Isn't it funny.....

how one can own thousands a lorry load quite a few recipe books and magazines, yet still come back to the same recipe, over and over.

This is a mixed fruit and walnut slice that I got from Peg's blog. I discovered it ages ago and have made it so many times. It is always a winner. Very easy to make, lovely to eat and makes a large quantity. I didn't have enough mixed fruit this time round so added some dates. I love that beautiful green leaf plate too. Mum gave it to me years ago and I kept it safe and sound in the dresser. Then, one day, I just decided to start using all my beautiful things and it gives me such pleasure.

One slow contribution to SBS this weekend. This is Crossed Canoes and is something of an odd block, I thought. The colours haven't come up very well here. The pale fabric is a light apricot with a white spot.

I do have enough to make a good sized quilt but am starting to look on this project as a learning experience. I've never had patchwork lessons so working through these blocks, and trying to do the very best I can with them, is certainly giving me some good lessons. This block is foundation pieced.

My babies are certainly growing up. On Friday, the kindy kids were allowed to wear their school uniforms for next year for a 'show and tell'. They all looked so grown up in their uniforms but when they changed back into their kindy uniforms, they were just babies again. Time goes so quickly.

Hannes in his new school uniform. He will be in prep next year. And what blog post from me would be complete without a photo of the latest flowers from SIL's garden? The white roses are mine but the goregous red ones are his. Hope everyone has had a lovely weekend.

Happy Grandparents' Day

This week, Grandparents' Day is being celebrated. I never heard of Grandparents' Day till last year, when the kids asked me to go along to their school. Yesterday, it was for the beautiful Holly and they celebrated with a liturgy, some games and lunch.

I was really touched with the service because each child had to nominate something that they thought was good about having grandparents and the whole morning was devoted to the value of older people; their wisdom, their experience and their value to the younger generation. The kids were encouraged to ask their grandparents about their personal stories and about their lives when the grandparents were the age of these kids. The kids had to bring along their favourite toys but they also had to give a presentation on the history of the toy. Holly chose Lego and there was some quite interesting history that she dug up!

There were two classes of Grade 2 involved and one group brought the savoury portion of lunch and the other group brought the dessert section. We played some games, using Apple laptops (!!!) out in the playground and the kids had to choose a game that they thought their grandparents would have played. Holly chose a billy cart and built a virtual billy-cart on the Apple, loaded me into it and proceeded to push me down the hill. My character was a hen so I'm not sure if there was any hidden message there! Needless to say, I spent a lot of time being emptied out of the billy-cart. How times have changed.

This flower was made with cutouts of their hands and feet and had little messages written on them. Just lovely. On the previous Friday, Holly's brother Jack, was sick and came over to my place for the day. He recovered quite dramatically after a few ice blocks while watching Star Wars! In the afternoon, I asked him to strike a 'sick' pose so I could take his photo. How good an actor is he?? He looks like he's on death's door! All my grandbabies are SUCH drama queens. I have no idea where they get it from.

Hannes was so excited to find his favourite cousin had come along to pick him up from kindy!

It has certainly been a full granny week for me. Hannes had his gymnastics presentation on Sunday and was totally chuffed with his trophy.

What a wonderful grandma week I've had! It's very heartening to see schools encourage participation by grandparents and to encourage kids to find out what older people can offer them. Stay safe, my beautiful grandbabies and have a wonderful life. Grandma loves you all very much.

Farewell, me lovely

After a lot of looking around and test driving and screaming and yelling discussion, we have finally bought a new car, so farewell to my trusty steed, the Commodore. I have loved this car and it was been wonderful. It has not cost us a bean and apart from some cosmetic touches (ie I ran into a carpark, Bill the Builder backed into a fence), it is almost as good as the day we bought it. Someone is going to get a bargain with this one. Thank you for keeping me and my babies safe and for always getting us to where we were going.

The new beast is a Subaru Outback and we picked it up with much flourish.

It has quite a few bells and whistles and is quite comfortable to drive. Still getting the hang of it. Hannes is delighted with it and we went for a spin with the sunroof open before we went to kindy on Friday.

Welcome home! Hope you fit in the carport!

A jammy kind of day

Spent most of yesterday making jam and relish. I made five bottles of apricot jam

and eight bottles of green tomato relish.

Mum gave me a heap of cherry tomatoes so I picked out the ripe ones and used all the others to make this relish. I hope it tastes OK. I haven't tried this recipe before.  I also made a banana cake for the freezer and topped up the jam drop supply and have now hidden those in the spare room too.

Bill the Builder is home on holidays and is goofing off tidying up the shed so he says. We are picking up a new car that looks like a Mongolian Racing Duck in the next few days and I am really hoping for a road trip down south to see Lynda. I'm not used to having Bill the Builder home and it's a real challenge quite nice, although there are lots of cups of tea and snacky cake. We'll both be fats as fools somewhat heavier if this keeps up!

How gorgeous are these roses from SIL's garden? They are actually a lot darker red than they look here and the perfume is just exquisite. What a beautiful day it is here today.

Here's looking at you, mister!

Pick a spot….any spot

Generally, I am fairly neat and tidy. I usually put things away when I’m finished and I mostly work in a logical, orderly manner. And then the other times, I just lose the plot completely and the place looks like a bomb went off! Wherever you look, mess and chaos!  Just seems to go from 'not too bad’ to ‘whoa! What happened here?'

Hmmmm…maybe should have ditched the wine glass before I took the photo!

Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to take too long to get everything back in order. Very easy to mess up but very easy to put to rights again.

Remains of the jam drops I made, after leaving them to cool while Bill the Builder was home. I also made a lovely orange cake (hidden in the spare bedroom), a loaf of bread, a zuchinni slice, some pea and ham soup (found a meaty hock languishing in the bottom of the freezer) and put the fruit on to soak for the Christmas cake.

How good do I look in this apron from the M & M shop in New York?? Oh. OK. Not good at all. Rats!

 How beautiful is this rose? This poor bush doesn’t get much attention and doesn’t give many flowers (probably for obvious reasons!) but  when it blooms, they are just lovely.

Good bargains at the junk shop! Shiny purple diary for next year and three bottles for Christmas jam. Bargain! Apricot jam on the boil as we speak.

Today, Barney No Friends has to go to the doctor (again) but this time, only for his annual shots. How would you fancy having to load this into a cage?? Not one of my favourite past times, let me tell you. He weighs a tonne and also has an aversion to being stuffed into a cage and having the lid slammed shut, but then, don’t we all?

What a week!

Last week, Bill the Builder organized new carpet for the bedrooms and major electrical renovations. I didn't have a good time, although I'm very thankful now that it's been done. Some days, I had no phone and no electricity but I put the time to good use.

This is Bride's Bouquet and is totally hand done. It is as wobbly as it looks in the photo but it's as done as it's going to be. It was made with templates. Wish I'd used stronger colours though.

Blazing Star, also hand pieced with templates

Boy's Nonsense, foundation pieced

Bear's Paw, foundation pieced

Cats and Mice, foundation pieced but not too keen on the colours. Might swap it out into Farmer's Wife Sampler

Bow Tie, template pieced

One good thing about getting the carpets replaced was that everything had to be yanked out of the wardrobes so there was some major sorting out done. Not everything made it back in. I nearly went insane having all the furniture piled up in bathrooms, in the lounge and the laundry but wanted to give everything a good clean before stuff went back. It was the week from hell.

Rounded the weekend off nicely though, with a trip to the circus.

How sweet is this little guy? It was his first circus and hopefully his last, or at least, my last but he asked a few times if we could go yet, so I'm thinking he was bored spitless slightly underwhelmed.