TGIF..

Friday, May 30th

Today is the last day of Colour My World, it's a shame I've really have enjoyed this little project. I hope other people will do the same and notice all the colours of the rainbow around them.

Electric Blue Friday
Blue is another one of my favourite colours, but I was surprised at how little I own that is blue! - maybe it's not a fav after all and I should take it of my list. Interesting that 4/7 photos are associated with water which is a calming and peaceful element.

I find blue to be peaceful, calming and restful. Some things that seem blue to me are a baby sleeping, taking a snooze on the sofa when you get a spare 10 mins, sitting outside enjoying the weather - even if it's winter.

What ever you do this w/end make sure you take 10 minutes just for yourself. Have a great w/end everyone. Oh and below are my photos.

My blue-eyed girl

Cone flowers in the back garden

Glass bowl

Just the right size for a cuppa

Make sure to drink my 8 litres a day.

Ready for next round

Retro drying up cloth

Thursday is dragging.....

Thursday, May 29th

Ma vie en rose et rouge

Today are a couple of my favourite colours - rose et rouge and it comes in so many shades; it did help having a little baby girl.

Kettle

Monkey's chair

Stop sign at the end of my street

Well worn birkies

S cossies/swimmers (aka bathing suit)

Berries on my oatmeal

A stack of t-shirts and jumpers (aka sweaters) that need to be put away!

Mid Week

Wednesday, May 28th

Jazzy Orange
I don't have alot of orange things in my house or garden so this colour was a difficult one for me, after hunting around my house I finally have some pics.

Only 2 seasons in MI - snow and road work!!

Look what I found in our fridge - a bowl of orange jelly (aka jello) with peaches - thanks J

Yummy orange soda drink

Vitamin C - I take it everyday

The laundry wall

I won....

Tuesday, May 27th

I'm so excited, I haven't won anything for years and just found out on the w/end that I had won a prize from a fellow blogger - yeah! - Its a handmade tote, made by a fellow aussie from her jeans. Lisa's blog can be found at Tin house check out the tote bag, so cute. - Thanks Lisa, I can't wait to receive it and use it. Nice to know other people on the other side of the pond are thinking of the environment as well.

Well today is...

Mellow Yellow Tuesday

Yellow to me is a happy colour, makes me smile when ever I see sunflowers, daffodils and homemade lemonade.

Kitchen Blind

You can never have too many coasters, even tacky ones!

Loved by aussies and S

Candles in the dinning room

S Bear toy - it's a cat, that pretends to be walrus!

Colour my World...

Monday, May 26th

Is it really Monday already? - the w/end just flew by for me. I hope everyone had a great w/end. In US today is a public holiday - Memorial Day, time to reflect on the fallen who have brought freedom to our countries - Thank you to all the men and women.

Plus it's the official beginning of the summer BBQ season, and time to plant our veggies into the garden, since the frost and cold mornings are on the way out!

On Friday & Sat our sub had a massive garage sale - that I only found out about the day before - grrr, since we have alot of clutter that we need to get rid off! Anyway Friday morning J was home to look after Missy S so I quickly went out around the sub checking out the garage sale. I found some great bargains, mostly for Miss S so I'll will post about that later.

& the rest of the w/end was busy with jobs, getting my "To Do" list finally tackled - J painted the basement bathroom, same color just a tad brighter shade. I started work on cleaning the basement. Believe me this is a massive job and will take more then one w/end to complete. The local scouts collected our ol' sofa and chair. This sofa was from UK, handed down from J's mum, when they collected it they mentioned it was in great condition - not bad for a 20+ year old sofa, hopefully it will find another family that can use it.

Today is the first day of "Colour My World" and its......

Green Monday

Christmas Cactus - flowers like made at Xmas, nearly died in the winter from the cold sitting in the family room, moved it to the kitchen table and it's thriving again.

Various champagne and sparkling white wine bottles that live on the top of our kitchen cabinet

Funny story behind these bottles, no we didn't have a party and forgot to tell anyone! This strange assortment of bottles live on the top of our kitchen cabinet and will never be thrown out. The packing company in UK were very enthusiastic about packing and packed these empty bottles away; they received VIP treatment triple wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in a separate box away from the common beer and wine glasses. After this I don't have the heart to toss them out.

Broccoli ready for freezing

Lizard from New Mexico - clinging to our kitchen wall

Grapevine growing again

Hosta's growing in the backyard

Christmas in May

Sunday, May 25th

The other day it was like Christmas at our house, no we didn't experience a snowstorm, though it is not unheard of having a snow storm in late May. The Postman Pat truck delivered numerous box's for us. - yeah!!

J rushed into the foyer to inspect the boxes then quickly pounced on a couple and ran upstairs with them, I have since learnt that they where my Mother's Day presents. A midsized box arrived for J, which contained an adapter cable so I can now download photos from my camera phone to the computer - so more S pics!

Plus a huge parcel arrived for Miss S - I picked up the parcel and placed it on the kitchen table, wondering how long it would take for her to notice it. Once she was placed into her chair she immediately noticed the parcel and smiled at me, thinking "its for me...." I told her we would open up the parcel once she had finished her supper.

Who sent S a parcel? (Granny and Grand Dad had sent it from UK). I explained to S that the parcel had traveled on the plane just for her - no excitement at that comment. After opening the package I took out the contents, assorted clothing items and a book. I showed her the dresses and sweater, but they produced no excitement - just a mmmm, nod of the head, and a cute smile.

The big winner was this book , since she already owns a couple of these Touchy, Feely Usborne Books within her library. Well I only had to show her the book, not even open it up and she started to kicking her legs in excitement, moving her hands and arms around in the air, and almost hyperventilating.

Once I gave S the book their was no way she would part with it, so for the next half an hour before bath time I read the book a couple times and let her play with it. Then S read the book and told me, in her language what to touch on each page. S's reaction was adorable, utter amazement and excitement for her new book.

On that day for S Christmas had come early, it's nice to see S starting to recognize and realize that certain things are only for her.

Favourite Toy

Friday, May 23rd

Miss S's new favourite toy is her exersaucer. My gf lent me her daughter's a couple weeks ago, since her little one is 2, and a tad too big for it. Well S loves it, and when she is not in it playing she will crawl to where it is in the room and try to get into it.

I now have to move it out of the room before her sleep time, otherwise she will crawl over to it and won't leave it alone. I worked out how to solve this dilemma, I produce another toy for her to play with, this distracts her enough so I can move it completely out of the room.
Kinda like when you give a dog a bone!

For me it gives me some freedom so I can get some cleaning done around the house, I just take S into the room I'm cleaning, place her in the exersaucer and she plays happily for 20-30 minutes. Just enough time to get some jobs done quickly.

After researching the cost $100 - I thought maybe I might be able to find a second hand one at a local thrift store. Well I ended up finding one for $25 - barely used - yeah! So I grabbed it.

Well this is the best $25 I've spent, a toy that amuses her for more then 5 minutes is really priceless. It's great when you can find a bargain, that you want or need. The purchase then becomes more worthwhile.

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Next Week:
I saw this in blogland and thought it would be fun. Every day of the week is dedicated to a color (see below) and participation only involves taking and posting photos that include the color of the day.

The colors for each day are:
Monday - green
Tuesday - yellow
Wednesday - Orange
Thursday Pink and Red
Friday - Blue

If you want to join in, post a comment including your blog link and I'll add it into my blog. I'm looking forward to this project, should be fun.

Making it from a box...

Wednesday, May 21st

OK so the other day I realized that time was against me and decided to give in and purchase a box of instant brownie mix for a BBQ last weekend. This is unknown territory for me, since J and I make all our meals from scratch!

I must admit thank goodness S was with me, since it forced me to make a quick decision on what box to buy, with her limited patience you have to be quick otherwise she will have a meltdown. So with much hesitation I finally selected the one box I thought would make a nice batch of brownies.

That day after her supper, I took take advantage of her being full, happy and still in the high chair, and quickly grabbed the ingredients needed - 1 egg, water, oil, bowl and wooden spoon. Turned oven on, lined the brownie pan then mixed all the ingredients in a bowl with the box mix. After stirring the mixture 40 times - (that was what it said on the box) I put the mixture in the pan and hoped for the best. Thinking if its crappy I'll quickly pop out the next morning and grab something already made at the store.

Well after it had cooled down, for what seemed like forever, I took a little sample - some broken edge bits - Wow it actually tasted pretty good. Light and flaky on the top and moist and chewy inside. They may not be fantastic like my "to die for brownies" - my neighbors love, but good enough to take along with my tossed salad to the BBQ.

I'm not going to stop baking from scratch but it's good to know that you can fall back on the "box" products when your running out of time.

- Oh and I noticed while at the BBQ that J did manage to consume a couple of my brownies - so I'll give them a 7/10.

Happiness is....

Monday, May 19th

Wikipedia states the definition of Happiness (also called felicity) is an emotion in which one experiences feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense joy.

Happiness for S is being pushed in the shopping cart, this produces shrieks of joy and lots of giggles. & When you go outside with the shopping cart the shrieks and giggles become louder once the wind starts blowing through her hair.

Last Friday we visited the local park where S meet up with some of her friends from my exercise class. I placed S in the infant swing, at first she was very unsure about it, but after pushing her a couple of times she understood what was happening and held onto the swing. Next the bout of giggles started producing a huge smile. For S this is pure happiness and joy infact utter contentment.

When you hear S giggle and laugh it only makes you laugh, its very contagious. On Sat she had another play on a swing at a BBQ, J pushed her faster and higher - like only a Daddy can!

On Sun she went in the swing within our subdivision park - though this one was not an infant one and had no support in the front other then a chain! - so I wasn't able to swing her so high and therefore didn't produce has much excitement.

It's lovely that such a simple activity can keep S amused, content and happy. Happiness for me is hearing her giggle, laugh and finding delight in what is new.

I believe that some people are naturally more happy then others, I hope S is happy, content and fulfilled with her life when she is older and still able to find joy from the simple things in life.

When you are content, fulfilled and overall satisfied with your lifestyle/life you are happy. Maybe more people need to find their own "swing set" that will provide them with bouts of giggles, laughter and happiness.

1 step forward, 2 steps back...

Saturday, May 17th

That is what happened this week, S decided very firmly that NO lumpy solid food is not for her. So I had to put her supper back into the blender and re blend - grrr. At least this solved the problem of me wearing her supper - yeah!

I know some people think I'm crazy making her food from scratch, but at least I know what she is eating without all the added preservatives and additives that her body does not need.

My production line to make baby food for S happens once or twice a week, by hand - using our hand blender, just boil or steam the veggies or meat. Once its cooked and cooled place it in the blender for a couple whirls, checking the consistency - (now that Missy Moo refuses lumps). Then scoop it into ice cube trays, freeze overnight and voila - instant baby food. Then a couple times a week I take out some cubes of various sorts, fruit, veg, meat and thaw this out and place in plastic containers in the fridge and serve for her meals.

If you opened my freezer you would be surprised by the variety of multi-coloured baby food cubes - applesauce, pears, carrots, broccoli, chicken, turkey, potato, sweet potato and couple others that I can't remember what they are!

Some foods are not worth me making - such as peas, I found this out the hard way after cooking 1 pound of peas and being left with lots of pea skin and only 2 tablespoons of pea mush. The quantity produced wasn't even worth freezing so S ate it that afternoon.

Fruits are a favourite - of course something sweet, applesauce, pears, bananas, peaches and banana yogurt. I'm yet to introduce tropical fruits since they are not in season. I have to admit that sometimes I do fall back on store brought only if it's not worth me making and if the fruit or vegetables are not in season.

The other day I gave S some of my homemade treacle steamed pudding - which J had made. Well you should of seen her face, you would of thought I was trying to poison her. So no not progressing on that front either learning to feed herself.

So far I've learnt you have to be patient, what I would like is not what S would like. Once she is ready I'm sure she will eat lumps and eat finger food. I guess you can't rush these things.

Well like the title says - 1 step forward, 2 steps back, I'm learning to take baby steps along the way - it saves me having to change my clothes several times during the day.

Today is washing day.....

Thursday, May 15th

I know this is strange but I enjoy washing, no really I do! - When I was a teenager my family called me the "Washing Machine Queen." - Not sure what brought this on, but I think it's getting all my clothes
clean that makes me happy. The end result of clean smelling clothes is so comforting to me. I don't like the folding, ironing or the putting away part, just the washing and hanging out the washing.

It truly is amazing how much washing I have to do now with S around, some days I still have to change her outfits 2-3 times, especially after she decides to not eat all her meals just to wear it instead. Plus I have the on-going washing of her nappies aka diapers. I normally wash the latest pile every 3-4 days. While the washing is on, I normally get into "busy bee" mode and want to clean something else in the house. Most of the time this doesn't happen since S decides to chase me around and wants to play.

Having a routine helps alot, I divide the clothing into dark, light, whites, towels and or sheets. Then when the pile is big enough to do a large load (I hate wasting water by doing tiny loads) I put them in the machine and let it do the job. All my hand washing, items I wash in cold and place my bra's, S socks, tights in a mesh bag so we don't have only 1 sock at the end - since socks do have a natural habit of disappearing. My theory is that they like to separate from their partner for a while & have a break! I do miss not being able to put clothes out on a line to dry from the sun, our subdivision won't allow clothes lines, so I hang my clothes to dry in the basement on clothes drying racks so sometimes our basement does look like a laundromat.

Cloth diapering/nappies are fantastic, I recommend them to anyone. OK it probably is easy for me being a SAHM to maintain the current nappy supply, but still more people should give it go. I've noticed S only gets bottom rash when in disposables. I use a disposable at night, since no matter how many liners I use in her nappy she still ends up wet in the morning. Now days it is so easy with cloth nappies - you just press a couple of snaps, buttons, velcro or poppers shut and its on, no more painful nappy pins. I use Fuzzi Bunz which consists of a fleece/plastic cover which you place an insert into. After they are dirty I just throw them into a rubbish bin with a plastic liner and when wash day rolls around take the liner bag downstairs and do a cold rinse followed by a hot/ cold wash. Any solid waste is thrown into the garbage bin.

Some extra work is needed with cloth diapers, you may have to change your baby more often. Generally they can't hold as much liquid has disposables but they don't stay in the land fill for 50 years. Each to their own, but even if one person buys a couple of cloth nappies to start with that would be less disposables for them to buy and less landfill for the environment.

Well time for me to tackle my ironing monster, which is closely related to my other monster - the washing monster!

Water, water everywhere....

Tuesday, May 13th

While enjoying my morning herbal tea I heard the strangest noise - shh,shh getting louder and louder, after figuring out what it was I decided to take a pic -

The noise was my

neighbors sprinkler system watering the garden - I was so surprised because -

1 - I haven't heard this noise since last summer.

2 - Did someone forget to tell them it's Spring the wettest time of the year.

3 - It's 6:30am - What are you doing!!

Don't get me wrong I love green grass, fresh flowers and seeing a beautiful lush garden but when will people realise that it's not necessary to start watering in the beginning of Spring just so you can have the greenest grass in the street for the Summer. Well our grass is not bright green, currently covered in a blanket of thatch which needs to be removed, though our flower beds are looking very healthy.

I remember last summer, when I would go for my morning walks while heavily pregnant with S, all you could hear was sprinklers coming on one after another and then see the water running down the street into the drains from over watering.

It really is a shame to see the water waste here, coming from OZ and living in UK both countries have hose water bans and a garden sprinkler system is out the question. You would get fined for being so wasteful. I wish they would do that here, it would stop the waste.

Last summer our county water department asked for people to water every other day, so if your house number was even you watered every even day and if an odd number then every other day.This bizarre system didn't really didn't work since people decided to water the lawn twice a day on the day's they could water.

Why are people so obsessed with green lawns?

I came across some interesting articles on water usage - domestic usage in 2000 and another article with some great ideas on how to reduce your water usage.

I'm going to review the articles again in order to practice what I preach!

Note: This year our sprinklers will run only once a day, every other day for a short amount of time and not during the peak heat of the day. Hopefully this will help to provide us with a smaller water bill each month, so far I'm planning for my sprinklers to start working late May/ early June - maybe even mid June.

So many jobs, so little time.....

Monday, May 12th

J away this week in Phoenix for work, so it's time for me to get into action and tackle some of my "To Do List" - a list that never seems to get smaller or disappear.

Top on the list is cleaning of the house.
This a regular item on my list since the house gets cleaned and a couple days later is dirty again.

Tidy Living room - alot of books for S are currently sitting on our ottoman along with my Mother's Day chocolates. I'm sure I'll find a happy home for the chocolates!

Empty the shoe rack in the laundry which contains our winter shoes, and empty the shoe box in the entrance. Change shoes to summer shoes.

Clean and tidy laundry room.

Put away my winter sweaters.

Bake brownies for w/end BBQ.

Finish installing baby proofing gadgets for drawers, toilets and cupboards.

Start to make plans for our Summer holiday.

In-between take S to playdates, do grocery shopping, attend exercise class and visit library.

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After this is done I need to tackle our basement and clean that out, since my family will be visiting in June and my brother will be sleeping on the fold-out sofa. So need to find the sofa again which is currently covered in bags, books, boxes and other junk - yes our sofa became our junk room!
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Well after writing this list I'm exhausted, think I'll have a cuppa first before I tackle the list.

Happy Mother's Day

Sunday, May 11

Happy Mother's Day - to all my Mother friends, My Mother, Mother-in-Law, Sister-in-law and anyone else who is a Mum or waiting to be a mum.

Today is my 1st Mother's Day very exciting, J got S up, changed and dressed and feed S all before I woke up - yeah!! -so I was able to have a sleep in, first time in 8 months.

I came down stairs to a happy little girl and her Dad playing in the family room. J made me breakie of poached eggs and bacon on a english muffin.

Unwrapped my numerous presents - thanks S - How did you know I needed some PJ's for summer, face srub and my fav chocolates.

S decided to help me write my blog this morning.

Now I can experience the joy's of Motherhood.....

I love hearing S laugh, chuckle, and say Mummum - she may not know I'm her Mum yet but knows I'm very important to her, where ever I go S will try to find me in the room. It's lovely to have someone to care for who inturn loves me unconditionally - warts and all!

I hope everyone enjoys today with family and or friends, and you are treated like a Queen for the day.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY xxxxx

Diamond in the rough...

Sunday, May 11

The other day I went to a garage sale, actually it was an at home child center - closing down sale, I thought it would be great opportunity to get some toys for S. I ended up spending $48.75 and found some fantastic finds.

I purchased many books both new and used, (in my opinion you can never have to many books), play mats including rubber connector mats - these will be great for S to play on in our basement, blanket, posters, alphabet magnets, plastic bowls and two big ticket items:

Workshop - OK she is way to young for this but this time next year, I probably won't be able to keep her away from it. I was lucky to grab it for $15.00 it looks kinda like this but with a sink, mobile phone and message board and all the workbench tools one little girl will need! I thought will be great to teach her how to make things with tools.

My little pony castle - This toy will have to wait till she is older then 2. The castle looked like a nice girly toy for her to play with, and included all pony accessories needed for a pony land castle. The cost was $7.00. The castle
looks like this .

They are currently sitting on our garage - they need some elbow grease, so poor J has been parking his car on the driveway. Looks like another job that will need to be done this weekend.
I'll post photos of them once they are cleaned and placed in the basement.

At the moment her favourite toy's are wooden blocks - she loves to be a human bulldozer and knock them down when you make a tower.

Controling our household monster!

Friday, May 9th

No my house was not invaded by a scary creature, just S terrorizing our house. S moves around by using a combination of going forward a couple steps then stopping, army style crawl and bunny hop. When I want her to move quickly I'll just show her my red leather coach handbag, she loves it, infact she even decided to eat the shoulder strap the other day. I wonder if coach have handbags for 7 month olds!

Anyway, started on the childproofing of the house the other day. Boy is this a huge, no a massive task. I stupidly didn't realize how big this task was until my friend came over for a playdate the other day, well everywhere the little one crawled he pulled, tugged and tried to put everything into his mouth. It was a great way to realize what needs to go and what needs to be childproofed. After analysing what we should do in each room I started to write up a list - yes one of my famous lists. This is what we needed to buy:

• Toilet seat locks
• Cupboard locks
• Drawer locks
• Door locks
• Power outlet covers
• Power outlet covers to hide cables
• Gate for top of stairs
• Gates to stop S crawling out of family room, this involves blocking 3 passageways
• Couple shelf's to move our Knick knacks from the side table's
• Door wedge's to stop fingers sticking into side of door
• Covers for our blind cord's
• Move bakers pantry from kitchen to lounge/dinning room
• Swap coffee table for ottoman

This is the beginning, I have a whole bunch of more stuff due to arrive from our local baby store any day. One nice thing I was able to pay for this with my ebay money that I made last summer by selling our unwanted stuff - yeah!

Looks like another weekend will be spent installing more gates and other childproofing gadgets.

Gate at top of stairs

One of the gates in the family room