Food + Art

Who said you shouldn’t play with your food anyway?

I came across this fabulous idea on Pinterest a little while ago, and finally got a chance to try it out. Peter and Mayana have their last Mainly Music for the year tomorrow, and have been asked to bring a plate of food to share.

Last week Peter whipped up an epic batch of biscuits (easiest recipe ever: 500g butter, 1 tin sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup sugar, 5 cups self-raising flour). He froze it into about 5 lots and has been baking it in batches. So he used some of that biscuit dough to make some Christmas tree shaped biscuits. Then I made a simple icing of about 1.5 cups of icing sugar and the juice of 3/4 of a lemon. I spread it onto the biscuits and let it harden.

After dinner, the fun began.

I set out three dishes with red, green and yellow food dye, and a handful of cotton-buds.

And we decorated!!

Mayana thought it was awesome!

Two of her favourite things, ‘making art’, and biscuits!

And before we knew it we had a beautiful, colourful and creative batch of Christmas biscuits ready to take to Music tomorrow!

It was so lovely, the three of us doing something special all together, making memories. We’d quite like to make this an annual family tradition.

Super-easy, lots of fun, and kept Mayana fully focussed for nearly half an hour. The perfect toddler activity. You should give it a try!!

Point + Shoot: Fun in the Sun

And when I say sun, I mean stinking hot and humid Queensland summer sun. It was quite a warm weekend to say the least, but we still managed to have a lovely time together…

We enjoyed a lazy breakfast at the local French bakery (yum!!!).

Then we came home and took photos of my ever-growing baby bump (17 weeks on Saturday!!)

And of course Mayana wanted a photo of her baby too…

I had a table of handmade goodies to sell at a church women’s event in the afternoon, which was lots of fun.When I got home, we meandered down to the ‘Duck Park’ to feed Mayana’s little friends. There are also a whole bunch of turtles who live in here, and the poke their little heads up so they don’t miss out on a good feed too! Mayana LOVES it.

Some of the duckies got a bit brave and came quite close to Mayana, until she tried to cuddle them. That kind of freaked them out.

Once the bread was all gone it was time to hit the playground.

Mayana loves the Duck Park!

We also enjoyed a visit from my parents and Aunty Joce who came to check out our new digs, and the community Christmas Carols on Sunday evening. Clearly I was having too much fun to take photos though.

Back to work today… and only four more days before HOLIDAYS!!! (can you tell I’m excited?)

I’m playing along with Louise for Point + Shoot… you should too!

The One Where I Show You Some Photos Of Our New House

We have been in for over a week now, and are mostly unpacked. I have to say, I LOVE our new home. I thought I loved our old home, but this one is so much better in so many ways. I really love living here.

So here are some photos of our beautiful home.. we are so blessed!

This is our dining/computer/living area, looking into our lounge room. Technically this big open area should be the lounge room, and what we’re using for a lounge should be the dining room, but we wanted to keep it all as open as possible. Plus I’m taking this photo from the kitchen doorway, and to me it makes more sense to have the dining room next to the kitchen.

We spoiled our table with a pretty new table cloth and runner. And I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t made it Christmassy!

The opposite wall of the living room. I love how this house has the beams all around the walls, they make fabulous picture rails!

This is from the living area looking back into the entry hallway & front door. On the right is our bedroom, and on the left is what will be Baby Two’s bedroom, but neither of them are ready for the public eye just yet! I’m kind of in love with the fact that all the feature glass panels in this house are pink and green, and the only feature wall in the house is pretty much my favourite shade of green.

Through the front door is our very impressive front verandah. We’ve eaten almost every meal since we moved here out there, and we are planning on investing in a nice outdoor setting, because the verandah most certainly justifies it!

Our lounge room. The blinding light behind the couch is a set of french doors onto a narrow landing outside. When they’re opened we get a delightful breeze through the house. (See the delicious green wall!)

This is the view from the doorway back through the living area. You can see the kitchen door at the end. If you walk through the door where I’m standing, you will find a sunroom (which will soon become my craft room) on the right, a bathroom on the left, and a funny little hallway which leads to Mayana’s bedroom. I just went to take a photo of Mayana’s bedroom but it seems she’s been doing some pretty hardcore playing in there today so I’ll wait for a day when it’s a tad tidier I think!

I will, however show you the bathroom. Super cute huh? I love the claw-footed bathtub!

Back through to the other end of the house, to the kitchen! It’s smaller than our last kitchen, but I think probably more functional. Plus it has a pretty awesome stove! The table in the middle there is to be used for bench-space, because there’s not much else to speak of in the rest of the kitchen.

Doesn't my beautiful cupboard look great in here!?

Oh, and the Pièce de résistance, our walk-in pantry. It’s like a little bit of heaven for us… we’ve lived in two places with no pantry at all, and one with the most ridiculous and impractical pantry every invented. So this feels verrrry flash!

So there you have it! Our lovely new home… God sure turned this situation into something pretty awesome, huh?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

I love Christmas. I love everything about it. I love the lead-up, the decorations, the carols, the shopping, the food… I just love it. And I love decorating my house.

And yes, I am one of those people who has already put up their Christmas tree. I just couldn’t help myself. I’m the luckiest girl in the world that I have a husband who is willing to indulge my crazy Christmas lovin’.

We decorated our tree last Thursday night, and Mayana was absolutely beside herself with excitement. She really was a good helper, from matching all the different colours of the branches to help Papa put the tree together, and helping with putting baubles on the tree, to having the great honour of placing the star on top. I loved watching her enjoy it so much!

“This is the yellow pile, and the white ones go over there, okay Papa?”

Such a good helper!

Our beautiful tree and our beautiful girl!!

It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Point + Shoot–yay for weekends!

We had a rather delicious weekend this week… I so love lazy weekends with my two loves.

We introduced Mayana to the ‘Toad in a Hole’ for breakfast.

She was in turn horrified, (We DON’T eat toads Mama!), then delighted…

“I LOVE toads in holes Mama! They De-Lish-Us!!!”

We enjoyed the beautiful pink frangipanis that are growing right at verandah height. They smell so lovely!

We took Mayana to play at the local water park, which is one of Mayana’s favourite places in the world. After some manic running around, and about 6 goes on the ‘big waterslide’ (where she was sneaking between the legs of all the big kids who were patiently lining up.. cheeky thing!), she got a bit cold so we wrapped her in a towel and sat her in the sun and she savoured a delicious nectarine. How I love summer fruits!

We all enjoyed the beautiful beach scenes.

After Maysi woke up from a 2.5 hour sleep (I’m telling you, taking her to Wetside is always a good thing!) we made a cake together.

We ate dinner on the verandah, and I was blown away by how absolutely gorgeous my daughter is.

She takes my breath away!

Then it was time to enjoy the fruits of our labour…

A rainbow cake!!!

We all had a very happy weekend! Did you? Play along with Lou here!

The Month of Hairy Men

It’s that time of year again, where the men about town are slightly hairier than usual, and husbands are slightly more prickly to kiss. Well, mine is. Because last week, he announced to me that he was going to take part in Movember.

Yikes! I told him that he would be forgoing kisses for a month. If only he weren’t such a great kisser… he’s up keeping his end of the bargain far more successfully than I am. 

He started off with an incredibly creepy mo-design, but has thankfully tamed it back to a more standard-type moustache. I’m no fan, there are moments when he kind of looks like Kip to me and that more than freaks me out.

Freaky right?

Right now, he hasn’t shaved for a few days, so his ‘mo’ is kind of blended in to the rest of his facial hair. He’s threatening to tidy it up,so we’ll see how that turns out. Once it’s fully grown I’ll take a photo for you all to enjoy.

This year, Movember is supporting charities such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Beyond Blue, which are both worthy causes. So if you have a spare minute and a spare dollar, pop by my husband’s Mo Bro profile and sponsor his creepy facial caterpillar heroic efforts to make a difference and raise some awareness for these great charities.

And spare a thought for me… I’ll just be sitting here, waiting for December, when I can have my smooth-skinned and far-more-kissable husband back!

On the Move

I can't believe that after only nine months our belongings are all being boxed up for another move.

A few weeks ago, the house we are currently renting was sold. Technically, our lease gives us the right to stay here until July next year. And after a seriously embarrassing, pregnancy-hormone-induced breakdown I had when the agent called me at work to tell me about the sale which is on a 30 day contract, i was just about ready to tell them where to stick it! However, when our landlord offered to pay for a good portion of our moving costs, and we did the math and imagined how awful it would be to have to move with an 8ish week old baby, we decided to play along- as long as the Real Estate helped us to find a wonderful house to move into. We definitely wouldn't be moving for anything less than wonderful.

Thankfully, they came to the party. Next week, we'll be moving into another delightful Queenslander... In fact I'd probably go so far as to say that it is even more delightful than the one we live in now! It has polished timber floors, a beautifully done up kitchen with an actual walk-in pantry (as opposed to no pantry at all). Two lovely bathrooms, one of which houses a claw-footed bath (swoon). An absolutely beautiful front verandah. A swing set and cubby house in the yard (which is what sold Mayana). Wardrobes in every room - even a walk-in one in the master bedroom. An actual laundry room (as opposed to taps for your washing machine in a corner under the house). And stacks of storage space and playing space under the house too. Plus, there is a real dining room upstairs, as well as a sunroom, and even Baby Two will be able to have his/her own room. Well, at least until he/she is sleeping through the night, because with the sheer size of Mayana's room it would be a crime to not have them share at some point.
All this and we'll only be paying $10 more a week than what we pay now! God is indeed good to us.

I actually can't wait to be living there. I only wish this while process of the packing and moving and unpacking could be done with a simple click of the fingers. As it is, we get the keys on Tuesday, the truck is booked for Wednesday, Peter has a day's teaching work on Thursday and will spend Friday doing a bond clean before we hand the keys back in. I'm not sure yet how I feel about all of this happening while I'm at work. Hopefully my boss will see fit to give me a few early marks this week! I think he will, considering he and his wife have offered to have Maysi all Wednesday afternoon, feed, bath and ready her for bed so we can get the important things like beds organized at the new house. In fact we've been blown away by all the offers of help for moving and cleaning and looking after Mayana. We have definitely landed ourselves in a lovely community.

Peter has been wonderful (isn't he always?). He's done pretty much all of the packing with the 'help' of a certain nearly-three-year-old (who is generally happy as long as there is any empty box in which to play), and all of the phone calls to organize for utilities to be changed over, arranged all the money side of things with paying bond etc, booked the removalist, and still managed to keep on top of the washing, and cook dinner most nights when the smell and thought of food still makes me want to barf. Oh, and organize himself to apply for a good handful of jobs for next year, as well as arranging the literal pile of things he needs to apply for Education Queensland. He's truly awesome, and I'm truly blessed.

I hope you have a great weekend. I'll be busy hanging out with my family who are coming up to see my sister's dance concert, and trying to mentally prepare myself for the whirlwind week ahead. Wish us luck!