Doctor Who on the Christmas Tree

Well, actually, he's not, but his TARDIS is, and so is his arch-nemisis.

I moulded my Dalek and my TARDIS out of salt dough - that's cheap and easy to make. You bake it, then it likes being painted. I found the cheaper acrylic paints were working better than the fancy schmancy ones, so that's good news for kid activities!

I confess I got the idea from here. Nice one!

My Altered Christmas Tree

This is a Christmas tree I decorated - it came in kit form. It's from a set of wooden shapes from Kaiser, which was a not-very-expensive craft idea for kids and grownups.

I let the kids loose on the penguin, snowman and reindeer, while I nabbed the tree all to myself.














I collaged pretty paper all over it, and painted it up. Then I looked in my stash and found this bead-stuff I bought in Perth years ago. Pretty!











I added a few well chosen words to add to the theme...











And this is what the kids did with theirs. The penguin is green (of course).

Boys Grade 6 graduation

Here's my handsome boys at their Grade 6 graduation, a dinner and ceremony to celebrate the end of primary school.











Here's Thomas getting his official photo taken.















And here's the reward for being good for a long, long series of formal photos....

Tis the season...

... to drink out of a flowerpot... Mr Burns demonstrates his drinking-dirty-water style. Just inches away from a nice clean cat bowl of fresh water.

AND this picture's only here because I didn't manage to snap him drinking out of the watering can!

The Princess and the Prince

At a trash and treasure type sale, I managed to find a big bucket of Lego - but not just any Lego, this is Bellville (the girly range of princesses and castles). Not only is it cute as a bug's ear, but the people are fully articulated, so they make AWESOME stop motion animation models. They stand up and everything.

Here we see Princess Gorgeous with her beau: "But wait, darling, I want to talk some more about our feelings!"

"Argh! Get me out of here"

Rabbit on the Cubes

And then there was this ... a lovely old cookbook from a garage sale. You just don't see recipes like this any more...

You see, if *I* had a rabbit shaped jelly mould, I too could make a blood red rabbit on a bed of green cubes. Freak the kids right out.

Slime Time!

School year's over, and I'm still trying to catch up on cool photos I've taken in the last few days. Like these ones :

That's slime (in two colors). We made it (or rather, the boys made it). It's made from Borax and cheap PVA glue (lucky I buy my glue in 2lt bottles!).

Keeps the gang amused...

Merry Christmas Everyone

... just as soon as he fronts up with those enrolment forms ...

I got flowers!

At the school Christmas concert last week, *I* got presented with a big bunch of flowers (as a thanks for being P&C president for two years). It was a good presidential year, we got our fundraising total to over $12,000, in a small school with very few stay at home mums (not even me, now!).

AND I got to make an impromptu speech. Into a microphone. With a big audience. Just as well I've had a little practice now.

Here's my gorgeous flowers!









The lilliums are opening up over the course of the week - I love that!














And do you see, florists are keen on putting a little non-perishable goody in with your flowers, so you have something to keep. Aww.

Crusty old woman

So what have I been doing lately? Mostly baking! Oh, and work, and stuff, but in the free bits, there's been quite a bit of baking. It's all Shirley O Corriher's fault. We bought a book one day, when we were browsing in a bookshop on Scout night (the one night when all the kids are busy for a little while, and Jeff and I get to sneak out). This book, Bakewise, jumped out at us, and as we read a few paragraphs in the shop, we realised it would answer a lot of our geeky baking questions, and set us off baking even more good stuff.

I made the Tunnel of Fudge Cake (which I showed off at Stamp club, and on the stamp club blog). Then there was the delicious biscuits (that's American style biscuits - warm scones with a bowl of soup for us) and they were awesome.

Then I had a birthday, and scored another great book - it's this one - which encourages you to make slow rising, crusty, fab bread. It's really easy too! Let's just enhance that photo shall we?

It's crusty, chewy, and very hard not to say yes to that last slice.

I've been walking around the block a little extra lately too.

And this morning I've made this for stamp club - Cranberry and White Chocolate Scones (really that same biscuit recipe, full of buttermilk and cream). Oh wow.

Anyone seen this, ummm, cat?

I have no wish to make fun of the public spirited person who posted this notice at the local shops ...

... but I'm pretty darn'd sure that's a POSSUM!

No wonder the little tyke's scared - they keep trying to pat him and feed him fish!





Actually I just found that same possum photo on a Google image search. Hmm. Psychology students, I think, waiting to see how long it takes someone to call. Or post it on their blog.