Timothy, Timothy

A typical Timothy photo pose... at least this time though, he wasn't pulling at the bottom of his eyes whilst announcing "I got blood in here"!!

Dutch Apple Baby - The Bogwitz Way

Our New Amazing Breakfast Dish - Thanks to Jen for putting me onto this!

Today I made it like this:

3 Medium Royal Gala Apples, peeled and sliced to 5mm (Jen's recipe asked for Granny Smith's which I might use in the future, but Royal Gala's are what I had available today)
2tb Rapadura Sugar (use brown sugar if you don't have this - brown sugar is what Jen's recipe asked for)
1tsp Cinnamon OR Mixed Spice (I used Cinnamon today, will try the other next time)
4Tb Butter
4 Large Eggs
1/2c Plain Wholemeal Spelt Flour (Jen's recipe just asked for 'plain flour')
1 Heaped Tb sour cream (Jen's recipe asked for cream, not sour cream)
1/4c Milk

1. Pre-heat oven to 210 degrees
2. Melt butter in pan with an oven safe handle (I used a cast iron casserole dish)
3. Add sugar, spice and apple slices
4. Saute until the apple slices are nicely softened and the sugar mixture is bubbling
5. While the apple is cooking, Mix in a bowl with a whisk: Eggs, Flour, Cream, Milk - until smooth
6. While the mixture in the pan is still hot, pour the eggy mixture over the top.
7. Place the pan in the oven with plenty of room to the rack above.
8. It will be ready in 15-20minutes and is done when the top can be pressed lightly as you would for testing a cake, then springs back into place

Mine didn't puff up as much as Jen's does, only about 1cm here, but the edges did curl in nicely as it deflated. I imagine if I did my eggy mix in the blender, it would puff up more.

Notes:

• If you mill your own flour, add an extra Tb of flour as your flour is so much more aerated than packaged flour meaning there is less flour in your 1/2 cup than 1/2 cup packaged flour.
• I imagine this would work great with coconut flour or almond flour, making it grain free as needed - I'll try it one day to find out for sure!  

Cooking  the Apples

Whisking up the egg mixture

Poured over and about to go in the oven

Straight out of the oven

A couple of minutes later, deflated with a slight curl at the edges

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Anzac Day ~ April 25th

We've been enjoying this series of short video's with the kids by way of learning more about what ANZAC day means



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Meals for the Weekend

 Planning out the meals always helps keep some sort of sanity here, even on the weekends, so I'm taking a few minutes now to get us sorted.

Do your meals change on the weekends, or do you cook the same type of things? Pancakes only ever show up on our weekend menus

Yesterday when Nathaniel and I de-iced the chest freezer, we found quite a few raspberries so today we'll be having raspberry pancakes with cream...for lunch now instead of breakfast, as originally thought. YUM!

Saturday Breakfast - Get your own, eggs on the side by request
Saturday Lunch - Raspberry Pancakes
Saturday Dinner - Apricot chicken
Sunday Breakfast - Bogwitz McMuffins
Sunday Lunch - At mum's
Sunday Dinner - At a friend's

A pretty easy Sunday hey! Not often that happens! I still want to get the crockpot on overnight tonight with a beef casserole... need to make sure one is free - I have chicken broth happening in one at the moment and apricot chicken will be in the other for the day.

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Winding Up The Week

Typing in the quiet of the house while I wait for everyone to stir - yesterday was a BIG day, so I have placed no expectation of having everyone up and on the go by 7am as is the usual around here.

My highlights of this week

• 3 great 'bookwork' days in a row; Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday
• A friend coming for lunch on Wednesday afternoon
• Thursday's road trip leaving soon after 6.30am to do shopping at the SPC outlet in Ballarat, spend delightful time with a friend, pick up 100kg of spelt grain from her house, sus out the town of Creswick, spend another lovely hour with another friend and then hit the road to get back to Melbourne for dinner/piano/boys brigade

And today, we'll wind up the week with a 'mostly student free day' and make sure the house is pulled back together for the weekend. Washing to be washed and folded, a chest freezer that needs defrosting, read aloud George's Marvellous Medicine while the kids are folding washing, get vacuuming and mopping done and help Pete where needed as he has a job interview this afternoon! I need to find homes for the SPC shopping and make a wonderful dinner - Tonight I'll be making the drool worthy Bolognese Risotto, can't wait!

It will be a full day but a 'pottering' kind of day ~ my idea of home-makers bliss.

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Feeling like The Three Bears

You know the part of the story where the bears come back from the walk and find the house 'not as it should be'? Well that's what we felt like on arrival to the house we stayed in on holidays. We were an hour later getting there than we'd planned, which turned out to be a good thing.

All was good in getting there, found the address just fine and did our usual thing on arriving somewhere new, and got the kids to stay in the car while Pete and I get an idea of what we're all walking into. It makes the unloading of the car a whole lot less messy when we already know where to direct different bags etc. Thankfully it's our practice, because THIS time... it was obvious once walking in, that others were STAYING there! Large black men's dress shoes were near the front door as though having been walked out of. There were multiple sleeping bags & pillows set up but not made. Beer bottles and pizza boxes over the bench. Lap tops and mobiles scattered around. No one answering to our call, we then went upstairs to see if there was more 'stuff' or even people upstairs. NOW WAY was I going up by myself so I tagged along behind Pete! Thankfully there was no sign of life upstairs but by now we were obviously asking ourselves 'what do we do?!'

We had been told others were staying there the night before but also that they would be leaving the Island in the early morning so we had NO thought that this might happen.
We rang the people whose house it was (they were holidaying in Queensland while were were housesitting for them) and got no answer. We told the kids what was going on and let them know they'd need to stay put while we got it sorted out.

Only a couple of minutes after that, a couple of vehicles rolled up and a handful of interesting looking people rolled out - rather surprised to see us in the now open house. It turns out that they were the ones staying the night before but they hadn't realised anyone else was coming down and thought they'd delay their departure. They'd been at the beach so then showered and packed up and in another 45minutes the house was ours (so glad we've trained our kids to be patient!). I suspect (as NOTHING had been packed up and post event traffic off the Island was horrible) that they'd been planning on adding another night.

Ah well - all was good in the end and we had a wonderful holiday!

Back to the Books

I wasn't sure how I'd go today, back to real life, after 2 VERY relaxing week's holiday (still more holiday posts to come). Happily I'm up and raring to go. Up and wide awake before my 5.45 alarm too - something to be said about getting to bed early enough!

The children have been well warned that I'm running a tight ship... tighter than in the past, even. For 2 reasons. One, an ongoing one, is that I want us to get more done. And 2, this week in particular, is busy. It seems that our monthly activity, fortnightly activity and 3 random activities have all fallen in the same week that we start back with our 5 weekly term time activities - eeeekk!

Other than that, I'm really excited to be getting back to our book work today. I love it happening, and being a part of it and the kids love doing it. We all love those moments as 'lightbulbs' go off. Great weeks ahead!

We're starting with a diligence reward today. My kids are great helpers. They have been trained in a lot of different tasks and pretty happily help out. Their major fail is diligence. Keeping at it even if something fun catches their eye, moving on to the next task when finished vs playing with something and getting their jobs done at a reasonable pace so we can move onto the next thing, together. So from today, there is a small treat at lunch time for everyone that gets through their morning tasks diligently. No reminders, timely and with a great attitude. I surprise-awarded one yesterday to Nj who did a surprisingly great job yesterday morning... so today they will have faith that the reward exists.

Do you know, some tell me my kids don't need to learn household chores till they're older. Doing a load of washing or cleaning a bathroom isn't that hard to learn. Well yes, if that's all a child learned when doing household chores from a young age then  it could possibly wait. But attitudes? Attitudes are a heart issue and if not trained when young, the default will typically be... not good. Ungodly.

I have friends that struggle with keeping house because they weren't trained in it in their youth. It's not the skills in cleaning a bathroom that they most lack; it's the heart training that comes along with learning to clean a bathroom, mow a lawn, put out the rubbish, vacuum well, help prepare dinner etc. If a child's life is mostly about what they want to do, they don't learn the Christ-like calling we are all given, to serve. To put self last. To put others first. That is an attitude that is best taught when young and sooo much harder to learn as an adult. It's not their fault their parents didn't train them when young but now as adults it's a battle that they are forced to fight and could have been do with so much less pain and consequences on self  and on others, if it had been done 20+ years ago.

And now, I'm off to make hubby lunch and the family breakfast. Have a great day all - filled with blessings!

Churchill Island Pics

Our day on Churchill Island Heritage Farm started out with Highland Cows and Clydesdale Horses but continued into much more.

We went with Pete's mum & stepfather which the kids were thrilled about. We'd been thinking of the wildlife park but they suggested Churchill Island which turned out to be a perfect way to spend the day.

We enjoyed a lovely stroll around the grounds, finding many interesting things... the kitchen garden, animal nursery and the original well. It was perfect weather, barely a breeze, warm not hot and just enough sunshine. We stopped for a picnic lunch at a table by the ferrets cage - they've been introduced to the island in recent years to help keep the rabbit population under control. Very cute to look at but apparently they bite so I won't be getting one any time soon!

Here are some of my favourite things from our day

This one room cottage was home to a family of 5!

Standing at one end inside the cottage, facing the kitchen end. Behind the door is the inside woodpile

The butter churn was one of the many cool things we found inside the 'half cellar'

This was MOST fascinating... a collapsible high chair with wheels!!

If you're ever down Phillip Island way (Victoria, Australia), then I highly recommend a visit to the Heritage Farm!

It's just dawned on me

Jumping up and down on the inside here... it's just dawned on me, as our holiday draws to a close, that we haven't spent all the holiday money and I suspect there will be enough left for the desired tin of paint!!

Anyone want to come paint with me?!

or borrow the kids so this doesn't happen?

It's not just the kids who are funny...

 Yesterday we went and visited Churchill Island Heritage Farm and as we were driving in, we saw Highland Cows grazing by the road... both all cuddly looking and mean looking at the same time - those horns!!

This is a male Highland Cow; the females seemed to be even more hairy and had bigger horns!

 Pete looks further ahead and says "Hey Kids, there's some traditional cows"

My reply: "Honey, they're not cows,  they're Clydesdales..."

Much hilarity followed through the day because of this!
 (admittedly once I said it , we got a bit closer and Pete could tell they were NOT cows but hey, it was FUNNY AS at the time, and Pete's a good sport)

And just in case you haven't seen the two...

This is a Clydesdale Horse

and this is a Jersey Cow

and this is Pete apologising for his error *chuckle*

Saved by the tin

About 6 weeks ago I was looking ahead at a 2 week holiday in April on Phillip Island. In the school holidays. Meaning at last we'd be here when the 'extra' fun things were open... like mini golf and pony rides. I had been looking forward to letting the kids do these things, since we last visited the Island, out of school holidays about 18 months ago.

Six weeks ago I remembered the things we'd been looking forward to doing and realised the impact of Pete not being employed.

NO fun money. Period.

Thankfully the holiday itself was a 'gift' of sorts - house/pet sitting for a family we churched with a number of years ago who have moved to the Island since. So the holiday was all go and I was wondering how much more I could squeeze out of the grocery budget in the coming weeks to put some dollars aside for a couple of fun things while we were away.

God then reminded me of the tin...

Soon after our last visit to Phillip Island 18 months ago, I started collecting all $2 coins and putting them in a sealed money box/tin with the idea of using the savings for Pete and I when we finally got a weekend 'kid free'. This happened last November and the tin happily produced nearly $500 in $2 coins after 12 months of saving them. Dinners out, a new vacuum cleaner and a fun weekend came from that tin. Very happy.

Right away I started saving again, from mid November till now and this time both $1 & $2 coins.

In only 4.5 months there was plenty in there for 2 weeks of sensibly spread out fun. So far that's been Amaze'nThings and Grumpy's Mini Golf, with the Wildlife Park, Pony Rides and Go Karts ahead!

The next money box is already at home, ready to once again be saving all our gold coins for 'whatever next' and the best bit is, we don't even notice the absence of the money from the usual cash flow!

Love it!

Sometimes I don't like

 Sometimes I don't like living in a shoe box

Then God has me spend a few hours in a house bigger than ours, yet it feels smaller

and I remember I am blessed

or He has me spend a couple of weeks in a house *4 times* as big as ours

and I experience the difficulty of family members spread far and wide

and realise the potential vacuuming time ahead of us will be more than an hour, creeping to 2

(at home it's 5min for a quick vacuum, 10-15 for a reasonably detailed one)

and I am reminded, I am blessed

I remember I love our shoe box and I love the reasons we're choosing to live there

and I choose again to trust God to show me the way through the things I struggle with, because of the shoe box

Happy Holidays!

(Not a phrase I typically like or would often find applicable, I must say!)

I love the idea of house swapping and house sitting and we're kind of doing both at the moment. Friends have blessed us by having a holiday in Queensland with their family - and have given us the use of their house on Phillip Island... and we who have a bunch of chooks (hens) and a cat, so can't leave home without help, have house-sitters using our place and caring for our animals while we are away.

For years I've held the opinion that mother's rarely get a holiday... we just do the same thing, somewhere else - yes? So this time I was keen to plan things out so I DO get a  break. A chance to do things that for some, might still be a 'work' of kinds but for me, a nice break/change.

Sewing, knitting, crocheting... none of which I do too well at all and with both knitting and crocheting, I'll need the instruction books I brought with me LOL

And that's why I don't get to them at home - the head space needed to do them is beyond what I have available in day to day life. Here, the meals are planned out and mostly cooked even! (soo worth the advance work!!) And then today, Hubby has said he'll do dishes while we're here!

Happy Holidays Indeed!!