Backyard Produce swap

I have a few fresh jars of my home made Zucchini Relish......grown in my backyard and now turned into a delish relish perfect on cooked meat, in toasted sandwiches or my favorite, on beagle with roast lamb and melted cheese.

If you have some produce you'd like to swap just contact me and we can work out a fair swap. What I'm after is backyard produce, eggs, veggies or jams for winter, which I have bugger ll left.

Also if anyone wants to swap for some fresh Rhubarb I have a batch ready. Let me know if your keen and I'll cut them and swap them.

I have a swap box going on my front veranda. If you're a local I'll pop my stuff in it and just leave your swap item in the box. Easy!

I start with 2.2kg of my home grown Zucchini

Add some heat with Kims Dad's home grown chili

Add some colour (one of these onions I grew myself)

The bright colour comes from the peppers, the green capsicum I grew myself.

With some secret spices and lots of love.......

Heritage at Ercildoune Homestead

Mothers day was supposed to be spent with Mum and Dad and our family at Ercildoune Homestead, but Mums back went out during the week so we popped in to their house for a cuppa and then we went off for our afternoon adventure. We pulled into the car park and started our lunch picnic. Within 5 minutes we had people all over us seemingly drooling over the kombi.......it's always a nice thing when folks tell us of their kombi stories. Post kombi conversation we had a ball walking through the homesteads garden and buildings and where in heaven. The place is so dreamy, every little detail oozing with tales from the old days. The current owners have done so much work over the years it's mind blowing. They must get so much joy from the place.

By the end of the day the girls were so exhausted it turned feral and slightly hilarious. We packed up and made the most of what was left of our 12th wedding anniversary. It's been a big wearing week with a few mishaps here and there........slumping on the couch with the one person in this world that understands me is just sublime.

xo Ro

Mind racing

I have just been catching up on a few blogs, and found myself back at Attic24.  I am in love with the interiors of these awesome old caravans and campers.  It has made my mind race with ideas for our Dottie.  And since I bought some vintage fabric at the Stitches and Craft show the other day, I am thinking about new curtains or bunting, and of course crocheted blankets...

Our Dottie. I will post some interior shots when I start the make-over. 

Hacker Husband

Hi guys, it's Ro here. You remember me? I used to hang out on another blog but fell out of love with it, caused some major family disputes and thus decided not to have an online opinion. I've deleted my blog of 4 years, deleted my Facebook page and twitter, don't get me started. All in the name of limiting my online life. It was just taking up far to much valuable time. I'm in the process of cutting out a few things in my life that waste my time. However.....

After consultation with my better half, we've decided that I can be a guest blogger here. But I'm only allowed to put pretty pictures and talk about our life minus the attitude. We'll see how long that lasts. I am a cranky old bugger. Example....this Saturday morning I find myself cursing RAGE. The music is becoming pre-packaged uber hipster. Every Gen-Y seems to like dressing up in American Indian head gear with feathers and beads or the super 'original' style of wearing animal faces masks. It appears that 'they' are scared to be original and just follow someone else's clever idea. And that poor interpretation/eighties music revival is just as annoying as those tights that look like jeans. You know the ones I mean. Man am I over seeing tights on the wrong legs. And I'm sick and tired of shallow people so concerned about how people view them. They seem to go to great lengths to tick all the cool boxes. You know what I mean, those kids that HAVE to be seen at the rights festivals, shows, cafes etc...AAARRRGGGG.

So I failed on my first guest post. Do I look boooovered? I have so much to be happy about with our lovely life so I'm going to share that.....mostly. The fun times, the food, the garden and our dream project of one day finding that block of land and building a dream cottage and planting a vineyard and orchard.

I wanted to start my first post with something nice....a Saturday breakfast. But now I can see my word count getting out of control so I'll stop ranting and talk about my breaky.

Yesterday I had the kids to look after while Kim was out of action for the day. After a bit of cabin fever locked in the house I thought I'd take the girls out to a special secret spot that I love about 20 minutes out of town and takes some nice pics for Kim's mothers day gift. This special spot just happens to have heaps of mushrooms of all varieties growing under the pine tree's. And keeping inline with my ever growing hobby of foraging for free food I picked a few Saffron Milk Cap's (Lactarius delicious) for the next days breakfast. These little treasures are really a meaty mushie. They seem to take on the flavours of whatever else is in the pan, and this morning I kept it very simple by frying them with some butter, garlic (Daylesford Organics of course) and Chirizo (Vic Market). And what better to place it on but a bagel from Glicks (which we now get home delivered with the milk!)

These are the ingredients.....

And this is the dish.

These are the pics I took for Kims pressie.

These are pics of my 'special spot'

Focus Kim!

Why can't I focus on the jobs that really need doing, and just get to it?  I have a list as long as my arm of things to do, but can't seem to tick anything off.  It doesn't help when people don't call me back, and aren't available when I call them, my printer just won't communicate the way I want it to, and it's too wet and cold here for my washing to dry.  I have child-free time, and instead of achieving anything, I am finding myself reading blogs, which is not very productive at all.  Oh well, I had better get back to it. Focus Kim, Focus!

Autumn fun

I really enjoyed this weekend.  At one stage I was sitting toasty on the couch, blanket across my knee with my crochet hook working, the heater next to me keeping me warm , watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice... oh Mr Darcy! What more could a girl want?  The girls and I had a walk and a play at the park.  Loving those Autumn leaves! And if I block out all the housework I had to catch up on, and a small row I had with Ro then really it has been perfect. Here's to remembering the fun times!

Made this little bag for a 5 yo friend who has just welcomed her baby sister into the world, and I don't want her to miss out on presents.

Pincushion swap

I recently took part in my first crafty blog swap, which was from Kate's blog.  The pincushion swap. It was fun to have a new project, but as soon as it approached the deadline, when it had to be in the post, I was frantically trying to make it look pretty, as I left it to the last minute, because my original plan didn't work out as I hoped.  So I dropped it in the post on the cut-off day, (when family was visiting for the day and I was distracted), and posted it without any nice note or anything, and felt self-conscious about the standard of it.   (In my haste I didn't get a picture to show you, so you will have to just imagine it.) 

So you can imagine my feeling of guilt when I received my pincusion and I was totally put to shame!  It arrived with some cute star pins, and a lovely note explaining her inspiration for the design of it.  A lot of thought went into it, and although I felt guilty, I was so delighted to receive it.  Check it out!  Thanks so much Linda!!

Note to self - don't leave things to the last minute!

Pleasing ourselves

We have been getting away a bit lately, and it has been fantastic!  Since we bought the Kombi we have had quite a few problems with her, but she just took us down to Nelson for a long weekend, and she did a very good job.  We all love climbing inside Dotty when it's raining outside, and I'm sure she loves it too. Here are some pics of stuff and things from the past few weeks.

My blanket is nearly done, just needs a scalloped edge I think

The view from our verandah on the recent Mallacoota trip

The beloved Pa with the grandkids in Mallacoota

Tia discovers jaffas

Laney and I see who can make the tallest poker chip towers

The sun set in front of us on the way to Nelson this weekend

The girls snuggled in their new PJ's in Dotty

The girls made new friends in Nelson, and had some races.  On your marks...

get set... GO!

Tia wasn't very competitive. Preferring to stroll

We drove home as the storm arrived

Thaw update

We have a new website for Thaw, and it is also a new blog.  Please check it out, and change any links you might have to our current blog to 

www.thawmagazine.com.au

Cheers,

Kim