The Genial Hearth
I’ve just put the kettle on, join me for a cuppa and a chat.
Archive for Blogging
December 27, 2008 at 3:45 pm · Filed under Blogging, Cygnet, Paddington
Christmas and Boxing Day are done!
Now we’re just surrounded by more stuff—people have been very good to us (Cygnet could pretty much be a one-baby advertisement for Lamaze toys!)
Lots of posts to catch up on, and decisions and plans to make for the coming year. I’m hoping to fill in the missing Advent posts over the next week (it was a choice of doing stuff, or blogging stuff… so I chose the doing:-) ) But otherwise, I wouldn’t expect to hear much from me until we’re going to start back at ’school’ in the middle of January. We’ll be busy catching up with folks, going away for a few days, and enjoying Paddington’s company while he’s on leave.
Hope you all had a good Christmas, that your New Year celebrations are enjoyable, and that 2009 holds many good things for you!
December 22, 2008 at 11:34 am · Filed under Advent, Baking, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Puggle, Season
Three dozen Fruit Mince Tarts made:-)
I haven’t actually made them in years, so this is a nice change:-)
I didn’t make my own Fruit Mince this year (maybe next year, I reckon Puggle may well be able to do it himself by then), but I still had home-made Fruit Mince, thanks to Lizzy_bbb. I did fail to check I had enough Shortcrust pastry (I had already decided to just use ready-rolled sheets, to simplify matters), so we did the rest with Puff pastry… They’re not as good (they don’t look right:-( ), but they’ll taste fine:-)
No recipe this year, basically circles of shortcrust pastry, place them in a tin, add a teaspoon of fruit mince and top with a cross or some other decoration out of the leftover shortcrust. Bake for about 15-20 minutes in a moderate/hot oven.
December 19, 2008 at 9:55 am · Filed under Blogging, Carnivals, Domestic Life, Food, Menu
Friday: Bottomless Quiche
Saturday: BBQ (sausages and chops) with friends
Sunday: From the Freezer (beef sausages and lentil stew)
Monday: With my folks
Tuesday: BBQ (sausages and kebabs, and white bean salad) with friends
Wednesday and Thursday will be part of the next week, because I’ll have to shop then—I’m not braving the shops on Boxing Day for groceries!
Off to sew!
December 18, 2008 at 8:31 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Season
Make Shortbread.
I don’t think I’ve managed this since Puggle was born. And this year is no different. It may still occur if I fluke my way through everything else to complete, but that’s exceedingly unlikely!
I did get a decent portion of the remaining Christmas present shopping completed though, and Puggle and Bilby got to go to the beach, so not an unproductive day:-)
December 17, 2008 at 8:31 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Season
Make Peppermint Creams.
As so often happens around this time, we didn’t get this done. There was a fair amount of present making completed though:-)
We will get to these over the weekend (I hope!), as they provide a good balance to the other baking.
December 16, 2008 at 8:27 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Books, Christmas, Domestic Life, For Children, Picture Books, Season
Read Hettie’s Christmas Gift (doesn’t seem to be available through Amazon—I guess, because it’s Australian.)
We did this. This is another book to which I really enjoy returning. I love the fact that it provides a link between the northern hemisphere traditions that we read about, and our southern hemisphere reality.
December 15, 2008 at 10:08 pm · Filed under Advent, Bilby, Blogging, Books, Christmas, Family, For Children, Picture Books, Season
Read Is That You, Father Christmas?
. Bilby became very excited when she recognised the Christmas tree in the book as being like the Christmas tree in the corner of the room:-)
December 12, 2008 at 10:22 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Organisation, Puggle, Season
Make Blueberry and Cardomom Bread.
When doing the shopping, I wasn’t able to find dried blueberries (I think I usually find them at Woolies… I was at IGA). Instead I got dried cherries—what the recipe actually called for!
Sadly though, I napped with the children (three nights of Bilby waking in the middle of the night… teeth??), so I failed to put the wheat on to soak in time. None of this bread today:-( (We will make it though, possibly Monday… I’d like to see what it’s like with the cherries:-) ) I’ve cooked some fruit loaf instead, and Puggle was telling me today how he is going to squeeze orange juice for Dada in the morning:-) (I don’t think Paddington reads here every day, so it should be safe to say that:-) )
December 11, 2008 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Blogging, Books, Domestic Life, For Children, Picture Books
Read Wombat Divine
.
This is a family favourite:-) We read it a couple of times today, and I am sure we will read it many more times until it is put away:-)
December 11, 2008 at 11:26 am · Filed under Advent, Bilby, Blogging, Christmas, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Puggle, Season
Make presents.
The day ended up being far busier than I had anticipated, so although the activity was ready to begin, Puggle and Bilby only really started on it today. Puggle is being highly industrious and productive though:-) He seems really quite excited by them (can’t give you too much detail though, I’m pretty sure some of the recipients are reading:-) )
December 8, 2008 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Freezer, Season
Help make the Ice-Cream Plum Pudding.
Well, we eventually got the fruit on to soak:-) Haven’t finished the rest (so no photos:-) )… but we’ll get to it:-)
December 6, 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Baking, Bilby, Blogging, Books, Cygnet, Domestic Life, Family, Food, For Children, Paddington, Picture Books, Puggle, Season
Today the task was to read The Secret of Saint Nicholas
. This was one of the books we had from the library last year, and Puggle recognised it when we got it out again:-)
This gave us a chance to catch up on our cooking:-) So while I put Bilby down for her nap, the boys baked:-)
December 5, 2008 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Bilby, Blogging, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Puggle, Season
So they shaped the gingerbread (well some of it, and there’s still more to do).
Today’s tasks were making Speculatius (which we’ll end up doing tomorrow morning) and putting out their shoes for Saint Nicholas.
December 4, 2008 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Baking, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Plans, Progress, Season
Today’s task was to help cook Gingerbread.
We didn’t quite get to this in a timely fashion. Mostly because they were so taken with the card making:-) In the end, I made the dough (I did remember to add more ginger to this batch, we’ll see how it goes) and they will play with it tomorrow.
December 3, 2008 at 11:58 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Christmas, Craft, Domestic Life, Season
Making Christmas cards.
I hadn’t anticipated the busy day we had (although, given how busy it was, I doubt we’d have completed any of the possible activities). Still, now we’re ready to do them tomorrow.
The basket has some card blanks, as well as textas for drawing with. There are also some plain rectangles and decorative scissors (for card inserts). I’ll add glitter pens to this (I forgot to put them on the shopping list:-( )
The small tray has some Christmas-themed paper stamps, and some paper. You can see it, but there’s some glue on the shelf as well.
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by A. A. Milne
by Andrew Lang
