Weekend happenings and running on empty!

I am running on empty today, I didn't get to sleep last night until 11pm, and because I am trying to not take my tablet to help me sleep, I have been awake since 3am....blah...very tired, but surprisingly productive.

I have organised a few more guinea fowl to come in tomorrow, that are the same age as the 2 I have left, so that we are back up to 6 again. I also have a clucky hen at the moment, so I have organised for a half dozen day old chicks to come up tomorrow to place under her. I have a mix of Anconas, plymouth rocks and silver spangled hamburgs coming. I should also have a few ancona pullets coming up as well. I think quite a few of the girls are ageing and their laying capacity has dwindled , as out of 8 girls we are only averaging 1 or 2 eggs a day, and that has been since spring last year..so time to start bringing some new ones in to bring the laying capacity back up.  I'm happy to let the older girls live out their lives happily as they have done a good job with the egg laying, so now they are more for fertilising and eating some bugs.

I have been also organising a few final inside touches for the reno this morning as well. The weekend was relatively quiet, I spent most of the weekend keeping my sewing machine whirring away working on my wall art for the main bedroom, and I dug out the french knitting tool for Kasey yesterday, and she spent most of the day getting the hang of that, she absolutely loves it, and is currently working on a round rug for her floor (which she has conveniently given me the job of sewing together for her)  Then I think she will start work on covering some tins for storage containers on her desk. I will look at also getting her a rectangle knitting loom which is based on the same principle, but she will be able to make scarves and things with, but I will give that to her when we go away at Easter or whenever the novelty starts wearing off with the french knitting tool first.

I also did some baking for lunches and make pikelets,

 Chocolate yogo,

 and Hodgetts slice

So, lots of variety there for snacks to take to school, and for after school. I also placed an order with Fishpond last week, and 2 of my books arrived this morning.

I am waiting on another cheesemaking book on more of the soft cheeses, yoghurts, creme fraiche etc to arrive as well as a couple of cake decorating books. I am going to pop them away and take them with me on our Easter holiday as my easter reading...I just need to be patient...not long to go, Kasey finishes school this week for the term, it has gone so fast. I have booked her in for a kids easter cupcake decorating class next week, so she can bring her creations with her to share with her friends over easter. So..that's the update for today...lots going on as usual...
**Hour a day in the Garden Update - I have done 3 hours in the garden today, as I missed the last couple of days due to other commitments, so I made up for it today, I did 1 1/2 hours of mowing, (it is still really wet though, so only could do the front area until the back dries out more) and 1 1/2 hours of planting, I planted some Qld Arrowroot and Kassava in the pool area, I am hoping the Arrowroot gives the area a tropical look without having to have palms everywhere as they can get pretty messy. I have also planted Vietnamese Mint, Lemongrass, Mushroom plant, 3 types of sweet potato - purple, clumping and orange, and I know there is something else but I can't think at this stage what it is. I still have some pennyroyal to plant, and a Davison Plum, but I think I will plant that up at the property when we go up at the end of next week.

Camembert, books and crafts

My camembert cheese from my course at the end of October is maturing quite nicely. It has grown all of it's white mould, so now I have cryovaced it and it is in the fridge waiting to be eaten as a Christmas treat.

 I have purchased myself a couple of books in the last couple of weeks. I saw this book today, and grabbed it. It is a huge book, a couple of inches thick, with so many old classic recipes in it.

  I picked up this book at Spotlight a couple of weeks back, it is a lovely book with lots of lovely sewing projects for the home, but all are with a modern look.

I knitted up this scarf as a gift for my heartsister in Melbourne, as well as this lovely heart sachet, which I thought was apt for my heartsister. The heartsister idea is through the Simple Savings website, and we send a gift or card or thought to someone anonomously each month or so, and we receive something from someone else, and at the end of 12 months, we all reveal who we are a heartsister to. It's a nice way to make some new friends, sort of like a penpal, but a little different.

I managed to finish off the Christmas shopping today, which is great because Kasey finishes school tomorrow, and I didn't want to be traipsing around the shops trying to think with Kasey in tow. So now we can concentrate on doing fun things in the lead up to Christmas, and go to the movies and other Christmas time activities.  So just need to finish the wrapping, and a few hand  made things, and that's it. The shops were so busy as well, people absolutely everywhere, and it's only going to get worse, so I m glad I don't have any more shopping to do, other than grocery shopping.

Cardmaking, Sewing and a nice clean house...

I had card making class on Monday.  It is always a nice relaxing day with lunch provided, and we always make some nice, different cards, utilising a lot of techniques. These are the 5 cards that we made on the day:

Tuesday I had my weekly coffee with Tammy, and afterwards I went home and started on cleaning the house. After doing the bathrooms, I decided to redecorate a little, and went to Loot and bought some flowers, and some potpourri and a couple of decorative items to go with what I already have here in vases etc. I am really pleased with how the bathroom has come up, and Toni says it looks like a resort bathroom now, don't think it's quite up to that standard, but it does look nice, and the kids have managed to keep it tidy for a whole 24 hours now....amazing.....I finished cleaning the house this morning, I only had the floors to finish off, and the house looks so much better, and I always feel really great and organised when the house is tidy...I also caught up on the washing and did a quick grocery shop before Mum came down today to pick up her sewing machine that I picked up for her yesterday. Mum spent the day here sewing and learning how to use her new machine, and we had a nice girly sewing day. Tomorrow I have embroidery club in the morning to sew up the owl...should be fun as I haven't ever done anything like this before. I will post some pics tomorrow after class as it is very cute...I have a really bad cough at the moment, it gets worse late afternoon and evenings when it's a bit cooler, and my stomach muscles are quite sore from coughing...I hope it clears up soon as I am definitely over it....I have a bit of paperwork to catch up on tomorrow afternoon and Friday, so hopefully I can get that out of the way if I can be organised....here's hoping....I am in the process of ordering some books through amazon at the moment, I will try and finish the order off tonight, just want to have a good look and make sure there isn't anything else that I want....Radical Homemakers is one of them, and some homesteading and country living ones, I will have a look at some sewing and craft ones as well before I finish off the order....

Coffee, permaculture and an eventual animal commitment....

Caught up with Tammy for coffee yesterday. We were there for 3 hours! It was a long chat. Tammy has done welfare and counselling, so she had quite an in depth talk with Toni while we were there about Sat night, to try and clear things in her head for her. We finally heard from the girls family today, who have said that she is being discharged from hospital today, and that they don't hold anyone responsible, and that it was just a terrible accident. All well and good, but I am afraid that I do hold this girl responsible, it was her decision to totally wipe herself out with alcohol and jump on my daughters bonnet and seriously injure herself, and cause Toni such distress in the process, I am really happy that she is ok, and no serious damage has been done, but seeing how upset Toni has been over the last few days has been really hard to deal with, I just hope that everyone that was at this party has learnt something, I would hate to see no lessons learnt out of all of this, at least this girl's parents are now aware that there teenage daughter is wiping herself out with alcohol and can maybe monitor this a bit, I am not naive enough to think that Toni does not ever have a drink, but I know that having her licence and her driving to these things means that she won't be drinking, I know that she would never drink drive, she does take after me in this respect, I have never ever driven after drinking, and I know she feels exactly the same as me about this, thank goodness.....anyway....hopefully everyone can move on now....On a happier note, I recently reserved a permaculture book from the library, and picked it up today, so this will be my before bed reading for the next few weeks.

I am really interested in learning about the permaculture way of doing things. There is a course I could go and do , but it is nearly $1200, and I may still go and do it yet, but if I can learn everything out of a book, I would like to, even though I do love doing the practical side of learning, and find that I usually learn better that way these days...my brain definitely does not take to learning theory as well as it used to in my teens and twenties and even early thirties. I am also waiting on a permaculture design book to come in to the library that I have reserved, and will read that as well, much cheaper than spending $200 to buy it online.  I would really love to totally immerse myself in this way of doing things, and get more animals and spend most of my time outdoors.....but I haven't been game to commit to more animals, having horses was a really big commitment, and I think it has taken me a couple of years of not having them to get over the amount of time and effort that took, not to mention money! Damian called them the 4 legged money pits, the whole time I had them, which was true to a degree, and I found that I no longer had the really relaxed disposition around them that I had when I was much younger, and you really need that to be able to deal with the skittishness that they have. I also found that I no longer really enjoyed riding them due to the same reasons. I would really love alpacas, a donkey and miniature goats, even a miniature horse would be lovely, gorgeous animals, a bit quieter, and lovely manure for the gardens, and lawnmowers in the process....Damian would like sheep or a small cow as he would like to have them for the meat side of things, but if I had a cow I would want a milking one, and I definitely don't want to commit to milking a cow twice a day right now....maybe down the track I may get my head around that!