Mat is 40

Today is Mat's 40th birthday. He is one of my oldest friends, we've known each other since I was in Kindergarten. It had been years since we had seen each other, but then he turned up when I was working at Woolies in high school, dating one of my friends! We reconnected and were inseparable after that and many years later, he ending up marrying my best friend! What are the chances? Anyway, I love the dude and would do anything for him, so being at his 40th was the actual best. This awesome photo, taken on Jens new phone (I am just a tad jealous) shows him perfectly, the country life, surrounded by mates, drinking a beer. Perfect.

It was actually such a good night, cold as anything, but that was no issue once they got the fire going! The kids all ran wild in the paddocks until they got too tired, at which time I took the boys back to mums and they went to bed while Madeline and I hung out.

Mat the party planner went all out and there was good food, a lotttt of drinks and even Mat's 40th stubby holders to go around.

Perfect!

Hanging with the bestie - photo by Maddie our 11 year old photographer haha

and one of Mat with Jen and baby Sophie 

The fire was raging - and provided some awesome light in the photos. It's just not a country party without a fire!

Mat decided an actual birthday cake wasn't necessary and instead had Jen make some poop cupcakes. They were so cute - and also so weird haha. But certainly tasted good!

Highlight of the night was definitely watching Mat smash up the piñata that I had so carefully filled with a buttload of lollies from Kmart. The kids went wild when it broke open, only to have the adults scrambling for first dips after a friend had jammed the top section full of mini bottles of spirits. Classic. Made it all the more perfect for Mat. Best bit was that he hit it so hard one of the bottles broke - even though they were all plastic! Wild. Had the adults cracking up.

Next day found us back in the paddock again, fire still burning away much to the delight of my kids. 

This girl of course needed to pose for photos and send them to her city mates. She's not quite a country girl, but she is sure trying.

She cute though. Haha.

Happy 40th Mat. Let's hope there's at least another 40 in you! ❤ 

A murder of crows

I feel the need to post this, as I don't know if crows will congregate at our new house and we don't have very much longer here haha. I feel like everyone knows this - and then I found out yet again that someone doesn't - a group of crows is called a murder. A murder of crows. There are often a lot of crows at the park across the road, so I constantly refer to it as an attempted murder - then when I posted that on my Instagram stories heaps of people were like OMGOSH thank goodness you're okay - WHAT THE HECK? What happened?! Um well, a lot of crows were at the park. That's all. There was about 15 of them this morning, just hanging out. A pretty good murder attempt if you ask me!

In other unrelated news, Chloe bought Madeline and I the most amazing socks and dropped them off on her way home from work tonight. Churro socks from her work at San Churros! One sock has mugs of hot chocolate and the other has churros. The best bit? She bought us a pair each, so my obsessive brain can still wear them as a pair haha. Doug is off in Brisbane visiting James again as he hasn't been well, so we are having some sleepovers in my room. While dad is away, the girls will play haha.

 

Sneaky icecreams

I love these girls. They always make everything so fun. Alex has been a bit of a grump lately, I mean his world is continually being turned upside down while we have open homes, I deal with tradies, we move things between houses - and it's just left him a little unsettled. So, sometimes when it's bedtime and he's super tired, the best way to get him to sleep is just to pop him in the car and drive around for a few minutes while he fidgets a bit and looks out the window, before settling in and going to sleep. It's the best when he's over tired.

Tonight, we picked up Madeline's bestie Ella and they sat with him quietly as he drifted off, before we headed down to Joey's diner in Herne Hill and I bought them a sneaky icecream. As you can see it completely made their day and it was well worth it. Sometimes it's nice to spoil your kids (and other peoples I guess! haha) at the most random of times for no reason at all.

So icecream it was - on a school night, then back home to bed, and to tuck in fast asleep Alex. Double win. ❤

 

Mini Zen Gardens

I love that Bunnings offer free DIY workshops for kids! It is so fun for them. On Saturday we went with their friends from school - we have another sibling set in the same classes as my kids - and they had the best time. The workshop was mini zen gardens and they loved it.

Joseph's is a home with a mini garage to the side and the girls made theirs into little sparkly gardens.

Best time! Thank goodness for Bunnings.

❤

Under offer!!

Our house is fiiiiiinally under offer! Thank goodness. We were all so done with cleaning for home opens and living in a show home. But that's all done! We received a reasonable good offer, then haggled a little, but we are happy enough with their final offer (a little lower than what we wanted, but it will do) and are so ready to move into our new place! Just awaiting our plantation shutters now, but after a call to the company installing them, we found out the are docking at the end of this week (hopefully today actually!) and will be installed in the next few weeks! Hooray! We are all on track and I am so happy.

Lemon Baking

I am obsessed with lemons. Everyone who knows me knows that. Baking things with lemons is my actual favourite and I am all over that every time someone sends lemons my way.

This week I made:

Easy Lemon Cookies

115 grams Butter

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 ¾ cup plain flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Zest of one lemon

Lemon glaze

1 cup icing sugar

3-4 tablespoons lemon juice

Instructions:

1.     Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius (160 fan forced)

2.     Cream butter and sugar until creamy. Add vanilla and egg and beat again until combined.

3.     Sift in flour, baking soda and salt. Add lemon juice and zest. Beat briefly until soft cookie dough forms.

4.     Roll cookie dough into balls (approx. 1 ½ tablespoons of dough each) and bake for approx. 12 mins each or until golden om the edges. Move cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

5.     To make the lemon glaze, sift the icing sugar into a mixing bowl. Add lemon juice, one tablespoon at a time and mix with a fork. Keeping adding lemon juice until you reach your desired consistency. You want the glaze to be smooth, but thin enough to drizzle.

6.     Drizzle glaze over cookies. Leave 10-15 minutes to set.

These were amazing! I will totally be making them again. So much lemony goodness in them!

Moist Lemon Cake

1 ½ cups plain flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon lemon zest

½ teaspoon salt

125g butter

 1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 tablespoons lemon juice

½ cup buttermilk (or 1 tablespoon vinegar in a cup, then fill with milk)

Lemon syrup

¼ cup lemon juice

3 tablespoons icing sugar

Lemon icing

1 cup icing sugar

1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon milk 

Instructions

1.      Preheat oven to 180 deg celcius (160 fan forced)

2.      In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, lemonzest and salt. Set aside.

3.      Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, about 5 mins. Scrape sides of bowl as needed.)

4.      With mixer on low speed, add eggs one at a time, then beat in the vanilla and lemon. Beat on medium high until combined.

5.      Mixing again on low, add a third of the flour mix, and mix until combined, repeat with half of the buttermilk, then another third of the flour, the rest of the buttermilk and the rest of the flour. Mix until all combined.

6.      Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 50 mins until cake is golden brown and a tester comes out with minimal moist crumbs.

7.      Let cake cool for about 15 minutes in the pan. Combine the lemon juice and icing sugar to make syrup. Remove cake from tin and transfer to a cooling rack, the brush syrup on the cake while it’s still warm. Allow to cool completely.

8.      When cake is cool, combine all the icing ingredients, start with 1 tbsp of lemon juice and milk and add remaining lemon juice as needed. Icing should be thick and not runny. Ice cake and let dry before serving.

This was also really yummy! Give me all the lemons. I'll bake until the cows come home.  

Maddie's assembly

Today Madeline's class assembly performance was on and I was incredibly lucky to have my parents here for the afternoon, so that I could leave Alex home with them and go and watch. Maddie was child 1 in the play - so the lead part and did such a good job! I could hear her clearly for the whole thing.

Then came the wonderful surprise of her receiving an honour certificate! Teachers normally give parents a heads up, but neither she or I knew it was coming. It's especially wonderful as it's her second for the year and generally you're lucky to even get one in a class of 32 kids! I was incredibly proud. To be fair though, they have a new teacher for semester 2 as their first teacher left to have a baby, so she probably didn't know she had already received one.

So lucky to be your mum Maddie!

As soon as I pulled out the camera bestie Ella turned up for photos haha

I love these two. They have so much fun together and I am so glad they are in the same class this year. ❤

 

Big brothers are the best

Big brothers are actually amazing. There's been a few jobs at the new house that we just haven't managed to get done, because I couldn't find someone to do them! Two of the downpipes out the front were rusted through and not running into the drains, a few of the down pipes were missing their bottom piece that juts out to angle them into the drains and the vents in the ceiling and wall in the lounge for the gas to flow out of the house when we use the gas heater were missing and needed to be purchased and installed.

Enter Jared Goodlet, the master, who did it all, and then fitted my dishwasher to boot. What a legend. He took his time to make sure it was done properly, problem solving as he went along and did such an amazing job.

I can't even tell you how grateful I am to have a big brother who has always had time for me. ❤

 

A night at the arcade dance

Wife of a stake Young Mens leader checking in. Tonight I got to hang out at a multi-stake arcade themed dance. Oh my goodness. I swear stake dances were never this good when I was a teenager. My mate Pippa turned up with her teens and we got to hang, so that added to the fun. Cameras may have improved but photos sure haven't. hahaha. 

Awesome tunes with lights and smoke, pizza delivered and fairy floss machine. What else could you need? My kids were particularly annoyed to have been left out of this as they saw the decorations, all 1980s arcade style, much like their current favourite movie - Pixels.  

The smoke was so thick at the end that we were a little worried it wasn't going to go down by church on the Sunday. Plus to be honest, accompanied with the fairy floss smell, it was like you were unintentionally vaping in the hallway where all the smoke was sticking.

Looks like the kids had a good time... that's all we were worried about! ❤

The baby next door

Yesterday we finally got cuddles with the baby next door! The lovely Nicole had a baby girl two weeks ago and Miss Madeline has been actually dying inside, waiting to meet her and have a cuddle. A flu shot was a requirement, which makes perfect sense in the world we are living, so Maddie bravely marched off to the doctors for her needle. I was so so proud of her. All because she wanted baby cuddles.

As you can see it was 100% worth it! Every day of the two weeks until it was in full effect, we counted down and rubbed a new number off the fridge - until we finally got there.

She is just a little doll - and funnily enough, just about the same size Madeline was when she was born. So teeny tiny. A real life doll to cuddle.

The baby whisperer was hard at work and kept baby fast asleep the whole time. Won't be long until she has her own babysitting service haha. Love this girl and her mad skills.