Winter Wonderland

So we had a day of rain this week.

There may have been a few days last week.

In the big picture though we have to be very content with this version of Winter.

A little snow would be nice from time to time but there are always planes for that.

What I love about a winter holiday at the beach in Queensland:

1. Children sleep in with the late morning light and go straight to the beach.

2. Children stay on the beach all day where they can swim and sunbathe and play without frying like pork crackling under a tropical sun.

3. Yes, they can swim- even longer with a spring wet suit which is half price because it is pretend Winter.

4. Long, golden afternoon shadows on almost empty beaches.

4. Easy dinners of stew and fish curry and, that family stalwart, spag bog, because it is cold and they are ravenous and there are beaten up old pots in the holiday house which are nice to cook in.

5. Children go to bed early as they have been on the beach ALL day and it gets dark early. Blissful quiet nights for parents.

The song we danced to at our wedding was Moon River- Andy Williams, of course.

Give me a warm winter night at the beach any day over a sweltering sweaty summer one with mozzies and humidity and sunburn. It must be the Danish blood in me acting up.

Why the bundt?

My mother made ring cakes. She still has the same golden aluminium ring tin that she has had since she was married. That tin is a staple memory of my childhood. 

It is quite common to know such a cake as a ring cake.

Since I saw this movie though, I have always gleaned great pleasure from the word, "bundt". 

Watch it and see if it doesn't make you feel the same way. 

Are you are bundt or a ring cake person?

Bundt Bundt Bundt...

The baking mojo is officially on its last spindly legs around here. Along with the retail shopping mojo and the book reading mojo which has also ceased after a brief flurry of speed reads.

The feathered girls have lost their mojo too so for the first time in about four years I had to BUY eggs!!!

We reprised the Silent Mandarin Cake as I was thinking of its patron, Mrs Bartlett of the Woomba Bartletts. It is one of life's little mysteries along with the lost socks, how you run out of everything when you bake for the first time in a while.

Brismod had reminded me recently of the presence of the SwiftWhip in my second drawer. This was one of my first ever oppy finds from way before Life as We Know It. Swifty had not met Shorty Divine yet so she introduced herself by attempting to whip something that was the consistency of heavy plaster.

After a rummage in the big high Cupboards of Infrequent Usage, the bundt tins were rescued from obscurity. I just like how they look and enjoy using the word "bundt." Bundt, bundt, bundt...such a satisfying little word.

 After they had (over)cooked, I wrote up the shopping list on the laundry door. The 'spray cook' was to ensure proper release of the bundt from the bundt tin next time. One of them had resisted and it ended badly for the bundt. Note also the inclusion of jelly and custard for trifle so I could recycle it as a trifle.

That blackboard laundry door was one of the "Daddy is away so I will make a surprise" (DIASIWMAS) projects that he is so wary of. It is handy for shopping lists to be photographed on the i-phone and taken to the grocer. That circular thing is Year 9 science revision on the earth's crust not the explosive nature of a rapidly rising bundt. There is also part of the list of Diasiwmas which will not happen while he is away this time. Another nice word, it sounds a little like a colourful Hindi celebration. As in: She wore her most beautiful sari to the Diasiwmas party and took a bundt for the hostess.

Other uses for the blackboard include being able to trace around oneself as needed. I would have modelled myself but was deterred by the increasing size of my own bundt over the holidays.

Meanwhile, when the gaggle of animated fourteen year old boys rolled in on Sunday I was able to drizzle some mandarin icing over the better bundt and let them eat cake! They eat so fast they don't taste much it seems.

Ah yes. There is the stripped and resanded kitchen bench top from the last Diasiwmas and some op shoppin' teasers for next time.

P.S. Sorry to have not visited for a while but when I can find a spare minute there is no computer access due to the line up at our place for cyber time.
Hope to catch up soon. X

The Cycle of Life and Flying Fish

 Hello lovelies. It has been far too long. Some of you expressed a little concern in e-mails so I thought I should fill you in. There have been no health issues but I have found myself to be  considerably slowed down by the  Cycle of Life. Particularly the econo quick wash cycle.

Cycle 1: No matter what life brings, the laundry still dictates whether or not I feel in control of my life. I have been lax (lux?) with the laundry talismans and must throw some suds their way to keep them on top of things.

Unfortunately, a cranky Glaswegian Energex man came to switch over our washing machine to solar today and onto some sort of low tarriff savings device. This signals an end to spontaneous washing every time the machine is full. (Hourly it seems.) Who knew there were so many jerseys in a rugby team! As for the cycle of life- it is clearer than ever that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction in more than one aspect of life.

Cycle 2: Rain!  Finally the summer months have relented and it has been rainy and cold at last! How I love a bit of dreak weather. It's only two days till the shortest day of the year!

Cycle 3: Lots of people seem to be growing older very quickly this year, in their teens, seventies and preschool years. The signs are becoming more evident in their limbs. Some are longer, some are stiffer and some are ever more adventurous and skippidy doo dah.

Other limbs have started to behave quite differently as is demonstrated by the appearance of "the Flying Fish".

Cycle 4: The duck is back in the pool. Is it the same duck as every winter or a new duck or do the ducks now have a family tradition sending offspring on an annual pilgrimage?

.

Cycle 5: The girls are baking swirly cookies again just to keep them busy and warm up the house. There has been little baking this year as there is just no time.

 

  After work on Monday I made pumpkin soup, a roast dinner and chocolate brownies and ice cream. It may as well have been a tin of beans, the speed at which it was consumed.
Last night we had leftovers.

Cycle 6: With the dodgy weather there has been game playing of the nostalgic  kind. My family loved board games growing up and now Lala has the bug. She has roped in some regular girlfriends and they always thrash me. I blame my drugs but that game should be renamed Clueless. Annie in the dining room with no idea at all.

 Other old games have returned with Shorty Divine finding some goodies stashed in the boys' room to recycle. Her favourites are, not surprisingly, the people.

Cycle 7: Some of the classic books have turned up that the offspring have been given and I realized upon starting the Jungle Book that I had not read all of the stories in it. Anne of Green Gables is next on the list and then A Gazillion Leagues Under the Sea.

Cycle 8: The crochet hooks are out again because it is Winter and I bite my nails if I don't hook. Anyway the three boychilds still need handmade blankets and I have an idea that it may take me a while and I have to stay well while I finish them. Following this logic they will take years to finish keeping me fit and well!

 Cycle 9: Under the pretext of getting Lala sports shoes, I got my annual Converse sneakers. They are always my winter foot wear of choice as it is still too warm for boots here. I need a job like this one where I am permitted to wear the Con daily.

 Cycle 10: When the students make art at school, samples are needed so I've been making things I haven't made for years. All the old skills from over a decade ago are bubbling up to the surface for a rusty run through.

If they don't all blow up I'll show you the results. They've been making pots based on the Hermannsburg Potters of Outback Australia.

There is apparently a very good display of them at GOMA in the new Indigenous Exhibition. That will fill at least one day of the holidays nicely. Hopefully I'll see some of you there. I won't be the one wearing a beanie!

Mother's Day 14

I am Loved. I know this because at 4 a.m. my four year old woke me to tell me. She told me again at 5 a.m. and 6a.m.. She loves me a lot.

Gratuitous photo of child doing what she should be doing at 4 a.m.

 At 7.20 a.m. I found a perfectly made, albeit tepid cuppa on the bedside table. At 7.45 a.m. Fishy came in to tell me there weren't many eggs today and one of the chooks was dead on the grass. Through sleepy eyes I realised I would be enduring breakfast in bed without parental guidance and that I'd be disposing of Ruby Redneck's mortal remains at some point today. 

The Big Fella is interstate so he has left instructions for the offspring which they are interpreting free form. There was a crackling sound from the kitchen. I made a pact with the powers that be that I'd bury the chook graciously if I didn't have to visit the Royal Children's Hospital today. We have been accruing frequent flyers points there of late.

Then they appeared like the Magi bearing gifts. With beaming faces and laden tray they stood above me urging me to wake up and smell the bacon. 

Indeed it is a happy face bacon portrait of Dad so he is here in salty spirit. We all gnawed on his crispy facial features. 

Shorty Divine provided her twist on the Banoffee cake with a cupcake topped with a chunk of banana. We shared that too. I like to share the food my children prepare me although it means there is less for me to enjoy. (choke)

There were gifts, home made, dodgy and delectable. There was a spoonful of kisses, a promissory note of massages, chocolate, magazines, a be-sequinned frame of their faces, a carved wooden dolphin(???) and those home made cards. I always keep the cards.

Soon I will rise like a phoenix from the tissue paper and ribbon to assess the kitchen debris and bury the chook. 

We'll prepare Fishy for his rugby match, hang and fold a canyon of washing and visit the grannies and sisters to celebrate the perfection and glitches that come with membership to Club Motherhood. 

On the whole though I have surmised that one un-iced banana topped cupcake outweighs two baskets of wet washing and a dead chook any day.

P. S. Ruby Redneck has also risen phoenix- like from the back yard. Turned out she was sun baking.

Play Eat Run

Today I was playing with an idea for the year 7's but you might like to try it for your children.

 It could even be a 3D Mother's Day card if you want to keep them busy for a couple of hours this week-end.

 

Somebody bought in an interesting cookie box this morning. When you take the white cone off it folds open like a star. So we were thinking how this could work as a construction activity for the wee tackers. I photocopied one side and the base then cut them out and printed them onto stiff paper. This one is on water colour paper but you could use any card that goes in your printer. The template was on A3 sized paper.

We thought about how a twelve year old could transfer a bit about themselves onto the "Identity Pyramid". That sounds very New Age doesn't it? How about the "Cone of Self" or the "Me Prism"?
Mine shall be known as "Fishboy Facets". Each side is another side of his lovely personality....strings, piano, swimming, football and himself. Everything runs into the next as his busy life is getting a bit like that.

 The base and tip were made from a photocopy of a little canvas I painted a while ago for something else. It's just about him, now, this year. I didn't get too gushy as it is an example for other boys the same age.

 

It's up on my desk for a while till we've used it here but I'm looking forward to giving it to him. He can hang it on a string or sit it on his desk or, more likely, lose it under some dirty football socks. Ephemeral art!