N&A@SpringCreek

Strawberries!

2012-02-11T14:03:00.001+11:00

Our veggie patch is starting to produce! I just picked about a punnet of strawberries and there is more left for tomorrow!

Healthy but yummy muffins

2012-01-31T22:00:00.001+11:00

My husband usually loves my home cooking but he hasn't been able to have any for the past couple of weeks as he is on a diet. To make him feel better I decided to bake something he could eat! I had baked healthy muffins before and had been decidedly unimpressed with the tasteless results! So I set out to create something that was healthy, somewhat diet friendly but still tasted nice. Here is the result! I was really quite impressed with it, they need a better name though as the best I could come up with so far are honey fruit yoghurt muffins. Hope you like them!

1 1/4 cup wholemeal flour
1/4 cup almond meal
1/2t cinnamon
1/2 cup bran (I used all bran)
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 banana
Lots of berries (I used 3-4 handfuls of frozen silvenberries which are similar to blackberries)
1 egg
1 150g tub of yoghurt (I used vaalia strawberry low fat yoghurt)
50g butter
1 1/2t baking powder

Preheat oven to 200deg
Whisk egg
Melt honey and butter together
Mix all ingredients
Spoon into patty cases in muffin tin, I used a cupcake size muffin tin.
Bake until just cooked through when tested (I cooked for 12-15mins then used the grill to just brown the top so that they didn't dry out)

Veggie garden

2012-01-24T11:47:00.001+11:00

My husband has been busy over the last couple of weeks setting up our veggie garden! Last year we trialled a couple of ways to set it up including bed size, watering plan and how the veggies were planted in the garden beds and we have put our learnings into the first of the beds for the vege patch and this is the result! It looks fabulous and I can't wait for the corn and potatoes!

Paid Parental Leave Rant

2011-12-20T10:35:00.003+11:00

Ok so deep down I'm really thankful that we have the paid parental leave but I'm even more thankful that I'm not relying on it to pay my mortgage!!!! I have to have a rant about the bureaucracy involved!
So I dutifully submitted my claim (twice since you have to fill out the paper form and the online form which are virtually the same). Then the family assistance office has 21 days to process it, to make it easy lets call this 3 weeks rather than worrying about if they are working days or not. Of course they take the full 3 weeks to process. Then my employer has 14 days to accept or decline, call it 2 weeks. Of course the payroll representative of my employer chooses to accept on the 14th day because "I didn't want to log in more often than I had to". This same payroll representative indicated to me that the family assistance office then takes about 3 weeks to pay my employer then and only then will my employer pay me. 8 weeks of the 18 weeks of paid parental leave is up before I get paid a cent!!!
Can you sense the frustration??? I feel for those out there who are relying on these payments to pay their bills/rent/mortgage!
I think I will have to laugh or I'll go around the bend!

Christmas Pudding

2011-12-13T16:11:00.001+11:00

I love Christmas pudding! This recipe is one I've developed from a few different recipes with my favourite ingredients and without my least favourite ingredient, peel. Its very flexible so add the fruit you like best!

1.5kg of dried fruit (I add approx 750g raisins, 250g sultanas, 250g currants, 250g pitted prunes and a pack of glace cherries)

brandy

315g butter

250g sugar

1t mixed spice

1/2t nutmeg

250g plain flour

6 eggs

300ml milk

250g breadcrumbs (fresh not stale)

1 apple

Soak fruit in brandy for 2-3 days (I often soak the fruit for a week),

Blend butter into the dry ingredients (except the breadcrumbs),

Beat the eggs together with the milk,

Make the breadcrumbs and grate the apple,

Add the dry ingredients and breadcrumbs to the fruit and then the milk and eggs,

Place mixture in pudding bowls and boil for as long as you can on the day of making (atleast 4 hours) and atleast 1 hour on the day of eating.

The puddings can be boiled and stored in pudding bowls or in fowlers vacola jars (I'm lucky enough to have some number 28 jars which are perfect for puddings!)

Whats wrong with this picture???

2011-09-14T20:27:00.000+10:00

I came home to find one escapee steer wandering in the driveway! He was having a lovely time! He looked a little lost without his mates though! He calmly (after one jump kick of protest) wandered back to the paddock...

and patiently waited for me to open the gate for him to return to his mates!

Giraffe for Bubby

2011-08-18T21:26:00.000+10:00

I just finished this evening at my thursday night sewing class at Patchwork Orange a Giraffe from Sewn Toy Tales by Melly and Me for Bubby! Hopefully when Bubby (has been born and) is old enough he'll love it!

Steers are making themselves at home

2011-08-13T16:10:00.000+10:00

The steers have now been on our property for two weeks and they have done a fastastic job of eating/trampling down our back paddock.

They also seem to have made friends with the chickens and spend most of their time under the trees by the chicken shed.

king of the mountain...

2011-08-13T16:05:00.000+10:00

The alpacas have now eaten their way through to the rock pile and Lad (male cria) discovered how much fun it is to play I'm the king of the mountain!

Galloway steers arrive!

2011-07-30T12:03:00.000+10:00

Thanks Dad!

My birthday present this year from Dad is three 9mth old Galloway steers! They are making themselves at home in the paddock! The golden retrievers haven't discovered them through the fence yet... Could be exciting when they realise they have company the other side of the fence!

Keep eating little steers!

Quilt for my baby

2011-07-18T11:46:00.002+10:00

Quilt top that I've made for my not yet born baby. It's a lone star and ribbon star blocks made from quilting treasures Beatrix Potter flannel fabric that I had been saving!

Thank you Bondville and Hunter baby!

2011-06-17T16:39:00.000+10:00

I went to the post office and the gorgeous onesie that I won from the Hunter baby competition on the Bondville blog was here! Sooo exciting! Baby now has clothes to wear when he chooses to arrive!! The onesie is so cute and looks like it will be very comfy. It is the same one as the post on the Bondville blog that annouces that I won the competition.

Thanks again Hunter baby and Bondville!

Cherries or Plums?

2011-01-12T20:50:00.000+11:00

Despite how much they look like cherries the fruit in this photo are actually plums! We have found several plum trees growing in our back paddock! A couple have ripened to red and others have ripened to yellow. If anyone could tell us what type of plums these are that would be great!

Plums picked from the trees in our back paddock

We have soooo many! Some friends have picked bucket loads and there are still more to pick! I've stewed some for dessert tonight! Beautiful! I didn't over sugar them as I love the slightly sour flavour. I think this weekend I'll pull out the preserving kit that my mother-in-law has lent me and see if I can successfully preserve some!

Stewed plums, yum!

surrounded!

2011-01-08T14:46:00.000+11:00

Some friends took a photo of our property from a helicopter! It shows that we really are surrounded on three sides by water! To think that 6 months ago there was no water there, only dry scrub!

The vege patch

2011-01-02T19:26:00.000+11:00

We have started on the vege patch that we have been planning for months! We settled on the site right outside the chicken house which has now been renamed to the parliament! Today we marked it all out and planned where the watering system will go. There will be 4 beds 1m wide and 8-9m long and 4 additional 1.5m square beds for herbs and strawberries. In the middle of the area there are some really large unmovable rocks which we are thinking of making a feature, perhaps with something like pumpkins or another climbing fruit or vege plant growing over them. Progress so far...

Also Gedalyn ate lucernechaff from my hands this morning! :)

holidays...

2010-12-29T11:53:00.000+11:00

We are having a wonderful holiday! Our gardens are looking gorgeous after lots of mowing, weeding and pruning! I had such fun yesterday, I went to visit Heather from Braeside Alpacas for a spinning lesson and learnt a mountain load about preparing fibre for spinning and spinning fibre! We washed Lass's fleece and last night I used the hand carders that I borrowed from her to make rolags and started to spin them. The results look promising!

We can now see Gedalyn's cria moving! Her due date must be fast approaching! The photo is of Lass, Gedalyn and Julie relaxing in the shade, almost in the shelter and accompianied by ducks!

Mahler and Bartok love their food toys, I stuffed a kong toy and a ball with biscuits. These will keep them amused for hours! There was a minor scuffle when Bartok's toy had run out and he decided to see if Mahler would give his up... the answer was a definite no!

RAIN!

2010-12-26T21:04:00.002+11:00

Hope you have had a wonderful Christmas! We have just returned home to find we have had >100mm rain in the last 24hrs!!!

Sleet or Snow?

2010-10-16T08:48:00.000+11:00

The weather forcast here today is for snow, at the moment we have a rain, snow and sleet combination happening! burr! When I first woke up it was only sleet... Very pretty picture of the sleet falling on our violets!

Windy!

2010-10-15T16:22:00.000+11:00

I can't believe how windy it has been today! All roads from my work back into town were blocked for 3 hours today! I was very relieved to be home with only minimal damage. Debris on the road and was very glad that I was driving an all wheel drive, some minor flooding and some small trees had falled down but not blocked the road. Sadly though the beautiful tree in our front yard has lost a branch and fell on the paddock fence...

Our new weather station indicates that we have had 41mm of rain today! I don't believe the wind speed readings though! It must have recorded them between gusts...

my current crochet project...

2010-10-11T21:47:00.000+11:00

Not long ago I decided to learn to crochet... My first project is a brown granny square crochet blanket with some brown wool that I'd bought for another project but had never started!
4 blocks done... many to go!

birthday eggs

2010-10-09T10:57:00.000+11:00

So the chooks pulled out something special for Andrew's birthday! A huge double yoke egg! check out the size difference between the normal size eggs and the huge egg. The double yoke egg didn't even fit in the egg carton!

Breakfast was beautiful our own eggs, local bacon, fresh bread and some mushrooms.

Happy Birthday Andrew!

EGGS!

2010-10-02T19:10:00.000+10:00

Our chickens have been ramping up to full production, 6 eggs today for the first time! We have some wonderful friends staying with us this weekend who have been helping us out in the garden. When we went to find eggs this morning we found that all 6 chickens had gifted us with eggs! 4 were in this particular nesting box and made such a pretty picture!

Chickens

2010-09-22T20:51:00.000+10:00

I can't believe how much fun chooks are as pets!
They flock to the door when we enter the pen and crouch to be picked up!
Our family helped us build the most amazing chook house... happy chooks!

We have 6 chooks and the first egg has been laid!

The first egg was a week ago and production is ramping up, we have been finding two per day!

Hello World

2010-09-22T09:27:00.000+10:00

Hello World!
New to blogging, watch this space!