Week 38!

My first week on maternity leave has been an interesting week. I have cleaned my house, caught up with some friends and worked on some projects (like my vegetable garden) that I've been wanting to for ages.

While it has been quite a productive week, I'm left asking "What next?". I do have some projects left on my list to complete, but failing that I am left with nothing to do. I have asked some friends what they do to fill in their days and they tend to watch TV or surf the web, neither of which really appeals to me (in fact, I haven't turned on the TV at all during the day in the past week!). Guess I'll have to think up some more projects.

Anyway, I know I should be grateful for this nice and quiet time as once the baby arrives I am pretty sure my time will no longer be my own lol!

Here is a picture from us taken this morning:

According to the midwife I saw yesterday the baby is in the right position and is engaged, but she doesn't think we will be meeting him/her within the next week which is fine by me. I'm not really in any hurry for the baby to arrive and know that it will come out whenever it wants to, regardless of if I try to hurry it along!

From little things, big things grow...

I used to be afraid of failure. So afraid, in fact, that I wouldn't even try new things in case it didn't yield the perfect results I was after. Over time I have come to realise that failures actually have a place in everyone's life, whether that be to teach us that we can't be perfect all of the time or to enable us to grow both emotionally and mentally.

Today, I tackled a project where the result is well and truly out of my hands and which has the potential to fail dismally - I planted my vegetable seeds!

The old traditional, non hybrid, open pollinated seeds I ordered from Eden Seeds last week arrived in the mail on Monday. I used their planting guide to determine which seeds out of the ones I purchased I could plant straight away and which would have to wait until other times throughout the year. Today I was able to plant the carrot, lettuce, beetroot, pea, onion and broccoletti seeds.

After doing some research on how to grow seeds I learned that I could use old egg cartons to plant my seeds in rather than fancy seed pots, so this saved us a little bit of money. Basically the seeds can be grown in each pocket of the egg carton and when they have grown enough to be transferred to the raised vegetable garden beds, the pockets are simply cut apart and planted straight into the soil. Watering the seeds in the egg carton prior to them being transferred weakens the structural integrity of the cardboard in the egg carton, so it will break down rather easily once planted - Nifty hey!

In order to plant seeds, you will need a bag of seed raising potting mix. I just used the Yates variety which was about $7 for a bag that will last me quite a while! Once the egg cartons were filled with the mix, I used the end of a pencil to make a hole in each of the pockets at the depth indicated on the back of the individual seed packets. I then popped a couple of seeds into each hole, covered the hole up and gave them a good water.

I plan on bringing my seeds out each morning and placing them in a nice sunny spot on our deck for the day, before popping them in the shed overnight to protect them. As such, I have placed the egg cartons on trays to enable me to move them easily. Here is a picture of my seeds,.complete with little 'seed flags' on the deck this afternoon:

I will keep you up to date with the progress of the seeds and hopefully we will be seeing some sprouts within a week or two!

Recipe : Yo Yo's

Tomorrow I am having afternoon tea with two of my very good friends - I can't wait! Of course, this meant that I needed to bake a treat to take along with me so I decided on yo-yo's for the simple fact that they are easy to make and taste great!

Now, I am still on the hunt for the 'perfect' yo-yo recipe (if you think you have one, please let me know!) but so far this one has become a favourite at our Thursday craft night. Here is the recipe below:

You will need:
3/4 cups (190gms) butter
1/3 cup of icing sugar
1 cup of custard powder
1 cup of plain flour
1/2 tspn vanilla essence

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Cream the butter and icing sugar together.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and continue to beat until the mixture turns from crumbs into more of a thick batter.
4. Roll pieces of the mixture into balls, place on a tray lined with baking paper and flatten with a fork.
5. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until lightly golden.
6. Once cooled, join two biscuits together with icing (I like to put a dash of lemon in my icing too!)

Tip: Did you know that you can freeze left over icing? This is great if, like me, you have trouble getting the consistency of your icing right and end up with too much. Just place the icing in an air tight container and freeze until you need it again. It doesn't take too long to thaw out either.

Here is a picture of my biscuits all ready for afternoon tea tomorrow!

Yum! I just need to try not to eat too many now!

Project #2 - Christmas Traditions Book (Update #2)

Remember waaaay back in September, when I blogged about my Christmas Traditions book? Well, it's still not finished but I have been working on it!

I was originally planning on using 90 gsm linen bond paper for the pages, but was concerned that it wouldn't be thick enough to stand the test of time. As such I bought a pack of 220gsm paper with a nice metallic sheen to it and I am really happy with the quality and texture of the paper. Anyway enough jibber-jabba about the paper, let me show you some of the pages from the recipe section.

Here is the recipe cards for the Chocolate Candy Cake Cookies (hmmmm they are SOOO good!) and the shortbread:

And here are the recipe cards for the Reindeer biscuits and the gingerbread men:

I'm not sure if you can see or not, but the writing on the cards is really quite fancy so each card takes roughly 30 - 45 minutes to write out (with carpal tunnel and tendinitis lol).

I still need to finish the Christmas CD section and the pages listing the ornaments given each year as a tradition, but they are well under way. I have decided that the section dedicated to listing our family traditions will be left blank at this point as they may very well change over the coming Christmas or two, when we establish new ones with our baby.

Oh and before I depart, let me remind you all that it is apparently only 333 days until Christmas - Scary thought, hey!

Week 37!

It is hard to believe that at 37 weeks I am considered 'full term'. It seems like a life time ago that I held the positive pregnancy test in my hand and broke the news to Matty that we would soon be having a baby!

Now, in a matter of weeks, that baby will be here and life as we know it will change forever...and I can't wait!

Here is a picture of us from this morning:

Today is my last day at work for 12 months and I am pretty excited about that as well. Check out this cake that my friend's mum made for my farewell morning tea today!

Insanely awesome, hey!

I am not really sure how I am going to fill in the weeks up until I have our baby, but I am thinking it will involve craft, baking and a LOT of sleeping!

Recipe : Cheat's Rocky Road Recipe

Let me share with you this recipe for the easiest rocky road you will ever make. The whole thing can be made in less than 10 minutes and it tastes YUM!

You will need:
3 or 4 packets of your favourite lollies (In this version I have used lolly banana's, fruit sticks, mini marshmallows and turkish delight) 750gms of milk chocolate

Method:
Break the milk chocolate into squares and place in a heatproof bowl over a water bath to melt. Make sure you remember to stir it regularly while completing the remaining steps, to ensure the chocolate doesn't burn.

Line a 18cm x 27cm (or similar sized) slice tray with baking paper. Chop your lollies up into smallish pieces and place half of the lollies in the bottom of the tray. It will look like you have WAY too many lollies, but just remember, you can NEVER have too many lollies!


Once the chocolate is melted, pour half of it into the tray with the lollies and give it a little stir around, then place your remaining lollies on top:

Top the tray up with the remaining chocolate and poke around a little with a wooden spoon until all of the lollies are covered in chocolate:

Place in the refrigerator and allow to set. Once set you will need to cut into bite sized pieces. If the pieces are too big it becomes too hard to eat, so make sure they are of a manageable size.

Hmmmm chocolatey goodness!

A new long-term project!

So what do you do when the project you've been working on for the past 8 months is finally finished? Well, you start something brand spanking new of course!

For a while now I have become increasingly frustrated at the price of fruit and vegetables. It really irks me that we, as consumers, seem to pay more and more for these products while the quality of them declines. I have been reading about the idea of self sufficiency for a while now, but lets face it - it takes dedication and determination to make a family fully self sufficient and I am not sure I have enough of either of those things at this point in time.

While self sufficiency seems out of my reach at the moment, it doesn't mean that I can't take small steps to work towards the goal. While I was holidaying in Murray Bridge over the Christmas period I read a book called 'Choosing Eden'. This book tells the story of a couple in their 50's who moved to outer New South Wales to begin a life of self sufficiency to ensure that their family would have a refuge in the event of a Peak Oil crisis.

I am not going to delve too much into Peak Oil here (because it's pretty scary stuff), but basically it is believed that at some point the World's oil resources will be depleted and as a result the 300,000 every day items that rely on oil to be produced, will either not be available or will cost too much for every day people to be able to afford, so life as we know it will change dramatically. I told you it was scary!

So, today our journey into small-scale self sufficiency begins with the setting up of a vegetable garden! Here is a picture of the plot I will be using to grow our vegetables - erk...it's horrible hey!

The soil around our house is TERRIBLE. In fact, you can't even call it 'soil' because it's not. It's clay. Copious amounts of clay. But that isn't going to deter me. See those two wooden boxes on the top level of the retaining wall? Well that's where we are going to do our vegetable planting.

The boxes were made by my dad out of reclaimed packing crates, so they were FREE (rather than the $60 each Bunnings were asking!). They are roughly 1 mtr in length and about 80 cms wide, which is just perfect for our family of two, soon to be three!

The next step in setting up the vegetable garden is to fill the crates with suitable material to grow the vegetables in and order the seeds. It took me quite a bit of reading to understand the best way to make a raised vegetable garden, so I am going to blog the process for you so that you too can join in the journey of small-scale self sufficiency! Stay tuned for more!