paper mache

i thought we’d have some crafty fun today and try paper mache. The kids have never done it before and i think it’s probably about 25years since i last did it so i thought, FUN!

I made the glue with 1 part flour and 2 parts water. Then got a pile of newspaper to tear into strips. I thought that the kids might get too excited about the glueing part and not want to tear the paper but no, the paper tearing was a huge hit. They tore and shredded and tugged and ripped and scrunched up a storm.

Then i blew up two balloons. Possibly my first mistake was thinking that they would want to do anything with a balloon except hit and throw it. It was a constant fight to keep them off of them while i tied string to the ends.

Then the fun part! Or so i thought….. I showed them how to dunk the paper in the glue and swish it around and then lay it over the balloon…. Darcy just wanted to throw handfuls of paper in the glue bowl, and then try to splash the glue all over the floor. Jordy decided it was “ too messy and too yukky for me to do.” ? Big bloody princess.

So i paper mache ‘ed two balloons and three plates while Jordy swung in the hammock and Darcy kept swinging a stick at the balloons (and often me, who was holding the balloons.)

I had fun. I’ll do a second layer tomorrow.

 

Thermomix

My Thermomix arrived today! yay! Finally.

It arrived at 3:30pm and within three hours i made two rockets out of the packaging, fruit salad sorbet, french vinegarette, carrot and nut salad, and chocolate custard.

i am going to have sooooo much fun tomorrow

 

jars

i need more jars!!! is anyone still saving them for me?

i need LOTS!!! lots, and lots, and LOTS.

 

Mr Chatterbox

although i have known for ages that Darcy started talking quite young i have never really had much to compare it to. We seriously saw virtually no young toddlers at Litchfield at all and it was hard to remember what Jordy was doing at the same age. I just went back to the beginning of my blog to see what Jordy was doing at 19months and he was still using babysign a lot and he was just starting to use more complex individual words (like bowl, towel, table) but not speaking in sentences (and actually, he looked a lot like Darcy!!! I never saw a similarity before cos both boys seemed so different but when you watch the old media recordings it’s surprising to see how alike they are).

I have no clue when Darcy spoke his first words… did i record it here?? But he started using small sentences months ago. I’ll have to look back on the blog and see when but it was around when Nardia visited us at Litchfield so i would guess he was about 16months). And i remember before we left Litchfield he could clearly say about 50 words… These days i could not guess how many words he knows- how many words are there! LOL! He can name about 30 animals, all the furniture and kitchen things, body parts, regular conversation words… i guess he uses about 200 or 300 words and speaks in small sentences all the time.

I would have said that it was the babysign that helped him to talk so young cos i thought Jordy was an early talker too… but looking at the old videos and reading my old updates Jordy was not even close to Mr Chatterbox in language skills… maybe it has something to do with Darcy growing up so close to his Grandma! Grandma can certainly talk a lot!  (shhhhh, don’t tell her i said that! LOL!)

 

mmmmmmmm….sugar!

we were playing in the living room this morning with all the jungle animals and plastic dinosaurs and we needed a cave apparently (a cave with windows) so looking around for props i grabbed a couple of tall tupperware containers from the pantry and covered them with a cloth for the roof…. gave us hours of play and was then forgotten as we went outside to play with containers of water….. fine.

Just now Darcy has wandered over to see me with a handful of something crumbly squashed in his hand with a big grin saying “yuuuum”. I thought it was his old honey on toast left over from lunch and so did not pay much attention. Then he came back again with a MASSIVE grin on his face…. yuuuuummmmmmm….. so i had a closer look.

He was scoffing down a whole handful of brown sugar!!! uh oh!

So i check out the living room and Jordy has opened up one of the containers and is into the sugar. LOL! I washed Darcy’s hands and packed the container away but there were crumbs all over the floor. Jordy saw me coming with a cloth and decided he would clean it up so he was down on all fours licking up the sugar. Always one to follow his big brother’s lead Darcy was in there too. Meh, Whatever! They looked like they were loving it so i left them to it!

When they had finished Jordy came and gave me a hug and said “thanks for the yummy sugar, mum. It was so lovely and nice.” ROFL!

 

space monters

us playing on the deck this morning. Yet another adventure in space with space-boy.
done

 

lipgloss

Darcy found Grandma’s lipgloss and made us all beautiful. The lipgloss ends up pretty much everywhere EXCEPT on people’s lips

 

fishing

Grandpa catching some little fishes.
done

 

garden gnomes

not sure if they are more like elves instead of gnomes…. but the boys seem to love running around the garden of an evening. Usually after their bath so they end up dirty again…. but you get that.

Jordy has been watching me collect the beans from the bean pods to dry and i threw a bunch of old bean stalks in the compost pile the other day when i was clearing out one of the garden beds. Jordy decided that there were too many ‘packets’ (pods) left on the plants with beans that needed collecting. So all clean and nudie after his bath he was out there digging through the compost looking for beans.

Darcy, of course, was straight in after him. Which is adorable except Darcy insists on eating the old beans. Which taste like crap so he chews and then spits them out. Again, and again, and again… slow learner?

 

Darcy and Monte

i have been too busy lately to do much with the boys with any kind of prepared Montessori work but Jordy has still been asking for the colour matching game or the blue triangles etc so he has done bits and pieces.

But Darcy just started playing with the knobbed cylinders one day when they were out for Jordy and even though i still have not gotten around to actually ‘presenting’ the material to him he plays with them a lot, mostly clunking them around until he finds a fit… which i will just go with for now.
done

 

Banana Choc Chip Muffins

We made muffins today. Jordy is a super egg breaker now and can crack them with no help and no shell… except he waves around the empty shell after he has cracked it as if he has no clue what to do with it. Just put it down!!! Goose.
And, of course, Darcy wants to copy but he is a dead-set shocker when it comes to breaking eggs. Actually, not true, he breaks eggs very well…. it’s just that it is usually on the floor or just scrunched in his hand.
But the muffins were super moist and tasty.

 

in the doghouse

i don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or throw things.

With all the rain everything is soaked, the front patio is even totally drenched and so Bundy (my german shephard) has nowhere warm and dry to sleep. Which, i have to say does not bother me all that much. She’s a dog. She has heaps of room under the house, a soft (albeit damp) bed on the patio, an actual canvas doghouse under the eaves…

But Dad made me feel all guilty so i laid out some of my nice towels over her wet bed (which she scratched at and dragged off anyway) and made her another dry bed up on the back deck. Now the back deck is where the kids play and has previously been dog-free cos she has dirty feet and far too much fluffy fur. But, with Dad carrying on about her being cold (she has a friggin fur coat!) i called her up and put her food bowl up here.

Fine.

Now the other day cos my seedlings were getting drenched outside i had carried the trays up and had them on the deck (the same deck now populated by a big dog) and cos i had not wanted the kids to play in the seedling trays i had put them up on the outdoor table. All good.

Dad is here and says “you’ll wreck your nice table with those seedling boxes.” I explained that they were getting drowned in the rain. “Put them on the floor” he says. “Bundy will get them!” i reply…. but no, see, i listen to my father…..

So we put the boxes on the floor.

Had to go into town for a bit today. I was gone a couple of hours. I got back home, walked out the back on to the deck….. and i will honestly admit that tears welled up. My seedlings!!!! Friggin BUNDY!!!!!

With the rain and the cloudy days the seedlings had seemed to thrive and i had been planning to plant them once we had some fine days to dry the soil up a bit. Some of them i had intended to put in pots as xmas gifts for family. Now they had been reduced to green flecks of broken leaf amongst the upturned soil marked with suspiciously dog-claw looking scratch marks.

So, i took what i could and planted them out into the garden. I have no idea what i planted where- half of them were stems with a few roots and no leaves attached. I can’t imagine many will survive. While i was searching for survivors i allowed myself a moments doubt. “Perhaps it was a bird?” (a bloody big footed bird, but, maybe…. it might NOT have been Bundy…” And then, amongt the last of the cape gooseberrys i discover a half-eaten bone-shaped dog biscuit. BLOODY BUNDY!!!!!!

So i smoothed over the seedraising mix ready to plant some more seeds tomorrow and start all over again.

And then put Bundy’s food bowl back downstairs and locked the gate. She can sleep in the rain.

 

river views

here is the current view from my back deck.

and here is a shot of Darcy. Blurry! but funny. He found the hook thing himself, just decided to stick it on his nose, and then wandered out of the bedroom to show me. ??

 

thank you, rain, i’ve had enough now.

I have not gone out to check but i imagine my little seedlings have drowned.

And my sawdust paths did not have a chance to settle and are being washed away! Damn you!!!!!

My new potato bed is totally under water.

I can’t see the chickens anywhere.

The neighbour’s lower paddock is all flooded, and the farmland out the back now has a decent river running through it!

The water out of my bathroom tap (but not my kitchen tap) is decidedly yellow in colour and i have no idea why.

I wish i had a bigger rain water tank.

 

harvesting

The wonderful people that owned the property here before me had a vegie garden that was already well established so i am discovering all these wonderful vegies that just keep popping up. A few weeks ago zucchini seedlings came up out of nowhere, and lots of cherry tomatoes… but a week ago i discovered i have potatoes!! I harvested about a dozen over the last several days. And they are so super creamy to eat- delicious!

Yesterday i discovered sweet potato! I dug up two big tubers and ate one for dinner. I think they will be super tasty baked. It’s a funny white sweet potato and tastes a little different to the pink/orange ones i usually buy.

I want lots more of them so i picked all the shoots off the side and have them in water at the moment. Apparently after a few days they will develop lots of roots and can be re-planted. yay!

My seedlings are going sooooooooo slow at the moment. I am getting impatient. I planted the seeds a month ago and this is all i have to show for it. The seedlings are lucky to be about an inch tall. Ridiculous.

 

painting

Lala left a present for the boys when she visited a while back and I had promised Jordy we could get it out today and do some painting. He scoffed his breakfast and was outside waiting (not at all patiently) for me to get the paints ready about 15min after he woke up. Darcy did not even get a chance to eat (or get out of his jammies) before he was out there too.

The paint quickly went from multi-coloured to brown and once the aeroplane was finished Darcy started painting himself. Lots of fun!

It is probably a good thing that the finished product was not quite in the ‘masterpiece’ catagory cos Darcy decided to try to fly it by giving it a good throw. It plummeted to the ground rather rapidly and is now a broken wreck left abandoned on the deck.

Thanks, Lala!

 

starting to take shape

I shovelled a heap of sawdust onto the path areas this morning and i am REALLY happy with how things are looking in the garden now. It has its shape and is looking a little tidier. Over half the beds are planted out, and more seedlings waiting to be transplanted soon in a couple more beds.

Now it’s just a matter of time and a bit of trial and error as i learn what works and it should be all green and lovely and productive super soon…

Here is me giving you a tour of what has been done so far…
done

I just put Darcy to bed and glanced out the window to take a proud look at the garden and there was a BLOODY CHICKEN in there! I ran out the door and through the gate and into the yard… aaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!!! How long had it been there? How much had it eaten?!?!? Thankfully not long, and not much. The stupid thing chose the smallest corn seedling to eat and that was it by the look of it… no scratched areas where my seeds are, just the one corn plant missing. Lucky!

I spent the next hour putting in extra star-pickets and flattening down the base of the fence. That will keep them out.

 

beans and corn

Susan and i made a bean tripod thing today out of the bamboo i have growing around the edge of the chook yard. I think it needs to be pushed into the soil a bit deeper (will do that after rain) and perhaps a strong stake or star-picket to anchor it on one side. But it should do the job, we reckon.

I did not have a lot of success with some of my seed trays. I think the mix was too high in compost and may have burnt the seedlings. I only got about a third of the sweet corn come up, and not enough for successful pollination, so i planted out what i had, added old cow pats to my mix, and planted more seeds. Hopefully these will do better and only be a few weeks behind the first batch and not be too late to aid pollination.

One tray of seedlings looks ok (not great, but ok!), the leeks are also doing ok. But the tray of basil, chia, rosella…. uuummm, not sure what else, one full tray anyway has had virtually nothing come up. Will give it a bit longer but i think i will replant those varieties in a new tray next weekend.

 

jumping, jumping!

Darcy has been trying to jump for a month or two now and he finally did it!!!
His first really proper jump was on Friday and Susan kept seeing it but i always missed it! Typical! But i saw it last night.
done

 

yay for friends!

One of my favourite people is visiting at the moment, and what better way to say “i love you” and “thanks for coming to visit!” than to rope them into shovelling close on 2 tonne of compost! yay! I think Susan was hoping for some more civilised gardening… like planting seedlings. But no [insert evel laugh] i gave her a million newspapers to lay out and a truck full of dirt instead!

We busted our arses yesterday. I seriously need better garden tools…. or perhaps a tractor! But we managed to shovel out the compost and complete the last two garden beds (i now how all seven circles done so my mandala is complete!) and put lots more compost around the edges and in a couple of little mini inner-plots for some of my longer term plants like asparagus and ginger etc down the track. Oh, and those daylilies! They are still in their pot…. got to get them in the ground today!

Things are starting to look good. I can really picture where it will be next spring after the beds have had a full season of crops and the fruit trees are established and the vines get going along the fence

Cooked up a super simple yummy egg noodle quiche for dinner. Just cooked the egg noodle for a few minutes, poked it around the quiche dish. Then 7 eggs beaten with a little (lactose free) cream, lots of chopped silverbeet, grilled capsicum, garden herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg and a spolsh of mayonnaise… poured it over the noodle and in the oven for a bit… ta-da!