our big day out

My sister and I took the girls on a big adventure today.  We caught the train into the city with G in the morning to go and visit the museum.  It was both girls first time on a train - Matilda was a bit nervous and sat quietly for the whole trip, Polly loved it and bounced around sticking her head up to the window and waving goodbye to anyone hopping off the train.

At the museum we had a look at lots of animals and some dinosaur skeletons.  Matilda loved the dinosaurs and this time Polly sat quietly in her pram just checking it all out.  There's also a Torres Strait Island exhibit at the museum at the moment so we looked at the canoes and beautiful head dresses.  We watched an exhibition of some island dancing which both girls really loved (and all the other kids seemed to also).

Next we caught the city cat ferry across the river and into town (i love saying that we went into town, it sounds all ye olde to me) and met up with G and grandpa for lunch.  And the girls even got balloon animals from the guy in Queen Street Mall.

They were exhausted by the time we got home and Matilda was asleep on the couch by about 5.15 this afternoon and didn't wake up for dinner.

Crumbly

We had a big Sunday lunch today. And for desert - rhubarb, pear and ginger crumble with vanilla creme anglaise. Yum.

well..

So much for daily posting.  There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I'd like to do.

I have achieved some stuff while I've haven't had to worry about uni work.  My house is almost clean again (yay!), my spice shelf in my pantry is even alphabetised!  Still a little bit to go...

I've finally ordered some carpet to get our office/spare room renovated and I'm off to buy some paint tomorrow.  I'm hoping that it's finished by the time uni starts again at the end of July.

Apart from that there's been trips to the grandparents, visits to the library - Matilda and Polly got their own library cards which was very exciting (for Matilda anyway), crazy stops on the side of the road to pick wattle and play dates. 

I'm hoping that next week I actually might get some crafty time because I have a list a mile long of things I want to do while i have some time! But I never feel like I can make stuff if my house is too messy, so need to get that finished first.

work in progress: mermaid dolls

Matilda and her cousin have their birthday's within a month of each other and they both love mermaids... so this year, right in the middle of their birthdays we're having a joint mermaid birthday party for them.

I wanted to make them a special present for the day so I'm planning on making them a mermaid doll each.

I have a plan, that I'm not sure will work but we'll see how we go.  I'm thinking I'll use the Poppy Doll pattern, but replace the legs (and some of the body) with a mermaid tail.  For the tail I want to use a bunch of random shimmery strips of fabric all sewn together maybe with a few bedazzlers on them.

Then I'm thinking the doll will have to have some long hair (brunette for Matilda, blonde for A), kind of like this, but mermaid long.

I hope they work out like they look in my head :)

Chorizo

Apparently winter means chorizo around these parts.  It seems to pop up it's lots of things we've been cooking lately.

First up it was fennel, chorizo and bean soup for lunch last weekend (recipe below).

And last Friday night it was beef, chorizo and bean pies with green salad, chips and aioli for dinner.  How naughty is that? It was yum though.  The pie recipe is in the latest Donna Hay magazine.

Fennel, Chorizo and Bean Soup (serves 4)

1 cup (200g) black eye beans (I had cannelini beans on hand so that's what I used and I used a 400g tin so I didn't have to soak them overnight - which made this a really quick soup to make).
1 large bulb fennel, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2L chicken stock
400g tinned chopped tomatoes
1 chorizo sausage, finely chopped
salt and pepper
1/4 cup Italian parsley, finely chopped

Soak beans for 6 hours or overnight in cold water. Drain. 
Put beans, fennel, carrot, onion, stock and tomatoes in a pot and bring to a simmer.  Simmer for 1 1/2 hours until tender.  (Because I used tinned beans, I just simmed until the veges were soft).
Stir in chorizo, season and simmer for 10 minutes. 
Stir through half the parsley and serve soup sprinkled with the remaining parsley.

Strawberries

There's a little strawberry farm around the corner from my mum + dads place and we get a little excited when it reopens every year.

They grow the best strawberries I have ever eaten, and every year they are just as good.  Absolutely full to the brim bursting with flavour.  With the added benefit of buying a punnet and being able to eat the whole lot, not throwing out 6 slimey ones like you buy in the shops.

We had some this morning for breakfast on pancakes.  And ate the rest after lunch.  Yum.

 

On holidays and daily blogging

I finally handed in my last assignment for the semester on Wednesday, so now I have a break from uni until 25 July.  Yay!  I don't really like to call it a holiday because I'm really just returning to the way life was before I started uni and that wasn't really a holiday :)  But that is all beside the point really... no more assignments, yay!  So I'm hoping to blog daily until I go back.. we'll see how we go.  More than once a week would be a big deal in itself.

So on my first day of holidays (which was yesterday, but we'll start this daily blogging thing from today ok?  and i know technically it's now Saturday but it's really Friday night so that's what we're going with, and I know I just said I'm not calling them holidays but whatever) I finally finished and posted off a very over due baby present.

In fact, I was running to the postbox, express envelope in hand desperate to make Thursday's mail because I had to post the baby present before his first birthday (this Sunday).  I just made it.

A long long time ago, before kids and Brisbane I used to work with a team of four girls in a training job for a Melbourne financial services company.

 
We are good friends to this day and freakishly last year, we were all pregnant at the same time.  Two of us with our second babies, one with her first and one with her third.

So I got it into my head that I should buy all three babies the same kind of present, so everybody was going to get a fabric ball, a book and a little piece of clothing.  No problems, except I had to make the balls.

Polly was also due first, so I was trying to be fairly organised.  And with the first two I did really well. Number three on the other hand, not so good.  He had to wait a looong time.  It got to the point that I was just determined to make it before his first birthday and I barely did that... in fact in the process I've returned 2 items of clothing that were going to be included in the present but he would have grown out of by the time I'd sent it. 

Anyway, yesterday it was sent off and it made it to it's destination today.  First birthday party is on Sunday.  Just in the nick of time :)

New skirt

I quickly made Matilda a new skirt yesterday.  She's into skirts and dresses at the moment, it's all I can get her to wear most days and I really can't find any in the shops that I like.

It's Oliver+S's lazy days skirt with Made's gathered pocket added to it.

Cooking with herbs

This morning I went to a little cooking demonstration by the owner and chef at Sprout Cafe, Richard Webb, at the Samford Valley Garden Centre.  It was a really interesting and fun morning and luckily my sister, mum and neighbour came with me so when Matilda got a bit bored my sister took her for a little walk and brought her back just in time to try some basil ice cream which Matilda downed in seconds.

Richard cooked a lovely menu of:

Seared hervey bay scallops with nasturtium and persimmon gazpacho

Crispy Asian pork belly with Asian herb salad

Grilled crows nest goat tenderloin with creamy mash and vanilla lavender jus

Basil ice-cream with strawberries

Lemon myrtle panna cotta with wild bush honey

This is what I learned

• you can use nasturtium stems anywhere you'd use spring onions or onions
• a pretty and nice tasting edible flower is borage - and apparently it grows easily, so i'm going to give it a go
• the lemon myrtle panna cotta you can make by just adding a few lemon myrtle leaves to a basic panna cotta recipe when the cream is boiling and let it infuse and it produces a strong lemony flavour that was really nice with the little bit of honey on top
• warrigal can be cooked like asparagus, but you need to blanch it first
• geranium keeps possums away from your garden!  excellent, I need to buy some so I don't have to clean up possum poo from my verandah every morning!

So after this yummy talk and demonstration, I went crazy and bought a bunch of new herbs for our garden.

And come craft night this Tuesday, I'm going to give a couple of Richard's recipes a try.  You can get some off his blog.  I'm going to try this one and this one.