Frustrating!!!

Just to show you what kind of day I'm having..... As i sat down to re-rejuvenate and have a cuppa and a slice of the most amazing banana bread (picture below). My tea bag burst... as i poured my tea into another cup, i burnt my fingers by spilling my hot tea everywhere. Then accidentally put too much milk in making for a milky cold tea. Something I'm not too fond of. But i do not have the energy to re-do the whole process, so i am making do. At least my banana bread taste wonderful!






I got the recipe for this bread off best recipe's.com. And it simply is the best recipe. So easy and so yummy! (i will post the recipe at the end)


This week has not started so well. Last week was such a great week. And we had such a great weekend. Now we've gone into a slump.. Frustrating YES!!!

Ben is currently sleeping in bed with the flu.. Blue eyes is sleeping off his last 2 nights of tossing and turning. Although last night i worked out what was wrong when he told me mouth and grabbed it like he was in pain. Which means his 2nd molars are on there way.. Cowboy is just being cowboy and wanting to eat us out of house and home... (I have no idea how we will survive when they are both teenagers, my gosh they eat enough now..). They both seem to have extra energy, or maybe I'm just lacking alot of it.. And are into and on top of everything...

I am really looking forward to when everything evens out... And blue eye's sleeps all night every night.. It won't be until after his 2nd molars, so hopefully they come through fast not much pain and NO TEMPS!!

On top we have normal frustrating items, bills, winter items needed to be purchased etc (I'm sure you get my drift)..
And finally, at the end of last year i started studying a course by correspondence. Nail technology. I'm currently waiting on my kit so i can start practicing manicure and pedicures on my wonderful friends and family... But it hasn't arrived. I've called my teacher/tutor whatever you would like to call her and asked for it twice.. and it is not here yet.. Very frustrating. I've completed the theory for this module and just want to get into doing it, but i don't want to keep calling and hounding her. I understand people get busy, but I'm paying for the course and need utensils to finish it...

Any who, this morning i did go and see one of my close friends for a cuppa. She has just returned from completing a course on chocolate making. And brought home all her goodies!! mmmm best part of the day right there!! Cuppa, chocolate and a great friend, Perfect! And she sent me home with a goodie box!! All the chocolates are wonderful and oh so yummy! She's going to start her own specialized chocolate business, mmmm chocolate!!

Well i should try and find some motivation and get some things done while blue eyes is tucked up in bed... And hope for a better day tomorrow.. Fingers crossed :)


Very Simple Banana Bread

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups Self raising flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup milk
2 tablespoon margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 ripe bananas. mashed

Method

Preheat oven to 180C
Combine all ingredients, mix with a wooden spoon until all is completely moist.
Put in tin. ( i used my bread tin, but you can also use muffin tin for muffins)
Cooking time on recipe says 30-40, but mixture is very moist and took close to an hour in my oven. But well worth the wait!

Afternoon Tea for the Birthday BOY!

Yesterday afternoon, we had the grandparents, great grandparents and cousins my brother and his partner around for afternoon tea. Nice and simple. We love having parties for the boys, but sometimes they get out of hand and we end up having almost everyone we know around to celebrate. So this year we are keeping it nice and simple. The same goes for the presents to be purchased for the boys as well.. I asked for presents this year to be clothing, linen, kitchen utensils. Anything that needs replacing alot. Instead of filling up the toy room again! I was very please when blue eyes received some winter clothing and towels. He did get a toy from his Aunty and Uncle, but it is a learning toy! He loves it as well as the clothing, he's tried them all on almost twice!!

All the kids had a ball playing and eating, the boys are still a little tired today from it!!

Here are some photo's from the afternoon.






The cake, my wonderful boys helped me with including Ben!!






Getting a group kiddie photo for the Grandma's!






Cutting up the goodies to eat!





MMMMM Cake!!





Playing with Pa.

We had a wonderful afternoon, exactly what we were after!

I promise i will try and not get emotional, BUT our baby does turn 2 tomorrow...

Blogger is being nice today and loading photo's fast, so I've put in a few extra than originally planned!

Our blue eyes turns 2 tomorrow. Although he hasn't been a baby for quite awhile, to me and most of our family he is still our little baby. His age does however finally catch up to the attitude he holds. Very independent to say the least! But also very very cheeky! So here are a few of my favourite photo's. Some i will put captions on, but most are there for you to enjoy!





Of course only a few minutes old, and a couple of days early i might add!









This is one of my all time favourites of the boys together. Ben captured this, and we haven't been able to get another one like it, i love it!








He became very good at his reversing skills!









Very excited at his first few steps!



Now the next 2 photo's are from a weekend that we will never forget. There is another photo on our laptop somewhere of him in the shower which shows just how much the convulsions knocked him, makes me very teary when i see it. These photo's are from Easter weekend last year, he is trying to put on a brave face. But i can still see how yukky he was feeling after having 2 hospital trips..













Beach Bum!!









Always has to help lick the beaters after I've mixed up a cake mixture!!



Happy Birthday to our wonderful little blue eyes, life is definitely a bag of all sorts with you in our life, but that's what makes us love you so much. Wouldn't change it for the world!! xoxo

One visitor i do NOT like.

I do not like spiders on the best of days... I have a fear of them... It's not as bad as it use to be, but its still there.

Whilst in the sandpit with the boys this morning, We flipped the slide for their jungle gym, and my cowboys yells out "arr". He dropped the slide and made dash for cover... (can you tell the fear he has picked up from me about spiders!!)





This is what he found, the dreaded RED BACK! I forgot to put something down next to it, to show its size. It's the biggest I've seen.... I do not like them hanging around our house! It would have been in between half the size of a 5c piece and the full size of it, that's its bum anyway! So the jungle gym is off limits, I've sprayed it, but will get Ben to give it another check and probably another spray just to make sure!




After getting rid of the spider, the boys then spent the next 10 minutes or so hiding out in the laundry.. They understand spiders are not to be messed with. I'm glad that's one of the things they have listened to within all my ranting and raving to them lol

It's almost time for my blue eyes to have his nap, and while he is sleeping , i am going to have a shower... Wash my hair, well wash everywhere and get the itchy feeling away that lingers with me... Yes that is how much i do not like spiders!!!

Helpful little hands!

Out of nowhere last night a cyclone hit our house..... It mainly concentrated on the TOY room!!!!





This is the wonderful help the boys gave me last night, instead of packing up, they pulled everything out of the toy box!! They must have known something, I've been wanting to clean it out for a couple of months and put things back were they belong and not an all in jumble in the biggest toy box. But like alot of things i keep putting it off!







You can see the bottom!! This was a blanket box. Ben built this with his grandfather when he was a teenager. We did have blankets in it until the toy explosion happened last year! It fits alot of crap... eerrrr.... i mean TOYS in it!!

So my job today while my little blue eyed helping monster is asleep is to tidy it all up!!





But of course the boys love having nothing, well very little in the box so they can sit in it. They've been boating, driving and even building a house in it this morning. Maybe i should get rid of the toys and just keep the box, they seem to like playing with it more than all the toys now sitting on the floor!


Well off i go.... Can you tell i'm looking forward to it... :-)

Food, Food - Glorious FOOD!

I forgot to take a photo of the latest eggplant picked yesterday by Ben and the boys, so instead i took photo's of what we made it into!

For dinner last night we had, Sausage, Eggplant and Tomato Casserole. It is a slow cooker recipe, so it was suppose to be cooked for a few hours. But being that i had to cook the sausages before putting it in the oven (or slow cooker) It didn't really matter that i only cooked it for 30 Min's in the oven. The Eggplant and Tomato mixture also had to be cooked on the stove top as well, so i let it simmer on there for longer before putting it all the oven. With all the added herbs the house was smelling so yummy. The boys stayed down in the bar with Ben to watch the end of the footy. So i turned the radio on and up!! And enjoyed some much needed kitchen time, to myself!



The end result, The boys don't like as many flavours and added extra chunky bits in there dinner, so they got a sausage each and some mash potato!




A close up of our dinner, That is home made bread as an added extra to dunk in the juices left on the plate!! mmmm IT was SO yummy!


After having such a great time cooking yesterday, and not wanting to get out of bed this morning... I decided to do some more cooking to brighten my day!




I did a bit more than i original intended too!

I made 2 loaves of basil and garlic bread, a baked custard, a small batch of shortbread. And finally i got a recipe for chocolate yogo from Ben's cousin, from Tara Brae Farm (She's on my list of blogs i watch!) It is really good, so easy to make and oh so yummy. The boys have already had a couple of serves today. So I'm not sure how long it will last!

I still have more to do today, but having a spell right now, so i dont keel over!! after my rest i have to organise some things i sold on ebay to sell and do some cleaning! So time for me to go. :)

Perfect sunday afternoon.

Last weekend our favourite game started, Rugby League(football)!! As we only have free to air television, we only watch the Friday night games and Sunday afternoon game. We love our Sunday afternoon footy. Nibbles are done and ready to go for the footy to start!




Our Avocado Dip and biscuits. YUM.




This is Ben's team the Parramatta Eels, he has gone for them since he was a young fella!




I have always watched the footy, but never really supported a team, besides Queensland during origin time. But since doing a family tipping competition, i have chosen a team. And this is their logo, the North Queensland Cowboys!!

I'm not very good at our tipping comp, but i have fun! Our boys also have their input and say which team they back at winning each week. They love it just as much as the rest of us!

Well it's about to start so i better get down to the bar to watch it with my boys!

Bad Habits..

Last winter, i had trouble sleeping of a night time. Actually getting off to sleep was the hardest.. I put it down to the boys mischief at night time. But over summer I've been falling asleep quite easily. So I've come down to these 2 reasons for my bad sleep habits.

I'm not a coffee drinker, although i do love mocha that's as far as i go and it sends me crazy. (alot gets done after having one of those!!) I drink tea, during summer i only have my morning tea that's it. It's enough to get me started for the day. In winter i seem to drink more tea, because it's so nice and warm and comforting on a cold day.. So that last week has been cooling off with lots of wind around. So I've been drinking more tea, sometimes 3 cups a day.

My other theory... After the boys are in bed, i love nothing more than to have some mummy TV time and watch some adult shows!! especially in winter, snuggled up on the lounge with a blanket.. But these shows drift on into the late night. I have been caught out many a time very late at night still watching them, then realising what time it is. Because its so late I've managed to surpass my tiredness and go into mummy stealth mode and not be able to go to sleep, as my body thinks things need to be done..

These are my bad habits and this winter i am going to try and curve them and start being GOOD, so I'm not tossing and turning in bed for 2 hours before finally going off to sleep...

Do you have bad habits??


****The PLAN****
Only 2 cups of tea a day (mainly in the morning). If i want a warm drink, i need to drink a hot chocolate!
I don't really need to watch TV, are the TV shows really going to be that upset that i missed there show at 10.30pm??? I think not!! So to bed at 9.30pm at the latest, if i'm still feeling awake, i have MANY books i can read myself to sleep with!

Here we go, now i'm thinking i might need to write this down on BIG pieces of paper and post them around the house!! We'll see how i go tonight!! LOL

A Photo and Video Montage of Our Week!

This is what our past week has been like.



Sun shining with white fluffy clouds one moment.



Dark and rainy the next!

So the boys took to playing in the house.



Cooking in the oven!



Mixing their pretend food up before cooking it.



And pulling out all the containers to lay down in the cupboard!!




The video's (hopefully both load for me) are of the boys playing inside. They always seem to have extra energy on rainy days! So in between the catch up on my cleaning we played lots of silly indoor games!



Lets hope the rain clears up properly soon, so we can recover from our (lil boys) snotty noses before winter hits and they're snotty all the time!

In my last post i mentioned Blue eyes temperatures. Well That night Blue eyes hit 39.2c. Which is now his magic number as it was 39C. So we dodged a bullet, Ben came home from work. I thought we were in for a bad night of temps. But he had a decent sleep (in between us, that's why). So i think, if i hadn't of checked him when i did, he would have had a convulsion for sure! Its been 5 months since his last, 2 and a half weeks away from being a year since his first... I'm a little worried. But we will get through these weeks. He can breath better through his snotty nose now, so that doesn't worry me as much...

I need warming up, it's time for another cuppa!

Cake, electricity and snotty noses!

After my cupcake disaster last week, I've been wanting to try again.. This time i decided to bake a cake. But we had no eggs left... And i was really craving a chocolate cake... So i searched the wonderful web and found a recipe* for an egg less chocolate cake. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, being egg less and using water instead of milk and not having butter, but oil instead... But OH MY GOODNESS This is a recipe to keep!!! It's so moist and chocolaty.. mmm YUM!!




Chocolate cake! Doesn't it look good??? Of course we all had a piece before i realised that i wanted to take a photo of it first whoops, sorry children come first and this way you can see what the inside looks like!



Yesterday morning Ben organised for us to have a climate smart home service. Our government has recently been organising rebates for things like insulation, solar water heaters and solar panels for houses. They also have a package called the Climate smart home service. It costs $50. A qualified sparky comes out and replaces all your light bulbs with the new energy efficient design bulbs, a new shower head for the shower (water saving shower head) and installs and wireless energy monitor into the electricity box. The sparky came out this morning, (just made it through flood waters to get to us lol).
I love the monitor. It shows you how many kW is being used and how many cents per hour that amount costs. It also has the temperature and records previous days, weeks and months. So we can work out what is using the most power and cut down on its usage.. Brilliant, although when the sparky left we had a play with it turning on everything and testing how much power it uses.... Yes, so we will start saving money maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, once we've used everything at least once or twice on different settings... We also got in the pack a thermometer, with markings of best temperatures for our fridge, freezer, air conditioning, heating etc So i am now testing everything and adjusting to suit... Now this is all in aid of
1. cutting down our power bill and
2. cutting the bill also means less power usage which means less the power companies have to produce..etc, I'm sure you all understand!! It's been in the news enough! lol.




Wireless monitor and thermometer. The sparky put all the bulbs in for us. Except the one in our room, our bed was in the way and he's not allowed to jump on our bed due to rules and regulations etc.. unfair for him! lol

So apart from our new toy, the rain has eased, but the flood waters are still up, our town has moderate flooding, just in the low lying creeks and valleys, local parks. As far as i know, no business have been affected. But some people are still unable to come to town or leave. Our friend stayed another night last night. She is hoping to get home this afternoon. We shall see, Ben went for a drive this morning and its starting to fall but slowly! Our 2 boys also have bad colds. Blue eyes is worse than cowboy. So its only just gone into Autumn and we have snot already!! Blue eye's also had a minor temp this morning, so i am watching that making sure it doesn't spike and result in a febrile convulsion.. I don't mind him having a temp when he is teething, at least he can breath through his nose. Right now his nose is so blocked and runny that it makes me worry just that little bit more.. When i picked up some medicine yesterday at the chemist our friend who works there suggested i put them on a kids multi vitamin to help stop or prevent so many winter colds.. But I will have to look into it more. Try and find the most natural one, and maybe a liquid form... Its investigation time! lol

Well I've now got to go hang some washing and do some more, try and catch up on everything before the next lot of Autumn rain!

* Eggless Chocolate Cake

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Method
1. Combine dry ingredients
2. Combine wet ingredients and stir into flour mixture.
3. Pour mixture into a 20cm round tin and bake at 175-180C for 25-35 minutes.
4. Stand for 10 minutes before turning out. Cake will be delicate while still hot.

We have a creek in our yard, if only it wasn't seasonal!!

After the recent rain on the weekend, we've also had a monsoon low pass over us, and bucket a constant amount of rain on us. Our yard was already soggy from previous rain so this lot has just been skimming across the top and pooling down in our back corner. Our yard is on a bit of a hill so it all flows down to one corner. Hence we have a creek!! The photo and video don't show just how much water is sitting in our yard.

The video didn't go for very long as i had a friend call me asking if she and her partner could stay the night as they are flooded out of their house. We have a town about a 40 minute drive south from our town, if this area gets a substantial amount of rain it flows into our local river. The Mary river. And it then floods communities and our town as it flows through. Sometimes it is only minor flooding small creeks etc. But sometimes we get HUGE floods, and the water takes over our main street, flooding all the shops and local parks. So you can imagine the hype happening in our town today after the consistent rain. Everyone is on flood watch checking the weather website waiting for it to rise. The last major flood we had was in 1999 and it peaked at 21.95 meters. The highest on record was in 1893 which peaked at 25.45 meters. So from our humble home in the wet, we wait to see how high it will get. We are thankfully away from the flood zone the most we get is our little creek!










This is our back corner, i told Ben it was a good spot for a pond, then realised it would need major adjustments so the goldfish wouldn't get washed away!





This is a photo of one side of the main town, on the left is where the river lies, to the right of the photo is where the main street is. When it peaks high it makes alot of damage!



Well its time to go and check how much higher it is, isn't the wonderous world of the web fabulous! I remember being young and having to drive with mum and dad down to the river to see how high it was, now we have special devices submitting the information to the web!! I can stay dry! I hope your dry!

Gold Coast weekend, or should i say Grey Coast!!!!

We had a great weekend away, apart from the on again off again rain!! Not just small showers, pelting down rain! Our first day had sunshine, so we got some beach time in. Second day was playing in and around the rain. We went for a walk in the morning. Had some lunch with our friends mum, and Ben's dad turned up for a visit. Then went into the heart of the Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise. We went to a tourist attraction there called Infinity. It's a specially designed maze of rooms, filled with lights and mind tricking illusions. The little boys were a little frightened but said at the end they liked it... Can't let anyone know they were scared!! We got stuck in the rain trying to find our way back to the car.. We lost our bearings completely, once we found them we hot tailed it back to our villa for HOT showers and drinks!! Our third and last day was amusement park day. We were tossing up between Movie World or Wet n Wild. The morning was beautiful and sunny, it soon turned cloudy (with a tsunami warning issued) But it still looked like a nice day for Movie World. We had a great time (I've posted some photo's below) They have smaller kid rides there, so cowboy and his cousins got some good rides in. The big kids also went on some cool rides as well. The new really fast superman ride that gives you 4.2G's of speed.... and the Bat wing that shoots you up into the air.... oh so much fun!! We did get a few showers whilst wondering around, so we purchased some poncho's to keep us dry! We watched some shows, stunt drivers, looney tunes and the 3d shrek movie. Ben and our friend got stuck in the line up for the scooby-doo ride with a technical difficulty... We thought they may have been stuck on the actual ride somewhere, but they were next in line to go and after about 50 minutes they got to have their go! I think we jammed as much as possible in, heaps of rides for the kids as well as us and shows to watch, we pretty much did it all!! A well spent day of sooooo much fun! We didn't leave until the park closed, so it was a long drive home in the dark and rain! We stopped about half way for some dinner and a stretch..

Here are some photo's of our wonderful weekend.







The sunniest part of our trip! Luckily we spent some good time on the beach this particular day!


Batman!!!! Blue eyes got to high 5 him!! Cowboy was a little scared to see his hero's in real life, and soooo much bigger than on TV!!




Ben taking the boys on the merry-go-round!



Myself and blue eyes on the tweety bird cage ride. He was busting to go on a ride. Not many about for his size though.


Cowboy on the kiddie dodgem car's


Can't remember what this ride is called, but cowboy is in the middle with one of his cousin's beside him.



Our beautiful Poncho's!

I hope you had as interesting weekend as we did. Now its time to get back some sleep and energy!!