Scenes from today

The peeps and I made scones for afternoon tea with lashings of jam and cream. I am thrilled to have another sweet that I can bake in a hot oven, because my oven is ON or OFF, and ON is HOT.We made collages with glue, junk mail, glitter and fabric scraps. G was working on a project for Book Week, J made a display board about lady beetles and C didn't want to miss out so just used as much glue and glitter as possible.

She used a lot......and needed a long, warm bath to get all that craft glue and glitter off before she could eat dinner.
Want to bake scones too? Here's the recipe:

Scones

Ingredients

2 cups self raising flour

1 oz of butter

3/4 cup of milk

1/2 tsp salt

Method

Put flour and salt in a mixing bowl

Rub butter into the flour

Make a well in the centre, pour in the milk and bring together to form a dough

Knead very lightly so as not to activate to gluten in the dough

Roll out, cut into circles, brush with milk and bake on a baking tray in a hot oven (Yippee!) for 15-20mins or until golden.

Wrap in a tea towel so that they're still nice and warm when you serve them, break them in half, cover with jam and cream and don't worry about all that sticky jam getting all over the table until after everyone has a full belly.

Dinner tonight

Curried Pumpkin and Sweetcorn

Ingredients

1 tbsp oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tbsp curry powder

1 bay leaf

1 brown onion, diced

1/2 cup celery, diced

2 cups pumpkin, diced (I think north americans call this winter squash?)

kernels cut from 3 ears of corn

1/4 cup of red lentils

400g can of diced tomatoes

1/4 cup coconut milk

1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 tsp salt

1 tsp grated ginger

lemon wedges

chopped coriander

Method

Heat the oil, add the mustard seeds. As soon as they begin to 'pop' add the onion, celery, curry powder mix and bay leaf. Turn down the heat and stir until the onion is slightly softened.

Add everything else except the ginger, lemon, salt and coriander.

Cover and leave to simmer over a low heat until the pumpkin is tender.

Add the final ingredients to taste (depending on the tomatoes you may not need any salt) and serve with steamed rice, broccoli and pappadums.

Jill and Kevin's viral wedding video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
This has us all happily dancing around the living room tonight. What a joyful way to start the celebration of a marriage!

Scenes from today

I spent some time trying to get all the stain off of the cupboard so that I can refinish it and get it into the kid's room. This is turning into a much bigger project than I had anticipated, I hope it's worth it.

I swept the path in my favourite shoes.

I'm still stitching away on the centre for JW's colour wheel quilt. I need to get a new blue fabric to replace the pale blue yoyos, don't you think?

I've also been admiring my new rug! It's wool, it's big and it was only $135. It's lame to be so thrilled about it but I luff it.

And finally, let me leave you with the reason Mr Duyvken will no longer be allowed any unsupervised visits to Harvey Norman.What have you been up to today?

Scenes from today

I was sure I had the single girl quilt pattern I wrote about in my last post but after going through my books I realised I didn't. I do now though! There were only two things in today's post and they were both personal mail, I love a day that doesn't involve a bill!

I've almost finished painting the primer on the cubby and clearing the back fence so that I can get some beds planted out before the summer.
The camellias are extraordinary this year. We must have had just the right balance on sunshine and rain over the past few months. The trees are weighed down with blossoms and we are lucky to have a lot of them in our garden.

We also have a lot of rainbow lorikeets and they helped clear up after lunch.

They retired to the trees after fighting over our crumbs singing and skittering about making it very difficult for me to take a photo. This one is for Lynn who likes bright colours and things that blossom and has left me some lovely messages lately. Thanks for stopping by!

A question for the quilters

I love these quilts (from the pottery barn website, of course, I think I need help :-))

The squares quilt doesn't do much for me but the circles and stars on white I just adore.

The circles seems to be identical to the Denise Schmidt single girl quilt and I have the pattern for that in one the Denise Schmidt books but can anyone give me the pattern name for the stars quilt?

I could probably wing it by sewing strips together, cutting triangles and piecing them together to make the stars but I'd have to do some maths to figure out the single bed sizing and I am, at heart, a lazy girl.

Any ideas?

Grace

And so it goes...
The children are all sleeping in their own unique way tonight.
G took a while to get to sleep because tomorrow is the last day of term and she is very excited about the 2 week holiday.
She reminds me that there is a time in our lives when 2 weeks is a very long time and draws open memories of summer holidays that lasted forever.
J is sleeping carefully so as not to knock the 3cm gash above his eyebrow that he got last night when he was messing around with his sister. It was glued together at the emergency department this morning.
He reminds me to be grateful for the wonderful medical care we have available to us because the extra time taken this morning meant that he didn't need to be sedated to have stitches. Snuggling blue bear and holding mum's hand was all the comfort he needed while Dr Paula 'put him back together'. He and Dr Paula were joking that if humpty dumpty had doctors and nurses instead of king's horses and men he'd probably be sitting up on that wall again.
I heart Dr Paula.
C is finally sleeping after testing every bedtime limit I put in place.
She reminds me that being 2 is hard and that it is my job to make it easier. It's not always an easy job but it's the one I've got so I'd better do it well. Let me share with you something hilarious that she said today; after repeatedly hitting J's leg today when they were sitting together in the car I told her to keep her hands to herself. Without missing a beat she said to me 'but I can't hurt him without my hands'.
JW is sleeping fitfully because fevers are tough on little bodies.
She reminds me that a cuddle can be the most comforting thing in the world.
They all remind me of Jeff Buckley's album Grace that we listened to a lot in 2000 when we were expecting our first baby. I'll fall asleep humming Hallelujah tonight.

No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

The BBC have turned this wonderful series of books by Alexander McCall Smith into a tv series. I'm more excited about it than is appropriate for a 34 year old but I've decided just to roll with it. Precious Ramotswe is a great character and I have enjoyed reading all the books. The show looks like it will truly beautiful to look at as it has been filmed in Botswana and the light, colours and textiles look amazing. Yes, I said textiles. I'm already hankering after some of those african prints!