Tuesday 24 December 2013

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you all!  I hope you have all had a wonderful day!
We have had a good day, the kids have been pretty happy although the effects of too much sugar and too much excitement have been evident - thankyou to the Thomsons for a DVD which we put on late this afternoon to calm things down a little!  Thankyou to everybody for the lovely presents, we had lots of fun opening all the mysterious parcels.
We had our family Christmas lunch yesterday with our home-cured ham, which was delicious.  Some of it was too salty to eat, but the rest was lovely, next year we might cut back on the salt a little. 

This morning we had a joint service with the Korean congregation who meet in our building, and our family shared lunch with them.  We were blessed with a turkey from some friends so we took that along, and enjoyed trying kimchi and barbecued pork as well.  This afternoon we tried to figure out how to play Dominion, a new family game which makes no sense until you have played a few rounds.  I think we have got it sorted but we'll wait until we've finished the first game before we're sure on that...

Tomorrow we might try out a few Boxing Day sales as we have 3 kids' birthdays in January, Daniel is particularly keen on some Star Wars Lego, and Petra has been asking me to buy her Polly Pocket for months, so we'll see what's on sale.

Sunday 22 December 2013

The garden

The garden is looking quite nice just now.  Bryony took some beautiful photos
The californian poppies are my favourites this year - we haven't grown them for a few years but I got a mixed packet, and found them so easy to grow, and so lovely, we'll be putting them in again next year (or just letting them go to seed, that might work too).
My purple Hibiscus is doing well and looking beautiful
In the back garden the shallots are nearly ready, although the carrots and beetroot weren't a success.  The rabbits like the beetroot, we're been giving them one a week each, and Autumn looks like she's wearing blusher when she's finished hers.  Andrew's brassicas are doing ok, we've had a couple of good heads of broccoli from them.
The tomatoes are sick, I'm not sure if it's a disease or if the compost we got this year came with some kind of herbicide residue in it.  The tops have all curled up and the new growth looks terrible.




But the beans and corn look good.  This year we're growing blue hopi corn, for something different.

Smaug the Terrible

We (Mum, Dad and the 4 oldest) went to see the second Hobbit film last week, in 3D - pretty exciting!  We all want to see it again even though the kids found it too loud, and spent nearly the whole movie with their fingers in their ears.


Daniel was inspired to make a Lego model of Smaug, it took a week to finish


















Hobo stove

David made a hobo stove this morning and he and the boys cooked some bacon for lunch

Wednesday 18 December 2013

Bargain of the week

We are real bargain hunters in this house (well, I am; the kids like the bargains but not the hunting so much...)
Today I dropped into the hospice shop.  My excuse was that having forgotten to change out of my gardening skirt (which was grubby, and has a hole in it), it was easier to look for a new one than drive all the way home in the Christmas traffic.  I found 2 skirts, 2 t-shirts, a book of poetry by Fiona Farrell (never heard of her, but it looks interesting) a book of Anchor iron-on embroidery patterns, a box of old Shakespeare books  ($1) and this (50c, below), all for $11.

I remember my dear sister used to be into quilling, the girls are keen to try it.  A holiday project - should keep them busy until Christmas!
way station - a stopping place on a journey

This life is the first part of a much larger journey,  the first page of an epic story.  Thus, our house is just a waystation, even though we have lived here for nearly 9 years.  This blog is intended to record and share some of the adventures of our family of 9...