Cicada rescue!

Well what a surprise to find this cicada today- I think he has been tricked into coming out by the recent warm weather, poor thing only to find the weather was FREEZING today! We had snow for most of the day, and so my husband 'rescued' him from our front garden, he swears it was shivering!

Look at those amazing golden wings!

 

Alien-like face, strangely compelling!

Anne from Loopity Lou and Jacqui from Life in the Dome have both found these recently - and I'll trust both their opinions that this is a 'Masked Devil' cicada. Anne has some amazing photos of hers hatching (is that the correct term for cicadas coming out?) I just did not expect to see any this far up the mountains, this early in the season.

 

 

We brought him inside to warm up a little. He was pretty lifeless for a while, then started to move just a little. By the time he was getting quite lively, I thought it might be better for him to sleep in the garage tonight (rather than rattling around the house when we are trying to sleep!)

He can get out of the garage easily, but if he is still there tomorrow, hopefully we can find a suitable home for him again.

All things sweet and gloopy.....

Wow, what a productive day today! I blame the rain we've had for the past few days. Terrific for the garden and the few seeds I have germinating, but lousy for kids on school holidays. Oh well, make the most of indoors time and get productive!

First up I juiced a huge basket full of lemon/limes I was kindly given from a friend. I call them lemon/limes (or 'lime-ons' as my kids have named them) as my friend said they were limes from her mother-in-laws tree, but they are bright yellow and lemony inside. Thin skin and no seeds like a lime, but look and smell like a lemon. Taste? well, they taste like a lemony-lime. Whatever, they were free, need to be used and taste great.

So I decided to make the majority of the juice into cordial, using Linda Cockburns recipe from the latest Organic Gardener mag which landed at my door last week. Sensational Linda- and great timing!

With 1 litre of juice, 1 kilo of sugar (EEK!) and 750ml water, I made 3 bottles of delicious cordial. It is diluted 1 part cordial to 4 or 5 parts water, so this will go a long way.

Looks plain-but tastes incredible!

Sterilising the bottles was the hardest part- I've never done it before and tried the drying-in-the-oven method. That was ok, apart from the bit where I melted the plastic bottle stoppers onto the racks :-(  OOPS! Oh well, maybe my foil makeshift tops will do for us!

After that I made liquid soap, using a recipe from Daharja you can find HERE. I used half the amounts as I thought that would be enough (it was). It worked amazingly well, even setting in a couple of hours instead of overnight. I wanted to add some pretty colour, and let my daughter choose from the food colourings, she chose pink, no surprise there! Just one drop of red colour in almost 2 litres of soap made this totally gorgeous pale pink. I ended up filling a 500ml pump, and almost filled 2 x 250ml pumps. One for the bathroom, laundry and kitchen.

yes, I even made a label!

It is a bit similar to the laundry gloop I make, though that uses washing soda instead of glycerine. I made a new bucket of that yesterday too. It is so easy and cheap to make, and much kinder to sensitive skins. If you haven't tried it, you can find the recipe on my original post HERE.

After all that, I then made playdoh for the kids. Yes, the gas company just loved me today! I did the cooked one, the recipe is on the cream of tartar box, and since Miss A got to choose the soap colour, Master A got to choose the playdoh colour. 'Alien Green.' Eeeuukkk! Well, they loved it anyway, and I love making playdoh that is so cheap, non-toxic and the past batches I've made have lasted over a year, no kidding. Wrap in cling film, pop in the fridge.

Oh, and the last thing I made (apart from minestrone soup for dinner, but that is neither sweet nor gloopy!) was a big tray of brownies. YUM. And that is my next task, after my very productive day ....... a sticky brownie. With some lemon-lime cordial of course :)

why do brownies always look a wreck but taste amazing?

(if you want more details about the cordial or playdoh recipe, let me know. I have a brownie waiting right now though, so I'll get to it later!)

:-)

Fluffy Visitor

Well how cute is this guy? He came to visit this morning and sat on our fence for such a long time, we were all outside marvelling at how adorable he is! He is a Flame Robin, and the first I've seen since last winter, when I saw my first one.

OK, now the apology- I have been away from blogland for soooooo long its ridiculous. I have been popping in to read yours every now and then, but not doing the writing thing myself. And since being so lazy, I'm amazed to see I have picked up some new followers! So welcome to you :) Hopefully I will have something more interesting to read soon than, well, the nothing I've been doing. I think I've been in hibernation over winter. Coupled with the real-estate woes we have had (don't ask!) has not made for a happy blogger. But hey, although the woes are still pretty woeful, I am still here and although I'm not promising to do the blogtoberfest like those of you more energetic than myself, I promise to not go missing for months on end again.

In my hibernation mode I did learn to crochet and knit (yes, knit -much to my amazement!) did lots of baking, and started sewing again as I had a request for a couple of items- which meant a couple of sales, which in turn has lit my creative spark again. I currently have several piles of fabric lying around showing several unfinished projects! More on that later.

So, thanks for sticking with me through my winter of discontent! I hope Spring brings new life, energy and warmth to us all.

Historic Hartley

Visited Hartley on the weekend, a small rural village about a half hours drive from us. The local buildings inspired me to play around with the photo settings.

The Girls are Back in Town ....!

I'm so happy! My girls are back with me after living at my friends place for the past few months since we moved here.

Ruby at the front, checking out the new digs.

My friend who was looking after them went jetting off to Europe for 5 weeks (oh, the high life!) and I was visiting them twice a day for feeding/cleaning/egg collecting etc. Problem was, we hit freezing times here and went below zero a few days in a row, so their drinking water was freezing solid and I was tripping back and forth to give them fresh water.

Silvie (no comb) and Blondie (huge comb) ??why ??

After much guilt and anxiety, I practically begged the real estate agent to let us have them here, and within 3 hours they said the landlord said yes! Woo hoo!

Lady- fully recovered from the fowl-pox that killed Racey Rooster, but still she is still not laying after 3 months.

We can't move the ark here yet so for now we built a ramshackle lean-to into a holding pen. Bit of chook fence we went to our old house and pulled down (it is STILL for sale -not happy) and a bit of a hutch thingy and hey presto - new chooky accomodation.

BG- more Blue than Gold but still a beauty

Blondie - check out the mad comb!

The wyandottes are HUGE now- I really didn't understand how different they are to other breeds until I had my own- they are like soft round fluffballs! Check out the fluffly butts !!!

They seem very happy, even though they are still trying to figure out where they want to lay (there has been a few eggs rolling around the ground!) I made a nice nest inside the hutch and they just dragged the whole thing out :-0

So then I made a box on its side with straw in, but instead of using it to lay in, all 5 of them stuffed themselves in to sleep in it last night.... what the ???!!!!!

Crazy chooks - love 'em.

:-)

More animals......

The latest additions to the mountainwildlife household .......

Rainbow and Google (before their lovely wall-paper went on!)

A Shubunkin called Rainbow ("cos she has lots of colours") and a Black Moor called Google ("cos he has funny googly eyes!")

How could you not love those BIG eyes?!!

Both joined us on the weekend, hand picked by our kids. Well, given a total free-choice I think they would have gone for 'Nemo' and 'Dory' but since we are running a coldwater tank, tropicals are not on our list.

"Hey, check it out... another Shubunkin!"

We played safe and started with goldfish (yes, they are both goldfish!) as they are hardy and relatively easy to look after, and there are really so many different looking ones, I was quite surprised. 2 for now, then when the tank biology stabilises (another steep learning curve for me- aquatic management!) we can get another couple, but we might go for some little Zebra Danios which are just lovely and can live happily with the goldfish, if the numbers are right.

Google pretending to be a shark!

We picked up a great little fishtank on freecycle, 50cm/ 38 litre so fairly decent size, and enough for a small fish community. The nearest big pet shop is in the next town, and they have a huge range of fish and assorted bits and pieces. What they don't know about fish in there I can't imagine! Talk about fish.... well you could be there all day!

Other exciting animal news- we have our chooks back !!!! Hooray !!!!!!!!  More news about that later, along with some photos (if it ever stops raining!)

:-)

Happy birthdays :)

Has it been another year already? Sure has!

Despite the fact that I always get a little bit stressed about it, I do love the whole birthday-cake-making thing. I love thinking about cake ideas with my children, looking through books and thinking about colours.

Miss 5 decided a pink-and-purple flower cake would be just the thing this year, and was very happy with my interpretation!
Master 5 got his idea from a drawing he did the week before, a colourful rainbow-rocket. And we were all pretty pleased with the cake! My version is very-loosely based on the rocket shape from the womens weekly kids cake book.

I haven't worked with soft icing before, only ever doing butter frosting for the past 4 years. So that was interesting in itself, and with some helpful ideas from a brilliant cake-making friend of mine (as well as loaning a bit of equipment!) I had a great time working different colours into it and cutting shapes to make the ideas become reality.

I think they looked better in reality than in the photos. The rocket was brighter colours. Well, you get the idea anyway.

I also made hearts and tiny pink icing petals into flowers around the flower cake, and the rocket 'flames' are made with soft icing through a garlic press (never used with garlic!) It was very much like playing with playdoh! Thankfully it tasted a lot better though :-)

And of course, to top them off, sparklers out the back of the rocket and one through the centre of the cake (not shown on photos as we were too busy when they were 'sparkling' -especially when we set off the smoke alarms!!)

The party was lots of fun, 12 happy kids all enjoyed themsleves (and quite a few parents as well!)

Another year older, another year of childhood behind them. Oh, how can I be so happy and sad at the same time?

Blog make-over...

I have been playing around with new design ideas for my blog, please bear with me while I decide if I like it ! Or let me know what you think....

Creativity unleashed!

I have never been a 'knitter'. Wool (or 'yarn' as I am learning to call it) and myself have never really been on speaking terms with each other, let alone being friends. Despite many efforts on my mothers part to teach me knitting, I just never 'got it'. Or I wasn't interested enough to persevere. I can do a basic plain stitch, so long as someone else casts on /casts off and if I drop a stitch I'm totally lost.  :- /

But things are changing around here. Whether its moving to a new village where the population are wonderfully creative that has done it, I'm not sure, but something has ignited my creative spark once again.

I recently began sewing again at a sewing group, and have made bags with linings and a couple of pairs of school trousers - 2 things I just couldn't get my head around previously. I now know how to read a pattern (they really are written in English!) and next project on my table is a patchwork quilt.

But now...... the craft which has taken me truly by surprise - crochet!

I attended a couple of workshops recently which were provided by my children's school at our regular coffee morning, to learn beginners crochet. 'Why not?' I thought, after doing my half hour reading with the kindergarten class I was free those mornings. The teacher was a local woman who was very good at instructing total beginners (all of us!) and patient too. Although she did say that we would be crocheting beanies by our 2nd week, which I almost laughed out loud at! (beanies = woolly hats, for those non-aussies!)

But guess what? After learning a few different stitches (and unravelling a few test squares!) I was amazed to find that I actually can do it. And while an expert would find more than a couple of faults, I might even go so far to say I am pretty good at it! Well, its only my 2nd week and my first project.

So here is my beanie so far, in its raw state -

My first crochet!

The yarn is acrylic, (it was easier to buy at the time) although wool would be better. But I love the colour! I need to join the ends to make the back seam, and gather in the top to make it hat-shaped. Not entirely convinced it will look perfect but to be honest I am just amazed I have managed to do this far. (BTW- those plastic bread tie/ring things make great stitch savers!)

Meantime, I decided to revise my lessons and try some squares, commonly known as 'granny squares' (which to me is almost enough to put anyone under 60 off) but nonetheless onwards I went ...... I made these last night while half watching TV --

For these I am just using odd balls of wool and acrylic I picked up in vinnies, a big bag for a dollar - ideal for practising I thought. Although I am realising that lots of the balls (or is it skeins?) I have are just too fine and end up looking a bit spindly and straggly, (like the dark blue above). I definitely prefer the thicker yarn.

Wow, listen to me, talking like a real knitter! Or is crochet-er? Crochet-ist? Crochet-atier??? !!!!!

Next step is to get myself an aluminium hook and some proper wool. Not sure what I'll be making but I'm enjoying just creating for now.

Anyone else left in the world apart from myself who can't do these can find fabulous instructions with short videos at Meet Me At Mikes blog -(scroll down the right-hand side)
Pip shows step by step, very s-l-o-w-l-y so you can follow along in real time. It really helped me as I had forgotten how to get around a corner!

And since starting crochet (and consequently having my self-esteem boosted) I have even been thinking about trying knitting again. You know mam, I might even get that scarf going again- the one you started me on 5 years ago!

:-)

Muppets rock!

I came across this at meet me at mikes and just had to share it....!

I remember the muppets and this song from my childhood, and I just love this video!

Fozzie bear, Animal and Beaker made me laugh, and remember the swedish chef and the 2 old guys?

The band kicks off at about 3 mins! Wait until the end for Miss Piggy... I couldn't see Kermit though?

Anyone else remember the names of this lot?