Viking Dinner party

We belong to a Foodie Group, (which evolved out of our Bible Study group) that meets every couple of months to cook and eat together. We have a theme, and in the past have done French, Indian, Australian, Spanish, Italian etc..
This month was Scandinavian Viking! I decided to have a go at making gravlax, a cured salmon dish.

Apparently the Vikings would just bury theirs in the sand for a few months and eat it when it was nice and fermented. I decided to go with the hygenic glad-wrap/fridge metheod. It was delicious!!! I used this recipe.

Someone brought a bottle of Mead. I thought it tasted awful, like bay leaves, but some people really liked it.

Here is my plate before I pillaged it. From left, walnut flat bread, roast boar, roast meat, vegetable stew, red cabbage, and the gravlax on bread. I am not sure whether the Vikings would have served it with creme fresh, caviar and capers though...

I think one of these would make a great housewarming present to myself.

Should have been an architect!

My husband Dave that is. He is constantly surprising me through this house designing process with his good ideas, I have pretty much let him go for it with the architect, and together our new house is slowly coming together.

And as the weather gets chilly, I found the need to make a cosy blanket to snuggle under while watching TV at night. I used up some of my fabric stash, and bought some grey polar fleece to back it with.

Here is my littlest boy, busy with the very serious business of watching the Wiggles. As I approach my uni exams later this week (I have 2 on the one day, yikes!!!!) , I am very thankful for the Wiggles.

A bit teary

I have been stalking Rach's blog for news, and found myself all teary this afternoon when I logged on and saw her beautiful new baby. Well done, he is so divine. xxx

Busy Busy.

It's been two months since my last post, this blog neglect seems to be happeneing a lot lately. Hmmm...maybe it's the combination of 4 children, travelling husband, university, and everything else that fills my life.
And if we weren't busy enough already, we have just bought a block of land, put our current house on the market, and are designing a new house with the help of an architect.

It is very exciting planning a new home. My only real wants are lots of north facing windows and lots of cupboards. Bliss!
We have been doing lots of decluttering around here, and letting go of lots of stuff, it is wonderful.

Organisation with school age children (part 3)

"Go and clean your room!"

The words that strike fear into the hearts of children. Not only because they would rather be doing something else, but sometimes they simply do not know how or where to start.

For this reason I made a little sign for Sarah's bedroom so she does know where to start.

If she works through each item on the list, her room ends up pretty tidy, and she ends up pretty pleased with herself.

And then there were seven.

Meet Molly.
She arrived at our house on Sunday. She is an 11 week old Boxer and just gorgeous.