Wet and windy days....

Moments from our days indoors.....Besides spending time on the computers... we had time to clean our rooms, munch on oranges.....


and Yummy gluten free carrot cake....


Read several books between us.....


Get re-dressed into warm pj's (it is cold after all) and tackle a bit of math work.....while supervising the kitchen maid.....


Who was at the time baking ..... vegetarian sausage rolls......



And feta, baby spinach and kale scrolls for lunch.....(No pic after as they ate them too quick!)


We also spent some time talking about animal welfare and cruelty to animals. Reading about Bush Rangers, and learning how to take notes so that we can re-write things later. Drawing pictures, watching movies and documentaries. We started a journal each about a dangerous marine animal, A chose Stone fish and Z chose Salt water crocs. Some nice drawings to start them off were completed. We learned a bit about them from a documentary and are planning to research them further. There was even time for a little science before...
the boys went to see Pirates of the Carribean with their dad while mum got to stay home all alone and roast in front of the fire and read a book. Life is good! :-)

Hope your days are filled with sunshine! Love and Light to all!

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxo

Monday morning musings.......

There I was - lying in bed, snuggled under a nice warm blankies, listening to the soft fall of steady rain, and the stronger sound of water pouring over the drainpipe outside my window .... listening deeper still and hearing the sweet songs of so many native birds, happily greeting the day despite the dismal cold wet weather. Taking my sweet time, emerging from my warm cocoon into the day that I know will be busy and full, but trying to squeeze in that small extra moment of blissful nothing... ahhh.....sweet nothing.....warm bed.....mmmmmmm.....

when some hoon rev's up the street, and doors start slamming.... oh goodmorning populated little neighbourhood. Sigh. I was almost in the country side... I was ... I tell you!



It reminded me of when we first moved here, 14 years ago when a large number of the blocks were still undeveloped and there was far less traffic. We moved here to get away from the city life, to find a more natural haven for our children to grown up in. We had the best of both worlds here. The beaches, the lakes, the bush, the countryside, all within ten minutes walk or drive. But still not so far away from civilization when you needed it.

The addition of the suburb next door tripling in size, local farms being turned into large suburbs and traffic lights and a shopping centre down the road, have pretty much turned our little suburb into a noisy suburban hub that no longer appeals to the likes of me who yearns for the quietness of the country or more so the bushland around me again.


I am sometimes torn between the love I have for my home, (this house that started out seeming so big to us when we bought it, which we later made bigger as our family grew and needed more space. It is now once again feeling too big as one by one my children branch out and discover their own place in this world of ours) and my yearning for something more eco friendly on a larger piece of land where my herbs, plants and animals can roam freely without constraint. A place without noisy neighbours, revving engines and banging doors to intrude upon my silence and natures song.

But to have that, I guess I would have to move a bit further inland from this.......this vast ocean where I sometimes like to splash my feet. Where walking and breathing is very reviving to the soul. Ahh but then again, country air has much the same effect hey?


No matter where we are, there is beauty, there is nature, there is air to breathe. I guess we just need to be aware of it and be grateful for what we have. Today, I am most grateful for all the blessings bestowed upon me, no matter how big or small.

While I may long for a place in the country side, I am always grateful for the nature and beauty that surrounds me here. And even more so that today, my head is finally feeling clear and I can breathe through my nose again! Haha!

And now, I guess I better go and wake up my slothful children who inform me that they are in hibernation at the moment due to the cold weather. Hmmmm...as much as I have enjoyed the quiet peaceful morning and the time to catch up here and with emails, I think its about time they woke up and greeted the day. They are not bears after all!

Have a beautiful day everyone!

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

Taking it easy.....

I have been taking it a bit easy this week. After my declarations of feeling revived, it turns out I had a bit of a sinus problem, which left me feeling like sludge all week. The headaches were one thing, but then when it finally began to clear, I was left with constant sneezing and leaky watery nose and eyes. Yuck I say! Yuck! With not much sleep to go with it and loss of appetite for a few days, I was in the end feeling just a little sorry for myself.

Not for long though, in my usual fashion, I downed my herbs, soldiered on, ate nourishing things like this........yummmmmm.... (Pesto pasta with feta, baby spinach and Kale)

Of course there was still homeschooling, but as my head could not focus long enough or in fact stay up long enough for comfort, I spent a lot of time laying around, crochet hook in hand or in front of the fire trying to stay warm. Twas a good week for watching documentaries, yes it was!

I have been procrastinating a bit about writing up a homeschool learning report. I really like to do one at least once a month so I have some records to show, but finding the time this week to give it my full attention has been rather hard.

Today Zak and I watched a documentary about dangerous sea animals in Australia, it was a bit scary I must say. He also made some rock crabs for his ocean diorama which was put on the back burner for a while. Here are some pics from the day....

How to make a yellow rock crab....(because he liked yellow)

After pinching some white rocks from mama's garden, paint them all yellow...


When they are dry, draw some legs and claws, cut them out and glue them to your rock....


Note: If you are not stingy with the glue (Zak was not) the legs etc WILL slide off your rock) and you will have to fix them again. And again...and again....just sayin'


And of course it may take a while longer to dry....but your crabs will turn out cute anyway!


Hope all is well in your part of the world. Take care.

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

Spirit revived....

Well, Almost :-) I have been feeling a little overwhelmed with everything lately, hence my lack of posting here. Feeling a lot more centered today after a bit of a motor bike ride this morning past the beach and almost into the country but my man developed a migraine so back home for rest. We have both been just staving off a flu bug I think. Not quite letting it get us, but headaches keep creeping in. So hoping rest and nourishment will keep it at bay. Really there is no time for sickness here right now. Too much to do!

And so, instead of riding around the countryside, I am spending the day, pottering around. Almost finished the laundry and have a nice big pot of vegetable soup on the go. Now I am going to finish some knitting and crochet projects and hopefully fit in a little cross stitch before the day is over.

Periodically walking in and outside I am finding the sunshine blissfully rejuvenating today!

Hope you are all well!

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxo

Beautiful..Busy...Weekend

Its been a rather busy weekend down here! More so than usual it seems. Friday night was an early one as I was feeling rather tired after a week of continuous outings. Of course, I did not really sleep until I got my 1am message that Little Miss here was safely home to her friends house for the night after hitting the local night club.



She has taken to being 18 with gusto the past few months and is enjoying her weekends immensely. I have to say, it is exhausting just keeping up with her. OH to be so young again, where do they get their energy from?

Saturday morning I spent with my nephew Mr Yakka, we played out the back with the dogs and then he played with Zak for 10 minutes while I was finally permitted to go take a shower. Priorities you know? Once I was all clean and dressed, he donned a helmet and grabbed a scooter and we headed off to Nana's house which is just around the corner (about a 10 min walk) but which to 4 year old legs was so so far away........



We rode up the road........yes ON the road....don't tell his mum......hehe...



He tested out the scooters big wheels on the grass........it rolled okay, except for in the long grass..



And through the rocky bush trail....where I suggested that maybe I should carry it for him, he under no circumstances however was giving it up and maneuvered it the whole way...



We arrived at Nana's in one piece and helped get ready for Aunty Blossom's baby shower. Where, we ate lots of yummy food, played lots of games and he had fun playing show and tell with all the presents.....

After the baby shower, I headed home to get changed into something warmer and SB and myself headed over to our friends house for a bit of a birthday cake gathering. The boys stayed home for the first time at night ALL alone. They were very excited to say the least. They made their own dinner of chicken on rolls and were still up playing on their computers when we got home.



The birthday boy was very impressed with his cake.......I mean who would not be happy with one of Emma's cakes for their birthday......they not only taste AWESOME but they look AWESOME too. You can go check out some of Emma's other cakes over here. She is extremely talented in the creative dept. And she always comes up with the perfect cake for the recipient too....


Now if he could have just opened his eyes for the picture, it would have been perfect....oh well, he is getting old you know? Happy Birthday OLD MAN!



Sunday was spent with another walk around to Nana's (this time with Miss Peanut attached to Aunty K in her sling) to catch up a little more with family and then an afternoon of trying to catch up at home with washing, tidying, a little garden harvesting, herb drying, feeding the animals, cooking etc. Oh and kicking out teenagers who stumbled in at 2am the previous night and had not left yet. (It was our turn to host the after party sleep over) Just kidding, they all left one by one of their own accord. Then I hopped into bed very early, read half a book and created a few crochet squares ready for crafting.

Yep a busy weekend, but a fun one!

Hope yours was fun too!

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

Back to square one......

I may have mentioned a while back that the boys were taking a Hip Hop dancing class with their homeschool group. The class was specifically for boys although the teacher was a woman and they had a bit of fun, but were a bit disappointed when the teacher did not specifically teach "Hip Hop" dancing. She did however, try to keep the moves more masculine as she was trying to keep them interested. There was a bit of drama, hip hop and jazz thrown in. And at times a bit of stomping.

She later admitted that she did not really know how to dance hip hop properly and while she was happy to continue with the boys dancing class she would like to recommend another teacher, a male teacher who was far better at Hip Hop than her and that the boys could join the after school classes with him.

So it was decided that yes, we would give this a go. Only Zak and his friends Cal and Rory went for it though. So yesterday afternoon we rock up and I was watching the guy warm up and thought, Hmmm (He was pretty much spinning and pointing his toes and yes doing a touch of Ballet which is fine as most dance teachers can teach any form of dance, and as there was a little chest thrusting and hip hoppish moves at the end, I thought it would be all good).

The other teacher suggested the boys take two classes in a row and see which one they like as the first class had a few younger kids in it and the next was older kids. I waited around outside and my friend went off to do some shopping, fully thinking the boys would do both the classes.

When the first class ended, those boys came rushing out of the room like they could not get away fast enough. They were.....how to put this.......protesting rather loudly, so much in fact that I decided to remove them from the premises and talk OUTSIDE! My quiet suggestions of trying the next class which was being filled quickly with some rather noisy teenage girls had them exclaiming in no uncertain terms how "gay" the class was. Now they of course were using the word in the terms of gay meaning "lame", however, the teacher was obviously gay in the other way and at the risk of him being offended, well, we just left the building so I could listen to the boys concerns out of ear shot.

What was the problem? WELL, HE (being the teacher) made us to BALLET!!! Next, the boys all starting twirling in a rather exagerated manner and scoffing and putting on a rather effiminate voice which I assume was the teachers voice. OMG how embarrassing, I of course high tailed it even further from the building.

ME: "So you know that maybe he was just trying to get you warmed up and all stretchy so you could dance better? Its really good to know all forms of dance you know! "

THEM: "NO, he mostly taught us ballet the whole lesson".

ME: "So, you did not do any HIP HOP at all?"

THEM: "Well maybe a little at the end. But it was so gay!"

ME: "So I guess we won't be taking this class?"

THEM: NO WAY

And that was that my friends. Dancing has come to an end. Which is a great shame as Zak was really starting to enjoy the classes previously. Maybe I can find another school or an actual break dancing class. For now, I am stuck with trying to find something else for him to do over winter at least. Like I have time for this!

Have a great weekend all,

Hugs and smoochies xoxox

So...Do you want to see what I made with these?

You will have to pop over to Karisma's Kraft if you do! And please click on the followers if you want to keep up with all my crafty pursuits. I am not posting them here any more. 

Hope you are having a wonderful week! 

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

Unschooling Mondays.......

(Recent op shop scores)

I was very remiss in the edumacating of ones children on Monday! They slept in, so I went off to the beach with a little crochet in tow and hung out for a while with my friend Kel while SB had a quick surf.

Indi showed me how to make a fishing line, complete with rock sinkers and coral hook. She did try a cuttlefish sinker first but it was too light, so she used the rock and then decided that the stick was "stupid", as I had to leave after that, I am not sure how she fared in the end and whether she caught any fish. Will keep you posted.

SB and I decided to drive via a couple of other beaches on the way home and then ended up going shoe shopping. Shopping is always a quick adventure for us as we both don't like it. So we quickly bought some track pants for him and for me... some shoes...YES you heard me...shoes! My bare feet have really been feeling the cold this year and as they keep cracking and getting painful, I caved. We found some lovely soft leather shoes and as SB was supervising I came home with 3 pairs. He is very practical that way. LOL I would have ummed and ahhed and maybe got one pair but probably none. Do you like them?



I guess they would not be to everyone's taste. But I LOVE them! I love that they are soft and they don't rub or squash my feet. (I really do have a problem with keeping shoes on my feet!) I LOVE that they actually FIT my feet properly. I have small feet so find it hard to find anything that fits well.

Anyway, it was about this time the kids woke up and rang to find out where we had absconded to. They were cooking up a feast for breakfast and trying to find a way to cram the feta cheese bucket in the full fridge. Their sister was a little concerned they were going to break something. Hmmmm.

So after we got back the boys were about to do some maths when Zak decided he wanted to start his new math book. He opened it to find an interactive cd inside and that was it. They were both keen on checking it out and then spent the next couple of hours side by side "playing" maths games. It must have been fun as there was a quite a bit of laughing going on.

Later they spent some time riding their scooters up and down the house. Yes the house! It was cold outside and I do let them do it as long as they don't run anyone or anything over.



By this time I had folded the washing and cleaned up a bit and was sitting on the couch doing some crochet when Zak decided to read me a poetic story about Ocean Creatures. It was a fun story but had a lot of true facts so it brought up discussions on different sea creatures and their habits. He then found the book came complete with a heap of tattoos and was keen to stick some on himself and me. Thankfully, he was distracted by his brothers suggesting they go and play Minecraft and I was saved for the day. I won't be surprised if today however, I am sporting a new tattoo!

I decided to cook up a vegetable curry, some saffron rice and salad and build a big fire in the fireplace. With dinner cooked early, I once again put my feet up and tackled my crochet projects with gusto. And guess what? My little cardy that has been stressing me out with the increase in the wave pattern just seemed to flow like a dream, so I should be able to finally finish it! This is the pattern scheme Im using but I found the increase section for the sleeves was misprinted hence my frustration with getting it to work. I worked out my own scheme now so its back in action.


Tuesday was another busy day, took Gem to the shops to buy some warm pj's and ended up buying much more. We got some movies to watch as its been cold. On arriving home Zak was proud to show me that he had not only completed some math in his book, but played again on the computer maths, completed a whole unit of reading and work on Salamanders, practiced some handwriting AND did some drawings in his art book. His brother did some maths and lazed about in his usual teenage fashion. Hmmm

Today is going to be a park day as we have a party to attend. So Looks like a bit of an unschooly week really! Hope all is well in your part of the world.

Hugs and smoochies xoxoxox

A mathematical kind of day......

On Monday,  the teacher in me and the more relaxed natural learning mama were having a bit of a contest to see who was going to rule the day.  Feeling kind of obliged to lay out the "school work" on the one side, and sneak off to get creative and leave them to fend for themselves and seek out their own learning on the other found me in a spot of indecision.

With MR Just plan out my work and pass me the books on one side and MR independent learner on the other, I felt both obliged to "teach" and to run away at the same time. The teacher won...and it was decided we would get stuck into it.

So, we started the day with a bit of maths, which entailed Adem hopping online and watching a lesson then completing the tasks and me teaching Zak and him doing his lesson. Adem sailed through two lessons online and ran up and down the stairs printing out sheets as he was doing some sort of chart while Zak who was working on division soon became distracted and wanted to do something else. So I popped a box in front of him with 50 Brain games in it. Of course both of them spent the next 1/2 or so diligently trying to work out the brain teasers which of course were plain old fun games to them but which were actually a lot of mathematical questions, problems, drawings and mind blowing puzzles.

Later we were talking about measurements and radial symmetry when I remember seeing this post pop up on  Art projects for kids, which by the way you should follow for wonderful art/craft ideas for younger kids. Most of the stuff is a bit young for my boys, but we decided to give it a whirl just for the fun of it...... it was simple really. As Adem dislikes art intensely, we decided it was a math project and he very carefully measured and drew and came up with this....... perfect precision and very minimal decorations..... I was actually quite impressed with his patience and efforts....

Zak on the other hand, he who has a problem following instructions started off for some reason by drawing the page on the page, then the circle on the side, then he rubs it out and starts again. He then was using a ruler to measure the distances and drawing lines everywhere, then rubbing them out until in the end he did have a pretty okay looking peacock at which point he decided to rush and decorate in a frenzy of oil pastels and kind of forgot all about the whole symmetry experiment but who cares.....he made a pretty groovy peacock in his normal expressive sort of way......

With the day dragging on and mostly being about maths, we decided to do a little reading and comprehension which covered the areas of English and HSIE. I copied a whole unit of work from a book and the boys read the story, discussed it and then completed some of the tasks. Putting the book aside for later. 

For Science they also drew a food chain of what sea creatures eat...who eats who? And read some of the Seaside Naturalist. Both boys did a little vocabulary and then decided I should read to them from Ulysses Moore, Isle of masks. We had previously read half the book and then put it aside. Well, we ended up reading the whole book! 

Next up we made chocolate brownies and popped them away for dessert that night. The day passed very very quickly and I of course got none of my own things I had planned to do, out of the way, but I did come to a bit of a decision. 

I sat with them and said, right, by the end of the week, you should finish that unit of English work, your vocab work, your unit of science and at least 3 more maths lessons. And then you can do whatever you want....Im busy. Adems face looked rather excited. What???? I can do this whenever I want? YEP! What if I finish in one day? Well, then you are done and you can do what you want. 

Another of my little experiments you see, just to see how it pans out. Today, I went out op-shopping for the morning and came home to find they had indeed finished a maths lesson each (A did 2), some of their English and science and A was working on the computer at something or other with his dad. Zak was playing. And nobody complained and everyone was happy. 

My only gripe is that it is now 11.30pm and the little devils are still up playing minecraft! Zak has an early start tomorrow as he is off to do a bike safety course for the day. And as I am now yawning my head off. I think its time for bed. 

Hugs and smoochies all, 

Sweet dreams xoxoxox

Melbourne Day 2

Our second day in Melbourne was spent with a morning of shopping followed by lunch at home and then....more shopping! But we did not stray too far from the house. So I did  not take a whole lot of pictures that day. Of course, that night, I took quite a lot of pictures but I don't think I am allowed to show them to you! Nobody had their make up on you know!

So instead I will show you a couple of the building shots I did take on day 3...... because day 3's post is going to be about something else!  We all know I am more of a nature kind of girl so I did not really take many pictures in the city at all. But I did like the old old buildings, they have character, don't you think?

A bit of artwork at the station.....

Oh! A far more interesting subject for photographs! Nice to see some things don't change....she's got that whole "For gods sake mum...stop taking pictures of me!" look on her face!

Ahhhh......she is so beautiful! I miss her too much! So as I found myself sifting through the pictures.....and having a giggle at her antics...I could not resist posting just a few after all. We were having a bit of a karaoke party......

With wine and cheese and all sorts of yummy goodies! Mum....step away from the camera.......rawrrrrr...

Seriously mum! You are so dead!!!!!  (HEY! You said I could NOT facebook the pictures...nobody said anything about MY blog!) 

Ahhhhhhhh......and since I am clearly dead anyway, I might as well show you this one too! Isn't my baby sisters belly bump the cutest? 

(Technically this is also not the picture I was told not to facebook, this was the one I took on the sneaky while Zak was taking pictures...I heard no disclaimers that time! Thats my story and I am sticking to it!)

Speaking of the belly bump who we call "Frog", I of course got my hands on him as much as possible....he was most obliging with kicking me! Can't wait to meet him when he comes out! 

Hugs and smoochies everyone!

 *Please don't kill me girls! You know you love me! xoxoxoxox

Namaste

Peace/Love/Happiness to all xoxox