Still sick, Pj party and art

Above: Raven's art, rainbows and monsters.
Below is Monika's 'rainbow'.

Labyrinth's monsters.Following two are Kai's psychotic army dudes.

Below is Dante's fish and rainbow:

PJ Party! Actually, this is quite normal with the exception of Monika who sleeps in mum and dads bed still (AP). The children don't like the idea of having to sleep separately, and who can blame them, that's how they all started, with cuddles from mummy and daddy.

Individual photos of each modelling their new sets of PJs! Raven is a monster (he's monster obsessed lately), followed by Monika in her cat paw sleep set, Labyrinth in fashionable punky pink, and Kai and Dante chose the same PJs, it was two in one set, this is the army set, the other is red with black skulls.

Nearly recovered from our nasty 'flu. No, not the wiglet 'flu, just the nasty one that's doing the traps at the moment. We got the new pj's for them and they were all so excited, roughly all cost about the same, less than $20, but it all adds up when there are 5. Monika got some new skirts too, she seems to be outgrowing everything and all her trousers are either too little or too wide around the waist (Raven had this problem too, inheriting from Kai who was very fat, while I'd never say Raven's been fat, he was definately wider around the waist than Monika. So while I'd love to save money and be eco-friendly with hand-me-downs, its isn't all that practical.

We also had a pizza night, and have been loving the new movie we have (not yet released in Australia, just the US) of Coraline. Seriously, Monika has never had the time of day for any movie, sure she watches In the Night Garden or Dora/Diego she wont sit still long enough to watch anything else. She is only 22 months, of course, and each were different at this age, Raven loved TV as a toddler, and Labyrinth was soothed by RAGE when she was a wee 2 month old. But Monika is very different. However, Coraline has most certainly changed this. Its a longish movie, but she sits completely enthralled by it over and over again, we've only had it since Friday and she's watched it with the same enchantment every day plus twice today. I don't know what it is that is so fascinating to her but there you go. All of the other children love it too, hence why it keeps getting turned back on. They first watched in Saturday with their pizza.

Raven has been suffering, and they are concerned enough at the hospital to be bringing forward tests and so forth, so he has to go for the bloods and stool samples again on Monday so the test results will be ready by his next appointment. He has some kind of autoimmune disease, (probably coeliacs - though we could all be wrong and it could be more serious... whatever he has I have and everything points at Coeliac's Disease, really. Taking into account the changes I've had since going GF.)

Other than that, I've been reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman chapter by chapter to them, immersing them with singing and reading picture books to them everyday, doing random maths and they've done some art. We've gardened, cooked, done chores, and recovered from our illness. Why is it our holidays seem to be when we're all sick???

We also invested in a Swiss Diamond fry pan with lid (on sale at Habitat right now the Swiss Diamonds are well worth it) and a George Foreman griddle/grill to avoid using dangerous fry pans - we had a sunbeam banquet fry pan that had non-stick which just lifted off, nasty. We'll get a wok if it doesn't work out for stirfries, but a real one, seasoned. We are determined to eat healthily and that includes our cookware. We've long since came to the conclusion its worth saving up and spending the extra money on something that doesn't need throwing out every six months. They really do pay themselves back, in countless ways, like less waste (good for ol' mother earth), financially eventually, and of course, our overall health!

Reseaching lots at the moment and we might be able to move along faster in our attempt to become hippies living naturally off the farm and building our own home. YAY!

Garden of Earthly Delights...er I wish....part 9

Our little seedlings have grown up and are more than ready to head into the big garden... above on stakes are the snow peas and pea plant experiment. In front are the kale/cauliflower/bok choy.

Kai is pointing out the pea plant experiment, completely his idea and nuturing right from the start. We didn't really think it would grow (it was a seed found in a bale of pea straw hay!) but it was a great learning experience for him!

Of course, this is only a tiny beginning. I'm hoping I won't need to buy much fresh veges at least, but ideally I'd like to be growing all my own veges, fruit and nuts eventually. Its so hellishly expensive to buy decent nuts and real yummy veges, and this is an attempt at starting a new sustainable lifestyle, one that can benefit the children's minds as well as thier bellies *).

Today we did some cooking, we cooked buckwheat pancakes for brunch. Andrew didn't like them but the children ate them up and I liked them too. Later it was Quinoa/amaranth pasta (orgran) with spagetti sauce. The children watched Life in Cold Blood Dragons of the Dry yesterday and have been doing so much art. I'll be dedicating a whole post to just that in the next day or so! Q.

Pizza Night & Mary Mary Quite Contrary

Snow Peas and Potentially just Peas
Bok Choy/Kale/Cauliflower Seedlings

Pizza- Not GF

I'll come clean. Twice a week we have a lovely woman come in and take care of all the children, with the exception of one at a time. That was today, and always Mondays and Fridays. This is important to relax, get things done without them. Its the day I get to do some uninterrupted scrapping or painting or uni work. Well, in all fairness we could do without it, and have done, but its nice to have the break and have the government pay the woman a small fortune. She gets $23 per hour each child, she claims about 8 hours a day. She is an artist who'll be showing her work in a commercial gallery next month, so her hours will actually be 8 hours next month.

So today Andrew and I took Dante shopping for shoes, got our shopping and pizza supplies. We got to Ziggy's Small Goods because nearly all of their meats are GF. We got us some Cabonosi and Chorizo for our pizza tonight, we had left over chicken too so it made it kind of special. The kids love Pizza Night because it means movies and fun. Usually happens on a Friday night but last Friday Andrew took me on a date to the Castle where we both enjoyed their Surf'n'Turf which meant I got to tast Hollandaise Sauce for the first time (inherently GF). I'm going to teach me how to make that!

Anyways, so we also brought more cow 'products' for our lovely garden. We'll get that into the garden tomorrow. Now, officially broke. Doesn't really matter because of the meds we're on we'll all be sick for the next week anyway.

As for how our garden grows, as you can see our seedlings are happy and healthy little guys, I'm happy!

Happy Gardening!

Garden of Earthly Delights... take 8

Still trying! And it ties in so nicely with learning about plants, thank you Sir Attenborough!

So this is the next step, and it is a big one! I've been a bit reluctant and a bit short of dosh to begin. Reluctance born from wishing I could just build a house and garden in the bush... but even if it just does us a short while here is our first garden bed!

This garden has a layer of cardboard (barrier to weeds - and will be great rotting away down there), a layer of premium soil, layer of pea straw, a layer horse manure, another layer of the premium soil, a thinner layer of chicken manure, finished off with another layer of soil. Going to go get some more of the cow stuff tomorrow as it wasn't enough to fill the whole bed. This was my birthday/mother's day big gift. (And the seedlings, of course).

There is also the plants of course, my Tomatoes and Basil are loving it at the moment, insulated with polystyrene and lucerne hay (and Dante thought they were dead). They flowered recently. Not at all sure what that means (except for what little I know from them needing to be fertalised by another plant with help from a pollinator). I don't really know and can't find it on the net so if anyone will please tell me?

The Bananna Plant is growing tall! Reluctant to let it put down permanent roots (still hopeful we will get some miracle/ home loan for a bush block build) but yeah, its good for a few years in the pot then it will need a more permanent home. But maybe it will be clonable?

Then there is the new addition, the black berry cane. I have raspberry cane ready to be gotten - my Mum's a gardener too and has got some lovely canes that are too much for her patch so YAY! Thanks Mum!

Face Painting and Bushwalking

Monika is asleep after we had a bushwalk and found blackberries along the side of the trail. It was about a 6 kilometre work. We all realised that it was good but we need to do it more often! It is a lovely walk along the derwent river.

I've been dreaming of building a house that generates it's own electricity and supplies its own water, where we can have a big vege garden with lots of fruit too, and a goat and a sheep and some chickens. I've been researching how to do this and best methods of building etc. So I guess we're going green! But we're saving up and trying to achieve our goals realistically. We're putting in a vege garden right here and we've gone and brought a bananna plant (which we're potting until we get our block of land). I'm keen and I'm even trying to look at ways of generating money beyond the pension. (but that is heavily penalised, let's be honest.)

Anyways, as a result of my researches we decided to go to the Building Sustainable Expo at the Derwent Entertainment Centre on Sunday. Although it just seemed like a whole lot of expensive crap and postulating, there was some gems amongst the preverbial ***. Such as using bamboo which only takes 5 years to regrow after harvesting (not to mention 1/4 of the price). The economically soundness of a huge water tank. As for composting toilets, there wasn't any there. In it's place was an amusing toilet that used alot less to flush. I maintained that I didn't wan't his toilet on the grounds I AM prepared to take out the composting matter and use it on flower beds, and a dry toilet is still OK, and environmentally sound.

Of course the chidren enjoyed the free attention in the form of lollies/face painting, as you can see above... Raven became a T-Rex, Labyrinth a Jaguar, Kai a Parrot and Dante who wanted to be a chicken got something else... naturally Monika didn't get her face painted, she's a bit young yet.

Art Day

Above and Below: Monika's learning fine motor control, plus she has a good time being 'just like the big kids'.

Below: Kai drew a face. He wasn't really interested in doing much today but I was glad he finally drew something, and it's cute to boot.

Dante Above and Below: Another great love of his - Dinosaurs! RRRROAR!!!

Raven Below: He loves birdees! He's forever pointing out when we drive past birds, wether it's black swans, ravens or other avarian friends we happen across.

Labyrinth Below: a picture of her baby sister, Monika, and further below a card she made for her cousin's birthday.

Labyrinth Below: I've been checking out a few websites on sustainable living and wishing I could get the money for a block and dreaming about how I'd build a house - and this is how it's translating to the children - Labyrinth's drawn a farm she'd like to live on! Another obsession of the children is the PS2 and PS3. Because the controller is so big, even Raven has a problem holding it! Let alone poor Monika who so desperately wants to be one of the 'big kids'. So Labyrinth designed a baby controller that even the very young baby could use. Isn't she cute? What an idea! She wants to email this design to Sony so they can begin building them immediately!