Bread baking Wednesday

We made loaves of bread today, as I bought a tin on the weekend, and my mum gave me a pipe loaf tin. The pipe loaf didn't have enough dough in it, so it didn't fill the tin. I will know for next time.
We popped down to the Ripples Eco centre in Mt Duneed on Saturday afternoon (to get Evie to sleep in the car), and I bought this cute little chair for Evie to stand on while she brushes her teeth and washes her hands. It's made from recycled timber/driftwood. Might just have to get a matching one, methinks. Andrew's back now, and went back to work today, so were getting back to normality.

Bread baking Wednesday

I think Wednesday will be our bread baking day. Today it was bread rolls. They were so yummy, much nicer than the little white dinner rolls Evie insists on buying when we pass a certain bakery on our travels.
They were made with white flour, light rye flour, and a little bit of LSA (linseed/sunflower/almond)

Seems the dough needed a little smack down.

and a poke

Dyeing wool jumpers

I saw this jumper on Ebay for $1, was put off by its lack of colour, then thought... I could dye it! After a bit of research, and some help from Jannelle from Heartfelt via email, I dyed these 2 jumpers for Livinia. The second (sideways) jumper is from a local op shop.

I love this green, and they dyed better and easier than expected. I've dyed cotton with not much success in the past, but wool seems to take up the dye much easier. Adding some daisy buttons makes them a bit more girly I think.

The girls

Evie

Livinia

...now I need to work on getting more shots of the 2 of them together.

Baking bread with children

This book arrived yesterday, I had to put it to good use today, so we made.......

Cinnamon rolls (or snails according to Evie)

They turned out pretty well for our first attempt, and they taste pretty good too. I'll try to make them smaller next time I think, then we'll have more :) She was pretty keen to use that nice big knife all by herself. She had a little help from me though. I convinced her to keep her clothes on this time, helps that it's a bit chilly outside.

Happy Easter!

We celebrated Easter on Saturday, as Andrew flew out of the country on Sunday morning. Evie was pretty thrilled with the spoils.
On Sunday, the girls and I went to church with my parents, had lunch at their house, then afternoon tea at a cafe overlooking the bay with aunties, uncles, cousins and grandparents. A good day was has (aside from Livinia and I having colds), and now we're settling into a routine without daddy for 2 weeks. Ok so far...

Hot cross buns

Sultana thief!

Well, my bread machine packed it in a little while ago, I've been a bit lost without it. I'd been looking for an easy hot cross bun recipe to make without the aid of a bread machine, and finally found one. So we had a go today. Only half of them have crosses, as I cut the hole in the piping bag too big, and I'm not very good at that part anyway. They turned out pretty well I think. Yes, that's my naked chef in the above photo, I made her wear an apron though ;)

The finished product

Who's been eating our apples?

Apple mess on the ground
The rainbow lorikeet! It's a bit hard to see his beautiful colours at dusk, but he's most welcome in our yard, feeding from our big apple tree. I hadn't seen many native birds in our yard until now, we have honeyeaters too. We hope to have lots of them when all our new native plants start flowering.