School's out for summer...

Last day of school today!  Minty made these necklaces for her teachers using felt and wooden beads.  I love her colour combinations!

After school we headed to the beach with friends for fish and chips.  There was plenty of seagull chasing, crab catching and general hilarity.  We even got to watch a pelican being released back into the wild.  A great start to the holidays!

In which silence is golden...

If there's one thing I've learned in my three and a half years of parenting, it's that if the children are quiet for any length of time something fishy is going on.  

After a wonderful afternoon exploring the rockpools with Minty's best friend Aerin, the kids were playing quietly in the bedroom.  We were in the kitchen having a cup of tea and remarking on how lovely it was that the girls were including Turi in their game and congratulating ourselves on their burgeoning maturity.

Then Turi emerged from the room looking like a cross between Eden Wood and this…

It turns out that during the period of apparent peace and quiet the girls had helped themselves to the bathroom cabinets and mixed a slurry of contact lens fluid and foundation.  Turi was elected as the test subject for their new cosmetic creation and they had applied it liberally to his face and caked it into his hair.

Somewhere after the third lather of shampoo I began to realise it wasn't shifting.  His hair had the texture of stiff carpet pile and there was an uncanny lack of tonal variation between his face and hair.  I momentarily considered giving him a buzz cut until Aerin's mum, in a flash of brilliance, suggested we try sorbolene cream.  It took around half an hour of massaging the hair mask until his hair began to return to its normal texture.  So no permanent damage done, but I think it goes without saying I now have a renewed distrust of silence!

In which we hoola our troubles away...

This week was a bit of a fail.  I didn't get any work done, I've been on a short fuse with the kids, I had a series of interactions with various people that whilst not serious left me bemused and feeling like I'd rather throw on my pyjamas and avoid further human contact.  So this afternoon I was determined not to let the week end on a sour note.   My recipe for salvaging the week: Minty and I baked a batch of nutella cookies (more on those tomorrow), I grabbed my camera and we headed outside for cookies and hoola-hooping.  When we were all hoolaed out and Turi was up from his nap, we all went to the beach.  The tide was on it's way out and the sand was littered with hundreds of shells.  The kids took off their shoes and paddled in the rock pools, soaking up the winter sun.  On the way home they stopped at every driveway so Turi could sing a little tune, 'tap, tap, tap', and they did their best dancing impressions of Gene Kelly and Shirley Temple.  'Stop' signs became maypoles to be circled and their joviality was infectious.  Then into a hot bath to wash the sand and salt away, followed by home-made okonomiyaki for dinner.  So after today, I think on balance this week wasn't so bad after all.

Lazy afternoon...

After a busy morning of ballet, followed by playgroup, we decided to spend the afternoon relaxing at the beach.  The kids built sandcastles and chased each other while I lay around watching the boats bobbing in the bay and made sure no one ate any seaweed or threw sand in anyone else's eyes.  When it came round to dinner time I honestly couldn't be fagged cooking so we walked into town and had fish and chips on the pier.  A pretty perfect day if you ask me.  And now I'm off to do a spot of last minute sewing for the impending birthday - time is running out!

Happy Australia Day!

We celebrated by the book - ate sausages, party pies and pavlova and relaxed at the beach.  What can I say?  Australia Day really is a classy holiday.

Thanks for all your encouraging comments after my dummy spit… I hope all your toilets and kitchen sponges are clean and orderly and we can all move forward from here.

chasing summer...

It has been unseasonably wet these past few weeks, with a seemingly unending curtain of rain and an oppressive humidity that is not unlike living inside a butterfly house. Summer hasn't really arrived, at least in any recognisable form. Instead of waiting around for beach weather, this week we decided to take matters into our own hands. We have been attempting to dress the part, go to the beach despite the clouds and cool down with home-made ice-cream.

Here is the recipe for Pina Colada ice-cream that we made (as always from the ice-cream bible - The Perfect Scoop). It isn't technically ice-cream seeing as it is dairy free, and is more correctly termed a 'sherbet'. Whatever, it tastes pretty good to me - and vegans don't have to miss out!

4 cups pureed pineapple

200g sugar

250ml Thai coconut milk

1 tablespoon dark rum

1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice

Blend all ingredients together until smooth. Chill mixture thoroughly and then freeze it in your ice-cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions.

sand monsters

The end of daylight savings has thrown us for a loop. The kids seem to have missed the memo and haven't reset their body clocks so everyone has been getting up at 5am. I'm pooped.

My sister and nephew have been visiting us for the past couple of days. The weather hasn't been very kind to us but we've had a great time anyway. The kids don't mind a bit of rain and we managed to brave the beach.

Here are a couple of snaps from yesterday. They're taken with my little point and shoot (Olympus stylus 790 SW). It's a little tricky taking pictures with this camera when it's sunny because there isn't an optical view finder and the light reflects off the screen making it near impossible to see what you're doing. Sometimes when I look back at the pictures I've taken it looks like the camera has been wielded by a drunken sailor! I'm too scared to take my dslr to the beach though because juggling two small sand monsters and a camera is a recipe for disaster. The olympus is waterproof and shock proof so I don't need to stress.