Sconnoisseur

To say that Hubs loves scones would be an understatement. He loves scones. When our lovely neighbour made some the other week, Hubs devoured them and claimed they were the best scones he’d ever had. So when we had said lovely neighbour over for dinner last night, I asked what her recipe was.

She reminded me of Nanny when she told me she had to recipe. You just start with about 2 cups of self-raising flour, and add the right amount of butter, a couple of spoons of icing sugar, an egg, some very cold cream and chopped dates. Her tips were to just use a knife to stir (handling as little as possible) and use a very hot oven – about 240 degrees. Also, if it’s an electric oven, cook the scones on the bottom shelf, and if it’s gas, cook on the top.

Seeing as how I’d never made scones before, I thought I’d give it a go, as Hubs has his first exam this week and I wanted to do something extra nice for him.

I didn’t have dates so I substituted with craisins. That reminds me of one of our favourite moments in the TV show My Family, where Susan is cooking dinner (she is not known for her skills in the kitchen) and she says “I’m cooking Duck a l’orange. But I didn’t have any duck so I used mince. And I didn’t have any oranges so I used pears.” Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Anyway. Back to the scones. This is how the mixture looked:

It wasn’t until I had put them on the tray that I realised I’d forgotten the egg. And the icing sugar. But I figured they looked pretty good, so I’d give them a go. What do you think?

They were very very light and fluffy and quite delicious, even if I do say so myself! We had them straight out of the oven with a bit of butter and a cup of coffee, sitting on our deck. Chanbe even liked them!

As I was sitting there, enjoying our view, I thought to myself once again how lucky I have been to have had Hubs around so much in the last 12 months. A lot of people say to us how hard it must be with Hubs studying full time, and not having an income. And as much as it sucks not having money most of the time, having Hubs around to see Chanbe’s first year, and to give me sleep-ins and a cooked breakfast a few mornings a week, and to be able to have 3 meals a day together a lot of the time, and and and and… well it’s worth being broke for a while. Hubs has 1 more year of full-time study, and then it will be a totally different ball game. But I’m looking forward to the challenges that will bring.

We made it!

Here’s cheers to the first year of parenthood! It gets easier from now on, right? πŸ™‚

And here’s cheers to my 600th post! I’m currently trying to make scones for the first time ever. And I just realised I forgot to add the egg. Oh well! We’ll see how they go…

The essence of Chanbe

No, it’s not a new fragrance coming out, just in time for Christmas. It’s this photo:

This is my son. I look at this photo, and I see him. I really see him. The smirk, the look in his eyes, the fact that I can see him as a teenager. I see his soul in this photo. I can’t stop looking at it. This is the first time I’ve really realised who this person is, and who he is becoming. It’s quite a revelation for me. We have so many more good times to come.

Birthday Boy

(Warning: This post may contain clichΓ©s.)

Chanbe turned one yesterday. Where has the time gone? (I warned you!) Actually, I know exactly where it has gone, and we have enjoyed it so much. Chanbe woke up at 6am yesterday – we all wake up early on our birthday, right? – but I wasn’t quite ready to get up so we had a play in the spare bed and by 7 he had drifted back to sleep! We didn’t get up until 8:30 so we were all rested for our big day to come.

Chanbe had a birthday breakfast of home-made (of course) berry pancakes.

We then headed to church for lots of cuddles and kisses and birthday wishes. And then it was time for the party! Well, just a small BBQ with a couple of families from the medical centre where Hubs works. It had been raining all day Friday and Saturday (and most of the night too!) but Sunday was beautiful. The kids played in the playground (and the mud) and it was so nice to be outside after being couped up for 2 days.

And then it was time for CAKE!!!

Not my best effort, but the cake was delish! We had a gluten-free requirement, so it’s a flourless chocolate cake. Really quite delectable. There were no candles, but there were kids and party hats so that more than made up for it!

And now for the obligatory one-year-old-eating-cake photo.
Oh yeeeeeeaaaaah! Thank you to everyone for their birthday wishes! We look forward to sharing many more with you all!

Back to “normal”

Ha! As if my life resembles any type of normality!

Mum and Dad left 2 hours ago, and in that time I’ve had to do things I haven’t done in 2 weeks, like get up before 10am, do the washing up, put Chanbe to sleep, get the washing in…

Now don’t judge. I’m not entirely lazy or useless, except when my Mum is around. I think since I’ve had Chanbe, whenever Mum is around I digress back into being the child (not “a” child :-)), wanting to be looked after. And Mum and Dad do that so well! Since they arrived, they have been doing pretty much everything around the house – cooking, washing, cleaning up, getting up to Chance in the morning, feeding him his meals, changing nappies, putting him down for naps etc etc.

I don’t just sit around taking advantage of their generosity, obviously, but I certainly have time to rest that I don’t normally have. And they insist! I guess I get a taste of what it’s like to have family around when you’re raising a family, and it’s nice. Really nice. I have been feeling like my old self again – rested, relaxed, not so stressed.

It was hard to say goodbye this morning, especially seeing the look on Chance’s face when his Gran and Grumpy drove away, but we’ll be in Brisbane in 3 weeks so that’s something to look forward to.

I really do hope that we settle down one day close to family and friends.


Happy Birthday! (the first of many…)

As I mentioned, we hosted mothers group at our place this week, and I decided to throw a combined birthday party for all the kids!

We had such a lovely time with all the kids tearing around, showing off all their new skills. And of course, there was cake! I saw the idea for this cake months and months ago and knew I had to give it a go. And I gotta say, it turned out pretty damn nicely.

All the birthday boys! (The one girl who is part of our mum’s group couldn’t make it)

We then headed outside for the kids to have a run up and down our deck, pushing their carts.

 
Chance really rose to the occasion, and even though he missed out on his morning sleep (which usually goes for 2 hours) and only had 45 min at 2:30, he’s still awake at 7pm and having a great time! But Dadda just got home so Chanbe will be boarding the sleeping train and will hopefully be in sleepy land very soon. What a great day!

Giddyup!

In case you’re living under a rock (or just living outside of Victoria) you would know that today was Melbourne Cup Day – a public holiday in Victoria. Woo! We celebrated the day by heading to Wangaratta (just for a change) to take Ma to the races. We had such a lovely day and I must say that we were 4 of the best-dressed punters there! I’ll let you decide for yourself though…

First up we have Wifey, wearing her red dress she recently purchased on line, accessorising with a Mimco necklace given to her by her darling Hubsband as an annivchrisbirthday present. Chanbe’s outfit was purchased at the local op-shop for a total of $2, with accessories made with love from 8-10pm last night by his Mama, with the help of his Dadda and Ouma. Hubs is looking dashing in his pinstripe pants that he wore on the day he made his vows to Wifey, matched with a lovely white paisley shirt and topped off with black suspenders. And Ma is wearing a delightful silk dress she picked up whilst in Melbourne last week, paired with a stunning cardi and super-cute fascinator.

Can we see a bit more for the final judgment? πŸ™‚

 Sorry, is this just too cute? (as IF I’m sorry…)
  I just wish I had thought to enter Chanbe in “Fashions on the field.”
Three cheers for Chanbe’s outfit! Hip hip hip!
Hooray!

We really had a lovely day and the weather was spectacular. We’ve had a lovely time with Ma here, and will be sad to see her go home tomorrow, but we know we’ll be seeing her in just over a month back in Brisbane. Okay okay. I’ll give you just one more πŸ˜‰

Oh the irony

Last night, Chanbe slept through. And I don’t mean the technical version of sleeping through which is a 5 hour block. I mean, he didn’t wake up. But I did. He went to sleep around 8:30pm and was a bit restless, so I assumed we were in for another usual night of waking up every 2 hours. I crashed around 11pm thinking that he’d be waking up any minute now, just as I get to sleep he’ll wake up.

I woke up and wondered why I hadn’t been woken up by my son’s crying and I looked at the clock. 3am. Wha????? I lay there for a good 5 minutes, excited by this victory, and I didn’t even worry (that much) that there was something wrong. But there was something wrong. With me. Because I’m still feeding Chanbe all through the night, and I hadn’t fed him for almost 7 hours (count it people!!!! I wish I’d gone to bed at 8:30 too….) I was full. And in quite a bit of pain. I spent the next 20 minutes looking for my manual breast pump to ease the pain and discomfort. By this stage Hubs had woken up and was trying to get back to sleep while I was fretting around.

He said I had 2 options. Firstly, I could set up the electric pump and use that, (tooooo haaaaarrrd) or I could go and give Chanbe a dream feed (but but but what if he wakes up????) I chose the second option and was in and out in 5 minutes with him barely stirring. He did his job well, and apart from me knocking something over on the way out and almost waking him up, it went very well indeed. It was 3:45am by then. I could go back to sleep!!!

Except I couldn’t. I know that this is more Alanis Morissette irony than actual irony, but there I was, with a baby who was sleeping through the night for the first time in months and months, and I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing. I worked out that I had left my breast pump at my friend’s house in Wang, and thought about my sleeping baby. Would this happen again? Was I finally past the 2-hourly wake-ups? The last time I looked at the clock it was 4:30 so I figure I got to sleep some time before 5.

Chanbe woke up for good at 6:15 and after some play time in bed, Hubs took him for a walk so I could get some more sleep. I wonder what tonight will bring!?

Chanbe at the park

While I was in Albury for the day a couple of weekends ago, Hubs took Chanbe for a play at the local park. They had such a great time, and Hubs took some great photos and video for me to see when I got home!

The video commentary is courtesy of the locals kids at the skate park next to the playground πŸ™‚

Who is that good-looking baby, copying my every move??
He loved the swing!
And he thought the bark was mighty tasty…

Wifey’s new clothes

I don’t mind a spot of clothes shopping here and there, but since I had Chanbe, my body has changed somewhat and many of my old clothes didn’t quite fit right. So I culled. Big time. I donated all the clothes that I hadn’t worn since Chance was born, and many of the clothes I had been keeping “just in case my body morphs again and I fit into them some day.” I figure, in 10 years time after we’ve had our 7th baby (ha ha ha ha ha) I won’t be looking to fit into the clothes I had 10 years before. I’ll want to buy new stuff. So I let them go.

Some of the items hadn’t even been worn, as I had bought them years ago thinking “when I lose weight” blah blah blah. Well I did lose some weight a few years ago, but those things, mainly skirts, never suited my body type. So to Vinnies they went. In the last few weeks, I have been practically buying a new wardrobe. We had some money come in that we had been waiting for, and finally we could relax a bit with our super-strict budget, and splurge a little bit.

I still bought most of my stuff from KMart and Target, and as much as I love op-shopping, it was really lovely to buy some new stuff. I also bought some super-cute dresses on an online store (after trying stuff on at a shop to get my size) and I cannot wait for them to turn up! And it turns out that my complete body shape/type change has worked in my favour in many ways. First of all, I could never before fit into Target trousers, but the other day I bought 6 pairs of pants in the one go! 6!!! And I don’t mind saying, they look pretty darn cute!

This is one of the first times in my life that I have bought a whole bunch of clothes that fit beautifully right now. Not clothes that I buy because they’re on sale and they’re 1 or 2 sizes too small for me and I stash them in my cupboard and they sit there taunting me, waiting for me to lose the weight I keep promising myself I’ll lose. No. I’m buying for who I am right now, which means, also for the first time (maybe just in a long time) I’m accepting myself for who I am, and what I look like. Not just accepting, but loving. I tell you, as a girl who has struggled with body image for a looooonnnnng time, this is a damn nice place to be.

I can’t wait to show you some of the outfits!