Boo!

(this image is from here)

"Boo" said Boo, has he popped his head up out of the jack-o-lantern, where he had been hiding.

"Oh Boo, your scared me" said Belle. " I've been looking for you everywhere. I wanted to wish you a Happy Halloween"

I think you already know, I'm a huge fan of Mandy's beautiful illustrations. This drawing captures a very beautiful kind of Halloween. I love it.

We have had our spooky pancakes this morning (filled with blood and toad poo) and I am just taking a quick tea break before heading back into the kitchen to make slime pie and mud cake.

I hope you have a very smooky All Hallow's Eve.

(Spunky Monkey has been saying smooky, instead spooky all week. Too cute! Now I am saying it too.)

When your dead and gone

Miss Moo Moo, was giving me a cuddle and kiss goodnight, tonight. She kissed my eyes and kissed my nose. Then, as I started to walk away, she grabbed my hand tighter and said:

"Mum, I love you so much. I'll look after you. I'll look after you when you are old."

I smiled, wondering where she had heard this. Then she grabbed at my dress and said:

"And when your dead Mum, I can cut this dress up."

I guess there is nothing like teaching your children about recycling!

Perhaps she has something in mind, like this fabulous dottie angel creation pictured above.

Talking about fabulous things...

I would like to welcome my two newest members. Inka Inari and Marie Nouvelle Studio. Two very beautiful blogs. Grab a cup of tea and take a look.

The pumpkin has been carved

Yesterday morning, Spunky Monkey, (the official events coordinator), had everyone up very early, so Mr Moo could carve the pumpkin.

It was really fun, despite being 5:45 am. It's so wonderful to get caught up in all of the children's excitement and carving the pumpkin was a lot easier than I anticipated.

I had to remind Mr Moo, more than once, that we were carving a happy kind of pumpkin. He desperately wanted to go all out SCARY!

Halloween Central

Wanting some stylish kind of Halloween inspiration, I headed over to Martha Stewart's Halloween Central today. Oh my, the things that you can do. If only I had started organising this weeks ago, then I would have had plenty of time for: cutting, stenciling, sewing, cutting, paper mache, spray painting, printing and more cutting.











And don't forget, the haunted house cake.

Martha, can you come to my house and make this for me please?

Jack, the lantern

The first and only jack-o-lantern I have ever had, was carved by the chef that I worked with when I lived in London many years ago. I took it home to our house where he sat grinning for a week. The many friends who came and went that week, affectionately called him Jack.

"Hi Jack", they would say as they walked past, and gave him a little pat on the head.

or

"Jack, you scared me!"

Yesterday we bought our first ever carving pumpkin. We are more than ready to start a new tradition in this family. Miss Moo Moo is already hiding around corners and under tables, scaring the bejeebers out of me. She is also walking about the house under blankets and sheets being spooky.

People in Australia, have only started celebrating Halloween in recent years. It is hard to set new traditions for a something that you have never celebrated before. I guess we'll start by carving our pumpkin and make up the rest as we go along. Over the coming years we will find what fits best for our family on Halloween. I'd say it will have something to do with dressing up, scary stories and spooky food.

Handmade Christmas

(this image is from here. so very sweet)

I want to welcome my newest follower, Tracy from Knicky Knacks. Tracy is the person behind the Handmade Christmas Challenge that I have signed up for. (see my side bar)

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I have not got very far with my own handmade Christmas projects. Since starting these bowling bunnies way back when, there has sadly been no more progress to report. I have, however, been buying handmade gifts. I am finding this to be much more satisfying right now. I am discovering some very creative people and products, that unfortunately, I won't be able to share with you here, until Christmas. It simply would not do to spoil the surprise for my loved ones reading this!

So, if I don't get all of my handmade projects finished (I do have a list) I have sourced some great alternatives handmade by somebody else. Which is the whole point of it really.

This year I will not be running around K-mart two days before Christmas, buying tins of Christmas biscuits and horrible plastic toys. And for that, Tracy, I thank-you.

By the way, just in case you are wondering, as I write it is only 59 days until Christmas. You can keep up to date with the Christmas Countdown over at Knicky Knacks.

Think Pink

Today is Pink Ribbon Day.

It would have been lovely to have hosted a pink themed morning tea fundraiser with friends. But with our last week full to the brim with: 1 doctor appointment, 2 chiropractors appointments, 1 hairdressers appointment, 1 kindy interview, 1 school interview, two swimming lessons, and a birthday. And all of them in different towns. It would have been a push.

But it's all awareness. So think pink today and often.

Operation Christmas Child

These are the children that our Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes are going to be delivered to. This photo is from the Fiji Times, a couple of years ago. You can read the full newspaper article here.





With the dolls made and the shoe boxes decorated, it was with a happy heart that the kids and I sealed up our two shoe boxes on Friday morning and delivered them to our teacher at school.

These boxes will be distributed to parts of the South Pacific and Asia by the organisation, Samaritan's Purse. The boxes are to be delivered to children in need, for Christmas.

We chose to put together one box for a girl and one for a boy (5 years old) In it we put:

• A special doll - made with much love

• An undies and singlet set (Dora and Ben 10)

• A notebook, colour pencils, textas, a rubber, sticky tape, glue, a sharpener, some craft cut outs, stickers, chalk and a pencil case.

• A toothbrush (one Spiderman, one Ariel), a washer (one fairy, one frog) and a handmade soap. Scrunchies and fairy hairclips for the girl.

• A barbie, a forklift truck, some matchbox cars.

I really loved shopping with the kids to fill these boxes. They picked out the items, mindful that it was for someone less fortunate than them. They made suggestions of what the kids might want. They really liked watching the videos of the children receiving the gifts on the Operation Christmas Child website. I think it made it more real for them.



Our boxes ready to go. I wish I could have packed up fifty.

PS: I have a little tip on covering shoe boxes. Don't do it! I think it took longer to cover two shoe boxes with brown paper than it did to make the two dolls.

PPS: I'm sorry, I didn't write about this sooner so that you could have been involved too. Like I said in a previous post, I had left this until the eleventh hour (the very last week) to even do anything about it. But now you know, there is no excuse for you not to be involved next year.

Sending love, one dolly at a time

I have spent the last couple of days finishing off these dolls.

Thanks Karyn for posting about Dolly Donations on your blog. I was so excited and inspired by reading Sarah's blog that I instantly cut out these six dolls from her free template.

The top two dolls were made to be part of the Operation Christmas Child project that we are doing through our school. They were boxed up on Friday morning and are now on their way to a new home. And the other four will be packed up and send to children in Cap Haitien in Haiti via the New York office of the Abundant Ground Foundation .

As usual I had left this project to the eleventh hour, so I wasn't half as creative as I would have liked. But I am happy enough with these simple dolls who will hopefully make six little children feel very happy and very special.

Here is a look of what some of the more creative people came up with for the original Haiti Orphanage doll drive. Amazing!











Next time I think I'll make a superhero!

All of these images have been taken from the Dolly Donations blog.

Dreams for sale

Don't ask me why I was looking on this website at 6:20am this morning, I just was and this what I found.

This property for sale. This property is the farm where my mother grew up and where my some of happiest memories were formed. It is the farm that I have often referred too, and I know that I will do so again in the future.



I was not looking for this farm, so when the images came unexpectedly onto the screen, I cried and cried. Why? I'm not sure. For a lost time perhaps, for something that is gone forever. And for my Nana, who, at times, I miss desperately. The last time I saw these houses and this farm, was well over 20 years ago.

My Nana often passed this house as a girl, when she would go along with her parents, in a horse drawn buggy, to take their butter into town. She would look up at this house on the hill and tell her mother: "One day I'm going to live in that house". She made her dreams come true. She did it. Her and my grandfather, along with two of Nana's brothers bought the farm sometime during the 1950's. Eventually as the children came along my Nana and Grandad bought them out.

She then lived there for the next 40 years of her life.

The house in the top picture is the main farmhouse. Oh, the love between those walls. That house has such a hold over my heart, I can't even explain it. But Nana only lived there until I was about three years old. When my grandfather got sick, they moved up the hill to the cottage. That is the house in the second picture.

The cottage was actually where I spent all of my school holidays and where my our whole family came together every Sunday night for Nana's roast chicken dinner. It was here that I watched old movies and put on concerts with my cousins. Our cubbie houses were out the back of the cottage, ours (the three younger cousins) had a cubbie in the old dunnie and the boys (the two older cousins) had a cubbie in the old chicken coop. How Nana put up with all five of us at once, I'll never know. We laughed, we cried, we fought. We played a lot of cards and a lot of matchbox cars. There was often a green frog in the toilet and we had to reuse all of the wash water for Nana's rose garden. We are all very lucky to have experienced this kind of childhood.

Yes, those time are gone, and the house remains, but what I am looking for is no longer at that farm, it's in me.

Spunky Monkey's room

I can't remember why, but I didn't send these photos of Spunky Monkey's bedroom through to Ohdeedoh. I thought I would share them with you.

Like Miss Moo's room, Spunky Monkey's room is eclectic. Our whole house is, so a beautifully themed, matchy-matchy room was never going to happen. He sleeps in an old silky oak bed that was my mother's when she was a child and his silky oak bedside table is also from my mum's childhood home. I made the pillows on his bed out of Sprout fabric, also handmade, are the soft toys: Otto, the christmas elf (a present 2 years ago), the monster (for his 5th birthday) and the dinosaur (his valentine's present his year) The prints above his bed were bought by my mum sometime in the 1970's. I found them in the back of one of her cupboards when I was pregnant and claimed them immediately!

Oh my - Ohdeedoh!

Check it out!

Miss Moo Moo's bedroom is over at Ohdeedoh today.

It's a bit exciting, I had sent the pictures off months ago and had forgotten I had even done it.

I just wish her room was that tidy this morning!

And .....

Welcome to my newest followers, Michellel and make mine mid-century.

Love stamp love

Welcome to my newest follower, Jo, from Love Stamp. You can buy her beautiful jewelry here and here. And can read her lovely blog here.

I have a bit of a wish list.









How to choose just one thing! Too beautiful!

All of these images are from love stamp.

Farmhouse style

These images are just perfect for dreaming. They are from this beautiful book, that I got out from the library today.

Is the universe trying to tell me something?

The book is jam packed with really delicious looking recipes too. I think it will be a pleasure having this book in our house over the next three weeks.

Head in the clouds

I have been Tasmania dreaming again.

But this time, my dreaming is more specific, more of a checklist, perhaps unrealistic.

The perfect house: A rambling old farmhouse (restored, of course) Dark polished wooden floors. White: inside and out. High ceilings. A fireplace with an old fashioned mantelpiece. Lots of windows. Lots of light. A few acres, not too many. Five minutes from town (for supplies). Thirty minutes from the beach (for exploring) Thirty minutes from the city (for the culture: movies, theatre, funky shops, etc)

But of course, the perfect house would not be perfect, unless my cousin, her husband and her five children lived down the country road. Our kids would grow up together. We would eat too many home baked morning tea's together. We would share our Sunday roasts. We would produce swap.

Hmmmmm!

So you see. I am dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. But what a lovely place dreams are, a place to go and feel so very happy, if only for a moment.

Rustic spanish cooking

(This image is from here - a fantastic website I've stumbled across tonight)

If you lived in this beautiful farmhouse in Galicia, Spain, you could be eating this for dinner tonight.

On the weekend, this is the very yummy, and maybe a little bit bad for you, chicken dish that I made. I had copied it from a book many years ago (sorry I don't know which one) and never tried it, but finally I have made it and we all loved it. Here is the recipe.

Buttered Galician Chicken and Macaroni
(serves 4-6)

• 1.5 kilo chicken pieces
• 100 grams butter
• 250ml dry white wine
• 1 bouquet garni (2 sprigs parsley, thyme and 1 bay leaf)
• 1 onion (finely chopped)
• 100 grams bacon
• 1 tables. tomato paste
• 700ml chicken stock
• a pinch of sugar
• a pinch saffron stands
• freshly grated nutmeg
• 175 grams macaroni
• salt and pepper

to serve:
• 2 tables parsley (finely chopped)

To accompany:
• 2 cloves garlic (finely diced)
• 3 tables. chopped parsley (finely chopped)

Melt three quarters of the butter in a heavy based casserole dish. Add the chicken pieces and fry until brown. Add the wine and bouquet garni. Cook over a medium heat until most of the wine has evaporated. Meanwhile, in a frying pan, melt the remaining butter and gently saute the onion and bacon until soft. Stir in the tomato paste and half of the stock. Add the sugar, saffron, nutmeg and season to taste. Add the onion mixture to the chicken. Add the remaining chicken stock and the macaroni and bring the dish to the boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes or until the macaroni and chicken are cooked. Serve sprinkled with the chopped parsley to garnish.
Mix together the garlic and parsley to serve as an accompaniment and to sprinkle over the chicken at the table.

Lets go to the ball

I was sorting through some old fabric and scraps this morning, when Spunky Monkey pulled an old skirt of mine from the box. Almost tumbling in his eagerness to put it on, he announced excitedly:

"Lets go to the ball!"

Oh, to be a five year old boy, without a care in the world.

As he twirled and twirled and twirled.