Dancing queens....and santa

Hannah and her friend decided to put on a dancing show for us.

This is our cute Santa that I put on the door.

More dancing girls.

Photo update

Merry Christmas everyone!!!
This is going to be brief as I've only got a few minutes before someone wakes up.
These pics are all out of order (just the way I like it). : )

Darcy got a very cool magnetic warrior dude from his Aunty & Uncle in Australia that he just loves. And wow - it only took him about an hour to lose the head! Yah for eagle-eyed sisters who are willing to get that far under the couch. Ewwwww, can you say giant dust bunnies!!! LOL

Hannah got a beautiful handbag from the same Aunty & Uncle. Verry styley.

Oh no....what on earth possessed Santa to get them water blasters!

New shorts for DH.......look surprised babe!!!


It's a bit hard to see this gorgeous ring holder clearly. A creation of Hannahs.
I love that the kids want to make presents.

There's the ever-present dressing gowns!!!!!!!!!!!!

Darcy LUUUVVVVSSS PS2!!!!! Oops - who left that price sticker on! lol



Maybe next year I should ask for a new dressing gown!!!!

Hannah was doing some serious present wrapping so Darcy made a sign for the door. I wonder what the 'or else is'???

Yeah well I should probably try and take a photo of the lights when they're on aye?

Hannah saw this a while ago while we were shopping for the cousins so we got it but she had to wait til today to use it.

Ok Hannah just woke up so off I go.

Ho ho ho and have a great day.

Veges gone mad!

Yeehaa we have a flower which means we have a baby courgette. Hannah measured it and it's as big as her index finger. We will have to measure it regularly and take plenty of photos.

One huge courgette plant.

There are tiny flower buds here too, much to Hannah's delight.


We can actually eat these lettuce leaves now. That's the beauty of this type - you can cut and come again and again.

Summer fruit kai box

Not a very good photo cos I'm still using my phone. Maybe we need two cameras....? : )

Another early Christmas lunch

Dd10 thought it would be a good idea to have a special lunch today for the three of us. There were some southern style chicken nibbles in the freezer that she was keen to have so we decided to have mashed potatoes and a green salad (all organic) as well and to top it off...DD wanted to make a pavlova with cream and strawberries.

She's never made one before but was pretty confident and I must say she did a great job and it turned out great.
Of course we all over ate and are now absolutely stuffed!

Photo of the week

....and taken on my phone!

Wednesday

It's been funny weather today - muggy, raining on and off and with occasional bouts of sunshine. Perfect for rainbows. There is a second one there buts it's pretty hard to see. I fiddled with the saturation and managed to get a clearer image but it didn't look as good.

Now I'm thinking I have to go and google rainbows to find out why sometimes there are two. : )

This afternoon we visited with an old school friend of mine who lives about 30km away. (It's not a trip we would take regularly due to the price of petrol, but our new vege supplier is about halfway to her place anyway so it's a double good excuse to get out into the countryside where I grew up and roamed a lot as a kid. I also used to ride horses all over the place as well and it's quite neat to go back and see how much it's changed. There are lots of new houses and lifestyle blocks....I hardly consider it truly rural anymore although it's certainly better than living in town IMO.)

DD10 & DS8 love going there because she has lots of animals and two teenage boys that they really like.

The last couple of weeks she's had new kittens and a baby hedgehog (see a few posts ago for photos) so the kids have gotten a good baby animal fix. Today DD10 chose to hold the hedgehog and I felt it's cute little prickles. DS wasn't keen to hold it but he did "feel his spikes and his cute little head"! Next time we visit I'll get some better shots to post.

Her two boys were not there unfortunately (DS loves playing PS2 with the younger one) but we had a lovely but short visit anyway.

Your Candy Heart Says "Hug Me"

A total sweetheart, you always have a lot of love to give out. Your heart is open to where ever love takes you! Your ideal Valentine's Day date: a surprise romantic evening that you've planned out Your flirting style: lots of listening and talking What turns you off: fighting and conflict Why you're hot: you're fearless about falling in love

What Does Your Candy Heart Say?

You Are a Gingerbread House

A little spicy and a little sweet, anyone would like to be lost in the woods with you.

What Holiday Food Are You?

DD10 made some lovely carrot soup to use up the last

of this week's veges. It was very delicious.

Latest photos of the tomatoes, celery and beetroot...

....and the beans, peas, leeks and sweetcorn...

....and the lettuces, courgette and broccoli.

A close up of the broccoli cos I just couldn't believe how much they've grown with all this rain.

A friend of mine found a baby hedgehog a couple of days ago. Isn't it cute?

This week's box of veges. Someone has already been into the strawberries..... : )

My clever girl

DD10 has just created her own blog about being an unschooler as she's been very interested in mine. I think the main attraction for her is the comments part. She's really enjoyed checking each morning to see if we have any new ones (and has been quite frustrated when there are not!!).



I explained to her about web rings and she was keen to join one for unschooling kids. Unfortunately we couldn't find any (don't know if we were even looking in the right place) so she created a new one and is now waiting very impatiently for people to join. : ) I have explained to her how it works but the technicalities bore her!

So if anyone is keen you can check her blog at
www.beingbumble.blogspot.com

I got tagged!

Cool, I got tagged by another lovely unschooling Kiwi Mum. I've seen this on lots of other blogs and it looks like heaps of fun.

This is a quote straight from her blog to explain tagging (hope you don't mind S?)

"In the blogging world (which is still so new to me) I have often seen posts where a person is “tagged”, and they are required to answer funny/quirky/personal questions about themselves and their lives- and then to presumably tag someone else."

The game is to talk about your past week through these 4 questions:

1. What did you accomplish?

Lots of gardening - I created a new garden with help from DD10 which was lots of fun. It feels so right to be starting to growing veges - I just can't wait to eat them! : )
I also managed to get DS8 and I up every morning at 6.50 to watch the brand new series (Eon Kid) he's been waiting for for ages. We had a few late nights too so it was a real achievement. It was SO worth it cos DS8 really loves it (and I must admit I'm pretty hooked too - it's a very cool 3D CGI animation) and it has been so neat spending extra special time with him.

2. Did anything not go as expected?

Can't actually think of anything.

3. What was the highlight of your week?

Going to DH's work Christmas party. He works for a small family business and his boss is actually his best mate AND my sister just happens to be married to the boss AND I used to work there (where we met *bwg*) so it was a very family-oriented party. : )
We haven't been to anything like that for so long and it was just the best. It was lovely to catch up everyone.

4. Did anything exciting happen you did not expect?

My cousin and his wife had a baby boy!

Now I am supposed to tag someone else....I think I leave a comment on their blog tagging them. What fun.

Christmas Party

We had lots of yummy food.

Can you see the cute little finger marks care of my 22mth old niece?

Raining at last.

Finally we get some decent rain for our poor gardens AND for those people on rainwater. I bet there were a few dry tanks around here.


I love these photos cos you can really see how hard its raining.
I can't wait to take some photos of my garden after all this rain.

This week's Kai box

I remembered to take a photo of this weeks organic vege box. Don't they look gorgeous? And the taste....mmmmmm!

My vege garden

These are the latest photos of my vege gardens/pots.

This shot is of some newly potted-up tomatoes, celery and beetroot. The tiny ones are the celery and the 3 different coloured tomatoes (bottom and top right) are the new ones. The colour difference is really noticeable when they are side by side.

This is Hannah's capsicum which is now sharing a pot with 3 celery. She is very proud of it.

This is the first lot that I planted and they are doing so well. There were originally 6 broccoli.

I call this bit my stage 2 garden. It has 2 broccoli (that I moved from the first lot when they got too big), 6 lettuces of different varieties and a courgette. I think a snail might be nibbling at my lettuces so I will have to investigate some organic pest solutions!

These are my scarlet runner beans which I'm pretty proud of. I can't wait to try these cos I LOVE sliced runner beans!!

And this is the garden Hannah and I dug last night to extend the bean patch. We planted peas, corn and leeks.