Four Today!

Our girl turns four today!  It's hard to believe as time has flown by so quickly - it's true what they say - the early years pass so fast.  I'm feeling a mixture of emotions today.  Happiness - that our daughter is such a beautiful, caring and loving girl, but also I'm reflecting on the journey to this point, with all it's ups and downs.  Mostly, I'm wishing that this time could slow down a little.  It feels like yesterday, that Ava was this small....

And today, here she is, opening her presents on her fourth birthday!

She is so keen to take photo's, we bought Ava a camera of her own!

Happy Birthday to our beautiful Ava Lily xo

This Moment

 A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.  Inspired by soulemama at www.soulemama.com

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Have a great weekend

soup and skirt day

I'm on holidays - YAY!!.  What a luxury it is to be at home!  I'm making the most of it and today I took a break from the Spring Cleaning for a spot of cooking and sewing.

I'm loving my new River Cottage Veg book and decided to give the lentil and spinach soup a test run.  I replaced the spinach with our homegrown silver beet.  It was delicious for lunch with some homemade bread.

Ava's little friends (who are sisters) were celebrating their 2nd and 4th birthdays with a mid week party.  I haven't had the chance to sew for a while so I took the opportunity to get out the machine and make each of the girls a skirt so they can be match matchy!

The sewing machine is now out on the table for the duration of my holidays and I intend to spend some creative time sewing up a storm!

Our Weekend

It was a wintery, cold and rainy weekend.  However, we still managed to get out and about.  The local Farmers Market was on (under cover due to the weather) and we came home with a great variety of our favourite things - jams, local goats cheese and veggies.  We also found some day old Plymouth Rock chicks for sale by one of the stall holders.  We have our own chooks, but would like to breed one of the heritage varieties and have experienced little success with incubating fertile eggs have bought.  Finding Plymouth Rocks locally was like striking gold for me - suffice to say I'm very excited!  We have six little babies keeping warm  in their brood box.


Ava was keen to wear her new 'bows' to the market too!


Of course, the world stood still for the Football Grand Final between Collingwood and Geelong.  Some lovely friends asked us over to watch the game, it was a really close match. I spent most of the final minutes outside with the kids (I'm not really into the football, much to Phil's dismay!) and then we fired up the BBQ, enjoyed dinner together and discussed the highlights of the game!


We also made some homemade washing liquid from this blog.  It looks rather good and left the saucepan we made it in, very clean!  It smells great too with the addition of Eucalyptus Oil.  I'll be interested to test it out in my next wash.


Hope you had a great weekend too!

This Moment

 A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.  Inspired by soulemama at www.soulemama.com

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Enjoy your weekend!

Under the Weather

It was 'Under the Weather' day at our house today.  Ava has inherited a rather nasty cough and I seem to have picked it up too.  Fortunately we were both able to spend most of the day at home and despite us both feeling pretty ordinary (Ava spent some of the morning lying down on the couch), we had a good day.  Ava did some art with Maisy (her favourite mouse) and a new book arrived in the mail, which always brightens the day!


I made chicken soup to soothe the cold.  I tried making it in the slow cooker, which I haven't done before, and it worked quite well.  No-knead bread (again) with rye flour this time and it was really tasty with our soup for dinner.


Hopefully we will feel better tomorrow and the wild weather (it's blowing a gale and thundery outside!) will pass.

In the Garden

We have really been enjoying the sunny Spring weather here and taking the opportunity to spend more time outdoors.  The planting season is certainly upon us and we have been busy planting out the last of our heirloom apples from here.


Our veggie garden is also really starting to flourish and we have been planting lots of heirloom beans, corn, tomatoes, peas, carrots, radishes and lettuce seeds from here. We have found their seed really suits our climate and we have good success with our seed germination rate.


The broad beans, ruby chard and brussel sprouts are certainly coming along nicely and the flowers that we have planted as companions to deter bugs, are really adding some colour to garden.


The chooks were out scratching around for a tasty treat and Neddie looked on as we were planting.  As always there's washing hung out on the clothes line and things are definitely drying fast with the Spring Equinox winds!


Ava was very helpful with the planting, although she was pretty excited about making a 'snow angel' in the dirt!