Cold and cosy...........

Its cold in our little old Nelson, in fact I believe its cold in most of NZ at the moment.On Saturday the hills surrounding the city got a thick dusting of snow, it came down quite low and stayed around for most of the day. This is very unusual and a little exciting for us as we don't usually get snow at all!
We decided to go for a walk and soak in the atmosphere, it almost felt like we were on holiday in some little alpine village (one can wish)! On came the merino's, uggs and Puffers. Whilst I was getting Archie ready I noticed that he was wearing an entire mummy made wardrobe, so took the opportunity to snap a few pics!

Merino lounge pants

Merino tee with vintage pocket, long sleeve base layer

 The two tops were made for Charlie and are still going strong a couple of years later. The pants I made this winter for kindy, lovely warm and comfy!
Hope you all had a lovely weekend x

This past year .....

Ive run three running events, two half marathons and a 10k.....

Mahana Half Marathon

St Clair half Marathon

Kaiteriteri 10k

I've spent a lot of time here ....

 

Had an amazing summer with family, friends and lots of sun!

 

 

Had some crafty time, though didn't take a lot of pics :(

Cute high waisty!

merino shorts

yearly milo

Wow there you have it in a nut shell! I feel like these photo's are but the tip of the iceberg, but what can you do when you ignore your blog for almost a whole year!!
There has been a change in my life, coinciding I guess with the boys getting older.  I'm finding myself with a lot more 'me' time, and have really been enjoying trying out new things. These things tend to be more away from the home, and sporty in nature (i know right). The blog may have a a bit of a different emphasis, as I find myself more passionate about yoga and running, then baking and sewing. This does not however mean that I don't do the latter, just not as much as I used to!
Well if anyone is reading, thank you for sticking around! Hopefully I will as well :)

 

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.

Long Weekend ........

We are all shattered, have two boys in bed asleep. We have just had the best and busiest Easter weekend, full of Family, fun and chocolate!

We have a few traditions that we like to do over the Easter weekend, the first one being 'The grand annual Easter egg hunt'. The hunt is always held on the last day of school, and is such a fun way to kick off the school hols. Loads of family's from around the neighbourhood, head down to the queens gardens, where the hunt is held. Here the organisers, have hidden the eggs all ready for the children, such excitement!
                             

On good Friday we like to make Hot cross buns and invite the family around for afternoon tea. Uunfortunately I really suck at making them and they turned out like little brown rocks!! I think I'm going to blame it on the recipe, and search out a new one for next year!
This long weekend, we also had the added celebration of two birthdays, a 60th held on good Friday, and a  family 30th held the next day.
It was really great to have the whole family home on Saturday to share a meal. Its not often we are all together at the same place! The kids love being surrounded by their uncles and aunties, and got spoilt to death!

                  

                    

Sunday was egg day, and its seems its either feast or famine round here!! This year was feast, the kids got so many eggs it was not funny, considering they are not used to a huge amount of sugar it wasn't pretty either!! It was also the day everyone went home. We fare welled, my brother and his wife back to Blenheim, and my sister and her partner back up North. Its always so bitter sweet when they come to stay as we all get along really well, yet we cant seem to all live in the same place! I do so envy people who get to live in the same town as their family.

We are recuperating today, well meant to be. Andy took the kids to the skate park and ended up at A&E with Jack who split his chin open doing stunts! Luckily he narrowly missed out getting stitches and got glued up instead. He doesn't seem to bothered and we even managed a family bike ride up the river in the afternoon (and more Easter eggs)!!

We were blessed with beautiful weather all weekend, great company, and happy kids..... what more could one want! Hope you all had a lovely weekend xx

Life .....

Well life has been very busy round here the last few days! My sister and her partner flew in on Saturday for the week, so there has been lots of coffee drinking and gossipping. Andy and the boys were lucky to be invited on a fishing trip out to Durville island, on Sunday. It was a very long day for them, especially wee Charlie who was car sick and sea sick!! They bought home loads of Blue Cod though, that we had for dinner two nights in a row YUM!!!
I have started knitting my very first 'Milo'. Ive been wanting to knit one of these for two years, after drooling over the ones that keep popping up over here! Hopefully I can get it done ready for this winter, I really am such an amateur knitter. Ive been really enjoying my market book 'Toast', will give you a wee review once I'm done.
Two more days of school till the holidays, I can not wait! I really love that time to re connect with the kids, and for everyone to recharge their batteries.
Off to the farmers market now, for lunch and the daily coffee with sister. Then home to make some Easter egg hunt bags!

(These pics have no relavence to the post, just thought id put them on because I hate a blogpost without photo's and because they are cute!)

Weekend .......

This weekend we celebrated a birthday. Jack turned 8. Cliche I know, but wow where did that time go! He's getting so grown up now, a real little man.

We had cake, pizza and Italian doughnuts!!

We went to the Basket ball and watched the Giants win!!

We had our first sleepover with 2 friends and didn't got to sleep till 11pm, such good fun!! In the morning we scooted at home and at the skate park.

                                                                              

Then it rained, and we rested bliss. Boys played with the new birthday lego, I played in the sewing room, and we even painted some little toe nails.

 

We then watched Jack do the Aquathon, he did GREAT!! That night I went out for tea with my Mum, Thai yum yum, followed by a french film.

Phew what a weekend, it was pretty busy! Considering the amount of things that we did, it all went pretty well. Jack apparently had the best birthday ever, and loved the aquathon. Though the kids were pretty tired, and it rained a lot, it all ran smoothly! I sometimes find it hard to find a balance between letting the kids do all the things they want to do, and giving them the downtime they desperately need! I think we achieved that this weekend, and I even got to spend a couple of hours at the flea market but that's tomorrow's post xx

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!