Cassie's Cuddles

Meet my new buddy, Barry. I just made him 😀 I think he is really cute, he is cuddly too! Don’t we look happy together?I just took him up to Jared to introduce him to him. I said to Steph, I bet he will say “what’s with the legs?” Guess what? He said exactly that. The legs are weird, he looks like an old man with his pants low. His head is too big, he looks like an alien, and his tummy looks like a diaper. Please Jared, don’t hold back! Another good quality of Barry, is that he doesn’t talk. I like Barry.

Jared preached at Sth Yarra this morning, I was very inspired. While waiting in the car I took some snaps to fill in time.Lachlan won’t let me take photos of himself, so this is the best one out of twenty.

Jared was photographed reading through his sermon, in preparation.

My Stephanie (15) is hooked on crochet, she is seriously one cool Teenage Granny. Here are some sneek peeks at a couple of Christmas gifts that she has ready. The ninja is for Cassandra.oh, I can’t show you the next one just in case G’pa reads my blog. Then there is this worm, it is cute, but could be mistaken for something else (if you know what I mean).Yesterday I had a visit from my friendly postman, perhaps I should be on a first name basis now. The embarrasing thing for me was that I ordered about 8 books from http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/bestsellers/?a_aid=notebookco, and they posted them seperately, so I had a visit everday for three days. Yesterday I got 5 at once!Eye Candy is it not?

Yesterday I had my dad pop in for lunch, which was special. He had a meeting near my area, so he thought he would say hi, and join us for lunch.

Today has been a quiet day, Lachlan didn’t have sport because of the long cup weekend. We had visitors tonight, which was lovely. We met this family when Jared and I were just married (18 years ago), now they have 6 children, three are considered adults now. Life goes so quickly. God, help me to be thankful everyday for the blessings that we often take from granted.

Remember the Giveaway

You can have a chance of winning this book , all  you have to do is leave a comment in the next week, anywhere on my blog. Next Sat ( 6th Nov.)I will put the names into a hat, and draw one out randomly. So easy. International or domestic people are welcome 😀

What a week of driving. Tuesday I drove to and from Buln Buln to visit Jared’s grandparents, got home, cooked tea, then drove into the city for Lachlan’s drama night.He played a judge. Then I had to take him back to Scotch the next morning for 6:30 rowing. Of course there are other children to take care of, with School and all the rest. This is the first night home at this time for the week!See this cup? We went and saw my mum yesterday, and she pulled this cup out to give Cassandra a drink. This was my baby cup! Who would have thought that one day my sweet little girl would drink from it too? Maybe one day her little girl will drink from it too.We went to visit a friend who just had a lovely baby boy, Jared made him cry…but look at Lachlan’s magic touch.So sweet, don’t you think?In between all the regular driving and dropping off etc, I have been trying to tidy up a bit. Here is the linen cupboard, let’s see how long it will stay this tidy. I think that I need to sort through Cassandra’s cupboard.So much stuff. My advice for anyone starting out is not to buy/hoard lots of things. It makes your life stressful when your house is overflowing with things, even if they are good items. Life is more peaceful when your house is tidy.

Tommorow I will begin a giveaway, so stay tuned.Here are some sneek peeks, from the book that I will offer tommorow.

andand one more.I’ll see you tommorow.

The other day I took a picture of myself, but with a differance, from Cassandra’s point of view.This is what she sees, how sad and disturbing is that? I hope that I haven’t grossed you out.

This week has been a weird one, but yet productive too. I have started to do a major clean out (yeah, I know you have heard this before, but I mean it this time). I took four huge bags of my books to the homeschooling sports day, and put out a sign saying “free books”, they were gone very quickly. I have been cleaning, dusting, and vacuuming curtains.A couple of sweet roses from our garden, Cassandra claimed them for her bedroom.

 I have discovered that pure lemon juice cleans the shower screen beautifully, and mirrors. A good thing to do is then spray them with diluted vinegar to prevent streaks, works a charm.They make things shiny.

Here is a yummy, yet simple recipe for you.Caramel Banana Self Saucing Pudding.

Serves 8

1 1/2 cups self raising flour

3/4 cup mashed banana ( 2 medium bananas)

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 egg whites

1/2 cup apple sauce (in jar)

3/4 teaspoon bi-carb soda

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups water.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.

beat egg whites and sugar for one minute, stir bi carb into apple sauce (it will froth) then add to bowl. Add mashed bananas and combine. Gently fold in flour in one go. Pour pudding mixture into a casserole dish. To make caramel sauce, sprinkle 1 cup brown sugar over top of pudding mixture, gently pour water over the top. Bake for 30 min, until firm to touch in centre.

Yum Yum..Princess hair.

I found a few pics, oh, to be young again.When I was out with the children the other day, we came across a place in Bayswater that makes the baby reborns (dolls that look like real babies). They were outside the shop, it gave me a bit of a fright.I thought a baby was left alone!

Today I took Camden to his Boys brigade billy cart day, he won a ribbon.

Yup, I’ve been surfing! No, I’m not Gidget, I mean checking out blogs on the web. Check out these cute, yet functional tiny houses. They look kinda cozy.I wanna live in a tree house! Mum always said that I looked like a monkey when I was born 😀 If you have a silo hanging around, you could do this.Have a look at this blog, for a little bit of inspiration.http://tinyhouseblog.com/

As a mum, do you ever remember a time feeling flustered with a crying baby in a public place? I remember so many awkward moments, when the children screamed like they were being murdered? Do you remember your face turning red, your heart beat increasing, your hands trembling? Well, it may sound rather traumatic, but I do. I saw a young girl this week with a baby who was doing just this, in the op shop. This poor young girl, had a baby lying on the floor without a nappy screaming. I heard her on the phone, say “Dad, can you pick me up, and mum must have taken the nappies out of the bag, why did she take them out of the bag?” My heart went out to her. I wanted to hug the screaming baby, instead I said “hang in there” I went and had a look through the baby things in the op shop, and found one of those terry toweling cloth nappies, I said that I would buy it for her, she took it. As it was, the op shop lady said don’t worry about paying for it, she would have given it to her, if she knew it was there. Then I left. It made me think, there must be some young girls who need a little encouragement with their babies. I could play mumma to them, is this weird? I hope that I bump into her again.If you are a mum, or know of one, why don’t you subscribe to this free magazine at http://aboverubies.org/ It’s a great little magazine, with stories from mums all over the world. I might not agree with all of their theology, but who can deny that they are trying to promote godly motherhood, and godly wives.

check out this new label by Melly from Melly and Me.This is all about babies, and cute items to make for them.This is just one of the items up for sale. Find these on quiltfabricdelights.typepad.com

Check out this fun site, I’m sure you could make a few cool posters with this. I did one with the words of my blog, this is how it came out.I also typed in the Fruits of the Spirit from Galatians ch 5.and my family.It’s a bit of fun.

Thinking about this overnight, I have wondered. What words would be on your poster if your life was scanned with the words that you used through out your life? Would the words be words of kindness? Would they be filled with blasphemy? Would the words be all about you, or others? Just a thought, a bit of a daunting one.

Today Lachlan is home from school, he is hoping to have tommorow off too. Ok, so he isn’t 100%, so I’ll be a softie and let him have another day. I’m such a nice mummy.Here is something I wanted to show you over a week ago, but never got round to it. This bag of chenille was given to me by a young girl in our church. She went to a market, thought it looked like a good deal, bought it, then offered it to me, nice eh? I will make some soft toys out of the fabrics.This is Cassandra with her pet slaters, enough said.

Don’t you just love Spring? It makes you want to clean, don’t you think? I feel a little lost after I finish with Dayspring Day, so I decided it would be best to really give the house a good clean. So I started in the kitchen, with good ole Sugar Soap. I cleaned down a lot of the cupboards, and some of the insides, the mouldings, things in the cupboards etc. I notice a huge differance, but no one else will, but that’s ok. At this rate, it will take me a week just to get through the entire (small) kitchen. Suddenly my house is looking very big.As you can see, it is gross! But with a little bit of elbow grease…A bit better, not worth putting it on my blog I guess…but, you know how it is, you gotta write something!As a bonus, I found this reward (hidden in the back of the cupboard), and no, you can’t check my cupboards for more, because I already have done so 😀Here is Stephanie with her new “School Stuff”, she is going to school for the first time tommorow. It’s a community school in case you were wondering. She will be doing year 11 and 12 next year, and getting an entrance score like every other year 12 student. This term is a “Settling in period”. I’m sure she will enjoy it.

On a side note, I found this little bag for $2 at the op shop. I have decided that I do not like leather, or hard handbags. I much prefer the soft bag banging into my children’s heads rather than a “brick”.