Flowering Rosemary

Shopping and suffering for a good cause #openslather

I received my family tax benefit top up last week which made me very bloody happy. Due to us making sweet F-all this financial year it been a long time between shopping sprees. Took the kids to kindergym on Thursday morning, then chucked them in the car and whipped up the Mount to Big W, KMart and Target(you know all the good shops), which has led to my new favourite saying(not) "Oh my Gok". Who the feck is he anyway?! Needless to say we are all sporting new clothes and shoes, lots of them. 

We're the owner of a new $39 HP printer too, which came with ink cartridges. The old Lexmark is in the wheelie bin, who's ink was getting expensive and hard to find. I just thought feck it, for that price it was cheaper just to buy a new one, with ink!! Un.believ.able. 

Took the kids to maccas for an early lunch and a play before we hit the shops, probably a good move; they were bloody angels and I was so thankful we got through two shopping centres and Target without a melt down my them or me, so thankful. 

Friday was a pretty good day too. I took Izzy to playgroup at the kindy she's starting pre-entry at next term, I know, next term!! This will see her integrate with other kids that she will go on to primary school with. The other kindy playgroup I had been taking her to for the past couple of years mainly has kids that are going on to private primary school and I didn't want her to start state school not knowing anybody.

Izzy is usually pretty quiet at first with people she doesn't know well, but she jumped right in like she owned the joint and played and talked flat chat to other kids off the bat. It was funny and very reassuring to see. Summer loved it too. As we walked out the gate with her cupcake paper covered salada box she said, "I love that new kindy", I was a very proud and happy mum.

After, we grabbed some lunch from the bakery and headed to the playground, it was a beautiful day, in more ways than one. 

I laughed in amazement as I saw the drink bottle we had left there two weeks before; it was found and left on a bench. Summer cracked it straight away and didn't want to drink out of anything else, I looked for a tap and rinsed it out so she could have her cordial in it. She really was losing it and having her favourite drinking vessel made her happy straight away.

Sooky la la at the playground

This is her earlier in the week. She's put 15 pairs of Izzys
undies over her head and couldn't get them off. Funny kid!

It's Sunday night, and I'm about to hit the sack. Went out with some girls last night, didn't get too smashed, but only had about four hours sleep last night. I got home about half one and got to sleep about 2 after filling in the hubby with all the important details. Summer came in our bed about half two, nappy change and a drink she wriggled, poked me in the back and rolled around my head before falling asleep. 

Izzy woke up crying, a nightmare I think, may have been the tree trolls in Bridge to Terabithia, she watched that with Brett while I was downing my first wines at my girlfriends place. She came in bed with me and Summer, Brett was kicked out into her bed, to tell the truth he voluntary made himself scarce! I got up at seven and have been suffering ALL day, from tiredness mainly. It was suffering for a good cause, a good night out on my own, but it will be awhile before I do that again!

How has your week been?

A view with train/rail lines in it

My place in time #26

It's been about 25 years since a train ran through town. Quite clearly there's trees growing on the train tracks along Railway Terrace, where a bustling train route once ran, through to the southern ports.

The station now houses our local community radio station, and has done for the past 20 years.

These shots are from just down the road, Towers Road, behind the local hospital. 

The hospital has been in the news lately, SA Health have removed obstetrics from the schedule amongst other things. If you're about to have a baby you have to drive thirty minutes now, in labour, or potentially have your baby in an ambulance on the way. 

This may not be a big deal for us, but for someone living in nearby Beachport, or Robe (45 minutes from our hospital) it seems unbelievably unfair and damn dangerous for high risk pregnancies. Along with the fact, the high price of petrol for country people to be self-commuting, the destination hospital not catering for overnight stays for dads, country taxpayers deserve better. Shame, especially when we were promised no loss of services.

The community isn't letting it slide, with a petition circulating and a public meeting on the 31st.

Pumpkin ravioli

I made ravioli last week. It's one of those things I had listed in my bucket list, so was taking the kids to the circus apparently, which I can cross of the list too. I had forgotten until I actually went and looked at the list this week. 

I was in love eating this, and if someone had of been standing at the door it would have sounded like I was having an orgasm on the kitchen floor. It was that good, I'm a legend in my own lunchtime  Almost. I didn't have butter, but crisped up some sage in margarine. Sue me. It was bloody delicious!

500 grams pumpkin

2 cloves garlic

olive oil

1 heaped tablespoon of bread crumbs.

Peel and slice pumpkin and place on a baking tray with some olive oil and whole garlic cloves(in skin). Bake until soft.

Pop garlic out of skins and mash together with pumpkin. I just used a fork right there on the tray.

Mix in the breadcrumbs and let cool. 

If there any hard bits(edges of pumpkin) that wont mash properly just discard them or eat them! You should be left with at least a cup of pumpkin filling.

400 grams plain flour

4 eggs

pinch salt

Make a well in the flour and break in the eggs and add salt. Use your fingers to break the eggs and mix in the flour. Combine to make a dough. Knead until smooth and shiny, it will take at least 10 minutes.

Cling wrap it and set aside for 20 minutes.

Use a pasta machine to roll out dough until it is on the thinnest setting, make strips with a width of about 9 cm. 

Place small teaspoons of filling about 10 cm apart. Brush around the filling with some water. 

Place another strip on top sealing around the filling first and then out to the edges.

You could just cut them into squares, but I used a cookie cutter to cut out the ravioli.

I kept the off cut pieces together and wrapped them in glad wrap, rolled them all together and cut them into fettuccine with the machine at the end. If you have any left over pumpkin, knead this with some more flour back into the pasta for a pumpkin tainted pasta. Cooked with a cream sauce would be nice. Happy days :)

Veggie patch envy

There may have been some confusion yesterday when I posted pictures of that beautiful veggie patch. I had a feeling that some may have thought it was ours, but alas, I too have garden envy.

That veggie patch is out on my brother in laws farm, he and his wife have gone travelling around Australia for most of this year. Their daughter(my niece) and her fiance are living there at the moment, we were feeding the chooks, the dog and her cat while they too had gone away for several days.

We were merely raiding the veggie patch ;)

These are pictures of my veggie patch, not so overflowing. The two barrels used to have shrubs in them. They were looking rather ragged and sad, so I ripped them out, added some sheep poo compost and put in veggie seed. One has wombok and broccoli in it and the other, carrot and lettuce. They seem to be going alright, green fingers crossed.

My neglected patch has, at the moment, some broad beans growing, not badly and some shallot type onion things. Some lovage(great to use as a celery substitute), perpetual leeks and parsley. This patch needs the sheep poo treatment too, the gum trees don't help. My bad for putting veggies there in the first place.

I've planted the square pot on the veggie patch retaining wall with a peruvian purple potato, it looks to be growing ok, hopefully, whenever they are ready, the pot is full of them when I tip it out.

How do you like our scarecrow? This was Boggys fancy dress costume for the recent 40th we went to, determined not to let it go to waste, this was my solution. Dunno how thats gonna work out, because it is sure to perish out there!

Out and about, and zoned at home

There is a mass of spinach and silverbeet behind her.

Pulling up carrots, and there's some Italian parsley poking out the bag.

On our way to feed the chooks

cookie!

Mesmerization of the third kind 

Pumpkin pizza

It's pumpkin season, try this for something different while it is cheap and readily available.

Pizza dough(enough for about 3 pizzas)

1 1/2 cups water

2 sachet yeast (about 15 grams)

1 teaspoon salt

Mix together and leave until foamy, about 5-10 minutes

Add 2 cups, from 4 cups of flour, and mix in, add rest. Stir to combine, then knead until smooth.

Place in a bowl and cover with a tea towel in a warm place and let sit for about 30 minutes.

Roast some sliced pumpkin until soft, I used the pizza tray to do this as a guide to how much pumpkin I would need. It should take about 15- 20 minutes.

Spread the pizza base thickly, about a centimetre or more thick, with the white sauce and arrange the pumpkin, then sprinkle with fresh rosemary.

White cheese sauce

2 tablespoons butter.

Saute half a small onion and a clove of garlic in the butter.

Add 3 tablespoons flour and stir to combine.

Add a little from 2 cups of milk, and keep adding a little at a time and whisk after

each addition to a smooth consistency.

Stir until it thickens.

Take off heat and stir in 120 grams of grated cheese, salt and pepper.

I used tasty cheese, if you have any other fancy pants cheese, add it instead or combine for a burst of flavour. 

Instead of pumpkin, I used sauteed mushroom and thyme on one of the pizzas.

Serve drizzled with a little olive oil, and garnish with some fresh rocket or spinach.

Mushroom and white cheese sauce with thyme 

You'll probably have cheese sauce left over:

• use it to make broccoli and/or cauliflower cheese
• add prawns and whatever other seafood to make a neptune topping for steak (we love to use lobster in cray season; that's if and when Boggy can catch them.
• Make a mornay with fish (atlantic salmon, prawns or just tinned tuna). Make a pie. Or just chuck in a casserole dish and bake with a packet of cheese and onion chips scrunched up on top. Bit yummy :)

When the moon hits your eye

Like a big fishy pie

That's... a mornay

Nope? Sorry......ahem.....I'm going now ;)

The circus

The nuns at primary school had so much valuable wisdom to impart. They were Sisters of St. Joseph, an order started by Saint Mary MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison Woods. I went to St Josephs in Nangwarry for most of my primary school years and Tenison College for all of my secondary education.  So I was imparted with much wisdom, which at the time was oblivious to how valuable it was.

One of the fantastic things they imparted to me, was to show full appreciation and always be the last person applauding. It's good manners, or something like that.  I wish I had of jotted everything down in a notebook, hindsight is a bitch. 

Over the weekend we went to a show, Loritz circus was in town. It took Izzy a while to warm up, as is the usual with things and people she doesn't know well. As I watched her in the second half of the show clapping along with the crowd when something amazing happened, I recalled what the nuns had said. I think it was before an all schools concert or maybe it was that time we bussed it to see Peter and the Wolf, preparing us to be good and grateful audience members. 

What a thrill it must be to be performing under the big top and hear that applause after you've done something quite amazing, and daring. What amazed me, is through all those daring feats, the performers, jugglers and acrobats smiled through it all. I found myself with a dumb smile on my face too, a circus will do that to ya. Some hot bodied acrobats helped, like a smack in the face when they tumbled out in a fanfare at the start of the show. 

It was the same reaction as if the cast of Magic Mike had of burst out onto stage, kinda took my breath away for a second. I quickly got over it, hubby was sitting next to me, I didn't want to seem too enthralled by them. The acrobatics soon took over the show, it was pretty amazing.

The little dynamo, Americus Wilson, famous for being on the Oprah show and New Zealands Got Talent, wowed everyone with her Lyra routine and world famous hula hoop tricks. Izzy was enthralled after already loving to watch Rachaellust on youtube. She's been practicing!

Loritz is only a small circus, but it was worth the money for the hour and three quarter show I thought, if only to watch your kids enjoy the circus.

The circus moved on to Mount Gambier; we saw this big fella and heaps more scattered around town when we went on Friday. There's nothing much on in the holidays, no kindergym, no playgroup. I drove down to go to the indoor play cafe with some other mums and kids.

Somewhere I visit every day

My place in time #59

Being a stay at home mum does have it's pros, like not having to leave the house some days. Days like these for me usually result in me not being dressed properly until lunch time, easy and relaxed. It would be good if this was the case everyday, as there are two people who try their best to see that it is not easy and not relaxed! Somedays we don't go anywhere, and depending on the weather, the kids don't even get outside the house.

One place I do go everyday is the loo. Somedays it is my refuge, and the sound of that doorknob lock clicking is pure relief, besides the other kind of relief that goes on in those tiny four walls. But I'm not taking photos of my loo, that would be too easy, plus I can't be bothered cleaning it.

Somedays the letter box doesn't even get a visit, not from me anyway. This is Izzys new favourite thing to do on her own. I am sure it is so she can be closer or catch the view of her best friend next door, which her wanting to play with is a constant nagging point during the day.

The laundry gets a visit from me everyday, whether it's packing the machine, turning it on, or emptying it. The broom and the vacuum cleaner live in there too. So I go in there for something, every. day. Again it is not spotless. Which is really ironic, because I have taken photos of the place that is the most crappiest at my place, chook poo crappiest.

The place I visit every day without fail is the chook house. Every morning I take our food scraps out to the two girls and let them out for a wander, which always means land mines everywhere.

Occasionally we get an egg, it's that time of year, a bit cold for laying eggs. The little brown chook has been an egg machine. The black one hasn't laid one for a while. I'm hoping to get a couple more chooks, I can see them not being let out as much, I'd have poo everywhere! They have a fair run around two sides of our big shed. 

You can read more about the My place in time project at Blackcurrant photography

A local playground

My place in time #72

Our local mega playground, opened in 2008, it doesn't seem like it's been here for five years already.

The kids love coming here, what kid wouldn't? It's not too far from home for us to walk or bike to, on a nice day. 

It has something for the adults too. 

The flying fox is Izzy's favourite

Kimberly Clark were part contributors, hence the advertising

The pit falls of fake nails #openslather

I bought some fake nails on sale from our local nails and beauty place, I had some leftover from a voucher I received for my last birthday. I set myself up in the lounge after the kids were asleep, painted my toe nails and started filing my finger nails ready for the fakeys. I matched up and lay them out ready, there was no glue! 

I searched high and low for some glue left over from the previous supermarket jobs I'd used, but couldn't find any. I went to bed feeling a little deflated and a little pissed off, the one time I sit down to do something to make myself feel good, time on my own to do something for me, and it wasn't happening.

I texted my sister in the morning to see if she has any, she did. I let myself in her house, retrieved the glue, replaced the front door key in it's hiding spot and scooted off home to stick on my new claws.

Claws is the word for them, they are longer than the ones I usually use, something that seemed to be oblivious to me just looking at them in the packet. These longer improvements on my natural piss poor excuses for nails instantly became something that was going to take some getting use to. 

Texting. You can't use them to select on a touch screen phone. So I think there may have been some face twisting and total concentration tongue action going on trying to get my finger just right to hit the right letter. It was more like total frustration having to try then push the backspace without pushing 'send' by mistake. The same for eftpos purchases at the supermarket(more like the bottlo)and looking like a total douche(with kickarse nails) after selecting chequing account instead of spendings savings.

Unlocking the child car seat restraint almost had me in fits of laughter and slight panic; after realising I had to use my finger joint push the red button to release the seat belts. I almost asked Izzy to undo it for me... pathetica. But funny as.

Try pushing that release button with this baby...good luck sister!

Changing nappies became a freddie krueger esque mission in reverse, trying not to rip my childs butt into shreds. Not to mention trying to wipe myself. That is after trying to unbutton jeans and deal with a zipper with nails that could penetrate toilet paper at twenty paces! 

Speaking of change. Try undoing a purse zip and then trying to retrieving small change without looking like a totally awkward dick wad. Also I do not recommend trying to change your earrings, especially fiddly studs, do this all before applying the nails, a little foresight goes a long way.

Know anybody that uses keys (while in mid conversation)to clean their ear wax? My dad has a friend that used to(probably still does) do that. It's quite achievable at the moment with my pinky. A word of warning and most definitely too much information, don't go for the pinky nose pick, you might just pierce your brains. If I was a coke snorter I'd be laughing.

As much as they have been a bit of a pain in the arsenal, one does feel just a bit spesh with nice nail couture as fake as they may be.