Weekend off from kids and I spent it in the kitchen....I think I am mad lol

This weekend we had a child free Saturday from about 11.30am and I don't pick up the kids from school until 2.15 today (Monday is early dismissal for them). Hubby and I had planned a nice relaxing weekend, or so we thought lol.

Basically as soon as the kids left we got ready to go to the shops (Trust me I loathe the shops with a passion, I always seem to be at the shops and I hate it!)....but I desperately needed a haircut so off we went. While there we decided that we would have two meals that we love and the kids aren't so keen on for Saturday and Sunday night's dinners.

For Saturday night we decided to have marinated pork belly (I know I know that is really not good for you but its a once every so often treat lol) with singapore noodles....yuuuuummmy!!

For Saturday night we decided to have slow cooked lamb shanks with veggies.

Of course we then decided that we really should make another batch of Jam Scrolls for the kids lunch boxes, and then we just happened to also be running low on our home made chicken and vegetable soup which we love to have for lunch during the week. So we shopped for everything and came home and found we had no time left to actually make anything except our Saturday night dinner.

It turned out fantastic and was so tasty. Of course though that meant that Sunday then became our cooking day. We did enjoy a bit of a lay in till 9.30 which is a very rare treat in this house. Then proceeded to make a start on the jam scrolls and veggie soup. Once they were on we decided to finally rearrange our freezers. I bought my mum's fridge/freezer when she went into a nursing home last month and after bringing it down here it has sat in my alcove for the last 2 weeks. So we pulled out freezers and gave them a thorough clean out and the older of the two now sits in the carport defrosting and we will attempt to sell it off next weekend. My alcove looks so much bigger now that all the crap has been cleaned out of it. The alcove is a small area that joins out addition to our house. It is basically just the verandah roof which has been roughly lined out and the previous owners have put a sliding door on one wall and a normal door on the other which leads into our carport. So it kinda looks like a box with a door on each side lol. In this space we just have a small pantry cupboard which houses kids raincoats and things like potatoes and baking trays and then we have a large chest freezer and an upright freezer, which is now a fridge/freezer. It was my idea to try to save power, so hopefully it works. I had only bought a new fridge for my mum in February when hers died on her, so it seemed only logical for me to pay her the money and take over her fridge. Only thing is we have gotten rid of our second fridge and an upright freezer and consequently I am now a little short of freezer space as mum's fridge is only fairly small and the freezer is naturally only small too. Oh well I guess it should save us money in the electricity department at least. The fridge and freezer we have just retired are at least 15-20 years old each so a brand new fridge would have to be more economical.

Gee I got a bit off topic there didn't I lol...sorry! Anyway after doing all this I found a frozen jam roll cake at the bottom of the old freezer so decided to make a Jam Roll Baked Custard......these things are soooo nice. It has been a couple of years since I last made one and I am so out of practice lol. I made it but forgot that I used to double the custard mixture so the custard only came to half way up my dish.....but it did taste really nice lol!!

But our weekend without children saw us spending it all predominantly in the kitchen or at the shops, that was so not what I had hoped for lol. Next time I will have to plan better I think!! This week is the kid's final week at school as they come into their next lot of school holidays. I can see the next two weeks will involve a lot of cooking so I can stop the "what can we eat" questions that seem to spring up every hour on the hour lol and they can eat something other than chips and lollies that they naturally seem to gravitate towards. I will be stocking up on fruit and definitely making homemade biscuits and cakes I think!!!

Can anything else break down or break in this house????

I am so fed up right now. We just can't seem to get a little bit of luck on our side at all. Since we have been married it has been one thing after another.
We were married in October 2007 and since then the things that have happened (to life as well as household items) are as follows:
April 2008 - Hubby's kids are taken by their mother and we have to take her to court to get access re-established.
June 2008 - Had to track down Hubby's ex as she moved house right at the time when we had to serve court papers on her and didn't bother to give us a forwarding address (thankfully they stayed in the same suburb so we were able to find them!)
August 2008 - First court date which then was adjourned because the Ex was had just had a baby.
October 2008 - Finally something goes right and we get access of every second weekend granted effective beginning of November.
November 2008 - My mum collapses and is rushed to hospital where she is kept for 2 weeks and told that she will have to be fitted with a pacemaker.
December 2008 - Major blowup between my ex and me due to his new partner deciding that there is no way on earth that we should actually be on speaking terms with one another as her and her ex hate each other!
January 2009 - My mum collapses again and lands back in hospital where she then gets moved to another hospital for her pacemaker insertion.
February 2009 - My mum was out of hospital for 3 weeks only to have my brother go and visit her and find her unconscious because of having a hypo (diabetic). Thankfully ambulance guys were able to revive her and she didn't have to go to hospital
Late February 2009 - Mum is found unconscious by Meals on Wheels ladies and goes onto to spend another week in hospital.
March 2009 - Mum is sent home only to land back in hospital a week later after being unable to breathe at a follow up hospital appointment. She then spends another 3.5 weeks in there where they assess her as having some kind of non responsive style seizure so they place her on antiseizure meds.
April 2009 - Hospital sends her home, only to have her found 4 days later by the Meals on Wheels unconscious yet again.
May 2009 - She is placed into a nursing home and here we hare mid June still trying to organise to become her Power of Attorney as unfortunately she didn't have any appointed.
In the meantime we have had a list of breakdowns as follows:
Toaster
Sandwich maker
Microwave
Tyres on car
Fuel pump on car
Fridge played up
Playstation broke down
Dog has had ear problems which cost us almost $1000 in treatment
and now.....
Hubby and Mr12 were mucking around in the kitchen the other night and Mr12 fell backwards onto the open door of the dishwasher, totally buckling the door and rendering it inoperable. Of all the things in my house the dishwasher has been the best thing we have ever done as it has saved me sooooooo much time! In this house it works out more cost effective than handwashing as dinner time used to see me filling the sink 3 times a night, not to mention the breakfast/lunch/baking session washing up times. I am devastated as we just can't afford to get it replaced/fixed right now. We just laid out $1800 to buy mum's fridge and tv off her which of course if she hadn't had to go into a nursing home, we wouldn't have purchased, but I knew that if we had tried to sell them we wouldn't have got anywhere near what she paid for them and as these items are only a few months old there was no way I was going to let her loose money on them. So I bought them. At least I know that they will last for many years but right now I am not sure its something I should have done lol.
Please tell me that our luck will change soon lol, I am just so sick of every time I turn around something else has blown up or gone wrong!!!!

My first recipe......CHEESE AND BACON SCROLLS

These are my famous (well in my house at least lol..) Cheese and Bacon Scrolls. I use these to put in the kids lunchboxes and they really do go down a treat. They are so easy to make and are a bit of a weekend tradition in this house.

I use my breadmaker as it is so quick and simple.

1.25t dry yeast
3C plain flour
1.5t bread improver
1T skim milk powder
2t sugar
1t salt
1T margarine
290ml water

Pop all ingredients into your breadmaker pan and pop it on the Pizza Dough setting and push start. On my breadmaker it takes 1hr50min.
Once the dough is done, simply tip it out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out so it is a rough rectangle shape (I am in no way precise with this, I just roll it until it looks about right and is about 1cm thick).
Spread it with a think layer of tomato sauce.
Sprinkle with bacon pieces and grated cheese (I have also added capsicum occasionally for a more "pizza" like flavour.
Simply roll it up, so you end up with a long sausage.
Then it is just a matter of lightly flouring a couple of baking trays and cutting approximately 1 inch wide pieces off the dough. Place them onto the baking tray so that they touch one another, forming a rough circle shape. I normally get approx 10-12 on each of my trays.
Cook them in the oven at approx 160 degrees (Fan forced oven) for approx 20 minutes or until lightly brown.
This recipe normally makes about 22 scrolls.

They taste beautiful hot but are equally as nice cold. I normally freeze individually and the kids get one each in their lunchbox. They make a great alternative to sandwiches.

Drowning in a house of clutter - Oh boy do I have clutter lol

Well here I was thinking that my house was pretty cluttered and was planning ways to declutter without the kids getting too upset about my thoughts on a few of their bits and bobs lol, I shouldn't have ever thought my house was cluttered before, really I shouldn't have.......NOW it is cluttered.

After moving my mum into a nursing home a couple of weeks ago, my brothers and I have gone through her house, well most of it at least and thrown out the junk stuff and boxed up alot, marked a bit for a garage sale and gone through her clothes working out what she will need and won't need. Of course all this sorting leaves me with a dilemma. I am a really sentimental person and as I am also the youngest child in the family by a 13 year age gap, I have memories attached to so many of mum's things. You should have seen the pile of stuff that I had to bring home courtesy of my nostalgic mind!!!!

My sisterinlaw wanted to toss the clothes that mum won't need, I said no we will give them to the Salvos,,,,,well now I have rethought and decided that I will list them on Oztion to make mum a little extra money (where I will find the time to do this when I have a carport oozing with decluttered items from my own home to list on Oztion I have no idea!).

So here I am with a loungeroom that now houses a huge box of ornaments, 3 boxes of clothing/handbags to list on Oztion, a suitcase and two washing baskets with mum's clothing that needs to be stored and rotated to the nursing home, a suitcase full of photo albums with a stack of photos still to be gone through, and other bits and pieces. I also scored a sleeping bag, blankets and two quilts...these things can be used straight away on the kids beds etc so that bit isn't quite so bad.

Oh boy though my house is just screaming out wanting to be set free and I am just dreaming of the day that I can actually properly clean the place. It takes me so long to clean as I have to move so much stuff. I have told me Hubby that this weekend, the toolshed and carport is being gone through from top to bottom. We are tossing the crap we no longer use/need and going through all the boxes I have sitting there waiting to listed on Oztion to make sure that I'm not holding onto it for nothing.

My new mission is to only keep the things we use and/or love to bits, everything else can go......now to put this plan into action!

Wish me luck!!!!!

OOOOOHHHHH yeah I forgot to mention, I am so happy, we are getting a solar electricity grid on our roof in November (sooo far away, but the best this poor inundated company can do lol). After getting a quote of $9500 a few months ago from another company, we are getting it done for the princely sum of $550 (plus the cost of a new meter box which is approx $430, but we would have needed that regardless of who we went through. I am so happy that we will be doing our bit for the environment and also helping ourselves out a little with the cost of our power. We are only getting 6 panels but it is a start at least.

Just another day......

I am really starting to feel like life would have been so much less complicated back in our grandparents days. I feel in so many ways that computers, playstations, wiis etc etc have just made life for parents so much harder.

Also all the legal rigmarole you have to go through to do things these days. Take my mum for example, as she is legally blind I have been signatory on her bank account for the past 5-8 years but now that she has gone into a nursing home I have to jump through hoops to be able to do her banking for her. She hadn't nominated a power of attorney and because of this I am going through hell trying to get the paperwork done so that I can continue to do this. Why should it be so hard. An elderly person begins to forget things and so that means that anything they have said in the past is null and void. I know that there are probably many daughters/sons that have squandered away their parents money when this happens but it makes life so darn hard for those of us that just want to do the best for their parents. Then of course you have the actual parent who makes you feel so guilty that you have had the nerve to put them in a "prison" as my mum called it. She has been in there 5 short days and she has already decided that she doesn't like it much, the nurses are lovely the food is nice but "there is just something about it I don't like"....sheesh. She won't leave her room that is the whole problem in my eyes. She won't give it a try. She is happy on her own as she says but then she complains because she just sits there bored all day. I have no idea what to do to try and get her to mingle. Looks like I will need to talk to the diversional therapist up there and see if she can come up with some ideas.

As for my kids,,,,major blow up yesterday afternoon. I admit I lost it totally and I feel so bad today. The stress of them and everything with my mum has gotten to me I think and unfortunately the kids pushed my buttons so they bore the brunt of my ranting and raving. Mr8 in particular was in the firing line. I need to work out something to do with this child but I am at a loss as to what. On a brighter note Mr7 has finally settled in a bit better and I haven't had tears in the mornings for 8 consecutive days of school....fingers crossed this continues!!!!

Thought I would share one of my more recent scrapping sessions......don't get time to do diddly squat these days but here is one I did of Hubby back when he was a little school kid lol.......what a shame I haven't gotten around to doing any of mine yet lol.....lucky he doesn't read my blog or he would kill me!!! (He is the one on the far left in the striped beige jumper)

What is a blog for????

My mind has been everywhere since returning from our holiday. We have had to put my mum into a nursing home and I am feeling very stressed out about this. I never imagined that this would be so hard. I feel guilty, cruel and relieved all at once. I know that she can't stay in her own home as she just can't look after herself any more but at the same time I know her views on a nursing home and I feel that we have just made her miserable.

She has borderline dementia and one day she realises that she needs to be cared for and the next she is talking about going home. We only moved her into the nursing home last Friday, but she seems to believe it is only a short term thing and she will be going home soon. I just can't seem to find a way to explain to her that this is it, this is now home.

My brothers and I have to rent her unit out as naturally she needs some sort of income as her pension gets eaten away by the nursing home fees. We are packing her unit up bit by bit and we are going to store her sentimental items (ornaments etc). I want to take her shopping as two of my sons have birthdays next month and she wants to buy them a present but I am too scared (read chicken!) to take her shopping in case she asks me to take her to her house. I am scared that if I do she will refuse to leave but I am even more scared that if she was to walk in there now and find her house getting packed up, she would get very upset and angry. I feel so torn as to what to do and I seriously do not know what is the "right" thing to do.

I also then have Mr8 crying his heart out every day when I take him to school due to a couple of class bullies. Even though his day goes okay and he is happy at the end, I still have trouble getting him there. The teachers have been great and reassure me that once I am gone he is fine but it still pulls at the heart strings even if he is "faking" it to a degree.

But anyway, I have gotten so far off topic its ridiculous lol,,,,,,this is what I mean about my mind, its everywhere at the moment. Life right now has got me thinking about the "purpose" of our blogs. I have a passion for reading everyone's blogs but I feel that my own just doesn't measure up. Reading other people's blogs I find to be "educating" and I feel that everyone else has lots of pictures and shares their lives and in turn enriches others lives by sharing information that is really useful. On the other hand I have mine that is just an outlet for my stress it seems lol. I want my blog to become something interesting, something that I can actually refer to for recipes, ideas etc etc in years to come.

My biggest problem is time. I have lots of recipes that I could share but its just finding the time to actually be able to get them on here. I don't know,,,,what do people want to see in blogs that makes them interesting????????????????????

Our holiday in the Gold Coast Queensland and now back to reality...ho hum

Well here we are back to normality after spending 16 wonderful nights on the Gold Coast. Our days were so jam packed but the kids loved it and never complained that they were tired or sick of walking which really amazed me.

While there we went to all the Worlds twice, visited Currumbin Bird Sanctuary, the Tree Top Walk in the Lamington National Park, Tropical Fruit World and spent a day in Brisbane at the Museum and Science Centre. Such a fun time and one which the kids are all eager to do again.....they even got their chicken mum on the Tower of Terror, not once but twice!!!! lol I will post a few piccies once we get ourselves organised.

The weather was beautiful while we were there with very little rain, what there was was only a brief shower then it cleared up into blue skies again. Come back to Adelaide to grey overcast skies and very chilly mornings. Have had to drag out the jeans and jumpers yuck!

Today is their first day back at school and I have had a hard dose of reality thrown at me. The younger two have worked themselves up into a tizzy about school. Mr8 was sobbing his heart out upon getting into the car, calmed down by the time we got there but then as I was about to leave the school I hear this yelling and he is sprinting across the school grounds in a flood of tears because he doesn't want to go to school. The youngest, Mr7 made himself sick about 5 times so Hubby took him in because I just couldn't deal with it, I was at my wits end. I am back to having no idea which way to turn.........can't we just stay on permanent holiday???? lol

My Baby is 7!!!!!

Yesterday was my baby boy's 7th birthday. Where has that time gone???? It seems like only yesterday I was cradling a tiny baby in my arms and now he is a boisterous little boy who loves wrestling, Alf (you know the alien from the 80's tv show), Bakugon and anything bash them up and crash them down lol.....oh yes and neverending amounts of.....wait for it......toilet humour shall I say lol.

My little man had his heart set on an Alf cake. I make them a character cake every year so I was up for the challenge. I have actually found an Alf cake pan on Ebay and I won it, but unfortunately it has to come all the way from the USA so it won't be here for a couple of weeks. So I got creative and this is what I was able to produce....I was pretty happy with it and my little man was over the moon.


I was so much happier with this cake than the one that I did for my StepDaughter back in January. She wanted a Bratz cake and so I attempted Yasmin for her. Let me say that although the kids thought it was great, I thought she looked like she was demented lol. But hey at least I tried, I have never been good at human forms lol, cartoons and characters I can do freehand but faces, nope.

Daylight savings has finished sadly and gone are the times when I could go out and bucket some water onto my veggie patch after dinner. It means I have to be more organised, which isn't good in this house!! I love the extra hour of daylight after dinner time. That was always my time to get a few bits and pieces done outside, oh well, looks like gardening and bringing in washing is going to have to squeeze in somewhere before dinner for the next 6 months again.

I saw an interesting segment on 60 Minutes last night which was all about back yard gardens and how more and more people are returning to the old style of eating/cooking and living. It was really interesting. It made me more determined than ever to really get stuck into my garden over winter and get it all planted out before spring.

Ok back to housework.......

When sickness hits.......

It has been such a "down" kind of week in our house. Last weekend my step children were here for the weekend and we had planned to have a lovely day on Sunday and take them to a local fair that was on and then down to Semaphore Beach for the annual Kite Festival. It should have been a lovely relaxing day. The weather was about 32 degrees so it was very warm out unfortunately, but it still was supposed to be a lovely day. My eldest son had been at his mates house on Friday and Saturday night but I insisted that we were picking him up at 10.30 Sunday morning so we could have a family outing.

Sunday morning arrived and I was feeling less than great with pretty bad stomach cramps, which by the time Mr14 arrived home had turned into me feeling very nauseous. DH asked if we should just cancel the day but I was determined that the day would go ahead and I would just pull my socks up and get on with it.

Well we went to the fair first which was set up on the local footy oval. We walked around the outside, but I felt too horrible to take in much and was just too flat to actually get the kids involved with what was going on. I made it around the first lap of the oval and then started to feel extremely unwell. DH told me to go and sit down in the shade and he would take the kids over for a free ride or two. I gladly took his offer up. I admit I did feel so much better sitting in the shade. DH came back with the kids who had decided it was too hot to wait in the sun for a ride and we decided to go to Hungry Jacks for lunch as we had promised them.........there was no way I wanted to look at food but went along anyway. The kids happily tucked into their burgers while I just sipped on a little bit of lemonade.

We then made our way down to the Kite Festival. It was so busy and we had to park quite a way away so by the time we made it down to the where the kites were flying the heat had started to make me feel very lightheaded and nauseous again. Once again DH put his hand up to take all 6 kids down the jetty to watch the kites fly while I sat in a shady spot. I was wondering why on earth I had put myself through this,,,,if it was one of the kids that had been unwell we would have either not gone out at all or just one of us would have taken those that wanted to go. But no the "Supermum" in me kicked in and I was determined that the kids would get to see these darn kites if it killed me lol,,,,,,I so wish I had just given in to my "sooky la la" mood I was feeling lol.



DH finally after what felt to me like hours, arrived back and I just glanced at him and said "Can we go home now??????", one look at me told him that I really should have just been home in bed, so we made the trek back to the car and I went to bed for 4 hours uninterrupted by children, while poor DH ironed the school clothes, cooked the dinner and did another load of washing.

Well, 5 days later I still feel very run down but am at least able to function, which is great considering 3 out of my 4 boys have all been ill this week,,,,,of course one after the other lol. I have number 3 at home with me today and just have my fingers crossed that the fourth doesn't come down with it as it is his 7th birthday on Sunday and would hate for it to be ruined for him.

Well I had better get some housework done, I don't really feel like it but I feel that the house is looking very grotty and just horrible, the floors all need doing and the bathrooms and kitchen need a good going over too.

I also have to plan how I am going to decorate my little boy's birthday cake,,,,he wants and "Alf" cake,,,,you know that TV show from the 80's. We have been watching it on Foxtel for the last couple of months and he is hooked. I have managed to get him an Alf toy for his birthday so he will love that, but now just have to get creative and design the cake!!!

I will post photos of the outcome next week.

It's so strange how different it feels when one of your kids isn't here....

My eldest, Mr14 has been away on his year 9 school camp for the past two nights and is due to come back this afternoon. He would have to be the quietest one out of the 4 boys and yet there is a strange silence in the house with him not being here. It is so strange!!

He is the sort of kid that doesn't enter into arguments, is the peacekeeper in a lot of situations and the all round good guy who always tries to help others out. Yet while he hasn't been here the other three who usually have daily squabbles have been unusually calm. I feel like the house has entered some kind of time warp or something lol.

Does anyone else feel major differences when one child is missing from the day to day scenarios??

So exciting.....

We have finally decided we are definitely going to take the boys away for a holiday to the Gold Coast. I can't wait!!!! We unfortunately can only take my 4 boys due to problems with hubby's ex but we will have a blast and it will be alot easier not having my Hubby's autistic son to have to control all the time too. I would have loved to have taken them all, but the more I think about it the more I know that it would have been a real drain on us trying to control him and stop him from destroying things in the house we are renting.

We have paid all our deposits and bought most of the theme park tickets and booked the flights. This will be the first time any of my kids have been on a plane so that will be really exciting for them and they have never been to the Gold Coast so I think they will just be blown away by the stuff we have planned.

Today Mr14 left on his Year 9 school camp. I know its ridiculous but I always feel a sense of loss when the kids go away for a couple of days. I feel like a bit of a control freak because I worry when I'm not there to watch over them. School doesn't bother me but anything else I turn into a real worry wort lol. I know he will have a good time, although adding to my worry is the fact that he has no friends going on camp with him. He didn't seem too phased by it as he does at least know a few of the others but I worry for him anyway. It is only a 2 night camp so he will be back after school on Friday.

A while a go I tried the "no shampoo" method for my hair. Well it didn't last more than a few days as I found my hair felt very limp. I have read that you need to give it a couple of weeks to settle in but by the 5th day it was starting to really annoy me, so the shampoo came back into play. One thing I have kept up with though is the no conditioner part. I am now using half a cup of vinegar in a 2 litre jug and I just top it up with water. As I have long hair I have always needed to use quite a bit of conditioner just to get the knots out after I wash it, but now I simply dip the longer part into the jug and let the vinegar/water mix penetrate for a few seconds. I then run a wide toothed comb through my hair which loosens any knots, then I pour the jug of vinegar mix over my head slowly, followed by another comb through and its done. I have found that the knots in my hair come out really easily and my hair has felt so much softer and bouncier than it ever did when I was using conditioner. It seems to also help with the knots I would normally get throughout the day too. It is really amazing. I certainly won't be going back to using conditioner (unless of course I am away from home unexpectedly lol). I may even try the bi carb soda shampoo mixture again in the school holidays when I won't be having to go out so much lol.

The "I have no friends" dilemma

Right now I am feeling so sad for my little boy. Mr8 who's friend shifted house 4 weeks ago has absolutely no friends at school and is just sitting all alone at recess and lunch. He doesn't mix in easily and therefore he won't just walk up and ask his peers if he can join in. He is turning into a very angry little boy lately but I know that it is stemming from him feeling so lonely at school. His older brother has confirmed to me that he does just sit by himself or just wanders around aimlessly. I asked him last night if he would like to have a birthday party this year and he said he does but he doesn't know who he will invite because he has no friends. I just about cried for him.

As his mother I want to just hold him close and make all his worries go away, but as his mother I also know that there isn't alot I can do to help him in this area either. He doesn't play any sport as he doesn't want to, I even tried to get him interested in scouts since that isn't a team sport, I thought he may like that better, but after attending two sessions he refused to go back because he thought it was boring.

The other day he told me at lunch time he walked around the pit (a square area where the kids play handball) 28 times before the bell went.

I wonder what kind of day he will have today :(

Weekends go by so fast

Here we are at Monday again already, just where do Saturday and Sunday go????

We had Hubby's two younger children here for the weekend, and my boys were with us too. Mr8 went to his best buddy's house for a sleepover on Saturday night. These two miss each other so much. His mate recently moved house about 40 minutes from here in a country town, neither of them are settling into school life without one another. They seemed to enjoy their time together. Thankfully he was picked up by them and then we went for a trek out to their house, for a bit of a stickybeak lol, to pick him up on Sunday. It is quite a nice house, much bigger than the one they had and on a bigger block. It is nice a peaceful, with just the sound of birds singing, so unlike my street that is quite noisy with the sound of traffic. If I was to move out to the country though, I would have to have a big block of at least an acre and feel like I was living in the country I think, they are in a suburban part of the town so it is like a limbo land to me lol.

On Saturday I baked 2 batches of my pizza scrolls and a batch of my jam scrolls.......yummo!! The first batch of the pizza scrolls were demolished for lunch while the latter batches got put straight into the freezer ready for school snacks. This morning they were all packed off with a jam and a pizza scrolls in their lunchboxes on top of their normal sandwich and variety of other snacks they usually have,,,,,,I shouldn't hear "I'm hungry what can I eat" when they walk in the door....well at least I hope lol.

I took photos of the scrolls, so I will be making up a recipe card for each of them and will post it on here once they are done. Well I had better scoot and get the lunchbox snacks sorted out and then go and pick up the boys from school.

How many more things can a girl want to do???

I made a decision last night that saw my hubby just kind of smirk and go "aha" in that way that only a man can do when his wife adds yet another thing to her "want to do list" lol. I decided that each time I cook something (something that has a recipe lol) I will photograph it and scrapbook a recipe card for it. Once I start I will also post them into this blog so in effect I will be sharing my cooking with whoever wants to take a peek. This makes me just want to start cooking all my favourites,,,,my kids would love it as the house would be full of home baking but oh boy I can also feel my waistline growing!!!! For someone that is desperately trying to lose the weight that idea may not be so good but I am going to do it anyway lol.

Tonight we are taking the kids down to the beach for a picnic tea and a swim. It is quite warm here today so it should be really nice down there tonight. Originally we had planned to do it tomorrow but Mr8 has been invited to a friend's house (his best friend that recently moved house) and I don't want him to miss out on either of these outings, so I will just work around him.

This morning I went to help out with the spelling tests for Mr8's class. I tested 19 kids and 14 of them got a score of 8 out of 10 or higher. I thought that was pretty good for a Year 2/3 class. There was in fact only one that scored below 6 and that was mainly because she gets her "b" and "d" and her "p" and "q" back to front lol.

Mr6 has actually managed to have a whole week in a row where he hasn't cried. I am so proud of him. He has now filled up his sticker chart for this week at school and has earnt himself a lucky dip from his teacher and he gets to play with his much longed for electric guitar for the weekend (it is Hubby's and Mr6 so desperately wants his own lol),,,,must remember to dig out some earplugs I think!

Ok off to get ready for the picnic, we are taking savoury biscuits, cheese, kabana, garlic mettwurst, ham, french onion dip, roasted capsicum dip, watermelon, rockmelon and some salad which I haven't decided upon yet lol.

Don't know why I didn't do this months ago......

On the weekend DH and I didn't have his kids and my kids were going to their Dad's for the weekend, so we decided it was high time to clean out the carport and our bedroom. With an autistic child in the house, our room gets used as a "keep safe" room when he is around and things don't always seem to leave it lol. DH's son is 8 and is autistic, he has the knack of destroying most things he gets his hands on and so our room becomes the dumping ground every Friday before we take charge of him for the weekend. On the following Monday things should get put back but unfortunately we try to think of somewhere safer to keep the said items but can't so we kind of just leave it sitting in our room, the result was a room bulging at the seams and very little walking space left.

We started in the carport and pulled everything moveable out and swept it thoroughly. We had 3 old kids bikes, some old weights, a trolley cart, plastic outdoor chairs, a trundle bed and a few other bits and pieces. I stuck a sign of $20 on the chairs and $20 on the bed and just put the rest out with a free sign.....well I have never seen things disappear so fast! I kid you not within ten minutes the 3 bikes were gone, as were the assorted toys we put out. We followed that up with the trolley and the weights and within 5 minutes they were gone alone with the chairs,,,,Sold for $20 and the bed which sold for $15,,,not bad for things I would have given away lol. I have no idea why I just didn't put these things out as we decided we didn't need them lol. Last year we got rid of another trundle bed and a cubbyhouse in the same way. It is amazing what the word FREE does isn't it? If I had put a dollar value on them they would have sat there for quite a while no doubt. But this was mainly about decluttering our house so that was achieved at least.

Then in the afternoon we made a start on our room, everything got pulled out and sooooo much stuff was tossed out, I mean it was just trash stuff, not even charitable. I ended up with 2 bags for charity but the rest was binned. I have no idea why it had been kept for so long. I am a very sentimental person but honestly as I was going through my stuff that I had saved since my childhood, I found christmas cards that were dated 1979,,,,,,who keeps christmas cards for 30 years?????? Lol the funniest thing was that I didn't even know the people the card was from!!! I even had 5 postcards that had been addressed to my sisterinlaw,...now she has never lived with me and I have absolutely no idea where on earth i would have got these from!!!!

Anyway because I like to digital scrapbook, I have put all of my photo albums (about 13 in total) on the floor in the loungeroom along with all the kids keepsake boxes. These used to be stored on top of our wardrobes. I decided that if they sit in the loungeroom they will annoy me to bits (which they are!!) and I will force myself to scan all the things I wanted to scan onto the computer and then I can store everything away properly and it will all be categorised etc etc etc. I think I will scan the kids artwork and throw away the originals, keeping only a couple of things and maybe just scan the school newsletters etc instead of keeping all the ones that have their names featured in them. At the end of the day are my boys really going to thank me for giving them a box full of paper which they then have to read through to find their names in it??? I think it will be much easier to just give them a disc that has it all on there and they can just keep it and go through it if and when they want to. At least they have the option then. Sometimes I hate the fact that I am so darn sentimental. I keep way too much stuff. I so badly want to get into my scrapbooking and get all the photos looking nice. To me the photos being nicely presented will probably be more important than an old school newsletter or a piece of artwork they did in Year 1.

So this is me this week, I now have a carport that looks presentable and clean, a bedroom I can actually move in and vacuum with ease and a loungeroom that now looks like a storage room lol....oh well you can't win them all. I just have to bite the bullet and start scanning and naming....wish me luck!

It's the little things....

I am so excited lol......I just went out to see how my veggie/fruit plants that we planted recently were doing and what do I find but two baby watermelons beginning to grow. I am sooooo happy, I really did wonder if I would only be good at growing vines and not the actual fruits lol. I am not by any means a green thumb but am slowly getting the nack of being able to start things off from seed and actually getting a few to grow into productive plants....okay now that I have done my little happy dance I will get back to making some lunch lol......

Friday Musings.....

Well here we are at the end of yet another week. Earlier this week I mentioned the troubles I have been having with a couple of my boys and school. Well things have changed....a little bit lol. Mr8 is going off to school without a problem and seems reasonably unphased by not having his best buddy there, but it is worrying me that a couple of days he has mentioned that he has played with noone at recess and lunch. Yesterday he told me that he walked around the pit 28 times at lunchtime (the pit being a cement area that the kids play handball in). I asked him if he was doing that with his friends and he replied that no he was alone and just felt like it. My heart just about broke,,,,I so want him to make some friends, firm friends not just acquaintances as he seems to have now. He isn't worried about it but I think deep down he does worry and that is probably the reason why he has so many temper tantrums. This week I have had more than my fair share of tantrums from him and he has been sent to his room numerous times. I can see I will have to work on this with him and may have to have a chat with his teacher next week.

Meanwhile, Mr6 (the one that cries to the point of making himself ill) has been taken to his class by my Hubby for the last 4 mornings. I was at the point where I just couldn't face it anymore. He has cried each morning because I haven't been walking him to his class but has been much better with Hubby than what he has been with me,,,,yes he has been sick twice but his teacher has been able to put up 3 stickers on his happy chart and he has earnt his right to play with Hubby's electric guitar tonight. I am hoping that he keeps this up for me next week when I resume the classroom drop off lol.....I guess if it doesn't it at least proves that it is me that he likes putting on a show for although the fact that he has been sick twice this week without even crying leads me to believe that he must be very upset on the inside still....will have to keep an eye on the more little Vegemite.

This morning I decided to make a batch of homemade laundry detergent. I had previously tried the wet batch (the one that looks like egg noodle soup) and found this to be quite good. I recently discovered a "recipe" for a normal dry style detergent that to me seems so much less fuss than the wet batch. The only tedious part of it was grating up two cups of laundry soap but even though I procrastinated doing it, the whole batch was done in about half an hour. I now have a nice little container of detergent that should last quite a while as it only requires 2 tablespoons per load. This is the recipe I used, it is down the page a little (sorry I am new to linking lol)..... http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/search/label/Cleaning I can't wait to try it out!!!......can't believe I just said that lol, it is very unusual to actually want to do laundry for me!!

Right now I am boiling up some eggs to make some yummy curried egg and salad sandwiches for my Hubby and I for lunch. He pops home to have lunch with me a few days a week, it is nice to be able to eat a meal by ourselves occasionally lol.

Have a great weekend everyone!

KIDS!!! What do you do when you have tried everything????

Oh boy, I don't know whether to scream or cry right now. My youngest, Mr6 is an emotional wreck when it comes to school. He has just started Year 1 this year and it is not going at all well. My heart aches for him but at the same time I feel so much anger at the way he is carrying on. Ever since starting kindy he has cried about 90% of the days I have had to drop him off. It is very trying as you can imagine.

This year though is just ridiculous. He has made himself sick on several occasions because of the way he is crying so hard and this morning OMG!!! We were sitting outside before the bell went and he was sick.....out of nowhere! I cleaned him up as it was only a mouthful or so and then we moved over closer to the door and another mouthful came up TMI I know!!! We then went to go inside and he started crying and carrying on and yep you guessed it I had to race him out of the classroom because he was sick again. It wasn't because he was feeling ill, it is just how worked up he gets himself. He is terrified of doing assembly with his class and he has assembly coming up this Friday with his class leading it. Last week they were only watching assembly and he was just as upset for that!!!

His teacher is a "tough love" sort of woman and has said he is just going to have to get over it. I am at the point where I will be going to see the principal as I can't keep doing this! I know that he is fine shortly after I leave but it is getting to the point where he is getting teased about it and I am so scared he will end up with no friends if this keeps up.

At home he is the little extrovert and has no fear about dancing, singing and generally being the centre of attention. Put him in the school setting and he just freaks,,,although having said that his teacher last year said she couldn't understand his fear either because he would often get up infront of the class (when he isn't meant to mind you lol) and dance and sing and not even think about it. I have never been able to get him to have a birthday party, he refuses and he won't attend birthday parties either.

Oh brother, what to do, what to do.....on top of this my Mr8 has just suffered the loss of his best friend who has moved house. They have been friends since kindy and were together in reception. They spent Year 1 and 2 in different classes and have finally in Year 3 paired back up again after much pleading by me lol. Now just 3 weeks into the term he has moved house AAAGHHHHHH. The poor little guy comes out of school last Friday saying "I'm going to be so lonely now that Jacob has gone",,,,,,,I just about cried for him. He is a great kid but finds it very hard to make friends, I hope today goes okay for him and he actually plays with someone at lunch and recess!!!!

Why does parenting have to be so darn difficult!!!

What a weekend!!!

Hasn't the weekend just been awful with the fires in Victoria???? It is just such a tragedy, between the fires and the flooding Australia is being hit hard from all angles. My heart goes out to everyone affected by either the water or the fire.

The weekend here was pretty ordinary. Hubby and I were going down to Mt Gambier on Saturday after I dropped the boys at their dad's and returning to pick them up from school on Monday. Well it ended up being a weekend of one thing after another.

We were woken at 4.45am on Saturday by a call from the security company who looks after Hubby's work saying that the alarm had gone off and they were sending out a security guard. Well hubby decided to go and investigate since we only live about 15 minutes away. I had no choice but to stay home since I had the 4 kids sleeping here. I sat here worried that there would be men with baseball bats waiting for him (lol isn't it ridiculous how the worst possible scenarios run through your head!!). He got to work to find nothing amiss and ended up letting himself in, having a quick look around and resetting the alarm himself. The security guard still hadn't arrived and at this point it was almost an hour after we had received the call about it, so hubby called them and then came home. We went back to bed for an hour then got the boys up to take them to their Dad's at 9.00.

We then proceeded to leave for Gambier. We got about a kilometre up the freeway when the car made a loud backfire noise and died. We got it over to the side of the road and called the RAA. This was a day when the temperature was soaring and the wind was absolutely unbelievable. We put the bonnet up but had to put it down as it looked like it was going to tear off. We waited 45 minutes for the RAA guy to get there. It was sooooo hot, thankfully we had water bottles with us. The RAA guy got out the car and had a look and his sunglasses went flying off his head, he ended up getting his safety goggles out as the wind kept ripping his glasses off his head lol. He deemed it unfixable and called a towtruck. So we proceeded to sit for another hour. While waiting a police car pulled up behind us to ask if we were ok....15 minutes later he was back with some nice cold water...what a sweetie!!! We then continued to sit and saw a tow truck coming up the hill,,,,unfortunately he was in the middle lane and had a truck next to him and continued driving. We made comment and said he probably didn't see us. Twenty minutes later we discovered we were right whent he same tow truck proceeded back down the hill on the other side of the freeway without a car on the back, a few minutes later he came back to us, saying "I don't know how I missed you",,,hmmmm yes well if you had been in the left lane where you should have been you would have seen us lol. We got the car towed back to the mechanics who thankfully had a loan car that we could borrow, and took the loan car back home to swap it over for our other car. Finally at 1.30 we left for Mt Gambier!!!! We ended up arriving in Gambier at about 6.45!! But at least it was cooler down there.

When I looked at my mobile I was shocked to find I had missed 7 calls, 1 being from my mum's house and 6 from my SIL. My phone had been on vibrate accidentally so I hadn't heard it. I called my mum to find that she was actually lucky to still be alive. My brother and SIL had gone up there to see her after returning from a holiday the day before. They arrived there and knocked on the door and got no response. They thought that was strange so used the emergency key (she had a key locked outside that the ambulance can use to get in if needed), they found her unconscious and called the ambos. She had taken a nap and had a hypo (she is diabetic) in her sleep. The ambulance guys said that if my brother hadn't called in she would have been dead by Sunday. She is one lucky lady!!!!! That news rattled me, I worry about her living alone as she is pretty much blind and is getting quite frail, but she refuses to move into a nursing home or retirement village type thing. Her attitude is that the only way she will leave that house is in a pine box.......I used to be able to laugh that off but her health hasn't been the best lately and she had a pacemaker inserted 4 weeks ago and I am scared that I will go up there one day to find that is the case....that sounds horrible but you know what I mean.

Today I should be doing the shopping but I am feeling a bit unwell so I am just pottering around the house. Hubby tells me to sit down and rest and do nothing but that isn't me, I need to be doing something lol. I guess I will go and hang out the washing and do a bit more pottering lol.

Call me a Blogaholic lol!!!

OMG I think I have gone blog crazy. I now have about 50 or so blogs on my following list, lol I think I am addicted!!! There are so many great blogs out there and they are so interesting and every time I find something I like I just add it to my list.....I am so glad that people don't add to their blogs every day, well most don't lol or I would never leave the computer!!! Hubby and I have started to try to become "green and frugal" or at least more so than we were. We are doing well so far and have a holiday with the boys lined up so we are desperately trying to save money to go towards that. It is a holiday that I have wanted to do with my kids for many years and feel that before they get too much older we really should go and "just do it"! I can't wait. Once we have this holiday we will be pumping any extra money we can save into our mortgage to try to get rid of that as fast as possible......stay tuned! I sold another 2 things on Oztion today so that is another $11.00 towards our holiday yay!!!

This weekend the heatwave just continued with yet more 40 degree days...today we are looking at a slight reprieve apparently,,,,,its only getting to 39 degrees....lol that is soooooo not a reprieve!!! I just don't seem to be coping with the heat this year at all. I don't know what it is. Normally I handle it better than Hubby but not this year. Roll on Saturday when it is meant to only be about 30 degrees, still warm but alot more bearable!!!!

This weekend was a baking weekend for me. On Saturday I decided to make Pizza Scrolls for lunch so out came the breadmaker which had sat unused for a few months. After making the dough I rolled it out, spread it with tomato sauce, bacon pieces and some cheese, then rolled it up and cut it up into slices. Baked them for about 25 mins and voila! there was Pizza Scrolls. The whole batch got devoured within about 10 minutes.......at least they liked them I guess but I would have loved to have had some left over to make it to the freezer lol. I then decided to make some bread rolls and Hubby put the ingredients into the breadmaker for me but something went wrong, we still don't know what lol, but suspect he may have used SR Flour instead of plain. The dough just about oozed out of the breadmaker and then when the it was done I touched it to get it out and the whole thing was just full of air lol. I continued on to make it into rolls but they didn't turn out very well.....the bottoms of them went like rocks, although the bread in the middle was quite nice. Not to be deterred I made another batch which didn't turn out too bad and my eldest boy has two of them for this lunch today.....next time though I must make them bigger, they only turned out like little dinner size rolls. Yesterday I decided to have a go at cinnamon scrolls and I must say other than it turning out a little too cinnamony they are very yummy and heaps cheaper than those at Bakers Delight!! Next weekend I might try making some Jam Scrolls and see how they go.

After reading some more blogs on the weekend and my favourite website..EB I have decided to try going shampoo free. My hair tends to go pretty revolting looking if it gets rained on (by revolting I mean like oily looking) so rather than just use water for the last two nights I have washed it with bicarb soda and done the vinegar rinse. I figure even if I use the bicarb and vinegar every day it still has to be better than shampoo and conditioner and I will save quite a bit as I have long hair and tend to use quite a bit of conditioner. I am surprised that my hair, which usually screams to be washed every second night as by that time it starts to get a bit oily looking and pretty itchy, is actually looking pretty good. It is a little bit oily in one spot which I gather I probably missed with the bicarb lol but other than that it is great. My head isn't itchy at all and if anything it actually feels softer than normal. I was sceptical about using vinegar rinse as a conditioner as I normally find that my hair gets very knotty and it takes a good size portion of conditioner put through it before I can get a comb through it. I found that by dipping the ends of my hair into the vinegar rinse and then running a wide tooth comb through it loosened the knots and then pouring the rest of the vinegar rinse over it slowly then combing again, my hair has been knot free and I wouldn't even know that I hadn't used the handful of conditioner through it. I will keep this updated on my "poo free" adventure lol......even though I'm probably not doing the full on "poo free" thing I think at least this is a start. If it works, I will probably try to just bicarb/vinegar every second day and see if I can stretch it out a bit.

I am also wanting to make up some homemade cleanser and moisturiser......this is quite exciting in its own way lol!!!