Take two bursts of sunshiney apron goodness courtesy of the ever-awesome Katie!

Spot the sunshine?

Add a mouthful of cookie dough and a trayful of gingerbread shapes ready to pop in the oven, and whaddaya get?  

 A Master Chef smile bringing some sunshine all of it’s own.

I wanted to take pictures of the cool *individual* packets they were posted in - I’ve kept them specially, but meh if I haven’t lost the snapshotty buzz of late. They were addressed to *Master Chef B…* and “Master Chef H….* and as B4 ripped into his first glance of what was in his package he said “Gasp - it’s… green!” “What’s your favourite colour?” “Green!”. Well picked, Miss Kate

Perfect for two little men in their very own kitchen - and in mine - right?

It’s not even the first time that Beanville has been sunshined by Katie’s apron bender - when she came to play on my Turning 30 Bday Weekend lookie what came with her.

Red red red aprony goodness.  With STRAWBERRIES even.
 

Unfortunately we won’t be able to have Carb-free-Katie over for dinner to express our gratitude, because we are going to be eating po-tay-tohs for dinner till they done come out our ears.
…..

When B4 picked a huge bag of kiwifruit on his stay with his grandparents, voila, Kiwifruit chutney.
Recipe*, by the way, since Mother Me asked:
Digby Law’s Kiwifruit Chutney
(makes about 2L)
1kg kiwifruit
3 onions
2 bananas
1 cup raisins
2 tablespoons crystallised ginger
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
juice of 2 lemons
1 cup white wine vinegar.

Peel and slice the kiwifruit, finely chop the onions and slice tha bananas. Combine with remaining ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring often. Gently boil for about 1-1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally, until soft and thick. Allow to cool then spoon into clean jars and seal.

But two enormous boxes of po-tay-tohs courtesy of Hubby’s Father’s undying love of a bargain?  Especially a free bargain?  Well potato chutney I just don’t know about, so breakfast lunch and dinner it is.

Luckily, one of my favourite recipe books has a whole potato section.


Which I feel is rapidly about to become as well thumbed as the macaroni cheese & pizza base pages.
.
.
……
*(Recipe courtesy of my friend Janine, I assumed Digby Law was some friend of hers or something but for the purpose of this blog post I googled, and, well he’s a cookbook author. Fancy that.)

…preserving jar as it sucks it’s lid in and seals.

Not the catchiest of jingles, I’ll admit. But sitting here listening to the deeply satisfying *suckpop* of my jars of kiwifruit chutney one by one sucessfully sealing, I am just so stinkin’ proud of myself.

Probably made all the sweeter by the boiling liquid fear flowing through my every vein as I cooked sterilised my jars in the oven

and then filled them, convinced they were going to explode at any moment, sending shards of high speed glass flying into mine and my kids’ flesh and burning the house down in the process.

Just that not happening would have been cause enough for satisfaction. But a suckpop sealing noise signalling each successfully sealing jar now too? Icing on the cake baby, icing on the cake.

And since I like my cakes with both icing and a cherry on top too?
I finished the easy version wrist warmers that Nikki gave me the link to when I bemoaned my inability to knit the funky cabled ones I had been pining for. Woo! Go me! I finished stuff!

Of course, I completely spat in the face of all that is holy in the world of pattern-following; wrong sized needles, wrong ply wool, circs when it called for flats, therefore a completely different number of rows… and you would not believe the consternation I caused myself trying to figure out how to make a hole in circular knitting. Like, a thumb hole. Seriously, I worry even myself.

But let’s not detract - I finished stuff! I knitted, I preserved, I am woman, hear me - um - chore?

Oh frick. Pride before a fall n’all that, I have just found hairline cracks in TWO of my *suckpop* sealed jars.

Now what do I do? Leave them be and they’ll be fine? (I really like that one). Transfer them into other jars? How do I make that not just happen again? Help me, oh ye earth mothers of the interwebs…

Well ok, only in so much as “I Did It Again”.
Oh, and I suppose we also both have two boys, and a penchant for kooky hats. But short of those, I don’t have abs of steel, and no one ever made a life size sculpture of me giving birth, or anything. Uh, thank goodness.

Those of you who have been putting up with me for long enough to make the sane of those among us ask - why? - will remember that I have wanted my nose pierced forever. But for one reason and another, all very sensible, I never had.

Once we moved to bumpkinville, I finally got it done, with a gun, hated the big stud, changed it to a small one far too early, got all infected, took it out, Hubby did a happy dance, and that was that.

And so this was me last night. Naked nosed.

I’m sure there is a reason we have a random photo of me looking sideways at nothing in particular yesterday evening on the memory stick. I’m not too sure what that reason might be, but stunningly convenient as it is, I’m not about to fight it.

Well today I had to schlep two hours thataway through a weather bomb, to negotiate a heinous parking building and endless hospital corridors, all walked at the speed of a still-unsteady-on-his-feet two year old who insisted on attempting to open every door along said endless corridors, regardless of any “STAFF ONLY”, “TOXIC WASTE CONTAINED WITHIN”, “Men’s Toilets” signs on the doors. Ahh, good times. So where was I?

Oh yes, since I had to do that , I rewarded myself with battling a second heinous parking building, and a tad more pelting rain, to visit the only store I had found online within a two hour radius that pierces noses with a needle.
Which means - for those who are wondering if they really need to care or could just be off and have a nice cup of Horlicks and a lie down - that you get the tiny little stud in straight away, so no need for impatient premature swapping over and resultant scabbiness.

Please, feel free to pause a while over my crooked self-cut fringe, and 30 year old shiny gaping pores which I have no idea how to photoshop out, and would be far too lazy to do so, even if i did.

Everyone in said store - including the person stabbing a needle through my nose - was impossibly cute, and around 12 years old. And if you don’t believe me, just look at the after care instructions they gave me.

I’d like to think I got all the pretty highlighter because they thought I was so young and hip (*snort*), or maybe even because I was able to help them spell the word they were stuck with on the computer when I walked in (“officially”). But alas, I fear it was neither. Liberal highlighter use is just part of being impossibly cute, and 12 years old.

Next was a quick stop to buy items of $4.99 chinese slave labour clothing to replace the “Woohoo I’m so clever I managed to unscrew the lid off my full sippy bottle of milk while in the hospital” outfit that H2 was soggily modelling.

And then, I found my way back out of City H, which I do not know well at all (applause please).
And then, I found my way back through all the twisty turny country backroads to my lil bumpkin town (futher applause would not go astray).
And now, I need to ignore all the work I have to do to finish knitting my first wrist warmer, in an effort to recover from the trauma of an hour spent trying to prevent H2 from suceeding in any of his 14,000 escape attempts from the Opthamology waiting room.

And maybe a nice cup of Horlicks and a lie down.

Our house is very small and heavily insulated, so it stays toasty warm.
Attached to our house is an enormous garage which we use as a warehouse for stock and into which I venture every day to package up and dispatch orders.
The garage is big, uninsulated, and does not stay toasty warm at all. In fact, it is freaking freezing out there. And because it’s so big and uninsulated there is no point in putting a heater on or trying to warm it up in any way, so I just put on an extra jersey, my hat, maybe my red scarf, and out I toddle.

No problem. Except, my fingers don’t work very well. Because they’re frozen. And shuffling invoices with frozen fingers is kind of frustrating. But, shuffling invoices with gloves on works even less well.

When all the cool kids started making wrist warmers, I thought “ah those crazy cool kids”. But then I started thinking. So I got a hold of the pattern, and decided I was going to make a pair for my friend. And right after that, I was going to make a pair for me.

Then I started reading the pattern and realised I needed DPN. I ordered a pack. I waited patiently for them to arrive.

They did.

I printed out directions from online of how to use DPN.

I sat down with my new DPN, my printed off pattern, and my printed off DPN directions.

I decided knitting wrist warmers had been a dumb idea.

And so some months passed. My fing-ies continued freezing. Which is nothing much to complain about, in the grand scheme of things, and so life went on, tiddly pom.

But today, I had had enough of fumbling frustrating frozen digits. And so it was that I could be found in The Warehouse, searching for fingerless gloves.

The horribleness of the situation did not escape me. I knew that what I was going to find would be slave laboured, synthetic and sweat producing, cheap, ugly, generic, not last well, the whole shebang. But I had cold fingers, and no inclination to resume DPN eyeball gouging. So there I was.

But the ultimate irony? As resigned to my fate as I finally was -

I couldn’t find a single pair.

Ain’t that just the way it goes.

I said somewhere, in a post ages ago, that I would rather my kids did work alongside me, than shut themselves away playing with plastic kid-sized vacuums etc while the housework fairy (ie me) magically whisked all the housework away for when they came back in. This post now proves me completely hypocritical. Just mentioning that I’m aware of that, y’know, in case anyone remembered.

So over the last year, we’ve aquired a few foodie kind of toys. There’s this awesome wooden cuttable food set that I made B get a whole week’s worth of ‘good behaviour’ stickers on a sheet to earn (boy was that the cruisiest week of my life, I would never have believed the power of “do you want to get your sticker today?“), this porcelain teaset I bought in a worn down moment in the warehouse,

the cookies B4 and I made from fabric, and these stainless steel kitchen utensils that came about because I had an expiring voucher at a toy store and needed to get *something*, so after 364 days of not really needing anything, I got them. I was planning on using them for similar bribery to that outlined above, hence why they’re still in their wrapping.

But the foodie stuff annoyed me because it didn’t really “fit” anywhere. So last night, I took a look online at play kitchens.

Ohmyfreakinggoodness, do you know how much those things cost??
That wasn’t going to happen.
So today I made a completely free one, from only what I had to hand.

“Haha!” Anyone who knows anything about me is thinking. “A post about how badly she cocked up a misguided attempt at making a toy kitchen!” You rub your hands with glee at my sad and sorry ineptitude.

Haha! Back at you, says I, because it worked out perfickly awesome, thankyouverymuch.

I’m not saying it was completely devoid of “it’s moments”,

but overall…

Although, including the tablecloth and general rearrangement of the toy room, it did take me five hours. Five hours. FIVE. HOURS. That is a freakishly long time. That’s like my whole day, winter time.

These (white, low) shelves were already in the toyroom. I got them free from an old boss - I nannied their autistic son fulltime, they ran a carpentry business making frames and, erm, shelves and stuff. They were plain wood, at some point I painted them. Hubby thinks they are a hideous hunk o junk, which leaves me free to do whatever the heck I want to with them. Score.

Most recently it was housing puzzles, and being used as a climbing frame to reach all the stuff on the shelves above, which is supposed to be “ask mum to get it down for you” stuff. That, plus H2 loved to climb on top of it, on all fours, and use it as an extremely creaky rocking horse.

It was not in good shape.

But first thing I did this morning was make a table cloth cover for their horrible cracked table.

Which brings us to hypocrisy number two, for anyone who’s stuck around since whenever it was that I declared I found the story of Noah’s ark to be completely horrific and not something I would ever read as a bedtime story and hang on a kids wall and think was all cutsey.

How I excuse myself from this, is that B4 (then B3) had spent an extremely long time sitting in an extremely boring fabric store waiting for me to purchase my hearts content worth of girly mummy fabric, and vigorously requested the Noah’s ark panel. Which was on special. And meant I could get out of the store sans-tantrum. And has been in the fabric stash ever since, and when I went in there this morning to find kidsy stuff to make a table cover with, egads if it wasn’t completely full of girly mummy fabric and utterly devoid of kidsy stuff. Except, for Noah’s Ark.

Table cloth complete, I chopped up a stained cot sheet to make curtains for the shelf under the sink/stove. No more babies means no more need of cot sheets, stained or no. It covers, on one side, shelves raided from my office for the teaset and cookies.

And behind the other half of the chopped up cot sheet curtain, homemade playdough, cutters, bowls and stuff…

Last night (ok, so 5 hours plus half an hour last night) I had spray painted four glass coasters. I gave them two coats, and let them dry between coats and everything.

I was thinking to myself, haha, I can blog this, and say that I let them dry overnight, and won’t my family be so surprised and impressed! Drying overnight! I am so grownup.

But then at 10pm I got too impatient and snuck outside and glued them on still tacky. Oh well. Voila, stovetop.

The knobs turn, and I have to say, I am blimmin taken with those spraypainted glass coasters.

Then the white cracked bowl incident, rectified, became a (nailed on) kitchen sink.

The “taps” turn, the plug is free moving tied on that green stretchy - but there’s no hole underneath it for it to fit into. I don’t trust them that much.
*cough*at all*cough*.

And the third section is benchspace. More benchspace than I have in my own kitchen, most likely.
There’s a whisk too - hence the extra blue hook - someone was making scrambled eggs with it during Le Photo Shoot.

Full frontal finished view (oh, I can only imagine the google search results…)

and no, those cut out bits with blue behind, aren’t covering up for any cockup or anything. Ever so sorry to disappoint. They’re just to look pretty.

The back view.

That black bit of dowel stuff that I painted black, was just a smidge too long. I couldn’t get to the saw so I just cut a hole in the backing and let it stick out the back. Claaaassy.
And I couldn’t find the staple gun, so the whole backing thing is taped with packing tape to the shelves. With a lot of packing tape.

B4 wanted to be in the “finished” photo and I wouldn’t let him because he had no pants on.
So he called me “a bully”, and crossed his arms ready to sulk.
So we reached a comprimise.

Having put on the finishing touch, picked up all my crap off the floor, I straightened up and looked proudly at my creation.

Very proud. Hubby looked over from his desk. His first last and only comment on my masterpiece? “I hope you didn’t use good cartons for that cardboard.”

I would like a new husband please, if anyone has one going.

Yes sure, this exercise may have meant my kids are still half in their pjs, half naked, come four pm on a Saturday,

but at least I have a cool kitchen to play with. Uh, I mean they do, of course. *ahem*. Priorities, after all. It’s all about priorities…

And now, having spent the last hour serving themselves gastronomic delights of the wooden & fabric variety, the kids are nagging me to cook them actual food, in my actual (skody, equally as small as theirs, far messier and less inviting) kitchen. Dinner, they reckon.

Geez.

I have various herbs in various pots around the place, and a few fruit trees & vines here and there, mostly in pots (very much related to being allergic to commitment) and some swan plants and even the odd flower plant left over from the surprisingly successful summer flower planting episode. Most of my stuff dies. That’s just the way it is.

But, a couple of months ago I decided to throw caution to the wind and put in a little vege patch.

Since everyone else, every blog where I turn, is all “look at my awesome hanging upside down tomatoes” and “i’m filling up my half acre backyard with vertical growing garden boxes” and “lookee at my vegetables they’re growing” and “peak oil self sufficiency this” and “peak oil self sufficiency that” well I thought, what the heck. I’ll go round the corner and check on my vegetable garden.

First stop was the pot where I tried a few bits, but didn’t expect it to work too well.

It hadn’t.

I planted 3 or 4 seedlings from this lot - look at that delicious selection it suggests is possible - cabbages, brocoli, cauliflowers, and whatever other picture is covered by dirt.

This is what’s left.

Some random stones, and one, very holey, something.

And on closer inspection I saw the culprit.

I gave it to H2 to inspect, hoping it would just, “go away”.

H2 had a look and then gave it back to me. So after some consideration, I threw it over the fence.

I went into the garage to see if we had any caterpillar killer to put out. Strangely - given that I don’t recall ever having bought any, or ever having used it before - we did. Even more strangely, I found it. Really easily.

And then on to the main event. The vegetable patch. *ahem*.

There is only one available word with which to describe my vegetable garden with any degree of honesty.

Pitiful.

pit·i·ful (pt-fl)
adj.
1. Inspiring or deserving pity.
2. Arousing contemptuous pity, as through ineptitude or inadequacy.
3. Sarah Bean’s vegetable garden.

Pitiful, yes, but nonetheless… it must be granted some kudos, given the fact that it seems not even any weeds will grow in that mix of clay and, um, clay.

When I planted these vege seedlings I gave them a good dousing of worm wees, and have done nothing to them since. They haven’t grown a lot. But neither have any weeds. So by all accounts, the plants should be dead, really. And they’re not. And frankly? That’s kind of as good as it gets.

We have a piteeful spot of silverbeet, enough to feed a family of four for um, approximately 3.42 minutes

and a piteeful spot of beetroot

and minutely less piteeful “stir fry mix”.
Which is err, sparkleberries celery, and some lucky dip vegetable.

All very impressive I’m sure you’ll agree. *ahem*
I noticed, that something had been eating my lucky dip vegetable! The outrage! So after I had pulled up the pitiful attempt at weediness, broken up the soil clay, and given it a good dousing of fizzy worm wees, I blitzemed it. Very daintily, because the thought of poison on my vegetables? Didn’t really sit well. Neither did them all ending up like this, either though.

So I weeded, aerated, and then, I blitzemed.

Then, I read the instructions, to make sure you’re allowed to actually use this stuff on vegetables. You were. So we were all good.

Ages ago, I bought frost cloth to cover my passionfruit plants. I’m pretty sure we’ve had frosts already. I wouldn’t really know, because we’ve pretty much hibernated for winter now and are never out of bed in time to see them. But they’ve probably been there. Maybe. Anyway, the frost cloth has been hanging in it’s Palmers bag on the back of the bathroom door for some time. The back of our bathroom door doesn’t get frosts. That I know of.

So I covered the vege patch with it. Mostly to stop my kids noticing that there was tasty candy sprinkles blitzem all over the ground. Since I figured that veges sold ready to plant in winter, in the coldest town around, should be able to cope with a little frost now and then. But now they won’t have to. I am so good to my vegetables. *Haw haw*

I couldn’t find the staple gun, so I had to use nails. It wasn’t pretty.

But you know, if you’re not living in the sunny city, then there has to be at least one good thing about instead living in hicksville, with no move anywhere on the horizon, right? Yep. In the middle of nowhere, you don’t have covenants and councils who care, and neighbours who prune their topiaries into pretty shapes. So, in bumpkinville no one cares if your stuff looks like crap. Well that’s my theory, and I’m going to need to stick to it.

Case in point one, I also “tidied up” the worm farm this afternoon:

Case in point two, being the three passionfruit plants there was *almost* enough frost cloth left for.

The other two passionfruiters? Well they dipped out in favour of the winter frost proofed vege patch. Doh.

Case in point just ugh:

So, while were looking at this poor wee manky mandarin tree, what the heck is that?
Mould? Or some weird dirt of unknown origin?

Although it looks beyond gross, it wipes off pretty easily, and the leaf underneath is perfectly healthy looking and shiny - see?

I suppose I could just wipe down the whole darn thing. I used to have a job where I polished the leaves of someone else’s potted plant. But my own? Really?

I have to confess that I spend a lot of time working, which I should be spending with my kids.

Which sometimes I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about, like yesterday, when after a major reshuffle/reshelve of our garage warehouse space over the last week, myself and a worker spent most of the day lugging boxes from storage back into the garage. And my children spent the day divided between playing imaginary games, and helping us lug boxes around.

So every time I found a box for me, I had to find a medium sized one for B4 to carry, and a seriously light one for H2 to carry.

It was just about the cutest thing on the planet, watching them so serious in their helping, a little chain gang of pint sized slave labour, earning their keep and pitching in.

And then there are other days where they refuse to do anything other than be fully amused by me, or watch TV. And when I “choose” to work, that means they watch a whole lot of TV, which means the mummy guilt shouts at me so loud on those days that I go to bed at night with a wee touch of tinea.

No wait, that’s a mouldy foot thing, right?

Tinnitus, that’s the one. With a wee touch of tinnitus.

Foot mould and mummy guilt aside, I’m clearly not the mother of the year, but I do have one (almost) unbreakable rule.

If I’m working, and H2 brings me a story to read to him, I stop and read it.
I refuse to say no to a child who wants a story.

But this morning? He didn’t even need me for that.

B4 has one of those freakish 4 year old memories where you read them a book twice and then they can read the entire thing back to you almost word for word.
And H2 has no complaints about the validity of that.
Self sufficiency. If they learn nothing else…

The boys and I spent the weekend in the city visiting my parents, and night #2 B4 went to stay across the other side of the city at Hubby’s grandparents.   Hubby’s parents were also visiting overnight, so B4 got to hang out with Granny as well as the Greats.

I’m a little jealous of B4 having great-grandparents.  My parents were in their 40s when I arrived on the scene with a “tadaa - surprise!” and threw them back into the “parents of young children” mode they thought was well past.  So I only got to know one of my grandparents, and she passed on while I was a kid.

This was a big motivating factor in me wanting to have my children young, so that they could get to know my parents well.  And we didn’t manage just get that, my kids also get great-grandparents thrown into the equation, on Hubby’s side, which is awesome.

The Great-Gs may live in the city these days, but it’s amazing how many vege plots, worm farms, rainwater tanks, chicken runs and compost bins you can apparently sneak past even the pickiest of covenants.

B4 loves to hang out there, feeding the chickens, working in the gardens, playing with the toys that have been well loved by generations of little hands, and watching the weetbix, boiled water and stewed apple ritual that is preparing breakfast each morning.

This was the first time he’s ever stayed away from home without myself or Hubby.

He, of course, was completely unfazed by the idea, had a complete ball, and pitched many and varied compelling arguments for staying two nights instead of one.

I, of course, missed him something rotten and insisted on bringing him home with me when I left the city today.

When I turned up to pick him up at 10.15am, he’d already that morning been out and back to a nearby kiwifruit orchard to pick fruit, and was now striding across the lawn in his gumboots, wearing his woolly hat knitted by Aunty C, carrying chicken feed out to the chicken run with Granny bringing up the rear.

The stuff of childhood memories.

Today was B4’s first day at Kindy. It’s the kindy where two of his cousins (great cousins actually I think but that’s just getting complicated) go, we went for a visit a few weeks ago, then put his name down, and he has been counting down the days ever since.

Idea: His
Dutifully faked enthusiasm: Mine

Cue two hours of complete f*cking nightmare in the bowels of hell.

Much like my first experience of kindy, 27 years ago. I think *I* lasted 4 sessions maybe. (Mum?)
B4 was beating the door down to get out after two hours.
I could have told him we Beans just aren’t kindy people. He wouldn’t have listened. But now he knows.

It was supposed to be a six hour session so I told him we needed to find and say goodbye to the head teacher if we were going to leave so early.
B4 to Teacher: Byee

Teacher: Oh! Ok, thank you for coming to play with us this morning, I hope you had a nice time [or something similar]

B4: No, everyone was annoying me

Teacher: Oh were they, I think they were probably trying to be your friends and play with you.

B4: Well, they were ANNOYING me.

Teacher: Yes, and it’s ok to tell them to go away, you can say “Go away please, I don’t want to play with you at the moment.”

B4: But you were annoying me too…

Teacher: Oh! Was I?…

B4: Yes, when you were welcoming me. And I *didn’t want* to be welcomed.

Teacher: Ok, well we only do that once, next time at mat time there won’t be a welcome. So you can come and play again another day, yeah?

B4: We’ll see.

Nightmare.
Bowels of hell.
That is all I have to say.

(No wait, I also have this to say. Thank the sweet stars above that I am not expecting him to tidily conform, sit on the mat when told to, use toilets with no doors/privacy, and hold his own amongst 30(?) other children his exact age group in um *counts on fingers* 4 months and 19 days. Because then? I would be completely screwed. And panicking, right now.

At first, I freaked out a little - what is up with this non-conformance? OMG! I have one of those feral wild children who you can’t tell to sit down and shut up and have them do it! Omg! What have I done?
I had a crisis of faith. And parenting. And I was reeeeally mad. I hissed in his ear. Just a little. *SIT down.*

But then I remembered. You only need to be trained to conform, sit down in a group when told to, shut up and listen to instructions, by the age of 4.5, if you value the ability to conform, sit down in a group when told to, shut up, and listen to instructions to by the age of 4.5.

And if I don’t want to value that ability? Then I don’t have to. And since I’m not in a position where I need to demand that he goes back to kindy, and I’m not intending on setting my feral child upon an unsuspecting teacher with 29 other perfectly trained children for them to deal with, then I don’t need to either.

The fact that he is mostly not feral a fun & enjoyable person to have around when he’s with me, or his father/brother/grandparents/friends/friends’ parents/great grandparents -
The fact that he sits down listens and follows instructions when there’s something interesting he’s ready to learn from one of the above -
The fact that he has compassion and gives his brother big long snuggly hugs and plays well in small groups and communicates with mixed ages and always has questions about the world around him and loves to read and isn’t afraid to tell a grown up that he didn’t like what they did to him that morning even if completely devoid of any tact whatsoever -
well that’s of more value to me.

Which is just as well, really.)

How does one grow a fine stubbly white goatee, at such a young age?

Tasty, even.

By climbing up ridiculously high, to procure the sugar bowl, to do this.

That’s how.