interested to hear!

Friday, August 24, 2012

My busy wee life

I've been gone a while, but it's quite busy keeping house and looking after a family of five.
 
We're all good here, and this wee munchkin keeps me pretty busy, but all in all she's such a happy wee soul. She's getting up to all kinds of mischief that 9 month olds do. I've got her in a couple of mornings of Nursery, just for a little "me" time and she's loving it.
 

The "me" time consists of quiet coffee with my book, or at a Pilates class which I really enjoy. The rest of my time is taken with wiping, cleaning, sorting, picking up, putting away. You know? The usual stuff that riddles the life of a mother.


I'm sure scenes like this are in homes everywhere on a regular basis.

I've been slack on the crafting too, but hoping now that the better weather is coming in I'll get more inspired.  I went to a craft fair last night with friends and bought this fabric. Having two girls, i'm sure I'll get to use it soon. Just have to finish three or four other projects that have been languishing around my sewing machine first.


I've been working on this baby quilt for my Sister who is having a baby girl in the next couple of months. Almost done, but not quite.




Hope to get on here a bit more and share some more joy with you all. There's been lots, just not a lot of time to share it.

Back soon!
Stef

Monday, April 30, 2012

Nearly there

I've been working on a patchwork quilt for our bed, my second quilting attempt around the time that Cora was born 5 months ago. Last week I finished the quilt top and I'm pretty happy. I've almost finished the backing, but had a moment just on the home stretch where I stitched the last piece on the wrong way around. Yep, I swore. Yep, the 'F' one. Will be spending tomorrow unpicking and hopefully will get to the shop to buy some batting.


Our little quilting group are getting together later in the week and I'm determined to have it ready to start quilting together.  Let's hope I don't make the same mistake twice with the backing.

Being a "starter" and not much of a "finisher" of course I've started my next project already. I'm doing the hourglass block that my friend Karen is working on too. I bought a Moda Jelly Roll for this one so the hard work of choosing colours is done for me. I'm really enjoying piecing this together and the perfectionist/ control freak in me gets a huge joy hit every time I get perfect points with my sewing.


This is for Mum's 60th in August. Not quite sure how it's going to get half way around the world from NZ to Scotland, but I'll figure that one out later.

Slow down!

It always astounds me how quickly my little ones are growing up. It just seems like yesterday Ella was learning to ride her bike and Leo learning to walk. Now we are here with Leo...


And our littlest Miss Cora is desperate to get crawling. I want to yell "STOP! Slow down, don't grow up too fast, you're scaring me!" Because as sure as the sun rises every morning, I'll be celebrating 21st's, engagements, weddings and grandbabies before I know it.



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