Movies and Caramel Popcorn

Tired kids and a shower of rain = movie time! Much needed rain is here so we arent complaining. We need it on the vege garden and the swedes - the first to feed us and the second to feed the stock over the winter (so they can feed us later) Popcorn was requested so I dug out my caramel popcorn recipe.

MMMMMMM, nom nom golden caramel popcorn!

Recipe courtesy of a womens magazine, many years ago and is apparently Mel Gibsons recipe! It has been much used over the years. The original recipe has peanuts in it but I omit them. (mainly becuase we never have any in the pantry becuase if I buy them Jase eats them!)

9cups of freshly popped popcorn (about 1/4 cup unpopped) - I use my air popper but any method would work.

1 Cup brown sugar, firmly packed

125g butter

1/4 cup golden syrup

1/2tsp salt

1/4tsp Bicarb soda.

Melt sugar, butter and syrup over a low heat, stirring until sugar is melted. Bring to boil and boil for 2 mins. Stir in soda.

Pour caramel over popcorn and mix through.

Spread onto oven tray and bake at 180oC until golden brown, mix and flip, brown other side.

Cool.

On cooling the popcorn goes crunchy, mmmmm. Its good!

Will keep in an airtight container for several days. (although not in our house becuase we eat it all first!) 

The ' Tussins'

All around at Armagh for Xmas Lunch. Lachie and Nevey down from Wellington and Lucas. Missing is baby Fynn. We are catching up with him in the New Year.

 Jase doing the Santa thing and handing out the presents.

Xmas Morning 2010

Much excitement as the day started at 5.30am with Ben waking for his usual morning feed. The others heard him and got up to check thier stockings around 6am. Then there was hushed whispers and we feet pattering and a hoard of kids landed on our bed to open thier stockings!

 I also need to work out how to post photos vertically on the blog, since I upgraded it resets them back to horizontal even though I have saved them in my photo editing programme.

Here is Ben with his present, by the end of the day he was starting to rip the papers open - even if the pleasure of the contents was ignored for the papers nutritional properties!

 The Chaos in the lounge after the big unwrap!

 Ben amist the chaos.

The kids infront of all the presents.

Christmas Crafting

I have been very pleased that since the children have finished school that I have had some time to get into the sewing room and create some crafty magic.

It started with the need to create something for Ben, as baby of the family there isnt much we dont already have that he needs. So I decided to make him some bibs - can never have enough of those! We bought him a new highchair (the old one bit the overused by my brothers dust!) so he is also the proud owner of a beautiful wooden highchair from http://www.mocka.co.nz/ Its a great chair, was on special and came with free pads and crotch strap and it converts to a chair for use at the table and can carry up to 60kg. Cant go wrong huh! Anyway the bibs seemed a fitting accessory. They are minky backed flannel apart from the spotty ones that are minky fronted too!

 For Jess and Daniel I made Lego Playmats. They both asked Santa for lego and in the efforts to keep small pieces contained and free from rolling baby's I thought these would be brilliant (and they are!) Jessas one has Michael Miller Lil Kingdom print with a quilting cotton princess print on the outside. Daniels has Lego print from Kokka (I think it is called Hello my friends) and has Michael Miller print, the name of which escapes me right now, but its the one I found in Spotlight and bought the remainders of the bolt becuase it is out of print now. The mats fold into the middle and are velcroed shut then folded over and snapped shut to create a carry/hanging bag that can contain all the lego blocks.

For the little boys I made road mat, car caddys. Based on the one I created for Lucas (my nephew) for his birthday. These ones are a little bigger (I think) with different road systems. I have made the roads so that the mats can be laid next to each other in different places to make the ultimate roading system. The printed strip has little pockets for holding dinkies. Then they fold up and can be carried by the handles as an easy transportable take along toy. 

 Again for Ben, a little cuddle toy, made from bamboo velour and two little birds from Spool http://www.spoolsewing.com/blog/2008/05/16/bird-mobile/ I added ribbon tails and bells inside for a lovely sensory experience.

Xmas treats

We decided not to do adult pressies this year, but as a token of festivity and because the kids wanted to make something we decided to make truffles for pressies.

There are five different kinds, Xmas puds, Oddfellow mint, Cranberry and white choc, mint cream cheese and toasted marshmallow. The kids helped with the chocolate and decorating. Then we packaged them all up in some little tupperware bowls and wrapped them. Kept a few for ourselves and made up a little tray for our lovely neighbours. We delivered the neighbour ones on xmas morning on our way to our xmas dinner at Nana and Gegens. They were all well recieved.

Ginger Bread House Recipe

I cant remember where I got this recipe from so I cant give due credit to its initiator.

150g Butter
1 Cup Brown Sugar
2 Tblsp Syrup
2 Cups Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Ginger

Cream Butter and Sugar till soft and fluffy, add golden syrup and stir.
Sift flour, ginger and soda. Slowly add to butter mix.
Knead to combine.
Roll thin, cut and bake for 10-15mins @ 150oC

Gingerbread House

Every year for the last few years we have made a traditional christmas gingerbread house. Its great fun to make and to eat!
The recipe I use for the gingerbread is great. Its egg free, so Sam can eat it, it doesnt swell when cooked, it holds its shape nicely and it dries hard enough to construct with. But best of all - it tastes delicious.
Laura and I made some little xmassy biscuits with the left over dough. Some of them have boiled sweet 'holes' in them. Thats where you cut a little hole (we used the apple corer) and drop crushed boiled sweets into it. Then when you cook the biscuits the sweets melt and and create a little stained glass window effect. Very cool. We did this with the house windows too.
Cooked yesterday and constructed this morning to give it time to set. I also found a great egg free royal icing recipe. Again Sam friendly, tastes good and has all the properties a gingerbread house maker could want.

So I set the kids up with a couple of bowls of lollies (not all of which made it onto the house!) some icing 'glue' and the cake and biscuits.
Great fun was had piling lollies on in random order. I think there was also an unspoken competition to see who could put the most lollies on a gingerbread man too!

 Cutting out the pieces, photo courtesy of Laura

Eco friendly Living

I am a huge fan of trying to reduce our personal carbon footprint and getting back to basics. I hark back to 'The Good Life' There are many reasons for this, most of which I wont get into in this post, I will leave that for future entries. But one of the reasons is that things just arent made like they used to be (how many times did our parents say that 20 years ago!) Life is terribly materialistic, there are many mod cons and intruments to make our lives easier. The thing about all these 'things' is that they, quite simply, arent made to last. Mobile phones, for example, are made to last a year before you need to buy a new one - one year! Thats terrible, and do you know what the worst thing is we are drawn into this hype and marketing, all too often we do just throw things out and replace them with a new, bigger and better one. Shame on us! (Disclaimer - before my current mobile phone, I had owned my mobile for nigh on 8yrs, so it had a pretty good innings, I would have kept it too if the battery had not crapped out on me. Guess what, you cant replace them *rolls eyes.* and Telecom had brought out a new (bigger and better ;-) network so I had to upgrade. I dont like my new phone, sure its pretty, it has a colour screen and can go on the internet - but for the basic times I use it all that is wasted on me - I mean who wants to peer at an entire internet page on a 2in screen, optometrist anyone!) (although I do secretly covet a new iphone or android so I can download the knitting apps onto it - now that I would use!)
Anyway, my post has digressed. The point to this post is that at the weekend I dug out of our shed Jasons nana's old Kenwood Mixer. It has been languishing there under the dust, grime and bird offerings for several years. We were given it when Nana Dark went into a rest home. But alas our tiny poky kitchen could not accomodate its solid, cast beautiful body. Now we have a gorgeous, huge kitchen. So the machine came out and got a good clean up.
I did a bit of research and discovered that it is probably about 55-60years old. It is solid, heavy and built to last. It has a huge stainless steel bowl with it. Perfect. Its a Kenwood Major A706 light industrial. (Nana Dark had 5 children and made lots of lovely baking) The only downfall is that it is quite rare so the mixing attatchments are not available. The shank is a different fitting to most Kenwoods and it didnt have the dough hook or balloon whisk with it. I will keep my eyes open for them though!

Today I got the machine out and made some ginger bread for a christmas ginger bread house. It mixed like a dream. More about the gingerbread tomorrow (its egg free, sam friendly and I am hoping to make egg free royal icing too)
Here are some photos of the beautiful beast.

Laura's sewing

Todays first post, yes there is going to be more than one today, are you impressed? Of course you are. Anyway, todays first post is about Laura. She decided she would like to create some christmas presents for two of her friends. Obviously the girl has inherited her mothers talents for creating, crafting and frugality. In the face of having no cash with which to purchase presents, she decided to make them. So we had a we trip to the Salvation army and found a pair of shorts and a pair of trousers for $1.50 and $1 respectively.
We borrowed Nana's old sewing machine. A Pfaff, great for learning on becuase the motor will only go one speed (slooooooow!) She cut the shorts/trousers to shape and has sewn them up and added handle from the offcuts. Apart from a few threading issues and a couple of questions she has done them all herself. Here are some pics.

My New Years Resolution

Okay so its not New Years yet but I am getting in early! Ben and I woke up early. Well technically Ben woke me up becuase he was hungry. But anyway, since the girls are at Nanas and the boys were still asleep, I decided I would do a bit of work on my blog. I have had it for a few years now and of late have been particularly bad at keeping it up to date. So I have changed the look for a bright, new, fresh look. Well I hope I have - we will see when I publish this post if it has actually worked!

Ben is now back in bed and Charlie is up and dancing to the Little Einsteins. A bleary eyed Sam did come through but he seems to have retired back to bed again. I think this could be due to the fact that it was after 10pm when we got home last night. I am loving the school holidays and not having to be so aware of our time contraints. I am looking forward to getting some things done around the place. Normally I spend much of the week dashing between housework, cooking, driving children around and entertaining the wee ones with things such as playgroup and music. Its a hectic but fun lifestyle. But I do enjoy the holidays sooo much. Firstly becuase I love being with my children (most of the time!) after all, if I didnt want to be around them I wouldnt have had them. Secondly, with no time contraints we can please ourselves. We can lay in (well not me as such thanks to Ben, but the other children) we can lounge around in our jammies, we can go visit on a whim, we can create, play and have fun and best of all; I have several little slaves to help around the place!!

So getting back to that New Years Resolution, I want to keep the blog up to date a bit more. Inspired by other blogs I have read, I would like to theme my posts more. I thought maybe I could have a day when I report on crafts we have done, a day for produce (veges etc) a day for musings (cos I know you are all very interested in what I have to say lol) what other ideas can I use - leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Okay and now, since I have finally downloaded some pictures off my camera I will add a few randoms for your pleasure.

 Last Wednesday the children had their end of year production. They all danced, laughed and acted thier way through Aladdin. It was fantastic, the kids did so well to remember all thier lines, dances and songs. Here is Jessa in 'Material Girl'

Laura played 'Aladdin' Here she is with Wishy Washy.

This is Daniels section, the boys did a very funny dance, all dressed in tutus! (Dont tell him I put this on here!) He is the one at the back with the Gold Hair and Blue Tutu.

Here is the Christmas Tree with the kids after they decorated it, I am not sure why the photo has uploaded on its side, it was saved the other way!