Less Restrictive

Due to our government lifting some restrictions, we can send our kids to school again and have visits with close friends and family. I’m looking forward to the sending my kid to school part, being at home the last couple of months have been…interesting.

Amongst being stuck at home, we are moving house – we purchased a property in February and we had already planned to move before the pandemic, and as such our government (where we live) has permitted relocation; we are moving house.

This has been particularly stressful, in amongst everything else that’s been going on, but we keep on plugging away.

As I was putting my schoolboy to bed tonight, I told him that he would be going back to school soon, and he burst into tears because he didn’t want to go back to school as he would miss me, and wanted to do school from home. Nevermind the fact that he has complained daily about doing school. I think he’s enjoyed being at home and having more attention from me. This new phase is certainly going to be interesting, especially as going back to school coincides with us moving, I will be sending him back.

I’m not sure what to think about all this. I’ve missed seeing people, but also I’ve gotten used to being at home, so this is going to take some time to adjust and get used to again.

How are others feeling in this next phase, and does that mean I need to give up my TikTok account now that life is kind of slowly starting again?

Weekend Cooking

It’s been a long week. I’m glad it’s over, here’s to hoping next week is better.

I did some cooking this morning with my mum and brother, virtually so that was fun. We made some savoury mince, so dinner for tonight is all prepped and I can take it easy this afternoon until dinner time.

And I’ve got some freezer meals. I’m set for the next two weeks for meals and shopping. which is great – I like to be organised.

I was hoping to jump on last week to write about my week, but it didn’t happen and that was a week ago – and I’m not sure if I can remember that far back. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and it’ll be a quiet day – considering we can’t go anywhere. I’m sure we’ll be able to leave the house at some point. But my eldest has drawn me a picture and has requested that I wear my twirly dress tomorrow. So, why not. I’ll dress up because I can and I will feel pretty because my little men will think so. That and they will want me to twirl in my dress. Apparently, that’s the best part – watching Mummy spin around like a ballerina on a music box.

After making the savoury mince, my boys decided that I needed to bake a cake – I went with cupcakes (they now have snacks for the week) with berries, topped with buttercream icing and sprinkles. They looked great, and they thought so too. My youngest (Mr 3) is my little sous chef, helping me mix the batter and then ‘helping’ by licking the bowl clean. He also helped me make the savoury mince. He cut up all the mushrooms, and attempted to cut up potatoes, before deciding to peel them. I think I need more kids cooking implements as he quite enjoys cooking and it’s fun to be able to share that with my boys. Mr 6(eldest) was more interested in his lego, but hey at the very least he enjoys eating the food I make, so that’s a win in my book.

Hopefully you’re all enjoying your weeks – wherever you happen to be, and a Happy Mother’s Day to all the lovely Mama’s out there.

God Bless!

#Newmumoftiktok

This week, I joined tiktok. I had a friend who had jumped on, and she did a couple of videos. So I decided to jump on too. Yesterday, I recorded my first video #mumsoftiktok. I also got into the kitchen and made some gf df pies. The pastry wasn’t great. I’m going to have to experiment to get a nice crust that doesn’t look anemic and tastes – well of coconut oil (I used copha and gf flour in the base) NEVER AGAIN. Oh and yesterday was ANZAC day so my sous chef (3yr old, who LOVES helping and getting into the kitchen with me) and I baked some ANZAC biscuits that game out kinda ginormous.

That happened, as well as a whole week of school – ugh, what a loong week it was, and TAFE started up (online) after the holidays, and I now have two assessments due in the next two months – yay me.

Well, today is a short one, mainly because I have places to be tonight (Zoom) so that I can connect with people from church.

Also, I have not yet eaten dinner, so looking forward to eating some gf, df pizza… yeah, that’s going to be a bit different. It’s been while since I’ve had takeway pizza, so lets see how it tastes on a gf base with no cheese. Sigh, Cheese is good, I miss cheese.

Hope your week has all been well, and I will be back next week with another tidbit from my life. That’s provided something of interest has happened for me to share. I’ll keep you all updated.

Have a great week!

Back to (Home) School

Welcome to another week of me prattling on about, well stuff.

Back to school (kind of) this week, commencing homeschooling, oops I meant facilitated home schooling. Which reminds me, I need to sign into my child’s online classroom to make sure I’ve got everything prepped for next week. That was tricky. And it was only three days. This week, I have five days and I’m not sure how we’ll go. As I’m studying Education Support (to be a Teacher’s Aide) this might actually be good practice, even if it is my child that I am teaching.

So, it’s been an interesting and busy week. I’m not sure how this week will pan out, with a whole week of learning, but I’m hoping that we can get into a rhythm and DS1 will get used to doing school at home, now that the novelty has worn off. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t spent as much time in the kitchen, although I made a really yummy chickpea and cannellini bean soup. That’s been my lunch, so good.

On the plus side, DS1 has been so inquisitive, asking so  many questions about letters, numbers etc. so something is obviously sinking in.

We were at dinner tonight, and as my laptop is out in the dining room and was on screen saver, the time was on and he started off asking me what the numbers meant and then asking me every minute what the time was. I think he needs a watch.

DS2 has been challenging this week, due to the fact that we are doing school – he’s been feeling a little left out (he’s 3) but I’ve found a couple of ways around this. He’s usually pretty keen to follow what is going on or play by himself. He joined us for a few lessons, but then decided that he wanted to be the teacher too. I made him the assistant teacher. He thoroughly enjoyed this power, and bossing his older brother around for a couple of the activities. Some of the lessons included walking around the house and finding things like numbers or letters, and DS2 dubbed himself the leader commanding ‘This way!’ and ‘you need to  march!’ so there we were, three of us, marching around the house whilst the husband worked in the office, probably wondering what we were doing.

We will be continuing to maintain our distancing, apart from the weekly shopping, whilst my husband works from home, I home school, study and attempt to keep up with the housework. How is everyone else doing it? Man, it’s tricky to keep on top of everything,

Hope everyone has a great week, I’ll let you know if I survive this week.

BEST OF LUCK, Keep safe, and wishing you the best.

Peace.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” – John 14:27

 

 

Easter Weekend and Birthday Fun

Another post about well, my life at this current moment.

Currently I’m in my dining room listening to the clock tick and thinking I should head to bed soon as I was up late last night decorating my son’s birthday cake (he turned 6)

I will however, share said cake.. ta-da!

As you can see at the bottom, my technique is well…not great. I’m not a professional, I just enjoy baking. DS1 loved it which is great, all day both my boys kept asking ‘mum, when can we have cake? Is it now?’ We didn’t eat it until 3pm, as we had lunch and watched a movie first. Then at cake cutting time, we had a virtual party when we video called a bunch of people who sang happy birthday. He was a bit confused and a little sad that we couldn’t have anyone over (or more presents), but friends and family were able to get presents to us which made for a wonderful day. He and his little brother played outside until the sun came down and then we sent them to bed, and they were out like a light – two tired little boys.

Just like a tired mummy. I’m signing off for this week, it would have been longer but I need to catch me some zzzzs and get sorted for online schooling that will start later this week. Eeek!

 

My own personal Groundhog Day

I’m going to guess most people’s days feel like it’s the same:

Wake up, shower, breakfast, kids, work (at home if you can).

Mine does. I’m feel like I’m stuck in the same events; continually being frustrated at my children’s lack of sleep as they wake up early and are unable to act like human beings.

Maybe I’m exaggerating – I’m just over being woken up before 6am most mornings. Today they weren’t too bad, up at 5am (I forgot to change the clock in their room to daylight savings) which would have technically been 6am, which for them (well my youngest at least) is pretty good. They were up at 4:30am the other day, and they were awful.

This week has been long. Shopping was not fun; some people are acting weird and are completely rude, and then the food restrictions. I hadn’t done a big shop in about two/three weeks before all the food restrictions came into play. During the checkout some of the items I had put into the trolley had to go back onto the shelf as I didn’t see the signs for the restrictions. There were only two products where I had gone over.

I’m trying to find ways to entertain kids, keep up with study and housework. Struggling to find the energy to keep on top of the housework with everyone in the house. My hubby is now working from home, and I’m keeping busy by de-cluttering. At the moment our backyard is clean and the broken toys have been binned. Still feels like Groundhog Day. Wake up, can’t go anywhere and spending the day with two small children who are bored and sick of each other’s company.

Cooking helps. I’ve made an apple and rhubarb pie and pannetone for Easter. I like to cook, so it’s nice that I can make something my family (mainly the kids) enjoy.

Pannetone

Apple and rhubarb pie 😋

I went through my baking cupboard today and de-cluttered it. Mainly to assess what I needed. It’s DS1 birthday next week (he turns 6) and I wanted to make sure I had what I needed to make his cake. I’m hoping it will look cool. I have to locate toys to put on it. He wants a Bumblebee cake. So, to make it easy for me; a square cake with Transformers fighting on top. I just need to locate his Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and Megatron to have an epic battle in Cybertron. (As a boy mum, I am well versed on Transformers and totally know that Megatron is the bad guy).

That’s going to be interesting, as the plans we had originally have been changed. I feel bad for him, none of his mates can come, but we’re planning on having a fun day despite it. Just trying to find a Transformer movie we can all watch as a family. Bit hard when DS2 is 3 and most Transfomers movies are.. well not G rated. On goes my search for Transformer movies, making dinner and remembering to bathe my children regularly.

Have a great week everyone.

YouTube Lied….

Due to COVID-19 impacting life significantly, which means no leaving my house, I am writing in the hopes to connect and feel a little less confined to the space I currently inhabit. I will live vicariously through my words!

Now all I need is a good story. Ah the story of YouTube lying to me lol

It was a sunny afternoon today and not much was afoot. At 2pm, I decided to make some bread bags with some fancy fabric given to me by a friend. It was pretty, had Paris stuff all over it which meant my bread bags were going to look chic, sophisticated. They were going to look dope!

I’d spent the week watching videos on YouTube about making bread bags and finally worked out what these people were going on about when it came to the right and wrong side of the fabric and got to work. The videos I watched promised a project done in about 30 minutes.

I briefly considered sewing a couple of tea towels, or even buying something online. I then remembered I had this fabric, I was going to use it for another project that never eventuated. This seemed like the time to pull it out and use it. (And save myself some cash). Locating my ironing board and iron in my laundry, hidden next to the recycling centre, I set it up put my fabric on and ironed it out. For an amateur such as myself, even I knew that I needed to iron it out flat. I then needed a pattern or a template. Freezer bag to the rescue! I placed my fabric on the bench (wrong side up) put down the freezer bag and traced around it, leaving space on the sides as I knew (from previous sewing projects and these very well informed YouTube seamstresses) that I needed to account for extra space.

Then I pinned and got sewing. Halfway through this, I forgot that I didn’t have pretty ribbon or string I could put through (as a drawstring) like all the YouTubers had and made my own “ribbon” out of an old pair of holey pants, thus drawing out the entire process. This was more complicated than I originally thought as it wasn’t as easy as just snipping a couple of long pieces of fabric. If I did that, I’d have uneven fabric and loose stuff everywhere. Realising this, I kind of rolled them up and then sewed them so that they looked like fabric headbands. And right now, a light bulb appeared on the side of my head as I could totally use the leftovers to create a headband. I’m so creative.

After I made my fabric headbands/ribbons I got back to finishing my sewing. My husband came in, and proudly showed him what I had done. He asked ‘are you going to do a drawstring?’ Uh no. My “ribbons” were way too thick and I decided to just tie it around the top and hoped that it wouldn’t come undone in the fridge. He then suggested loops, like belt loops and I got back to work cutting up the scraps into loops and putting them on the top at the open end and sewing them up. I created three thick ones; two on either end and one in the middle. I went to show my husband in the office. He then pointed out that because I’d put a loop through the top in the middle, how would I get the bread in? I threw my project down in frustration and stormed out of the room annoyed with myself. I needed to cook dinner for my children who were having fun outside whilst I’d slaved over these bread bags that I’d now ruined.

I made dinner, they ate outside whilst I ate inside and kept on working on the bags. My husband suggested I cut the loops in the middle and see if I could turn them into smaller loops around the top of the bag instead of you know, across it and preventing anything entering said hole. I had nearly finished when they both had showers, but stopped as well, it was bed time. When they were FINALLY in bed, my youngest came out a couple of times whilst I was working and chatted to me about how great it would be if he and his brother could stay up late, watch TV until dark time, played wrestles and THEN go to bed. I smiled, “Yes, that would be great. Goodnight honey, now go back to bed” “I just need to fix this toy” “Mate, it’s bed time. Goodnight. Go to bed” Off he went, but alas! He was not ready to sleep. He came out one more time commenting on the Lego city we had built before he and his older brother went to bed. “Yes mate, but I’ll have to put it away if you keep coming out”. That did the trick as he went to bed, I finished off my project (now nearly 9pm). It took me 5 hours, not 30 minutes, thus YouTube lied. Oh well, I’m partly to blame for not being 100% prepared. Oops.

I then took some pictures of adorable bread bags and shared them online. They are by no means perfect. The hand stitching of the loops are a bit messy, but they are functional! I will give them a gentle machine wash (in cold water) and tomorrow I will be baking bread! Here you go, a picture!

If you got this far, well done. My husband just walked in surprised I’m still awake (it’s 11pm) – and I replied that I have a need to connect to the outside world since being confined to this house with two small boys (5 and 3). They are adjusting to life at home with Mummy, and this week they’ve been bored. I’ve spent most of the week recovering from a wisdom tooth extraction I had on Tuesday so it’s been painful, but even more painful was attempting to explain to my kids that because Mummy had an operation on her mouth, I wasn’t able to 1)speak much and 2)play much. My 5 year old was like “Mummy, your phone could speak for you” So I downloaded a text to speech text for their benefit. Apparently it’s very funny when Mummy’s words come out of my phone in a British robot voice. Even weirder when I applied accents to it (yest the app had some accents which was bizzare) Mr 5 was in hysterics when I was trying to communicate to them to do something as simple as brush their teeth.

Goodnight world. I keep praying that God would hold us close and give us His peace during these crazy times.

Random Ramblings

For someone who professes to enjoy writing (me), my blog has few too posts to suggest otherwise. I really need to up my game and find some interesting stuff to write about.

It doesn’t help that this blog isn’t one topic; just my own ramblings on whatever I want to write about on a particular day.

You can tell that I haven’t thought this post through, because I’ve got nothing. Unless you all want to hear about my birthday. Which went fine, I felt special – and my facebook account had lots of birthday messages (it’s the main reason I have a Facebook account – it’s the one day of the year I get the most attention on my page lol). I had friends and family calling/visiting and the cake I made for my birthday is pretty yum for a paleo cake.

I found the recipe online and yeah, made it. I’ll probably use the same recipe for my youngest child’s birthday next month (he’ll be 3) but decorated to his preference – which will be a transformers type cake.

I finished my book over the last week, and now just need to upload my illustrations onto my laptop so I can edit and hopefully publish, so that’s exciting.

Then after that one, I have another I’m working on, involving farts and (possibly) other bum related activities.

I’ll leave you with another drawing; Optimus Prime – a picture that my eldest asked me to draw for him earlier this week after he went to bed. This whole story book writing is really reinvigorated my love for drawing. Except these days it’s flying toasters and transformers instead of flowers and faces.

Upcoming book…

It’s a rainy day here. I had a lovely catch-up with some friends in the last two days and looking forward to my birthday tomorrow.

I’m currently watching my kids eat their afternoon tea that they made – toast with jam, whilst I contemplate another coffee on this cold winter day.

I wanted to share a picture I drew for an upcoming book I will be publishing online. I’m a little excited. I wrote a story, and I hope people like it. It’s a kid’s book, about a toaster. It’s a bit weird, but hey that’s what happens when you make up a poem about a toaster.

I’ve heard, as an artist that you draw what you see. This is my cartoon kitchen that took me 1.5hours to complete. Still need to add more colour, which is varying shades of brown.

Enjoy my cartoon kitchen, complete with my cartoon Thermomix in the corner. 😀

My driving journey

15 years I have had my learner’s permit. I got it when I was 18, and for the next 5 years made some half-hearted attempt to drive, not really getting into the feel of it. With one exception. My dad had organised driving lessons for me when I got my L’s and they taught their new drivers in Mini Cooper’s. I have decided that when I retire, that’s what I want. They’re small, beautiful cars that just drive so nicely.

I could have gone for my lisence before I got married, but that didn’t happen. I married a great guy who was willing to drive me places (thanks Phil).

We moved to Melbourne, and I discovered public transport. Again, there was some half-hearted attempt to do some more driving. I booked in lessons and was driving up until I was very heavily pregnant with my second. It was hard, the only time I got to drive was on the weekends. And I hated it. I made Phil push me, but I hated it. So I stopped again.

Moving from Melbourne back to Regional Vic made me realise that I kind of needed my lisence. I spent most of last year driving my Mother in law’s car to gain my confidence and driving skills.

In January this year, I booked in driving lessons, and convinced friends and family to babysit whilst I concentrated on getting my licence.

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going for my lisence. It had been long enough. Every year for the last at least five years, my New Year Resolution was to get my lisence. I can now finally tick that off my resolution list as I DID IT!! I am now legally allowed to drive by myself. I’m on my green Ps and went for my own solo drive today down to the shops. It felt so weird to drive without an entourage.

My drive test was on Thursday, and it went better than I expected. I got told by my driving instructor and the tester how well I drove. I was estatic. I couldn’t believe that I passed on the first go. I’ve already driven twice by myself in the last couple of days just to get used to driving by myself.

As my husband said when I got my lisence FREEDOM!!!!