13 things I’ll be doing this Christmas.

 1. Get up really early on Christmas morning. By choice!

2. Leave carrots and water for the reindeers to eat and a biscuit for Santa.

3. Drink champagne slushies by the pool in the afternoon….bliss…..

4. Dress my son in a Christmas tee shirt.

5. Play carols on the car stereo all week.

6. Help my son be ‘Santa’s Helper’ and hand out presents to his Grandparents.

7. Eat an enormous amount of summer fruits- mango, nectarines, apricots….

8. Send Santa a thankyou letter.

9. Hang our stockings in the family room.

10. Enjoy every minute I get to spend with my family.

11. Watch in delight as my husband and son play with their presents.

12. Attend the Children’s Mass at our church and savour singing Christmas Hymns really loudly.

13. Wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas!

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Having a break

Hello lovely readers!

It’s getting to that time of year again, the fun one that is amazingly busy.  I am going to be busy in an extremely fun way, I’ve already driven and flown down to Perth and tomorrow I am jetting off to England, then Spain, then back to England, then Italy, Switzerland and France, then back to England again.  I don’t think I’ll have much internet access along the way, or the time to be writing posts!

Hopefully some of my fellow authors will be popping in and out, but from Deb and Hodgent we wish you a very Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, peaceful Summer Solstice, fantastic Festivus or friendly family celebration and a healthy beginning to 2010.

We will return with many photos and stories,

Deb

Does anonymity breed stupidity?

Or rather should I say, does the anonymity of the internet make it far easier to be sexist, racist, homophobic and so on and so forth?

This week I recieved a forwarded email. It was a poorly written racist rant that started with “When will this stop?”  It moaned about how ‘they’ want to sing our national anthem in foreign languages, how ‘they’ are trying to have certain foods sold in school tuckshops and how ‘we’ Aussies were not ‘consulted’ about this change.

It went on with some other crap which I skimmed over, too incredulous that anyone could send me this until I got to:

‘If you don’t want to forward this for fear of offending someone….YOU’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!!!!’

Are you kidding me? Does anyone really think I would forward this racist propaganda?

Never, ever in ‘real life’ would anyone dare to talk to me about how ‘Australia will no longer be the country of choice’ if we allow immigration.

And another day this week I logged onto Facebook to find a status update that says that asylum seekers should kill themselves. What?! Who are the people who are writing this utter, utter…words I won’t write!

Is it just me, or are the gutless masses finding solace in a world of anonymity?

Not only did I not forward the email, I replied to all who had been sent it and thanked the sender for reminding us that we live in a country not only blessed with a wide range of cultures and traditions but also with a small (I hope) group of people who are stupid and will blindly forward emails without thinking of the implications to the people around them.

Grrr!

13 Steps to Making a Crown

My big girl wants a crown for Christmas.  It’s all she’s asked for, and she’s asked several times!  You could do this in less that 13 steps, but then how would I use it for this post?

1.

2. 

It’s made of felt.

3. 

4. 

I’ve never used a hot glue gun before, this cost about $5 from a $2 shop and was very easy, although the glue comes out really hot!

5. 

I used a darning/embroidery foot to sew them on just to see how it went.  You could easily hand sew them, especially if you wanted it neat.  I was after a more casual look.  The needle picked up a fair bit of glue as well.

6. 

I hand sewed the beads with bead thread which is far stronger than normal cotton, then glued them as well.  Probably paranoid, but I’ve seen the way my toddler treat things!

7. 

Another play with the hot glue gun, I had some glitter glue.

8. 

Cut out a large piece of material for a head band (remember the measurement?).  Make sure it is a few centimetres longer than your head measurement and double your elastic width plus a couple of centimetres.  This one is about 57cm long and7cm wide.

9. 

Sew along the long sides to make a tube and turn it right side out.

10. 

Sew the tube to the crown, leaving a couple of centimetres at one end.  I glued it first so I didn’t have to pin it.  This material has a bit of stretch so I stretched it out when I was gluing it down, so when it is being stretched around their heads it doesn’t pull the felt.

11. 

Sorry for the horrible composite photo.  It is trying to show that I have threaded the elastic into the long end of the headband up until the crown, then sewn it down at that end.

12. 

Stretch the elastic comfortably so it goes the length of the headband, then sew the end and cut off the spare elastic.

13. 

Fold it around to those spare couple of centimetres you left on the other side and attach.  I put it inside the other end of the tube and sewed over it lots of times.

Tahdah!  Little sister wouldn’t try it on, so no photos of it on until Christmas!

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Wordless Wednesday – Counting Down!

More Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom and Wordless Wednesday

Cooking with Kids: Salads

Salads are very popular here, they’re a great healthy meal and something kids can very easily be involved in.  There are lots of advantages in having the kids involved in cooking dinner, the most obvious of which is that then you don’t have to entertain them!  Plus we’ve found with our 4 year old that she’s more likely to eat something if she’s helped make it.

The 4 year old is now known as ‘Queen Salad Maker’ and she is very proud to teach her little apprentice.  Just about every evening she asks if she can make a salad.  Some of the things they can do with minimal supervision:

• Use scissors to open packets.
• Tear lettuce leaves
• Use a spoon to scoop out avocado.
• Use a small, fairly blunt knife to slice peeled cucumber.
• Use a fork to get olives or corn out of the jar or tin.
• Wash and add cherry tomatoes.
• Pull off florets of cauliflower.
• Chop up sliced ham – even a butter knife will chop up most cold meats.
• Chop cheese slices or tear it into chunks.
• Mix the salad in a big bowl.
• Add dressing, so long as someone else has measured it out!  Don’t let them loose with the bottle on their own

Then they usually stand there and self serve while the rest of dinner is done, which is a pretty good way for them to eat vegetables!

13 Little Luxuries

1. A long, hot shower.
2. Sweet, fresh grapes.
3. Buying a block of the good Swiss chocolate.
4. Wearing perfume.
5. Sitting still and watching my children play together.
6. Sleep for longer than a 3 hour stretch.
7. Having the house all to myself for half an hour.
8. A trip to the library.
9. Not cooking dinner.
10. Filing and painting my fingernails.
11. Getting my family all dressed up to go out.
12. Buying fabulous fabrics and imagining what to make with them.
13. Slipping off baby girl’s mattress and sinking into my new mattress and feeling my whole body relax.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun!

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Wordless Wednesday – Christmas With Love

This is the jigsaw puzzle our 4 year old daughter made for her cousin.

Play Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom and Wordless Wednesday.

Cooking With Kids: Savoury Crepes

I had no idea this was so simple, I had to check several recipes because I had this image crepes were really hard.  No, they’re 18 month old easy!

Ingredients:

• 150g (1 cup) plain flour
• 435ml (1 3/4 cups) milk
• 2 eggs at room temperature

Method:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl.  Use a really wide bowl so it doesn’t get flicked everywhere.
2. In another bowl put the eggs and milk and whisk them with a fork.  A deep bowl for this bit, even baby girl at 18 months can do it.  She gets really excited when she manages to pop the yolks.
3. Pour a little bit into the flour and mix, gradually add a little at a time and keep mixing until you have a thin batter.  I do the pouring and let the girls mix, it’s easier for little ones when the mix is thinner.
4. Whisk until smooth, but not too much or the gluten will make the crepes rubbery.  But whisking is so much fun we often end up with tough crepes!
5. Cover and let it rest for half an hour at room temperature to relax the gluten.

We generally do this in the morning then go out, but it’s also a good time to get your fillings ready.  We use all sorts of things, corn, olives, mushrooms, spring onion, ricotta cheese, tomato, capsicum, ham, pretty much anything you like.

Use a little bit of oil in a pan on medium heat, pour in some of the crepe mixture and swirl it around to cover the pan.  Cook it until golden on that side.  Turn the crepe and put your fillings on one side, not too much.  When it is almost cooked, fold the other side over on top.  When the base is cooked you can flip it over again to heat the top.  I generally cook them from youngest to oldest, that way their’s has time to cool while the others are cooking.  I also slice them up. Enjoy!

MONDAY MONEY – Something Special

Having fallen foul of the flu this week I have been pondering what I would write. Whilst the head is still a little foggy I thought it best to look at something that I managed to do with my daughter in a couple of days as a gift for her cousin.

It is not an expensive thing to do, making a gift for someone, it is something very special, with time and love spent in making it. The commercialised side of Christmas has really taken hold. I would say for most people it is a case of what is the latest gadget that I can get, what piece of technology is there out there that I don’t have. The one that leaps to mind for me is the IPhone. My son has told me that I don’t need an IPhone as I only need a basic mobile, I would never use all the other bits and pieces attached. He’s probably right!

Anyway, I move off the subject. I drew my daughter a picture onto a piece of wood, coloured it in and then cut it into a puzzle for her. Yes you need to know how to do this sort of thing, but there are many gifts to be made. Without prompting she wanted to know if she could make one too, for her cousin we are going to visit at Christmas. She is 4 and I looked at her and said of course, thinking that I would end up doing all the work. How wrong was I, she helped search the internet for pictures of a tractor (her cousin is into tractors), then I drew it onto her board, and she coloured it in. Not the idea I had. Her cousin is going to get a brightly coloured tractor puzzle that she spent 2 days making. How much more special can you get (photo here).

So on a somewhat shortish note, think about the latest gadget you’re thinking of getting. How much love and thought is there in this? I love my gadgets and toys that I have, and yes it is great to have an excuse like Christmas to go and ‘upgrade’ again. At the same time though, isn’t it nice to have that little something special, the thing that says I really thought about you at this special time of the year.