Crafty Easter Weekend

This cross-stitched picture only took me four years to stitch, and then spent another four years sitting in a bag. Yesterday I went to the Warehouse (a big sell-everything store kinda like Walmart in the US) and picked up a $26 frame and spent an hour framing the picture myself. The hardest thing was making sure that each side had the same amount of white space as the other side. I'm really thrilled with how it looks on the wall. The silly thing though, is that this picture would not have worked in the lounge of my old house as it had wood panelling, but it looks stunning in our present home!

Here's a closer look at it. My oldest son described it as being very 'Anne of Green Gables-ish' which is pretty cool since LM Montgomery is a favourite author of mine. It's called Good Neighbours and was designed by Paula Vaughan.

On Saturday I did my first scrapbook layout in nearly a year. It kinda shows too so I won't post it here. lol. Now that I've done the one I feel like doing more but at the same time I feel totally inadequate with coming up with my own designs. Much easier with knitting and cross-stitch where you simply follow a pattern! I'll have to do some scrap-lifting I think. Maybe a mini album, something small and following a scheme. Maybe next weekend. 8:)

Yes, We have an Easter Tree!

Ok, nothing handmade on it, but I'm willing to bet it's the only Easter tree in New Zealand. The kiddo's decorated it with sparkly eggs that we brought from Spotlight while away in Wellington. It's been re-arranged several times and by the time I took the photo the tree was looking a little worse for wear. Totally inspired by the Easter trees out in blogland, mostly US ones.

Hope you all had a blessed Easter.

An Unexpected trip away

I've been mia as we got a phone call from Hutt Hospital asking me to bring Alex up for his next operation and we had to leave almost straight away. There was no-one to look after the other three kiddos so we ended up having an unexpected holiday in Wellington. It's not fun really to sit in a hospital ward all day looking after one sick child and three other active kids. But they did extremely well. After Alex's operation we had some fun time together; exploring Te Papa (Wellington's museum), a day trip to Palmerston North, paddling in the sea at Eastbourne, and the favourite with everyone, jumping on the giant pillow at the holiday campground.

I took the kids back to school on Thursday only to have the youngest kiddo not wanting to go (very strong-willed child), and in the failed battle to get her inside a boy came running past me and straight into Alex which meant a trip to the drs and an emergency x-ray. It wasn't a good day really.

While we were gone my Mum watered our garden for us. The no dig garden is looking pretty good. I've weeded it about twice since I made it up nearly two months ago. The lawns however were horribly overgrown. It only took 2 hours and three times filling the lawnmower up with petrol to get the job done! I'm saving the lawn clippings for when I extend the no dig garden in a week or two.

We also had fun visiting the op shops . My kiddos know they can't expect new toys other than at birthdays and Christmas, but if they find toys they like in the op shops at bargain prices they will usually make a deal to do some extra work to be able to buy the stuff they want. Youngest boy got a cool spiderman car for only $2.50, oldest girl got some pony books, and youngest girl brought a bag of toys for only a $1 that had some neat girly stuff she liked. I manged to find some books to read and some pairs of knitting needles, and also brought the girls a couple of toys. While the kiddos generally don't like me visiting bookshops and craftshops with them in tow, they will tolerate op shops as they never know what they can get. Cheap entertainment. lol.

Fish Pie and Peak Oil

I had in my fridge 400g of fresh hoki brought from Pac'n'Save for just over $4. A bargain for sure. But what to do with it? If I had 750g then I had a thai receipe that would of worked, but 400g was a bit too little hoki to stretch for 1 adult and 4 kiddo's. I had in mind to do a fish pie with, served with veges as well but my mind went blank (happens occasionally, ...well actually a lot, with four kiddos around) and I only had half an hour before going out, and half an hour cooking time when I got back. What's a girl to do?

Thank goodness for online friends. I posted on the Simple Savings website asking for help and within minutes I had the help I needed. The fish pie was absolutely delish and I'll be making it again. It also worked out pretty cheap to make too.

Fish Pie

400g hoki

1 packet of instant cheese sauce

1 cup of frozen mixed veges

1 sheet of ready rolled flakey pastry

Halfway cook the fish and veges, make up the cheese sauce and add in. Stir it all up. Put flaky pastry over the top. Bake on med-high heat for 20 minutes.

I'm thinking just about any fish would work with this, even canned fish. And of course I could of made the cheese sauce and pastry myself from scratch, but using instant sped it up time wise considerably. Not that I make pastry by hand a whole lot even when I have time you understand. lol.

In the middle of the Fish pie saga I had gone out to our library to watch a documentary on how the Cuban's dealt with the oil crises. You might remember in my last post I wrote about reading a book about an Australian couple who move from the city to a self-substaining farm due to the Peak Oil crisis. That book has kinda risen my interest in the whole topic so to much amusement of my extended family I took my nearly 18yods along with me to watch this doco.

It was very interesting to watch how the Cubans had to change things to cope. The biggest thing was as they had no oil for agricultural machinery they had to have smaller farms and with a greater variety of crops because the food had to be sold locally due to having no transport. The rural areas had solar power and the cities had electrical blackouts daily which meant there was no fridges, no air con, etc. They had to shop one meal at a time or pick it straight out of their gardens. They rode bicycles a lot, or waited up to three hours for buses. The average weight loss was 20lbs I think, and children were malnourished and pregnant women were anemic. In other words, it was pretty darn tough.

The scary thing is, I think this is our future. There is a limited supply of oil, we're over the half way mark of using it up (which is what Peak Oil means), and it's only going to get more expensive to get the rest of the oil out of the gound. One day we'll be wishing for the good old days when oil was $100US a barrel. One day sooner than we think...

A perfect wintery summer's day

We are on our fourth day of not just raining, but pouring down weather. And it makes me happy.

Happy, because our drought ridden country really needs this weather.

Happy, because of the smell of cheese scones in the oven, the perfect wet weather lunch straight out of the Edmond's Cookbook. A double batch even. Dripping with butter.

Happy, because it's the perfect weather to snuggle up on the couch and catch up on some reading. I have so many good books out of the library and only a month to read them. The only book that I'm choosing to slowly read at night, under the covers, and savouring each chapter is The Thirteenth Tale by Diana Settlefield. I'll do a review on this delightful book when I eventually push myself to read the last chapter. Another favourite at the moment is Choosing Eden, a non-fiction book about an Australian couple who decide because of the Peak Oil situation to leave their home in the city and set up a self-substaining farm in the country.

Happy, because it's also the perfect weather to do some more of my cross-stitching. The photo above shows the small portion of Dimensions Sew Cosy Kit that I've completed since the start of the year.

And finally, happy because I don't have to go out today! It's Saturday, the kiddo's are home playing with lego's and playstation games, and all is right in our little corner of the world.

Heart Love

Sharing some photo love courtsey of flickr and blogs! Not my photos, just things I found on around on the net and loved. I realised when doing this post that I really should of kept note of who made them. Sorry about that! If these are your photo's, I HEART them!

I'm still loving felt and embroidery at the moment. Aren't these cute?

Hmm, I could get my little white Christmas tree out and make some.... Darn, only one day till Valentines. Pity I'm not a quick crafter. lol. Maybe I should start on an Easter tree instead.

Loving Smoked Chickens at the moment

With our hot summer weather we are having currently I am reminded of just how much I dislike cooking in a hot kitchen. Instead of cooking a meal every night I will often dish up salads instead. Nothing fancy, usually just the old standard salad of an iceberg lettuce shredded, tomatoes and cucumbers cubed, all tossed in a large salad bowl. Sauces are left on the table for everyone to choose. To go with the salad I sometimes shred up some smoked chicken.

Smoked chicken is usually on my shopping list. I love that fact that I don't need to cook it and as with old cold meats it actually goes a lot further than hot meats. With one $10 chicken I can pick all the meat off and get three meals out of it. It goes with the salads, in tortilla's, and can be used in all chicken based recipes.

Yesterday I got out my old and trustworthy Alison Holst cookbook and made up Chicken Fricassee. We haven't had it for a while, and the kiddo's had forgotten how much they like it. It's done in the microwave, and I dished it up with potatoes and silverbeat (from our veggie garden!).

Chicken Fricassee

200g carrots

1 cup sliced celery

4 small onions

50g butter
3/4 cup water

2 Tbsp flour

1 tsp green herb stock

1 cup milk
2 cups smoked chicken

1/2 - 1 cup of peas

Slice carrots thinly. Cook with celery and quartered onions in the butter, with 1/4 cup water, in a covered casserole at Full power for 8 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Stir in flour and instant stock, then the milk and remaining water. Cook, uncovered, until sauce boils and thickens, stirring every minute. Add chicken and peas, heat for 2 minutes longer and serve with rice or mashed potatoes.

That's Alison's recipe. I tend not to follow them exactly and they always come out tasting good. In the Chicken Fricassee I don't bother weighing carrots, I use about 4 medium sized ones. We don't like celery so we don't add that. A generous dob of margarine instead of butter, which costs too much presently. Instead of green herb stock I'll replace it with a chicken stock cube, or even a flavour sachet out of a packet of instant noodles (The kiddo's cook up four packets for lunch but only use 2 sachets so I'll throw those into casserole type dishes.) and I guess the amount of chicken and peas. Oh, and instead of stirring it every minute (who wants to do that?) I'll microwave for4 minutes, stir, then stir after every 2 minutes of cooking. Takes about five 2 minute blasts. Take it out and let it cool down while you dish up the rest of the tea. Then watch the kiddo's devour their tea. 8:)

Getting sorted for the start of the school year

Monday marks the start of the school year for my four youngest kiddo's. During the last week we have been out buying bits of uniform, shoes, and of course, stationary. There is something about new exercise books that I just love. I think it appeals to my list making nature, and my desire to write that never evenuates.
Anyway, it's also been a very expensive week . As you can imagine buying clothes, shoes and stationary for four kiddo's is rather costly. Just a bit. Like $200 worth costly. Thankfully they are all at the same primary/intermediate school. Next year there is buying for high school to look forward too. To try and offset the costs a little I try to buy school stuff throughout the year when on sale, or find pieces of the school uniform in the local op-shop. I'll start looking out for the high school uniform this year.

I am soooo looking forward to some peace and quiet on Monday morning! As always I have a whole heap of things I want to get done (ie, another list lol) when they're at school. More crafts, books, op-shopping and listing stuff on trade me. Oh, and blogging more. I'll miss the kiddo's when they're gone though. Really. Well, a little.

Books Read in January

I made another discovery today, a personal one. I've been keeping records of the books I read each month for the last five years of so. And I discovered that the month of January is generally a month of rich reading; not only in the quanity of books read, but also of the quality of said books that were read. After pondering on this discovery for a while I came to the conclusion that it must be because a) school holidays and with the kids being home I have less time on the computer, I'm home more often, and I have more late nights reading books as I can sleep in. And b) as other people often go away on holiday at this particular time of the year it means the more 'popular' books are to be found more easily at the library. Now a) will be of no importance to readers here (maybe you'll have an uh-huh moment though), but b) may useful to other library users.

Anyway, books read this month:
The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby, and The Cross by Sigrid Undset. 9.5/10
Lottery by Patricia Wood 8.5
Finding Alice by Melody Carson 7.5
Mustn't Grumble by Joe Bennett 8.5
A Promise for Ellie by Lauraine Snelling 9
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing 8.5
Escape by Carolyn Jessop 9.5

As a side note, my grading system does not imply how well the book was or wasn't written, more of a 'how much I could relate to it' or 'enjoyment' or even 'how much I learnt from it'. For example, I found the book by Carolyn Jessop to be quite stilted in writing, and on occasions it fell out of time sequence, but I could relate somewhat to this book as I had to escape an abusive husband and fight a custody battle and still have problems with access. I also learnt quite a bit about polygamy, it showed a substantially different picture of it than the the tv series Big Love!

Discovered Martin Lewis today...

On a visit to the library I came across Thrifty Ways for Modern Days by Martin Lewis, a Money Saving Expert. The book looks interesting, especially for those new to the idea of saving money. Here's the contents:

What is Old-Style Money Saving?
Cutting Your Bills without Cutting Back
Do you Spend More than you Earn?
Chapter 1: Cleaning
Chapter 2: Shopping - What to Buy and How to Reuse it
Chapter 3: Clothes and Shoes
Chapter 4: Home Maintenance and DIY
Chapter 5: The Good Life - Grow Your Own
Chapter 6: Presents and Home-made Gifts
Chapter 7: Christmas, Weddings and Other Occasions
Chapter 8: The Old-Style Recipe Book

The book is a complilation of hints from http://moneysavingexpert.com. The website looks jolly interesting too. It's British based and the forums have thousands of posts. I'll add this link to the blog links on the right. This particular book (Lewis has written a couple of others as well) came from the hints shared in the 'Money Saving Old-Style' section of the forums. This particular board was started when older members of the forums wanted to share their wisdom with the younger generation. Although the discussion that sparked this topic off was could we live like during WWII, it isn't all old-fashion stuff, it includes thinks like breadmakers and slowcookers for example. So plenty of ideas to be got from here. Enjoy!

My Little Veggie Garden

This picture shows about two-thirds of our tiny vegetable garden. Besides lettuce and silverbeet, we also have a pot of mint, 2 zucchini plants that have a grand total of ONE zucchini on them, and two spring onions. I've come to the conclusion that the zucchini flowers aren't being pollenated so I will try pollenating them by hand tomorrow. The spring onions were from a tip I got off of Simple Savings. (Now why won't blogger let me type those two words for the link?) I brought the spring onions from the supermarket and saved the bottom two inches, and simply planted them in the soil, and away they sprouted. From now on I can cut the tops off as I need them and they should sprout away again.

I've also signed up to get Lynda's emails from NZ Gardener magazine. Lynda completed a challenge that she set herself last year of not spending more than $10 on food per week. To do this she grew her own veges and bartered the surplus to get other food she needed. This year Lynda is sending out these jolly useful weekly emails about what needs doing in the garden, what to sow, and what to harvest etc.

These emails have peaked my interest in vegetable gardening considerably, and I have been buying the vegetable seeds recommended to plant currently, only to realise that I don't really have any dug-over space for them. So on my last day that the kids are away I trotted off to the local garden centre to buy not only more seeds, but four bags of compost, and a large bale of compressed pea straw. At least, I think that's what it was. After tea I put bricks around a small area of the lawn, laid newspaper over the grass, and lastly threw the compost over it. I'll finish up with putting the pea straw on top tomorrow and planting the seeds. Fingers crossed that this will work!

Small little things

I visited some op shops today and instead of buying just books I had a quick look around at the kitchen stuff and came home with three pieces that I liked. One was a small crystal glass, much needed for cold drinks in the middle of our hot summer, which cost 50 cents. Another was this spaghetti bowl on the left. It's probably been massed produced and is of no value to anyone else, but the colours and design caught my eye and I fell in love with it. It's the perfect size spaghetti bowl for one. Just perfect for my favourite expensive pasta that I only have when the kiddos have gone to their Dads for the night. And lastly, a glass Christmas jug that I would post a picture of it if Blogger would let me. (Tis about time they improved the loading of pictures feature!). It's a clear glass jug, with a wee Christmas village scene on both sides, with snowmen riding in a sleigh underneath, and opposite the handle is a Christmas tree. I may even decide to use this outside of the Christmas season since I like it so much. The bowl and the jug were both 50 cents each as well. These little things that I bought for my house will make me smile each time I see them so it's money well spent.

What happened there?

Where did 2007 go? Sheesh, it whizzed by! Brilliant, brilliant year for me personally. It felt for the first time in years that things were starting to go right again and that I became more sure of who I was and what I want from life and headed off confidently in that direction.

So in what direction am I going? Basically it's what my blog header says: my life filled with crafts, books, cooking, decorating, children, love and laughter. A single mum living a happy and contented life frugally in New Zealand. Hence the reason why I've come back to this blog again. 8:)

What happened in 2007: A solo campervan tour around Northland at the end of April with a gathering of scrapbooking friends to start it off. Also a month long trip overseas to California, the UK, and Europe. Words cannot describe how much confidence these trips gave me, in terms of pushing myself, ie riding the BIG roller coaster in California's Disney Adventure Park and negotiating the metro system in Paris at night, and also in terms of gaining social confidence which I didn't have a heck of a lot left of after my marriage broke down. The kiddo's also started a new school which was much better in terms of education and social interaction for them, making my life easier. The youngest kiddo also began school in October so I can get more things done at home now.

Also things that didn't happen were a blessing. No operations this year! Alex will need one this year but that should be about it. No moving house. We are feeling a lot more settled now. And dare I say it, the ex behaved himself a lot better in 2007, most disagreements were sorted by simply being able to state what was in the parenting order through the courts. That made things much, much easier. He called the cops on me once, and the cops saw the situation for what it was and laughed at him. Justice at last!

My goals for 2008 are fairly simple. To keep decluttering the house and selling excess stuff on Trade Me, to do more crafts, to try new recipes more often, and save some money. In otherwords, stay cosy at home.

Happy New Year Readers!