Mmmmm, granola!

Evie's at her Nana's house this afternoon, which makes it a bit easier to tidy up the house and play with Livinia. I made up a fresh batch of granola too. I eat this for breakfast, just dry, no milk or water. It's made with organic oats, almonds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut, cinnamon, grapeseed oil and honey. The honey is from extended family members, (Edmonds Honey) who are apiarists. I get my beeswax for soapmaking from them too.

Moons...

Like my new header? My lovely husband Andrew made it for me with some of his photography of the night sky.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Andrew turns 28 today, here's the cake we made him, a chocolate Jaffa cake. It's just a standard chocolate cake, with the addition of crushed Jaffas. Evie calls it the happy birthday cake.
The girls gave Andrew the Ostheimer father, this is how we found him earlier- holding the baby :)

Preparing for Easter

I just took the girls for a walk down to our local shopping strip to run a couple of errands, I had seen these gorgeous Easter chocolates in our local fruit and vegetable shop yesterday, so thought I'd buy some for Easter next time Evie fell asleep in the pusher. Well, today was the day. The Europeans really know how to do Easter don't they? Beats some of the garish Easter egg packaging I've seen around.
And this little Ostheimer rabbit hutch has been squirrelled away for a little while now. Looks like we'll be celebrating Easter a day early, as Andrew is heading to the USA for work early Easter morning.

Gingerbread

Stab wound

Yesterday Evie and I got busy in the kitchen making gingerbread men, rabbits, eggs and butterflies.
I should have tasted the icing pens first, they are awful! Evie makes me take it off before she eats one.

Daddy will be proud of this!

Changing up the play space

I've been trying to figure out what to do with this corner play area, whether we should try to make a playstand or two, or get some sort of low, wide bookcase. Anyway, I came up with a temporary solution- bringing our old TV cabinet inside and covering it with a play silk for a farm play area, there is a cupboard underneath so we can store a few toys in there. I need to get some more baskets, to separate different toy types ie puppets, puzzles, dress ups, blocks, animals. I think it'll be a work in progres for a while, but the rearranging seems to have freshened up imaginative play for Evie.
Top of the old TV cabinet with farm scene. I apologise for the darkness of the photos, this house doesn't have a lot of great light, this room in particular.

Autumn garden

New lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, onion and leeks seedlings in, ready for winter.
Nectarine tree is a little confused, and had a few blossoms on it again...crazy!

More garden progress

We had some mulch delivered yesterday, and Andrew has spent late yesterday afternoon and some of today spreading it, with a little of my help and some more help from his dad. He also started oiling the new screens.
The mulch pile. I love this mulch, it's called leaf litter, and I think the garden supply place just buys it from tree loppers. It looks nice and natural, like a forest floor, and smells pretty good too.
I think it will look great when the plants grow, I still need to add more, but I need to leave a path for a rain water tank to be rolled in.
I think a bird bath would be nice too, hopefully we'll attract some native birds rather than the pest birds we have now.

Random stuff...

Custom Easter outfit number 2 (sorry, bad lighting, it's dull here today) The brief was a purple skirt in a winter weight fabric for a 3 year old girl. Purple can be a tricky colour to find, very few choices.

Here's a photo of our backyard last night after it had been raining (look, puddles!) This shows the screens my dad built on the weekend with a little help from me. The grass might green up now we've had some rain, we've had the driest summer on record I think. I've started to dig out a garden bed next to the garage, where I've planted a row of olive trees as a screen. I need to think of something small to plant in front of them as a border- dwarf lavenders, grasses, or something else?
This is what happens when you leave Evie to her watercolour painting to pull muffins out of the oven. She even painted the soles of her feet.

Autumn nature table

Here are the beginnings of our autumn nature table, can't wait until we can collect some autumn leaves once they change colour and fall off the trees. Autumn is my favourite time of year, I'm not a huge fan of the heat of summer. Just have to survive 35 degrees C tomorrow, then hopefully there will be no more hot days.

Autumn

Welcome Autumn!