holidays day seven, Making pasta

 A few months ago me and my sister Anneke and I were at markets and I saw a pasta roller/cutter. At the time I decided that I shouldn't get it as my little kitchen doesn't have much storage space but once we left I regretted not getting it. She remembered and surprised me with one for Christmas!
Tonight I googled a pasta recipe and made us carbonara for tea with fresh fettichini pasta.
The pasta was easy to make, just two eggs from my chooks and a cup of flour

 I mixed them together and kneaded for 8 minutes
 I then rolled it through the machine several times.
 Once the flat sheets had dried just a little I passed them through the fettuchini attachment and hung the pieces over my cupboard doors until I had enough for our meal



 I made our favourite carbonara sauce and it was delicious! Pasta for tea has never been so fun!

Ive also been working on a few more dolls for my daycare.
Last week Hansi helped me mark and cut the fabric pieces for two new dolls. The girl doll on the left is new. We attempted to dye her skin fabric brown with coffee (Hansi and another girl Yshi both have brown skin so I thought it would be nice for them) but I had no idea how much coffee to use and as you can see it only  worked a little bit. She is made using the same pattern as the boy doll but instead of using tubular bandage for the inner head I used a gathered piece of fabric and I love that her head turned out a bit chubbier. I crocheted her wig and then just hooked on hair around the edges and part for her pigtails. So far her name is Zoe.
Finn has a new cardie, he realy 'needed' one with green and white stripes:)
One day soon I will make another boy doll and we have a doll 'Talulah' coming from our Canadian day care pen pals. It will be nice (and peaceful;) when there are enough for each of the children

holidays day six, Christmas Day

We Stayed at Bennys sisters place Christmas Eve night and it was so much fun getting woken up in the morning by Terleah, who was so excited that Santa had finaly come (and that we had a 'sleep over' at her house:) Terleah and Dylan both loved ripping open their presents

Although I forgot to take photos of the rest of the day we had a realy nice Aussie christmas day with Bennys family. We spent most of the day outside, helped Terleah ride her new bike that we got for her, had a delicious lunch of cold meats and salads and a little water fight!

holidays day four, Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve we get together with our family from my mums side at my Oma and Opas house around their big beautiful Christmas tree.

Each Year One of the men (this year my cousin Sam) sits by the tree in Opas chair and passes presents to two ' little elves' (generally two kids, we all loved being chosen as an 'elf') who give them out.

We all squeeze into the little loungeroom and it is a lot of fun being all together and seing every one get presents

 

Christmas eve together is such a special tradition for us all. Each year I remember lots of other years.
I always remember my telling aunty Els I realy wanted a particular doll when I was about three. She told me that I had better get up on the table and shout out to father christmas that I realy wanted it so that he could bring it to me. I thought it was so magical when I recieved it that night!
 I also always loved going to the magic cave with all my cousins and crack up seing pictures of us sitting on Father Christmas wearing matching outfits that our mums had sewed for us all and matching hair styles!
I am so thankful to be part of such a big fun family 

Holidays day three

 I needed to get out of the house and do something fun.
 Some of my favourite days are days like this one, little adventures by myself. Getting out amongst beautiful nature, clearing my head, making room for new thoughts, more positive ones.

I took some craft projects and a book so that Id have something to do but I didnt need them. All I needed was the green grass to lay in, the breeze that rustled the leaves and blew the occasional one gracefully to the ground.

I love looking up and seing the sunlight lighting up leaves from behind. I love seing snippets of blue sky framed by them

All I needed was to be somewhere else, somewhere fresh and new where I new that I wouldn't see anyone I knew. Somewhere where I could climb trees and just be... with no worries or thoughts of the past or future, just the present there and then.

I held on tight to the trees strong trunk and felt safe knowing that it would hold me up high

I love this beautiful life I have

There can be such freedom In new surroundings

Holidays day two

Enjoying summer solstice. The pretty crystal was a present from my wonderful Mum yesterday, perfect for soaking up sunbeams on the longest day of the year!

 Rosemary, little dasies, purple flowers

Sun tea
 And sun biscuits (yep their meant to be suns:)

Two of my chickie girls laid their first egg! Yay chickie girls!

2 weeks holidays! Day one

 For my very first day of holidays I went to visit Mum
It was a fun day full of opp shopping, last minute present buying and lunch in the park
After tea we went to the beach until it was time to look at Christmas lights

 The water was dark and moody looking, the weather unseasonably cold

 We saw lots of pretty lights

 It was nice to drive around my old town and see all the farmilliar lights that we see each year and of course some new ones.

Im glad to be on holidays but I dont feel as relaxed as id hoped. Ive taken my second lot of clomid (fertility medication) and its making me feel stressed out.

 I figured that with my work increasing and my day care anual re-approval coming up that I had reasons to feel stressed but now that im on holidays and have nothing to stress about for two weeks I can see that realy im stressed about nothing!

 I hate feeling like this and im considering not taking clomid next month to give myself a break but I hate the thought of missing an oporturity to get pregnant.

 Anyway, my mum gave me a nice relaxing massage and im planning to meditate and have a restful break and hopefully feel good and enjoy my time off.

A little more red and green

 With inspiration from an article on 'Celebrating Christmas soulfully in the southern hemisphere' I have been putting together some simple summery Christmas decorations. My wreath is made of our favourite herb rosemary. I attatched it to a bent coat hanger using torn strips of christmas fabric that I forund at an opp shop during the year. I also added some red felt stars and a sun ornament in the middle in celebration of our hot summer sun. I hung it on the weekend in the hope that it would last two week and this photo was taken this morning, as you can see it is so far so good, still looking green and beautiful after a rather hot day yesterday. Benny and I both love to smell it as it smells just like when I bake chips with rosemary (yum!)

 
 Ive also made another warm summery star for the window in Christmassy red

 And decorated some sprigs of rosemary in a jar. I used some leftove beeswax sheet pieces to make decorative stars that stick on the jar and also modeled some as a candy cane for on the rosemary sprig

Me and the children have been buisy sanding away at our dolls house, here is the 'during' pic of its make over

Its beginning to look a little like Christmas

 Although ive been flat out with work and getting ready for my anual day care aproval ive been slowly but surely enjoying the beginning of summer and the lead up to Christmas by making some simple decorations. Its been a very wet Summer so far. The past couple of days Port Wakefield has been on flood warning!

 I made some rolled bees wax christmas candles this afternoon with stars. When the first one was lit and filling the air with its honey smell it sudenly felt like christmas was on its way. Im glad for the weekend and seems Benny has to work tomorrow morning I will be crafting up some Christmas presents.

(I just lit them both this evening and couldnt resist another picture)

last weekend (or was it the weekend before?) Anneke came over and we decorated Mum and Dads tree together (what a ridiculously lame photo of us all he he:)

eco beach wondering and our new favourite toys

 On Sunday morning me and Dad beat the hot weather to the beach for an early morning walk. We went back to the 'sea glass' beach and I found some more treasures for our Summer nature table.

 Along the way we saw quite a bit of rubbish so we deciced to pick up as much as we could carry on the way back to put in the bin. The whole way we were feeling like banana pancakes so eventually we went home to make some.

As soon as we turned around and began looking for rubbish I found a worn out holey bucket, perfect for carying more rubbish! Moments after I said the bucket had as much as it could fit, Dad happened to find a shopping bag that would carry more! Doesnt it feel like when were doing what were supposed to be doing the world just flows and helps us! 

Incase your wondering the banana pancakes were realy good (yum)

 Today I got a rather special package in the mail, some beautiful wooden farm animals that I bought with the money from working a weekend a few weeks back. It was a hot day so we made them a pond and they did lots of swimming and splashing!

the wave stacker made a great  water slide

 They ate some rather large carrots and bananas!

I think I love the toys even more than the kids:)

Im off to Jack Johnson concert tonight, my Christmas present from Dad. Im soo excited!!! Today is a realy great day!