Another month slips by! I have wanted to blog but I've been keeping a secret for a couple of months and me being me, find it hard to keep my own secrets lol, I can keep everyone elses secrets, just not my own. I can now let you in on this news but not just yet, I have other stuff to blog ;)

The munchkins had a quiet and relaxing 2 weeks of school holidays. Amusing themselves at home, playing together without the usual sibling fighting! We did visit my family for a couple of days, enjoying some much wanted op shopping, coffee at a gorgeous café, birthday celebrations for B3 and myself (my mum sure knows how to make us feel like we don't need to eat for a month after visiting her lol) and general catching up on all the happenings with everyone.

My brother, Jamal, has been selected to represent Australia (proud sister moment right here :) ) at the Special Olympics Asia Pacific Games which are being held in Newcastle, NSW, in December this year. He's one of 2 athletes from Mount Gambier who will be participating. Currently all the Aussie team members are individually fundraising to help cover their costs of getting to and participating in the games. Each member has the same fundraising goal, all monies will cover things like travel, athlete insurance, uniforms, participation fees etc. If you have a spare $ to help Jamal reach his goal it would be greatly appreciated by him and our family or you could simply leave a message of support and cheer here on my blog and i'll pass it on :) https://specialolympics.myetap.org/fundraiser/asiapacgames/individual.do?etapCacheBuster=1371188812248&participationRef=4136.0.845234217

We built a new letter box. Our other one was slightly on the small side and not too weather proof. Our new one is huge and no water gets in. It's made from the top of a rubbish bin (thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, although it was a recycled paper only bin). I think it would look good if we could get 3 more in different colours and replace the neighbours boxes that stand alongside ours.

Miss Pigsy had another litter of piglets. I know, it wasn't meant to happen this soon but the boar couldn't be contained. Luckily for me, there were no complications and Miss Pigsy is such a great mother this time round. 3 more weeks and we should be able to wean them off mum and this time we'll be putting a GREATER distance between boar and sow! I'm waiting on the ear tags to arrive so we can send the 1st lot of piglets to the sale yards, currently we have 17 pigs of varying ages and my gosh, they eat a lot!

 

 

Check out this mushroom our neighbour collected while out mushrooming. It's bigger then a dinner plate! Very edible but this one was destined for show and tell at school with B3. I've never seen one so big before, the munchkins wondered how many fairies would have lived under it! I do hope the fairies were able to find another home ;)

 



 



Hmmm, I guess I should tell you my news. We're moving! Only 10kms down the road and around the corner hehe. We've purchased a farmlet, 40 acres in size with a 4 bedroom house, stables, sheds, tanks, paddocks and more, everything we could ask for. I can't tell you how excited the kids are, they'll each have their own room with walls and doors! After living in this small open plan church with very little privacy and it will be a welcome change. We're keeping the church and will renovate it properly which will be much easier while not living here. It'll become a holiday house of sorts for us when I need to get away from the farm lol or visitors if they choose. The man of the house is looking forward to being a hobby farmer as am I. I'll have calves to rear again, be able to take in orphan lambs, have a huge orchard and vegie patch! So many ideas and drawings have been thrown around. Settlement is at the end of this month so only a few days and we'll be able to slowly move things in. The good thing about keeping the church is the extra storage and we don't have to rush about packing and moving :)

 

Until next time

~x~



 

to our awesome B3 :) 8 years old Saturday just gone..

No big party but it's the 1st time in a looong time that the man of the house has been home for celebrations on the actual day. As requested, we had McMummy's for lunch followed by a Green Piggy Angry Birds chocolate cake that I created, I think it looked pretty good and B3 was very happy with it.

B3 chose his own gift, lego of course and as a family we gave him a dvd player, headphones and a lego dvd, now he doesn't have to borrow his sisters dvd players!

That night we had a bonfire at a neighbours house which was a great end to a special lil mans birthday :)

Until next time
~x~

 

 

Not potatoes I've grown. These came from a spud farm not far from home and are now on their way to the Smith Chip factory in Queensland.

The joys of having a husband who drives trucks, the munchkins and I get to visit places we'd not think of visiting otherwise. Mondays excursion was to a potato farm. The potatoes are normally freshly picked but these ones had been stored in the ground, commonly known as root cellaring, for a couple of weeks, meaning, they were dug, dried out a bit in the sun for a day then turned back into the soil usually with a layer of straw mulch over them so they keep fresh.

B3 was quite excited to help with the grading of the spuds. After the spuds went through the washer he picked out the ones that had rotten soft bits or were cut with the harvest and threw them in a crate that was destined for animal feed or for the farmers dinner table. The really small spuds went into a different crate and were taken to another farm for planting. The spuds then went up a conveyor belt into the truck and off they went on their journey.

Until next time
~x~

*sigh* where do the days go? There's either not enough hours in the day or not enough days in the week, it doesn't help when we keep losing days, or is it we're losing our marble?? lol


Our B1 turned 13 this month. I still find it hard to believe I've been a mum for 13 years! She had a quiet family party at home the weekend prior to her special day and received some special gifts. My mum made a gorgeous quilt for her, not quite a single bed size but much bigger than a lap quilt. B1 has been wrapped in it ever since, it must be warm! On the actual day we had a special dinner and icecream cake with a couple more gifts from her siblings.

the gorgeous quilt

icecream cake 

Family party



Mothers day was also celebrated on the same weekend. I received some great school made gifts from the munchkins as well as a cozy dressing gown and my darling husband gave me the most gorgeous gift, a quaint 1960's caravan. I'm going to give it a big makeover, outside and in, it's something I've been dreaming of for the past 3 or so years and it will probably take another 3 years to get the makeover done! I'm forever looking through the Vintage Caravan magazines and drooling over the cool, retro vans and accessories. I have a pinterest board of all sorts of ideas I can do to my van, who I've named Eveie. I've settled on a colour, just not sure of the shade, I also have half an idea of how I want the inside to look. I'm excited!

Eveie the 10ft 1960's van

The vegie patch is growing well. The brassicas are all forming heads, onions have popped up after I thought the summer heat had been to harsh for them, we even have what we a certain is a sunflower plant growing where the pigs were, don't know how as we've not fed sunflowers to the pigs but we'll let it continue to grow and hopefully it will flower. It seems I also have sunflowers growing in the lawn out the backyard, they can only be from the guinea pig feed, it's such a muddled growing year in the Wimmera of Victoria!

Our little town has been saddened by the sudden death of one of the locals. He was a fit, not quite 70 year old, semi retired farmer. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family.

We've had a couple of bonfires the past month, not as many as we had last year, it seems everyone has busy lives this year and it's no fun having a bonfire on your own lol.

Until next time

Keep your loved ones close

~x~

2 years ago Wednesday just gone we turned this shoe box into a home, got the munchkins settled in school and made new friends. It's been a challenge at times, I miss not having my family in walking distance, the extended family is missed too but I know we did the right thing and we are blessed to have what we have.

Nothing gets done in a hurry around here lol It seems like the house will always be a work in progress but we are having fun doing it so that's ok. Each little bit we do is one less thing we need to do next time :)

Until next time
~x~

Ahh, the hot months are now behind us, the fire restrictions have been lifted and we can start enjoying our weekend bonfires once again.

Here's a look back at some of the 2012 bonfire season :) I have lots more shots but didn't want it to look like we are pyromaniacs lol

On Thursday when The man of the House was home, i made him light our 1st bonfire for the season. Unfortunately B1 wasn't home to celebrate but i wanted it done before we had the 1st neighbourhood bonfire and hubby wasn't going to be home for that. Lots of very dry twigs and leaves, cardboard and the odd unuseable pallet put out a huge amount of heat.

Saturday night the 1st neighbourhood bonfire was lit. Gosh, how i've missed the warm glow of an open fire, the smokey haze, the relaxing with neighbours and friends from afar and of course toasted marshmallows!

The kids had a ball toasting marshies, well, setting them on fire lol, making them crunchy on the outside and a molten gooey mess on the inside.

A simple bbq, a few drinks and lots of laughter made for a lovely night.

toasting marshmallows over the homemade bbq

being silly for the camera

Until next time
~x~

A giant atlantic pumpkin grown by my neighbour. Circumference 123cms. Weight approx 120kgs. Hollow and not at all good for eating but the pigs enjoyed it! Very few seeds. There were a couple of smaller pumpkins on the vine but most of the energy of growing a big pumpkin went into this one.

We'll try to grow an even bigger one next season :)

Until next time
~x~