so we've reached that stage

Tonight the big boys attended a two-part information session at school: part one was "How We Began" and part two was "Puberty Clues". You get the picture.

Charlie was typically quiet about the idea of going. Jasper stood in the kitchen bouncing a rubber ball filled with a 3D underwater scene and said "I think they have these every year and last year it was about S - E - X!" (Nervous giggle.) "What's a pubicle?"

Ah, wouldn't you love to have overheard the schoolyard chatter which led to that?

I would have liked to have gone but we had no babysitter.

Andy went into the fray and Clem and I stayed home and made cupcakes.

The session was apparently excellent, pitched just perfectly for the upper primary audience. The big boys were bouncing off the walls when they got home. It certainly seemed to have snapped the eleven year old out of a silent afternoon funk. I almost expected them to come home changed somehow but they were still just my boys.

Phew. Well, that's done. And I'm still giggling like a silly schoolkid at pubicle.

- Jane x

polar panda

It's all about the birthday parties in Clem-land at the moment. His friends are starting to turn five. Today's party, at the zoo, came with the option of animal dressups and Clem wished to be a panda. I was pretty happy to oblige, given that I can see my kids' cute dressup days dwindling before my eyes.

(Excuse me while I have a "boo-hoo my baby's growing up" moment. On Thursday we received a letter saying his first school transition visit is next Friday. His face simply lit up with excitement. I'm excited for him and I know it's a new and positive phase for our whole family. But still... blink-sniffle, you know?)

I made yet another version of the Farbenmix Yorik hoodie pattern, this time Franken-patterning the hood with the Cozy Winter Hood (which has ears) from Oliver & S 'Little Things to Sew'.

The fabric is polar fleece from the 30% off sale at the shop around the corner. I know polar fleece can be made from recycled plastic bottles (I don't know if these ones were) and therefore could be an eco-friendly choice but even so... I just find it a bit... yucky. However this was inexpensive, appropriately fluffy and warm and best of all, right around the corner. If he wants to wear this as a regular hoodie, I think the cute-factor can overcome my ugh it's polar fleece thing.

He had a great time at the party. In fact, it was his second party today, with the first being a fairy party for a dear sweet girlfriend at a place called The Butterfly Room. He said "It was good but it wasn't as pretty as it should have been. I wanted it prettier." I guess 'The Butterfly Room' conjures up some vivid images in the four year old mind.

I don't really want to think about it but we'd better start planning his own October birthday party soon, I suppose.

- Jane x

things we did not invite

That's a chicken louse being identified under a microscope. I realised the chooks had mites (red poultry mites) after seeing some on my hands after reaching into nests, and on eggs. And after cleaning out the chookyard and beginning treatments, I found this uninvited guest almost down my cleavage. Ack! Double parasitic whammy!

The girls are fortunately still looking in fine heath, although one has been laying on the ground rather than in the nest which is probably because the mites lie there in waiting. Little creeps.

I've started with a big cleanout of the yard and chookhouse. It's not very thorough however because the floors are just the earth. One reason the bugs have taken hold may be that it's been so wet and muddy, it has been hard for the girls to find a place to dust-bath.

Treatment so far has been:

• Spraying nest boxes and all timber inside chookhouse, with special attention to the perches, with a mixture of water with cedarwood, peppermint and eucalyptus essential oils. Smells great!
• Put wood ash from our fire in the yard for them to dust-bath in (they haven't touched it so far - it's meant to suffocate the mites - but at least I know what to do with our wood ash now).
• Dusting of nest boxes with Pestene, which doesn't sound too completely evil.
• Dusting a patch of chookhouse floor where the girls were dust-bathing with Pestene.
• When the girls go to sleep tonight we will creep in and give them a dusting too.

I have ordered some Diatomaceous Earth which could well be 'the new coconut oil' if its many claims are to be believed. I aim to dust that around judiciously - and not inhale - too.

This is something else uninvited. It's chickweed and it's everywhere in our garden at this time of year. But thanks to Tricia at Little Eco Footprints, I view it with new appreciation because it's quite a tasty delicate little green and meant to be very nutritious too. I've been munching little pieces here and there and even tried this recipe for chickweed pesto.

The verdict? Not bad, very 'grassy' which I quite like although I don't think the kids would go for it. Feeling very River Cottage with this little wild harvest!

The garden feels like it's beginning to 'wake up' from winter.

Charlie helped me with some pruning (climbing a tree and chopping at it? fun!). He's keen to cook more and made some Anzac biscuits with almost no assistance.

And I've done a wee bit of sewing. Clem wanted to make a pillowcase for his new big bed. His choice of fabric made my eyes cringe and my heart melt simultaneously. And he insisted on the buttons, which he selected with great care. He sat on my lap while I sewed.

He loves it. Therefore, so do I.

- Jane x

squashed flowers

Tonight Clem asked me to go outside in the cold and dark with him and a torch, to "look for flowers to squash". Sometimes it's actually easier to be the good creative parent who says yes than convince a four year old of all the reasons this isn't such a good idea. So we went, and found a surprising variety of flowers for the end of winter.

We took them to the "flower squashing book" which is a Webster's Twentieth Century Dictionary that belonged to my Granny. Clem laid the flowers between sheets of paper (after unceremoniously shaking off the previous squashed flowers that were in there) and duly squashed the flower sandwich with all his might. Checked them - no not ready yet - so I suggested we turn the book upside-down so its weight was all on the flowers, and leave it on the shelf for a couple of weeks.

He was happy.

Not such a bad idea after all.

In another episode of "why not?" parenting, I helped Charlie make chocolate eclairs on the weekend. He wanted to cook something he'd never made before and I let him choose from a book of sweet treats. Of course he chose what was probably the most complex recipe in the book and something I'd never attempted. But we had all the ingredients and, deep breath, oh heck, why not?

Splodge. They were small and misshapen, the pastry cream curdled slightly and the icing never achieved the desired state of molten glossiness. But they were pretty tasty! And we learnt a bit. For one, we need a more accurate set of kitchen scales. Cooking like this can be as much chemistry as art, can't it?

In more successful cooking, Jasper had a couple of friends for his rescheduled birthday sleepover (postponed due to flu). Andy made pasta with all the boys and demonstrated patience in the extreme with this many helping hands.

Wow, we look like we're all about facilitating children's creativity here at the moment, don't we? Did I mention the number of times we had to say "no!" to Jasper's requests to play more Skylanders on Wii with his sleepover friends?

So now. To finish off a fairly random post, how about some silliness from the big boys?

(No children were harmed in the making of this blog post.)

- Jane x

unintentional bonsai

One of the things I was drawn to when we bought our house twelve years ago was the number of large, mature eucalypts in the vicinity. The native birds love them and they provide good shade.

But... one of the things I love the least about our property these days is the number of large, mature eucalypts in the vicinity. They suck the moisture and nutrients out of the soil, overshadow our yards and make it very difficult to grow fruit and veggies in our garden.
Exhibit A: Blood orange tree, planted at least three years ago and fed continually with chook manure, compost and occasional conventional fruit tree fertiliser. Approximately 30cm high... more or less bonsai-ed by the effect of the neighbours' two massive eucalypts.

Exhibit B: Broccoli, grown from seed three to four months ago. And in our garden I'd kind of class this as 'vigorous':

It's a little disheartening. And wouldn't you know, I campaigned some years back to keep our large eucalypt street trees when the council wanted to replace them all with something smaller. This was before I twigged to the bonsai effect. So they are now replacing them in (very, very slow) stages and I guess the one out the front of our house will be the last to go. My own fault!

Anyway, enough on the sad garden front. I haven't sewn anything in the last week but Charlie has very quickly picked up the idea of making log cabin quilt squares.

I thought he might like to make a cushion cover out of the scraps from his quilt. With just a little basic instruction he was off and running. The idea is to make four 12-inch squares for a large cushion cover.

He's on the second square. How proud am I?

School had a 'pupil free day' yesterday (second one in three weeks right after school holidays? harumph) so I offered the boys extra pocket money to clean our car. They did an excellent job of the inside and to be fair, the outside was extremely dusty after a trip into the mallee scrub. This is after washing:

I'm choosing to regard it affectionately. That mess was made with a lot of effort and enthusiasm (and cost me $14).

- Jane x

have a great weekend

because this guy says you must, okay?

(more Jasper work)

- Jane x

production line sewing

I tend to get all excited about making one thing and just go for it. Although I might then make more of the same, it's not really in my nature to methodically cut out multiples of something and line up the sewing in stages.
Except I did this weekend and it's pretty satisfyingly productive.
Using my old faithful Ottobre Best T-shirts pattern I made these two, and two others - being made for gifts - are almost finished.

Jasper's is a Spoonflower print (organic cotton jersey) from an order I got a while back. I know I rave about this fabric all the time but it is just so, so soft and a joy to sew. And Charlie and Jasper choose their Spoonflower t-shirts over anything else, any time they can.
Clem's is a 'Lilofant' print in a lovely thick cotton interlock. I bought a half metre in green and yellow (both equally bright!) about a year ago and his green one has been worn a lot and is a bit small now.

Note that Clem insists on wearing these pants with the worn-out knees, on their third winter I think... they're comfy, I suppose I should just patch them.

And check out this pose that the two of them used on me yesterday when they were begging to go to the DVD shop to borrow some movies... "pleeeeeeeeaaase!"

Ack, what am I supposed to do in the face of teamwork like that? Anyway, while they watch movies I can sew!

Do you ever sew production-line style?

- Jane x