Harvest

Yay! Our little garden is producing food at last! Its not much, but we will have enough salad greens from now on and we've been eggsufficient for a while now... We moved the chooks yesterday and found a couple of eggs hidden away so yesterday's harvest was more bountiful than usual.


And with the surplus we made a lovely eggy sponge with blackberry jam and organic cream. It was the most beautiful golden colour and so yummy... All gone now!

Update: Recipe!

Allan's Easy Sponge Cake from Everyday Cooking by Allan Campion and Michele Curtis

4 eggs
110g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
100g (2/3 cup) plain flour
Jam, cream and icing sugar.

Preheat oven to 180degC.
Line a 20cm springform cake tin.
Beat the eggs and caster Sugar together until very thick and light. Carefully fold in the flour, then spoon the mix into the prepared cake tin and cook in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until cooked when tested with a skewer. Allow to cool on a wire rack, then remove cake tin and paper.. Cut the sponge in half and spread with a layer of jam and whipped cream on the bottom half. Replace top layer of cake and sprinkle with icing sugar.

Dingle Dangle Scarecrow

We have a minor bird problem in the vegie patch now that our beagle has moved on to much greener pastures. A great big net over half of it is helping, but we've not made it to the shop yet to buy some more... We needed a temporary measure while our little seedlings settled in! The neighbours scoffed, but we thought a scarecrow would be a lovely addition to our garden. Her name is Daisy and she worked very hard for the first 24hrs, but seems to have been on a smoko since... still she is a colourful addition while we wait for some serious vegie and flower growth to happen. The girls like her too, especially Audrey who has just mastered winking!

Spring Weekends

The days are warmer and longer thanks to daylight savings. Yay! Last weekend was Swayer's birthday and we started off with a garage sale crawl of our suburb which turned out to be quite lucrative! Check out our crafty loot! A whole tub full of buttons, beads, paper, paint, stamps and fun... Swayer was rather content with the two mini casio keyboards he found too.




So far this weekend has been spent floating with friends around Battery Point with a visit to the Mothers Market and lunch at the boat park. Fun times and pooped kids. Bliss!

Begin again

This has been a big year for transition and change for our little family and periods of silence in blogland can only mean more of that is happening... In the last little period of downtime, we had school holidays and were reminded what a delight it is to have our big girl home with us everyday and to go with the flow. Its a lot better for the planet too, not using the car to burn a path between school and home four times a day! So with a little more planning and reading and lots of chatting, we've decided to make school holidays a permanent thing once the kindy year is over. Unschooling seems like an extension of everything else we've done thus far and it is such a relief to let go and watch as our little owlets learn things in their own amazing way and at their own pace... And so begins a new chapter for our family and this blog which will take the journey with us as well as follow my own creative travels. Yes, I am getting there - just need a few more hours in the day and I'll be set! So here's some evidence that not everything around here is planning and chatting...



The garden is growing and will hopefully provide us with some meals one day soon. It now has a herb spiral (more for looks than proper permaculture function), seedlings growing in the vegie patch, an interesting L shaped bed of potatoes, more trees, more beds and less grass! The girls aren't really that interested yet. They love climbing into a pea tee-pee and munching some peas, or looking for worms or faeries, but green thumbs have not been discovered yet.

Unicorns, Rainbows and Faeries

We had a year of home made gifts and parties this birthday season. I have two winter babes, born with a two week gap between birthdays. It made for an interesting time, especially since Big Owlet fell in love with Little Owlet's waldorf baby and asked me to make one for her!!



Party games included a faerie treasure hunt for magical stones left by the faeries after the night's rainfall...



Fuzzy felt pin the horn on the unicorn game...



Felt unicorn horns... worn more like dunces hats, but you get the idea!



I wonder what next years theme will be? The birthday girl said she'd like to do it all again, exactly the same way... but with 6 candles!

Back to earth

I've had a little break from thinking about the outside world and interacting with it... After years of wishing and waiting, I finally left my reliable work-from-home job in hope of spending time focusing on family and creativity.... I've been re-evaluating and working out the family stuff first and I'm feeling energised and creative again! YEAH!!! Here's a little pictorial catch-up on what's been going on...

A new bathroom...



New pets... Martha Wainwright and Leslie Feist, the guinea pigs...



And the chooks, Personal and Private. Endlessly amusing...



Also a birthday or two... more on that next post...

zoo

This rather cuddly, but fierce ceature, known simply as crocobear, has been living with us for the past couple of months. He is on holidays for a little while as part of an exhibition of similarly rare and bizarre animals.

If you happen to be in North Hobart (329 Argyle Street), do stop by and pay him a visit! And say hi from me!