Joe ......

I have been really enjoying knitting this winter. I have finally found some patience and have found myself liking the fact that it takes longer to finish something, then it does when you whip it up on the sewing machine!! I love the fact that I can leave my knitting on the side of the couch, and pick it up and do a few rows whenever I have few minits spare time.
I am still very much an amateur, but slowly learning new things enabling me to undertake slightly more exciting projects!
At the moment I'm knitting a hat for Andy ( apparently I never make him anything so I really had to get on to it!). This is take two of the hat, the first one ended up fitting Charlie, important lesson learnt.... Use the right size yarn!! The pattern I'm using is called Joe, from designer Jane Richmond. Ive also made her mitten cuffs, which have come out super cute. I like her patterns as they are really easy to follow and simple, great for beginners. The hat is knit on double pointed needles which was a first for me, now I have gotten past the awkwardness I'm really enjoying it.
I'm about a third of the way done, hopefully it works out fingers crossed!

Joe attempt number 1!

Joe attempt number 2 ....

Do you like knitting?? Id love some suggestions of cool knitting patterns to try ..... Sarah xx

Autumn........

Its getting cold out, we were all bundled up in our woollies this morning ready to walk to school.The leaves are dropping and there are feijoa's that need to be picked. Autumn has well and truly set in.

Ive been meaning to make Archie some new winter clothes for ages but haven't got round to it. His kindy is in a valley and it gets so cold there, I don't think the sun comes up till about 10.30! He needs lots of woollies!! The good thing about making Archie stuff is that it kills two birds with one stone. If I make his things a bit big, Charlie will fit them too, BONUS!

Unfortunately once again, by the time I had finished making things for orders, I had run out of sewing time! I did however manage to whip up a new hat each. They chose the fabric, stoked!!

Hope you are all keeping warm xx

100% merino hoodie

Reversible merino beanie

GRUMPY!! 100% merino beanie, reversible.

Sport ..........

So my family likes sport..... ALOT!!! Andy and Jack could spend hours talking about sport, watching the sports news every night is great fun you get the drift!!! My mother thinks its hilarious that I have ended up with 3 boys, especially ones that are full on physically. I was such a girly girl when I was younger and hated exercise lol.
Anyhow I digress .... Sport is big in our household, basically its the main interest. Andy has played Soccer for years, he still plays now and coaches Jacks team. Charlie plays as well, so that's 3 games in one day. The boys also love mountain biking, tennis, basketball shall I go on?  Soooo I've chosen to embrace it. I decided that if I wanted to spend any time with my family that I would have to learn to love the things that they do. We now cycle together in the weekend, Jack and I go for runs, we go for many family walks!! The kids love it, it burns off excess energy, I must admit I don't mind it too much either!! Its good healthy clean fun and its free! Thankfully my boys also love to do craft, read, bake and other more sedate activities..... just not as much as they love sport!!!!!
Our weekend sports activities so far:
                                                      
Watching the Giants game:

Captivated!

Like father like son

 Saturday morning soccer:

 I only got as far as Charlie's game before I met up with a few friends who were going out for coffee and got a bit sidetracked. I'm not totally committed to the soccer mum thing quite yet, it was a bit to easy to sway!

Sick .....

This morning we all piled in to the car at 8.20 am ready and rearing to go. This is very unusual for us, as we like to chill out in the morning and take it easy, especially during the school holidays! Today though, we were dropping Jack off too soccer camp, picking Nana up, and going out to see the hamster farm!! My littlies have been looking forward to this all week, I was looking forward to it as well as we were going to sneak in a coffee and a browse at one of the local winery's!

However half way there we had a glitch in the plan, Charlie was sick. Full on. Glassy eyes, high temp, sore tummy the lot. Now you might be wondering how I had not noticed that he was sick before then, this is why. Charlie is like the boy who cried wolf, he always has a sore tummy, or a headache, when its convenient for him (getting out of chores, not eating dinner etc..) So when he mentioned it this morning, I just brushed it off like any other day, bad mummy!

My new favourite winter sheets (managed to wash everyones sheets!)

Soooo, we dropped Nana off and headed home. Charlie was popped to bed, and promptly slept for 3 hours.
Now I had one small child who was very disappointed we didn't get to see any hamsters, so we did the next best thing in his eyes and baked! I had come across a recipe on line to make bulk biscuits. It only had 4 ingredients to make the basic dough, then you can add what you like. We quartered the dough, and added peanut butter to one lot, choc chips to the other, and put the other two in snap lock bags to freeze for another time. These turned out great, (I will write out the recipe at the end of the post), easy to work with dough, and nice and versatile. While they are certainly not some sort of culinary delight, I'm sure they will go down a treat in the lunch boxes.

 Next on the baking list was cupcakes, Archie loves making cupcakes, well actually the icing! Today was the first time he was able to use sprinkles,  (I'm a mean mummy who wont let her kids eat all that colour, plus its one of the things that makes jack go CRAZY!! ) finally I found at the super market, some sprinkles that used natural colours, hooray yep not deprived any more!

yay!

Cupcake ?

All in all, though we didn't have the fun excursion that was planned, while sicky slept, I was able to spend some nice one on one time with Archie, and I caught up on loads of house work!  There always is a silver lining, its taken me a long time to figure this out. I used to get so disappointed when things didn't go to plan,  rationally I knew that it was just life, but I used to dwell on the bad. Now the kids are older, this kind of thing doesn't happen so much which makes it easier I guess, and we can all go to the hamster farm as a family on the weekend xxx


Basic cookie dough

1cup sugar
500g marge (I used butter)
1 tin condensed milk
5 cups s/r flour
heat oven to 180, grease oven tray (I used baking paper instead)
cream butter & sugar. Mix in flour & cond. milk. Add any extras to mix - this is the fun part - we did a few different versions - added cocoa to some, choc chips to some, craisins to some, orange peel to some - the choices are endless, what ever you have on hand to biff in - do it! Place on baking tray in balls & press down with fork (we did slightly bigger than teaspoon sized balls)
Cook for 10-15 mins til golden brown.

Peaches ........

Well yes, two food posts in a row. You get the drift, we really do love our food round here!
The other day I was generously given a huge carrier a bag of Black Boy Peaches. Now funnily enough, I had never come across these beauties, in fact (laugh it up) I didn't even know the flesh was red!! If you are like me and want to learn more, check out this article here, its funny. 
So today I spotted said carrier bag , sitting on the kitchen floor and feeling very guilty of neglect decided I better do something with them!

Google was once again my friend, and apart from the many bottling recipes I found, I learnt that you could make Peach jam BINGO!!. Though I thought I had finished my jam making for the season, I couldn't resist making a few more jars, plus I had never tasted Peach Jam.
Whenever I need baking/ jam/ preserving advice I ring my Mother in law, without fail she will know the answer, or have the recipe, or whatever I need. She pulled through once again today with an easy to follow Peach Jam recipe, thanks Nana x

Peach Jam

2.7 kg's Peaches
600 mls of water
2 kg's Sugar

Stone fruit. Put into preserving pan with water. Cooked slowly till fruit is pulped. (I usually mash the fruit with the potato masher) Add sugar, stir well and bring to the boil. Boil rapidly for 20 mins (mine took about 30), then test.
I halved the recipe and got 3 and half jars of jam.

Jam was made, then eaten still warm (not sure if you are meant to do that) on spicy fruit muffins for afternoon tea. The children got caught in rain shower on their way home from school, so eagerly devoured their warm yummy treat.

In other non food related news. I have cut out a gorgeous, very girly hoodie, that I'm looking forward to stitching hopefully tomorrow. I have picked out Jacks birthday cake, thanks Pinterest, that I will be making tomorrow as well! Fun times xxxx

QT............

Charlie my middle child started school late last year. I miss him, I really do. We really get each other, and he's a cool little dude to hang out with. Today I decided it was time we spent some quality time together, out of the house, with no interruptions. He wanted to go for a walk downtown and out for morning tea. I let him lead the way, and off we went......

Down the drive we go....

We stopped and watched the beginning of the Trolley Darby.

We played with the balls at Rebel.

We watched Steamboat Billy go round and round.

He bought a gemstone with his pocket money.

We watched the Mullet Man perform some very fancy tricks.

Pretty impressive!!

We had morning tea at this very old school cafe!

YUM!

We were out for hours. I had time to listen and felt like we really reconnected, it was great! Charlie had a chance to talk his little head off and got to choose to go where ever he wanted. we didn't rush, just enjoyed each others company.He was happy, I was happy. It really is the small things, sometimes I think I need to remember that.

Now I'm sure there are some rooms round here that were meant to be re-organised today!