I thought I'd better put in an appearance before the end of the year!

A bit of a photo catch up on what we've been up to - strangely, I forgot to get my camera out on Christmas day (except for one sneaky photo further down)!).

Trying out the auto-timer on the camera - off for Simon's Christmas work do.

Kids in pre-Christmas mode - decorating their rooms and building beds from straw outside.

Christmas Day - I found my mother on Simon's borrowed unicycle and just had to snap a shot.

Busy kids using Christmas presents.

Hanging out with friends at the river. Unfortunately too much rain had come down in the previous few days so the river was too fast and swollen for swimming in. Didn't stop them finding large (and hot from the sun beating down) puddles to swim in instead..

Some spontaneous foraging happened as we were out - I put all the kids to work helping me gather these red clover blossoms up.

OK, so a bit late for the Christmas just gone, but in my blog-reading (I wish I knew where it was because it was a link from a link and I can't remember where I was!) a few nights back I spotted this. How handy was it that I had a few large pieces of hessian I'd received for Christmas (which was a bit puzzling at the time, but I'm happy to have found a use for some of it!) lying around so made this right there and then.

I harvested all my garlic and was very happy with the result. My braiding isn't the flashest, so the last bunch ended up just being tied together.

As you can see through the boy and the sunflower that the garden has been very neglected and isn't really doing much!

Bamboo Chicken tractor still going strong 2.5yrs later. The only cost to us for this was the chicken wire.

VERY happy with our strawberries this year. We love picking a few a day.

And looky there! I thought I'd killed off my tamarillo tree with the winter frosts, but it seems that there are some fruit forming.

And right now....it is 2pm on New Years' Eve and my house is quiet. The kids have taken themselves off to bed for a snooze which is just as well since they'll be out late tonight when we go out for a BBQ at a friends house.

Independence Days Update

I think I can safely get back into this now and feel that I am actually achieving something!

Plant something: I have some seedlings waiting ready to go into the garden - cauliflowers and leeks, and my St Johns Wort and German Chamomile seeds have finally sprouted!
Harvest something: Rhubarb, strawberries, plums, cauliflower, sugar snap peas, baby carrots and fresh herbs.
Preserve something: I am currently drying some sweet violet leaves foraged from around the cracks and hidden areas of my garden.

Eat the food: Rhubarb was turned into a pudding this evening. Plums, peas, and strawberries are being plucked and eaten before even getting back in the house. Although I don't often try new recipes, I certainly sub in whatever vegetables I have on hand for cooking into saucy type meals.

Build Community Food Systems: Have been telling all my friends about our cool bean and pea teepee and encouraging them to do the same - even if just for the kids to be in touch with nature and having time to sit and enjoy the outdoors in a pleasant little environment.

I have spotted some Borage flowers peeking through, feverfew is now in full flower, calendula flowers are going crazy but I'm going to leave them to all go to seed and hope to have masses next year (from my reading with annuals, if you want them to continue to reproduce, it is best to only harvest 1/3 of them and allow the rest to go to seed). My potatoes are in full flower as well and eagerly watching for my garlic to start to die back in the coming weeks/months.

Only a little handmade...

I haven't really done a lot of handmade this Christmas but did manage to sneak a few projects in.

Today the kids and I started off making some Christmas crackers (from my research for instructions for making them, it seems that this is largely a British/Australian/NZ thing?). Anyway, for those that don't know what they are, they are sort of like a party favour that we have at each place setting at the table. Inside is usually a party hat, a tacky joke and a crappy toy (depending on the $$ spent on them). This year I thought we'd make some as I'd been given some of the "popper" bits (they are like a little cap-gun thing on a strip of cardboard that you pull and it snaps and it makes a noise). Inside I put a little toy for everyone (in the kids ones I put a proper little toy they could use) and will probably hunt out some good jokes to slide in too.

First up I made a "test" one that the kids got to pull and check they would work. It was just a tube rolled up in tissue paper (I had a half tube on either side of the longer tube to form the shape nicely when I tied the ends and then slid them out).

I then moved on to decorating some tea towels (kitchen/dish towels if tea towels doesn't make sense lol). I had the kids each draw a simple picture. I then outlined it again with a fine black felt pen. Then sellotaped the drawing on the window. Over the top I sellotaped my cotton teatowel and traced the picture with a laundry marker. Unfortunately my photos don't really do them justice (Danielle's one was on a pale green cloth and Nathan's white). They came up really neat.

Pick and eat

Really lacking in blogging action over here eh?

Enjoying baby carrots. They seem to be the best we can do - any bigger and they seem to get distroyed by some strange fungal disease.

We've been eating from our new silverbeet and spinach plants.

Getting a handful of strawberries every day and the sugar snap peas.

Waiting for the last of the winter cauliflowers to finish growing - it's going to be a good one!

Have started harvesting the plums! Yum! If you live nearby and want to come and grab some, let me know!