What is your weekly menu like?

I wasn't going to rave on how busy my life is but I just can't help it!
Just how much can you fit into one day?
If we didn't need sleep the days would roll over each other.
My daughter, partner and grandson will be moving back home with us at the end of October as the granny flat they have been living in since our house burnt down is needed for our friends daughter. So we ( my hubby, and good friends) have been frantically adding two bedrooms, a bathroom, hall and verandah to our little demountable we have been living in since May.

Hubby has also been doing the last few things, such as tiling bathrooms, decking, bathroom fit-out, plumbing etc on the Church which is getting close to completion. As well as making furniture for our customers and finishing off one of our neighbour's extension, he is in need of a holiday. As a requirement for lodgement of our plans to council I as an owner builder have to complete an Owner Builders Course online, so much fun, I have about 60 hours of reading :)

I had a great long weekend, one day it rained but the other two I managed to pant strawberries in hanging baskets on our deck, prepare seven beds for vegetables, plant celery, beetroot, spinach, Chinese vegs, tomatoes, capsicum and carrots. My seedling in my plastic glass house are coming along nicely, I think I have done well considering my veggie patch is surround by a construction site with mounds of dirt and old water tanks. Ok that's enough whinging for today :)

What I wanted to mention today was what I heard on the radio the other day, a lot of people these day only have 3-5 recipes or meals they used in their weekly menu. Imagine eating the same few  things every few days. I suppose there is a number of reasons why people do this,  lack of cooking abilities, maybe they werh never taught how to cook or learnt a variety of recipes, lack of imagination, laziness or maybe with the vast options of take away meals these days people prefer the quick and easy option. I thought about my meal options and I was pretty impressed with myself, I think I could go for months with not cooking the same thing twice. How about you? Do you cook a variety of meals or do you rotate the same meals every week? Do you teach your children how to cook? Have you passed recipes down to your children? Do you have recipes that have been in your family a long time? I would love to hear your point of view :)

Take Care

Goodbye Scooby!

Very early Thursday morning we were awoken by a cry outside our window, which at present is near the sheep yards and at first we thought one of the cats had caught a rabbit but after a while I went outside with the torch to investigate. I saw our precious scooby dragging himself on the ground crying in pain, my heart just sanked, I knew he was in bad trouble and I couldn't do anything for him. He had either been bitten by a snake (this was about 3.30am so not sure if snake would be out) or he had eaten fox bait so I knew he was in trouble. I picked him up in a blanket and carried him to one of our sheds out of the cold and patted him for awhile then I left him. In the morning I knew he would be gone. We have been excavating the site for our house and we had to move a camellia tree that was near the old front verandah and we thought we would transplant it and bury scooby underneath it. I posted about Scooby a few years ago when he wandered off the street into my shop as a kitten in town, he was such a beautiful big cat.
FAREWELL SCOOBY :(

It is ready to start

The house has now been demolished and what building material that could be saved will be used in other building projects on the farm such as accommodation for my milking goats and storage sheds as well as an extension on our demountable. We will be making the demountable into guest/tourist accommodation later when the house is finished. My son is coming up in a few days bringing two excavating machines as well as his boss to excavate part of the house site. This house is going to be a lot bigger than the old one and we will be having verandahs right around the house, which I can't wait to sit out on a warm summers night or in the sun on a cold morning.

We have a new dog to our herd, my son unfortunately does not have a large enough back yard for this girl so she is staying with us a for a while. I will have to show you a photo of her, she is as dalmation cross and she is very large. I have to keep the little dogs a way from her, being a pup she is too boisterous when she plays.

We have been busy doing fences, looking after lambs, making furniture for our shop, looking after children and gran children, and getting ready to start to build this house, I will show photos of its stages of build later. I'm also hoping to get my veggie patch booming this year as I am wanting to have enough to feed ourselves as well as our kids and grand kids, the price of food these days especially meat is crazy. I'm waiting for my one of my neighbours to finish shearing his sheep to come and shear mine and pick up a couple of older lambs to kill for our freezer. I know some of you might not like the sound of that but when you can produce and look after your own sheep with care and know that they are not full of chemicals and you can appreciate the quality and taste you know you and your family are getting the best.

They Have Arrived !!!!!

I had a great day milking goats and sheep on Saturday as you can see below all the girls were lined up ready to go. I was eager for as much information as I could as I knew I didn't have long till my goats had kidded and I would be up to the arm pits with goats milk.

The Girls all lined up for milking

Well as you can see from the picture below I am now in panic motion as one of my goats kidded on Monday and I think the other one is not too far away. I stayed home on Monday as we had quiet a few farming jobs to get done namely fencing and bringing the sheep in the house paddock as they had started lambing and to my excitement my first kid was born.

Baby born 1/8/11

He didn't take long to jump to his feet and mum was up eating and drinking straight away.

Up on its feet

After all the excitement of the day the reality hit when I started thinking I only have a week or so before I will start my morning ritual of milking the goats then storing the milk in my single fridge and start making cheese. I have written a list and am now running around buying the necessary equipment needed for my adventure as well as a second hand fridge. I will keep you posted as I stop to take a breath.



My Dairy Goats & Making Cheese

These are my very own dairy goats and they are both in kid. I bought them about four weeks ago and tomorrow I am going to a goat dairy farm to milk goats and make cheese, I am so excited I feel like a little kid myself. I have been wanting to get dairy goats for a long time now but because they have been  too hard to find or have been too expensive I felt it wasn't the right time but one day Dave found these pair advertised not far from us and so cheap I felt that's it, I'm getting them. They are friendly and have been in kid and milked before so I'm hoping all will go well. I went to our local Field Day a couple of weeks ago and met this lady who has a dairy farm and makes cheese so I booked myself into her course and I just can't wait. I think I have about another 4-6 weeks before the goats kid and I can start milking so I'm trying to learn as much as possible to look after them, the kids as well as milk them and make cheeses. If you have any advice or links I would love to hear from you. I will be taking pictures and telling you how the day went.

The Fire

The fire was now out of control, once it gets in the roof it spreads very quickly.My two neighbours and Jess's partner tried to contain it but it was no use, but fortunately the local fire brigade had just arrived and it took them no time to jump into action. They cut down the fence and started pumping water from the dam onto the flames, mind you during this time some of them where pulling out as much of our furniture as they could. Some of the guys knew the layout of our house so they worked together dragging out beds, cupboards, chairs, appliances, clothes, toys, baby gear, pictures whatever they could put their hands on as quickly as possible. Mind you it did start to rain later on in the evening, I remember snuggled up to Dave in bed at a neighbours place listening to rain and thinking of our furniture under makeshift tarps in the rain.

The Kitchen area


During this time my daughter had been trying to contact Dave and myself for about half an hour, we were oblivious to what was going on. Jess had rang her brother and sister and they were trying to get hold of us, I had put my phone on silent as we were at a study group. During our break time I notice my missed calls and as I picked up my phone Jess rang, she was telling me the house was burning and I'm saying don't be silly only because Jess sometimes jokes around and I had spoken to her forty minuets before, anyway she starts crying and then I hear my neighbour talking on the phone and my jaw dropped and my heart sank as I heard Jess crying in the back ground..
 Note: I am never putting my phone on silent in my bag again.

The spare room

After pulling myself together and relaying to the people around me that my house was burning down and that Jess and Bentley were safe at a neighbours house we had a prayer together and then just literally hit the road. I tell you it was a long drive home and thoughts were running wild in my head. As we drew closer my heart was pounding and we were anticipating what we were going to see but as we turn the last corner the flashing lights of fire trucks, police cars and ambulance were just like something you see in a Bruce Willis movie. ..................TO BE CONTINUED



My littlest granddaughter is just getting over a stay in hospital with tonsillitis, a chest infection and possibly asthma. This winter has seemed to have hit nearly everyone hard some way or another and I know for one  am looking forward to some good rain and warmer weather.





Life

I really enjoy my blog, and I like sitting down and updating what has been going on, like my dairy goats, my veggie patch, the task of rebuilding a new house etc but some days life is soooo full of many things that you need to just sit down and reflect on what is precious to you and how you can treasure every moment the best you can. This week one of my granddaughters was in hospital with a chest infection, tonsillitis and possible asthma. She has been sick on and off for a few months with chest infections and having chest x-rays and I think her immune system has been run down but thankfully with a spell in hospital with a intravenous antibiotics and on Ventolin she is now on the road to recovery. I looked after her on Thursday while mum had a work commitment and we had a lovely day together, she is absolutely gorgeous with a infectious smile and beautiful red curly hair.  While I was down there I went to see my son, who has been upset with the recent death of a very good friend last Saturday night. They were out with a group of his friends  and this young man decide to walk home and was accidentally ran over by a taxi. He was 33 and had two young girls, his funeral was today and I went to pray for and show respect for his family and to support my son. My son is finding it difficult understanding why such a caring and great guy could be taken so young. Life is full of so many hard and difficult questions yet thankfully there are many opportunities for them to be answered.
On my way home, which was like a three hour trip I had the opportunity to pick up a cot from one of my suppliers for my littlest grandson, who as been sleeping in a porta cot since our house burnt down some eight weeks ago. To his mothers delight he is now snuggling in his warm and cosy bed and hopefully will blissfully sleep through the night. As I started this post my thoughts are to remind myself and encourage every one to be thankful and enjoy everyday you have and to show love to those who you love.

Talk about Frustration

I have been going crazy trying to publish my posts, I have been searching the help lines for weeks and with having no clue at all but somehow today I must have done something right because it now works. So much has been happening and I haven't been able to update my blog so now I'm trying catching up. I will be continuing my story about "The day we will never forget" as well as updating the progress on our knock down and rebuild story. Our Insurance Company has been fantastic and the gentleman, the assessor for the company was so professional and caring it was unbelievable.

This is the first of three demountables that were lent to us by a friend from Church, amazing, from being homeless one day to having a friend lending us these huge rooms to live in as long as we like is surely amazing. It took them two days to transport them and set them up. One is our bedroom which is pretty large, the other a lounge room and the third is a kitchen/bathroom.

 We had to rearrange the back yard a bit to fit them in but we are thinking about buying them off our friend and making it a permanent cottage for guest, sounds good hey!

We had a neighbour come up with his tractor to move these big boys together and put them on supports

I will be posting more upto date photos of the demountables and how we have set ourselves up while we build later on. Hubby wants to make ourselves comfortable while we rebuild.
We have been pulling down the old house in pieces so I will be posting about that in the next few days and I want to tell you about the two dairy goats I bought a few weeks ago, I'm so excited and guess what they are both in kid, more of that to come. I'm so glad I can now post again I have so much to put on here my head is going to explode.

Meet Bentley

Hi Everyone, I would like you to meet Bentley. Bentley is my 4th grandbaby and my youngest daughters first baby. It was Jess and Bentley that were home alone on the night the fire broke out in the roof. Bentley was laying in his bouncer on top of the kitchen table in front of the fire playing with his turtle and Jess went out to get more wood for the fire. As she return she looked up and saw flames coming from the laundry roof and ran frantically inside scooping up Bentley, rang tripple "0" and ran out the door screeming for help while running down the street.

Our next door neighbours, Nick and Hendo were packing to go away, Hendo was outside packing the car and thought he heard a fox screaming and it wasn't until he took off his beanine that he could hear Jess screaming. Hendo looked across to our property and he could clearly see our house now in flames, he yells out to Jess if she had the baby, Jess screams back that she had. I know my heart beat skipped when Jess told me about this. Nick and Hendo jump in their car and raced to our house and Jess continued running down the road with Bentley in her arms to another neighbours house. We live near a village so there a few neighbours in the street but this night most of them were either out or had gone away, Jess went to a neighbours house banging on the door but no one was not home, their door was unlocked so Jess went in and grabed a sheet to wrap Bentley in because it was the coldest day on record for the month.

By this time the the call for tripple "0" had reached our local fire department and the firemen (our neighbours/farmers) are called out, the fire trucks are in our village next door to the house Jess was in at present. When one of the neighbours received the call for the fire and was getting in his car his to go his wife heard Jess out in the street in distress and went to her aid and took her and Bentley inside out of the cold.

Jess's partner by this time was on his way home and he said when he came around the corner and saw the flames coming out of the house he couldn't believe his eyes.
TO BE CONTINUED........

The Day We Will Not Forget!

May the 11th is a day we will probably not forget, it was the day my daughter was home alone with her baby and the house caught fire and after ringing tripple 0 ran down the street screaming for help.

Life has been busy and I haven't had time to keep my blog upto date but now I would like to over the next few months share the day the fire devour our house, the amazing people who came to our rescue, our neighbours and friends who have shown love, generosity and their time through the last few weeks, our Church family who have prayed and supported us. Another thing I would like to share is the demolishing and rebuilding of our house as well as our lives.

Time for a Break!

Bentley's hearing test, how cute

I'm really sorry for those who occasionally look on my blog especially friends and relatives, but I have been so busy with running a business, church life, the farm, my poor neglected veggie patch, running an every increasing household and enjoying my little six week old grandson who just had his first lot of immunisation needles today :( but he is fine and will probably sleep (hopefully) well tonight.

I'm not sure when I will be back full time on my blog, I have a lot of photos to down load of our extension and renovations. I usually show off my vegetable garden but it is not happening at the moment, but I will be getting it ready for a winter crop. I would like to get the paddocks ready for lambing this season as we should be getting a lot of lambs, which I am hoping to take a lot of photos of.

My daughters partner is a mechanic and now has his own work shop of the farm and has been working on his 4WD, which he loves and loves to take visitors 4 wheel driving all around our 100 acre property in. Maybe a video of that would be good:)

Motherhood!

Well, reality has hit and our household is buzzing. This little man has made his presence known and we are all trying to keep life normal and simple as possible. My daughter has mastitis and with feeling overwhelm with motherhood has not made the process easy. I drove home the other day after speaking to her on the phone, telling me she was really cold and feeling unwell, I knew I would not be able to get her into a doctors appointment so I took her to the hospital and she was seen straight away. With living 54kms from town I knew if we didn't see to her swollen and painful breast straight away things could get difficult. After a few days on antibiotics she has improved and feeling much better.

It has been nearly 21years since I have had a new born at home and I had almost forgot about the overwhelming sensation of being responsible for such a tiny little thing and how life will never be the same. My daughter who was very hormonal during her pregnancy is now having those same feelings and sometimes has moments of tears, I am thankful that I am there to hug and support her the best I can as her mother.

Now when I look at new mums I wonder if they are coping and if they have the support of their mum, I know husbands and partner do support them but it is a little bit different when you can turn to your mum for that special advise and support. Are you a new mum? Do you have the support of your mum? Have you had mastitis? I would love to hear your point a view.

He is Here!

I have been very occupied lately with the birth of grandchild number four and life has been very busy to say the least. Our household has jumped from two to five and then there are the extras that come along the way. We seem to have a revolving door at the moment and all I can say is thank goodness we set up a fortnightly menu planner because it takes the pressures of dinner time away.

I had five minutes to spare before running off home and I couldn't leave without signing in and showing off our beautiful 9lb 1oz baby boy.

Floods ravage Queensland

Floods ravage Queensland

Devastating Queensland Floods!

Queensland is going through a time of devastation that is so unbelievable, the amount of water and the damage to homes and lives is heart wrenching. The rain is still coming down, the rivers are still rising, homes are still going under, people are still getting rescued, some are missing and some lives will be lost. How much more and how long will it take for these towns and these people to recover from such a catastrophe. Australians are tough and can pull together when things get tough but we need your prayers and support as this nation is suffering. http://http//news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8195495/Brisbane-properties-to-be-hit-by-floods

Baby on the Way!

We have a new member to our family.....meet Mitchell, he is my daughters husband to be and soon to be father of their child. My daughter Jess and Mitchell have moved in with us for a while, Mitchell is a mechanic and has just started a new job in town, he loves anything mechanical and 4 wheel driving.

Mitchell is a lovely young man and Jess adores him, their baby is due on the 12th Feb and we have been busy making changes to our house to accommodate the new arrival. I think they will probably be living with us for about 12months or so, just to give them a helping hand until they can afford to get their own place and get settled.

Mitchell has been a great help around the farm, helping with the business and with the renovations. I tell you there is always something happening in our house and now we have a gorgeous little baby on the way

The colours in the sunsets have been beautiful lately, this is one of the reason I love living in the open spaces of the country, this type of beauty gets lost in the concrete jungle and people don't seem to have the time to stop and spend a few minutes gazing at the beauty of creation.