I finally made something off Pinterest!!!

I am totally addicted to Pinterest, madly pinning stuff that I would love to get around to making someday, but I have finally bitten the bullet and made something! Yay!!

It certainly isn't as well made as the original one, but I'm not and never will be a professional cake decorator so I don't think it's too bad.

The girls and I had heaps of fun making them (not the biscuits though, we took a short cut and used store bought), and we decided that since snowmen aren't big in Australia at this time of the year we would call them 'Christmas in Australia'! Rather fitting.

cheers

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I love it when it is time to start the Xmas decorating. I try to start some time in November, but traditionally around here 1st of December is the day we start so I usually have a bit of difficulty getting Mr Homespun to start earlier, especially frustrating when I need him to get the tree out of the roof of the garage!

So the tree is finally up and over the next few days I will start adding other touches around the house, I'll admit I do have a few Xmas decos that stay up year round just because they make me smile! I would also love to add to my home made decos, I have a gazillion Xmas patterns and I can't seem to stop buying more, so hopefully I will be able to make time to do that over the coming weeks, although I have nearly finished this jacket so I will probably finish that first. And let's not forget all the baking to be done over the coming weeks... and the shopping...

Happy decorating!

Cookbook of the month

Another month has gone by so it's time to look at my cookbook of the month. Julie's book is a lovely book and although I didn't make as much from this book as I would've liked, I enjoyed the ease of the ones I did.

Stuffed chicken breast with prosciutto and apricot sauce

This book is probably most suited to those who haven't been cooking for very long as there are quite a few recipes that most of us that have been cooking for a while would already have (a favourite) under our belt, like Spag Bol, Lasagne etc. But the photos are lovely, the instructions very clear and for the most part, the ingredients are what we would already have on hand or at least have no difficulty getting.

Mum Goodwin's chocolate cake - not a great photo because...

...we had already tucked into it!

December's cookbook of the month is, and no surprises here, The Essential Christmas Cookbook!

Mine has a different cover.

I really like this cookbook and I have a few others from this series.

Cheers

The vege garden

We have had some great weather of late, great for the vege garden that is. Last week it rained almost all week, followed by two very hot days last weekend and now it is raining again. And it doesn't stop. Just a little more than a drizzle, but the perfect amount to keep the new plants happy.

Hopefully the rain will clear this weekend, at least for a few day so my garden can get some sunshine and so I can get some washing done!

Happy gardening!

Cooking

So far I have only made two recipes from my cookbook of the month, beef and broccoli stir fry and marinated chicken wings. The stir fry is one I have made a couple of times before and we all love it (kids included, they love it). I have made a slight change to the original recipe which calls for light and dark soy sauce, sorry Julie, but I am a girl on a budget and we only have the normal soy sauce in the house so I simply substituted it for both types. I would love to put the recipe up here but to be honest I'm not up with the copyright aspects of doing this so if anyone has any advice please share it!

The other recipe is the marinated chicken wings, which were very nice and not as sweet as some versions of chicken wings are. I also made a small change by leaving out the coriander root, coriander is a herb/spice I am not fond of so I don't grow it at home. Unfortunately this one didn't get any feedback from the family (that's how I am starting to work out which recipes become part of our normal menu or not, I got this idea from a friend, if it gets unsolicited positive feedback I will make it again, if not, it's out). I also forgot to take a photo so you will just have to imagine what it looked like.

I know I haven't made much from the book, but I have been opting for simpler dishes at the moment, my dishwasher died (again) and I have had to do a squillion loads by hand for the past couple of weeks and not wanted to add more to it! I know most people don't have one so I really can't complain, it's just that they save soooo much time. I did, however, pick up my new dishwasher yesterday so I will no doubt make more from the book between now and the end of the month.

Cheers

More on the Kids Reward System

My post on the Kids Reward System I introduced in our family a few months ago gets so many hits on the blog so I thought I would give a little bit of an update on how it is going. We made a few tweaks to the value of some chores, but other than that the system is still going strong here. Admittedly, the girls don't always get their chores done, and they certainly haven't started doing many of the extra chores I put on the list (like getting the clothes off the line and helping with dinner) but at least I don't have to nag, if they chose not to do them, they don't get their pocket money as quickly as they would if they helped out.

It has also helped that I have stopped saying yes when they ask for a magazine or something similar when we go to the shops. Sure they haven't stopped asking yet, but they are optimists! In case you are considering this system, it still gets the big thumbs up from me!

My original posts on the reward system can be found here and here.

Cheers!

Cookbook of the Month

I'm sure that there are many of us that can all proudly and frustratingly attest to having too many cookbooks, yes? I add frustratingly because if you are anything like me, they rarely get used but are too good to get rid of, taking up valuable bookshelf space. To try and combat this I have decided to have a cookbook of the month. Unfortunately I will only get through 12 books in the year, but it's a starting point (I may change this to cookbook of the week, I'm sure I have more than 52 cookbooks, lol)

So I thought I would start off with an Aussie book so my cookbook of the month for November is (imagine a drumroll here):


Our Family Table by Julie Goodwin. Julie was Australia's first Masterchef winner and although I have had this book for a while I have only made a couple of things from it. What I love about this book is the recipes are all 'normal' food, nothing that is crazy fancy or with ingredients that are hard to get. The things that I have made from this book we have all loved so I thought it would be great to try out some more. I will post the recipes I use and give a quick rating of what we (kids opinions included) thought of each. This is also a great excuse to justify buying her new cookbook in the near future!
Anyone else have this book? Can anyone recommend any recipes from it that I absolutely must make?
Cheers