Thursday, May 31, 2012

Home made Pasta

On Sunday the kids and I had our first attempt at making home made pasta. For some reason I have always been intimidated to try this myself and given that we needed a two hour window (one hour for preparation and at least one hour for drying) there never seemed to be the right time. The pasta we made has 3 eggs, 300 gms of flour and 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil which are ingedients that most people have on hand at home.

I really had no idea what I was doing and at the same time wanted to take some photos of our process so as usual it became a big event. It's actually really quite simple to make and we ate it for dinner with home made bolognese sauce on top. The kids thought it was the BEST pasta they have ever tasted and we were so thrilled with our results. It's such a simple thing and we got such a big kick out of making it. Here's a few photos of our home made pasta making afternoon.














Thursday, May 24, 2012

Photo Walk | Footprints & Country Old (by Karin)

My good friend and "Project 365 - 2009" partner is on holidays at the beach this week and I sent her the link to Elise's photo walk and thought she might like to do some themes herself for some relaxing photography pictures while she is away.  She has totally impressed me with her first one themed "Footprints" and her next one today "Country Old".  I think they look fantastic and the kids and I are already talking about themes for this weekend.  They both want to pick a theme so I suggested we do one on Saturday being Sienna's pick which she is wanting "Flowers" and on Sunday James is wanting "Trees".  This is such a cool and easy thing to do. 

                                                           Photo Walk  |  Footprints 

Photo Walk  |  Country Old

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Photo Walk | Texture

Inspired by Elise's recent postings on her photo walks (down the left hand side she has a title called Photo Walks, just click on this as I'm having problems with blogger getting the link)  I decided since it was homework afternoon that we would eat afternoon tea in the car on the way home from school (thereby saving 15-20 minutes in preparation and eating time) and then when we got home, all the kids needed to do was unpack their school bags.  That way we could go for a 20 minute walk and come back home and get stuck into the homework.

James wasn't overly fussed when I told him initially about my idea of going for a walk to look for texturesd as he wanted to read his book however I told him we needed the fresh air and it would be fun and then we would do the homework.  To entice him further I told him that he was in charge of the iphone "notes" and had to list down all the items that we found ie tree, shade cloth, rocks etc. which he was keen on. So off we wandered up the street and looked for all sorts of different textures and we found plenty.

When I had taken enough photos and we were going to walk back I told Sienna it was her turn to have the iphone and she could take photos on the textures.  It was a nice little distraction from just coming home and playing in the backyard and besides that, if I let them play in the backyard for 20 minutes and called them into do their homework it's very difficult to entice them to stop playing and come and concentrate on homework.  So the walk was time out without causing a lot of "why do we have to come inside" quotes.  So without any further delay here are the 8x8 pages I made of our very first Photo Walk titled TEXTURE.  I highly recommend you do this little activity with your kids as you can find 15-20 minutes to get out of the house and it's free.  We actually were gone for 30 minutes but it was a very leisurely stroll.  This would be a good holiday activity as there are plenty of ideas you could use, numbers, specific colours, letters, shapes etc.  I'm going to see how many pages we can do maybe once a week and put it in a little 8x8 printed photo book of our neighbourhood which I think would be really cool.
 







Monday, May 21, 2012

More Instagram Pic's from Mother's Day

Here's some Instagram pics of Mother's Day which started out with Breakfast at our local cafe (YUM) with my Mum and my sister and then in the evening we had dinner with the family at my place.  I even went to the trouble to get the white linen table cloth out and ironed it so we could have a lovely table to eat at.  We all pitched in and made something starting with cheese and crackers, macadamia nut chicken, roast pumpkin and carrots with maple syrup, potato bake followed by our family's famous favourite Raspberry White Chocolate Cheesecake which I neglected to get a photo of because everyone got stuck into it before I got the chance...um...you'll just have to take my word for it, DELICIOUS!!!! 






Friday, May 18, 2012

Instagram Pics

I love the Instagram programme and the squareness of the photos which reminds me of the old poloroid instant camera we had when we were kids.  When I say "we" I mean Mum, ie our family.  As I always have my phone on me I never miss an opportunity to take a few pics with this little programme and the kids can work it out too so they take photos and pick a filter as well.  I have finally (with the help of my very smart IT guru nephew) loaded the pictures to my computer so I thought I would post a few of them. 









Saturday, May 5, 2012

Week in the Life - Day 7 - 29th April, 2012

I've finally got back to posting my Day 7 photos for Week in the Life which I really enjoyed doing.  Mind you, I haven't picked up the camera all week with the exception of a couple of iphone pics on Instagram.  I won't be looking at putting this together in my templates for at least another week or so.  I think once Ali Edwards starts posting her pages next week I'll want to jump right in.  Our Sunday was a relatively quiet day at home as it was raining and we were still recovering from being sick on Thursday and Friday.