::10::

Today, my big girl turned 10 - my gorgeous, independent, artistic & creative, stubborn, loving, moody, affectionate, and helpful Abbey!

Today we had a family day.... we made pancakes for breakfast, hung out at home for the morning then headed out for lunch...

and a play at the park and then onto the foreshore...

Today, at lunch I wrote a list of questions for Abbey to answer...

1. What is your favourite colour?
Aqua
2. What is your favourite number?
21
3.What is your favourite sport?
basketball and swimming
4.What is your favourite animal?
horse
5. What is your favourite food?
apples
6. What is your favourite song?
Boyfriend (by Big Time Rush)
7. Who is your favourite singer?
Taylor Swift and Jason Derulo
8.Who is your favourite person?
Mum and Dad
9. Where is your favourite place to go?
The beach
10. What is your favourite thing to do?
Draw
11. What would you like to do/be when you grow up?
Be an artist
12. Who is your best friend?
Brooke
13. If you could do anything in the whole world, what would you like to do?
Buy a farm and have lots of animals.
14. What would you like to do for your birthday next year?
Go to the city for the day.

Abbey's other favourite things include ~ school, hair styles, music, bff's, animals, and fashion. 

Abbey loves her family and hanging out together. 

Abbey also likes to cook, read, craft, play sport, and learn! 

Keep it up girlfriend .....

Happy 10th Birthday Abbey Louise. 

We love you to the moon and stars and back again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ funday Sunday ~

Today we enjoyed a day out at a local maze................

a beautiful weeping cherry... one day I would like one of these in my garden....

 there were many sculptures and artistic displays through out the gardens...... 

I thought these chess pieces were quite grand standing all in a row.

a brick path maze

a fairy garden....

 loved this....

 ornamental cabbages, and behind a dam covered in duck weed...

 a tyre maze....

 fun with mirrors.....

 time for a quiet lounge.....

 and the best time was had on the tyre slide...

 there were even some vegies growing in small maze gardens..

A great way to spend a sunny spring Sunday.

How was your Sunday?

Home

Today Evie and I enjoyed a quiet morning at home....our third quiet day at home.

Together we made some playdough

As those little hands were kept busy, I made a loaf of bread

 

and managed to squeeze in a few rows on this little project.

I also prepared a yummy lunch.

We headed off to school for an early pick up, our big girl has just returned from a 3 day camp! Very tired and weary mind you, and nothing that a late afternoon hot bath and an early delicious home cooked dinner can't fix!

Evie is very pleased that Abbey is home! So am I. 

We all missed each other a little too much.

School holidays are here again, Abbey and I have written a "holiday things to do list", we are hoping to do everything on the list and possibly more!

I especially enjoy the reduced pace of the holidays, not having the morning rush to school, no after school activities, and the occasional sleep in! (notice how Abbey has upper cased and underlined this on her list.)
Happy Spring Holidays to you! What are your plans for these holidays?

Yummy Lunch Recipe:

*Vegetable stock (I used 1 litre)

*Spring onion, garlic, carrot, celery

*Chick peas, parsley

*Bacon

In a deep pan, fry off spring onion, garlic, carrot and celery. Add bacon and continue pan frying until ingredients are just cooked. Pour in vegetable stock, gently bring to the boil. Reduce to simmer. Add chick peas and chopped parsley. Simmer until chick peas are warmed through.

Enjoy.


Play Dough Recipe:
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup salt
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
food colouring
1 cup of boiling water

Mix dry ingredients together, add oil, boiling water and food colouring. Stir and knead. Store in an air tight container.

Easy Tuna Pasta

An easy one dish wonder! A great mid week meal served with a side of steamed vegetables or a fresh salad!

Ingredients:

2 cups of uncooked spiral pasta

1 tin of cream of celery soup + water and milk (as per tin instructions)

1 x 185g tin of tuna

approx 1/2 to 3/4 cup of frozen corn kernels (or a tin of corn kernels)

salt & pepper 

grated cheese to cover top of casserole dish

Method:

-pre-heat oven to 180'C.
-allow up to 1 & 1/2 hours cooking time.

-place tin of soup into a bowl and combine with water and milk, mix well.

-add uncooked pasta, tin of tuna, and corn kernels, mix well.

-pour this mixture into your square baking dish/casserole dish, ensure the pasta is well covered with soup! -the pasta will be cooking in the soup mixture and if it is not covered it will dry bake!

this is mixture ready to go into the oven.

-cover (with lid or foil) and bake in oven for approx 60 minutes.

-remove from oven, (I usually check how well the pasta has cooked at this stage, just for my own satisfaction that the pasta is not going to be under or over cooked - test with a fork. The pasta needs to be  tender as it will be cooked for approx. another 15 minutes.)

this is how my pasta looked after cooking for 60 minutes.

-uncover and sprinkle grated cheese over the top (as much or as little as you prefer). You can also mix cheese with bread crumbs, chopped parsley and melted butter for a crunchy topping!

-return uncovered to the oven for approx another 15 minutes or until your cheese is melted and slightly golden.

golden cheese-y tuna pasta! 

Enjoy!

In the vege garden....

 The self seeded parsley was beginning to overtake around the garlic, so I decided to pull some of it out and plant it into little pots that I have been saving.

this is the parsley crowding the garlic - before shot

this is after the parsley was removed

These will be gifted to family and friends.

The snow peas are producing wonderful amounts for our dinner plates...

This is the most successful snow pea crop I have ever had. I do not know why or how, the only thing different that I have done was sprinkling ash from our fire around the seedlings a while ago and we have also had good rain fall.

In my mini hot house, seeds are sprouting.........

Giant Sunflowers

These are Evie's Seeds that she planted during our group planting session.

 I planted giant sunflower seeds into my old bathtub, some little critter was having a nibble on the seedlings so I have placed these cups over them for protection, it also acts as an individual mini hothouse!

Spinach, beetroot, corn, zucchini, cucumber, and more spinach are on their way!

All of these seeds were sown 20/08/11.

And the potatoes are looking good! I have 4 pots of potatoes growing. I planted about 4 or 5 potatoes (seed) into each pot with potting mix filled to about 1/3, once the potatoes sprouted I covered them over with more potting mix - I did this twice more. Hopefully we will have a lovely crop of potatoes! 

Frustratingly, I did not note the date that these first went in. I am guessing 4-6 weeks ago, possibly the beginning of August.