Bread baking Wednesday- raisin bread

I'm still baking bread once or twice a week, since my bread machine broke down early this year. Today was my first attempt at raisin bread- tastes great, and the house is smelling pretty good right now!

Our tank has arrived

Now we have to get it in place near the vegie patch, and install it.

A productive day

Evie's pants have been getting a bit short for her lately, she's grown 5cm or 2 inches since her birthday 4 months ago. So I whipped these denim pants up over the last couple of days.

From lemons...

...to lemon cordial

Images from Freshwater Creek Steiner School Spring Fair

Another little hat

Here it is, the second little hat, it came together much quicker than the first. It fits Evie quite well.

And here are some little fabric covered button clips we made, they weren't as easy to make as I thought they'd be!

One little hat

The girls both needed new hats for summer, so I decided it might be a good idea to make them, as I couldn't find any that I really wanted to buy. I dislike sewing circles, but made it through, with just a few puckers. Now I have to do it all again in a bigger size for Evie.

How much fun is it to photograph a 10 month old in their 'I don't like hats' phase?

Time for a new mattress

Our new mattress arrived today, very exciting. It's an organic wool futon, covered with organic cotton canvas. Blessed Earth had a sale on mattresses in September, so I thought it was high time we had a new one, since our old one was second hand (from relatives), and looking quite awful. It was important to me to find a natural fibre mattress, and I've since learned that metal springs in mattresses represent poison arrows in feng shui (futons have no springs). I believe that cancer is often caused by environmental factors, including the things we bring into our home. Our bodies have an amazing ability to deal with and get rid of toxins, but I think at this time we are bombarding ourselved with too many toxins, and our bodies just can't keep up with the elimination process. So bedding is a good place to start when living a less toxin filled life, since we spend about 1/3 of our lives in bed.

Trip to the farm

Last week we had a little holiday in Bendigo, and a day trip up to Sea Lake to see Andrew's sister & her kids.

Here's all 5 cousins (not the doll, baby Archie is facing away)

Smiles from Archie :)

Little gardener

I got out the secateurs today, to give the rainbow chard a bit of a chop back, looks like she beat me to it! She was "picking silverbeet for nana." Then she stuffed it into a couple of bags. We're looking forward to daddy coming home tomorrow, he's been in USA this week.

October garden snapshot

Sage in full bloom with dwarf apple tree blossoming on the right

Snow peas that were delicious in a stir fry last week

Second hand irises

It hailed about 10 minutes after these photos were taken!