twenty four years and still going strong

 Today is Very Clever Husband's and mine 24th Wedding Anniversary!

It is amazing to think that we have been married that long!

In fact, I have spent more years of my life married to this wonderful man than I haven't!

He is a wonderful husband, father and friend.

He still makes me laugh and feel like the most beautiful girl in the world!

 I love this photo, with the reflections, in a local park.

VCH's younger brother and sister were our best man and bridesmaid.

Two of my nieces were flower girls.

The oldest one turned 31 the other day!

Our wedding cake- of course I had to have something unconventional and had a croquembouche!

We are going out to dinner tonight leaving the children to fend for themselves!

We will be planning something big for our silver anniversary next year!

an 102nd birthday celebration

 Not many people live to the ripe old age of 102.

This weekend we had the pleasure of celebrating VCH's grandmother's 102nd birthday.

 

When you get to 102 your birthday becomes a grand affair.

On Monday the aged care facility had a party for all the residents who have a birthday in July.

Friday saw a special morning tea for her- I couldn't make it but VCH went along and said she had them all in stitches- she is a very funny lady and has a keen sense of humour that is still going strong at 102!

Sunday- her actual birthday we headed off to a nearby village and had lunch at a historic pub that overlooks the river. 

With lots of family there it was a lovely time and the kids had a ball.

 All the great grandchildren that were there.

She now has 3 great great grandchildren, with the latest one arriving the day before her birthday!

 five brothers and one sister with Great Nana.

 Our Family

 VCH with his brother and sister

The Girl with Great Nana.

She told me Great Nana looks cute! 

Here are links to her 100th and 101st birthday parties.

lest we forget: some recipes for anzac day

Today is ANZAC Day here in Australia.

B3 and I went to see the local march,

VCH took B4, B5 and The Girl fishing, with B2 and his L plates doing the chauffeuring.

They have had great success lately and we have enjoyed several fresh fish meals!

B1 has a job as a "nanny" for 5 days ( he's a manny!).

When B3 and I came home, I made some Anzac Biscuits (cookies), in honour of our ANZACs.

I used this recipe here:

 If you are not wheat or sugar free you may like to try this recipe here:

 

Hope my fellow Australians are having a relaxing day while we remember those who fought for our freedom on foreign soils.

Lest We Forget

sharing at:

mexican fiesta party

When we decided to combine B1 and B2's 18th and 16th birthday parties  

(lots of the same family and friends would be coming to both so this just made it easier),
I looked for a way to make it easy on everyone (particularly moi) cooking wise,
I didn't want to do a BBQ for a large number of guests and then have to prepare half a dozen different salads, a sausage sizzle was a little too casual, so it got me thinking about what would be easy and involve minimal preparation but still be yummy.

I hit on the idea of serving tacos, minimum prep - maximum flavour.

This then lead to the party having a whole Mexican theme.

I chose lots of bright colours and decorations to give impact but also keep it all very simple and low key.

 

I ordered some bright paper lanterns from eBay and we put them up in the entertaining area.

I picked up the pinata at Big W.

Each table was covered in a bright coloured tablecloth with a striped cloth used as a table runner
(I bought 2 of these as table cloths off eBay and then cut them into 4 to create 8 table runners. 

I added a coloured tin with some succulents that I planted about a month ago,
a coloured glass citronella candle from Bunnings,
and a bright coloured water bottle to make the table centre pieces.

I mixed up the colours on each table to give a bright eclectic feel.

To continue the theme I used purple plates, green cups and red napkins.

We started with some corn chips and dips:

guacamole, hot spinach salsa queso dip, and a cucumber salsa.

Then moved onto our DIY taco bar.

 I borrowed some crock-pots from friends as well as my own and did a bean mix for the vegetarians, beef for the traditionalists and my taco chilli chicken was in the other for those wanting something a little different.

I kept it simple by serving it with grated cheese, sliced tomato and sliced cucumber and shredded lettuce (took only a minute with my v-slicer).

Some sour cream, guacamole and sauces completed the tacos.

For drinks we made a non alcoholic sangria and a pineapple sangria, then later on a lemon-lime punch.

We also served some flavoured waters and had bottles of water on the table.

We made the party alcohol free as B1 has for the time being decided not to drink and we didn't want any problems with any of their underage friends drinking.

For dessert I served ice cream- I know I have an obsession with ice cream!

It is so easy to make and has maximum impact, you just need to be organised to start far enough in advance.

But it literally takes about 5 minutes prep time and then when it is cold enough you throw it in the ice cream maker and voila it is done- dead easy!

We had: 

Vanilla,

Mint Choc Chip- everyone's favourite

Mexican Chocolate

Liquorice (I will do a recipe of this soon)

Ginger

Coffee

Lemon-lime cheesecake (wasn't overly impressed with this- tasted too cream cheesey)

and for the dairy free Pina Colada Sorbet.

I also served a variety of teas, coffee and some yummy biscuits- I will share these in a post soon.

Every thing was very much do ahead, even the cake I did a week in advance and just froze it, got it out on the morning, iced it and it was good to go.

The photo of the cake has a weird yellow tinge because the lights in our entertaining area are yellow to discourage the insects.
After I wrote their names and ages in brown M&M's B4 covered the rest of the cake in diagonal stripes- an idea I got from pinterest.


Here they are cutting the cake.

We got the pinata down and VCH hooked it to the basketball hoop.

Here The Girl is having her turn- we didn't bother with blind folds.

A collage of the festivities

Happy Birthday in Spanish.

So ends our first party in the new look entertaining area- I will be back with the low down on the area very soon, pinky promise!

easter highlights

Just a quick pop in with a few photos of our Easter highlights.

We had a very simple Easter this year, no baking, no Easter crafts, no making gifts.

We pared in back and kept to the bare minimum, 

because today we are having a birthday party at our place to celebrate our two oldest boys 16th and 18th birthdays.

I didn't want to over stress myself and wanted to keep everything simple, 

we have been busy finishing a few projects for our entertaining area and getting the kids kitchen finished and out of here!

I will be showing you our entertaining area soon, but first here is our Easter.

All photos are straight off the camera- I have no time for editing today!

 My one and only purchase for Easter this year was these two bunnies from Woolworths.

The Easter egg tree was easy to do, just a stick in a jug with sand and place eggs on it- 10 minutes!

I changed my blackboard trays to appropriate Easter messages and put our Easter Lambs here.

 The entry way has a quick scrabble message,

and my favourite lamb and some of the eggs I made last year.

 This was also the very last Easter Egg hunt with all our children.

Now that he is 18, B1 has been disqualified- we let him sneak one last one in, seeing his birthday was only last week.

We have been doing this egg hunt in our garden since we moved out here and have never had a problem with the eggs, this year we lost two eggs to the wildlife! 

Must be some chocolate loving bandicoots or something out there!

 We finally got around to curing our new pizza oven and enjoyed our first GF pizzas in it!

They were delicious with a lovely smokey flavour!

 Hope you all had a Happy Easter and remembered that Christ is Risen!

Will be back with some party highlights and some new projects to share!

funky monkey party

B5 turns eight on the 10th of January, but as we knew a few of his friends would be away on this date we decided we would have his party a little earlier.

B5 loves monkeys and is even called Cheeky Monkey by a couple of family friends, 

so he decided he wanted a monkey party.

Because it would be hot and because it was just after Christmas we decided to keep it fairly low key.

The only party game we did was a pass the parcel.

The kids played in the pool for most of the time before hopping out for some food and ice cream cake.

The palm tree I had bought for B3's 10th birthday so it was an easy centrepiece and the little monkey I picked up for $2 at Big W, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with until B3 put it on top- perfect!

We added some yellow (for bananas), green (for the jungle), and orange (B5's favourite colour) balloons  in bunches around our entertaining area, B1 was in charge of this.

I wanted to keep the food simple, but also worthy of a monkey theme.

Along with potato chips, corn chips and a homemade taco sauce dip (thanks B3) and banana muffins we also ate:

I saw the watermelon on a stick on pinterest, and thought it would be fun and as we had a pineapple in the fridge we made some pineapple ones as well.

The banana pops were also from pinterest, 

some were coated with crushed coconut chips and the others with crushed nuts.

They were seriously yummy!

Because it was a party we had some lollies,

 even though I wouldn't generally allow my kids to eat banana lollies  

(because years ago I was told the flavouring came from paint stripper) 

 I made an exception this time.

 I used my drink dispensers again (no photo of them in use - sorry!)

One with water and the other with jungle juice (lemonade, pineapple juice and mango nectar)

I also did up these little milk bottles, I think I have used them for 4 parties now.

This time we had banana milk made with the Vitarium banana drinking mix,

this stuff is made with stevia as the sweetener instead of sugar.

 The monkey cake was super easy.

I made ice cream the day before and set it in a round spring form tin and in a circle cutter I set some ice cream for the ears.

When it was set I took it out and put it on the plate and cut a little from the sides to get a more monkey shape, then I cut the smaller circle in half and put them on the side.

Next I cut out a piece of paper the shape I wanted for the face and stuck it onto the cake, then I added coco pops all around the rest of the cake, the paper protected the face from getting coco pops over the face part.

As it was getting a bit melty at this stage even though it was night I popped it back into the freezer until the next day.

Next morning before the party, I took it out and cleaned up the extra coco- pops around the edges and added them back on to any sparse bits, then I took the piece of paper off .

I forgot to buy some chocolate buttons for the eyes and was wondering how I could do the face.

Two cherries, two dried blueberries and a red snake came to my rescue.

 Because I didn't want wax all over the cake, I came up with the brilliant (even if I do say so myself!) idea of sticking the candles into a banana.

Blowing out his candles!

So glad you had a fun party with your friends B5!

Looking forward to more fun on your actual birthday next week!

To check out my monkey party pinterest board go here:

For his 5th birthday party B5 had a circus theme if you want to check it out go here

 

12 from 2012

So here we are on the last day of 2012 before heading into 2013

 I thought I would list 12 of my favourite activities/projects from 2012.

One of my favourite things was The Girl's 5th Birthday Party.

The party details managed to cover four posts

Here, here, here and here

Next would be my sewing room reveal.

Wish it looked this neat all the time!

Go here and here.

I shared B2's bedroom here:

There was of course my fantastic hallway project that resulted in this beauty

I also had lots of fun with B4's 10th birthday spy party

 

 I showed my love of shutters in this post

I don't actually know that this is technically one of my favourites but it comes in third in my stats behind my vintage sewing room (second) and the ever popular spice angel tutorial from 2010

 I enjoyed sharing one of the most used spaces in our home:

the veranda

 My big exciting project of the year was launching "redeemed"

I am still excited about its success and am looking forward to new possibilities in 2013.

Some of my favourite recipes that I shared were:

 The ever popular snickers ice cream

 Decadent but Healthy Chocolate Brownies

 

Baked oatmeal 

It is still a family favourite with requests for it at least once a week even though it is summer.

Gluten free gingernuts oh how I love thee!

So there it is, a quick review of 2012, though looking through there are so many favourites that I found, particularly some of my more recent "redeemed" items.

I am so looking forward to all that 2013 has to offer and the exciting places it may lead!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!