Confession time....

I AM A RECIPE HOARDER...... I buy cooking magazines every month - and not just one magazine either. I buy cookbooks like I buy milk - pretty much all the time. When I am bored at work I enter the world of taste.com.au and print off mountains of recipes.

This is all with good intentions of actually making the recipes, but the issue I have is demonstrated pretty fairly in the photos below... and you haven't seen my cookbook collection....

I know that I would cook a lot more if I had some structured way to access recipes. Say for instance I feel like cooking a pie. I have to wade through papers, books and magazines to work out what I want to cook. After an hour of that my enthusiasm has wavered a bit, but I press on. I then cook a beautiful pie, close the book or put away the piece of paper and completely forget where I found it in the first place. That pie remains hidden never to be seen again.

So I need some help! How can I sort my mountains of recipes so I can easily find what I need? How do you sort your recipes?

Garage Sale Saturday

Total cost: $25.00

I have wanted bar stools for so long and picked these up for $1 each. Does anyone have any tips on how I can recover them?

I love the dry storage jars at the back and the single sheet set will come in super handy for Christmas.

The magazine rack, serving tray and picture frames are all destined for a date with my white spray paint can.

And the board games - wherever I can pick those up for less than $60 I do. Scotland Yard was an absolute childhood favourite. I have already messaged my sister to set up a challenge at Christmas.

This has become one of my favourite things to do on a Saturday morning. I wake early without fail and this gives me something to do before the rest of the world raises its head. Danny especially loves it - he gets to sleep in without me waking him every hour because I want someone to talk to.

And to buy second hand is a really rewarding thing to do - I find little treasures and my heart jumps knowing that if I was to buy it new it would cost so much more. Someone elses trash really can become your treasure - we mine anyway.

Maybe next week you can visit a garage sale near your house and post the treasures you find on your blog..... Then it really would be Garage Sale Saturday.

Advent Calendar Finished!

Finally finished the Advent Calendar for the girls.

It's a bit -yeah a lot - rough but it serves it's purpose and I am pretty happy with it for my first try at embroidery and hand sewing. The 14 and 18 are a bit wonky but I am telling myself it adds to the rustic appearance.....

I am giving it to them tomorrow and am nervous hoping that they like it. As long as there is presents in the little pockets what do they care...Right?

PS. Made my second round of bread today. Think I may have perfected the recipe... Our house is still bought bread free and feeling all the better for it.

I felt him move!

Yep I felt Paddy move for the first time. I think the things I have been feeling haven't been the real deal - this is definitely the real deal.

I felt movement for the first time while watching Matty Hayden play cricket. How great is that! I am a huge Haydos fan and cried when he retired. He played an exhibition match last night and we watched it on the telly and that's when Paddy decided to be known for the first time.

I am making the hormonal connection between Paddy moving for the first time and the legend playing cricket again. Maybe I should write a letter to Haydos telling him......

Either way it is great to feel him inside me. The connection between me and my son is growing so much stronger xoxo

Seriously Fat Feet!

Honestly, how swollen, red and HOT can one pregnant person's feet get!

I am day dreaming about cool boots that live in the freezer that I can slip on giving instant relief to my bulbous, aching, pulsing, RED feet.

Anyone got a pair of those at their house....?

Bye Em and Scotty

I farewelled one of my best girlfriends and her husband today. They are off to France to host a Ski Chalet for 8 months. This is a dream of theirs and I am so thrilled that they are living it.

Makes me think about my dreams.......

The Bread Challenge

Every time I buy a loaf of bread the first thought that I have is "how many preservatives are in this loaf?" It's one of those things that every time I rock up to the bakers I am kicking myself inside for being too lazy to make my own bread.

My own bread that I know exactly everything that is going into the loaf and that it contains absolutely no preservatives.

I also feel terrible about handing over that $3.50 every time and thinking "surely bread can't cost this much!"

So I have decided to do something about it and launch the Bread Challenge. This is just for myself but if you would like to join in that would be super.

The Bread Challenge is this - I will never again buy another loaf of tasteless, preservative filled bread again. I will never again be too lazy to prepare and bake my own delicious bread. From this day forward I pledge that I will only feed myself, my family and my guests homemade bread.

Ambitious coming up to Christmas and with a baby on the way, I know. But a stand must be taken sometime and there is no time like the present.

So this morning was Day 1 of my Bread Challenge. I found a recipe for a wholemeal loaf using just ordinary wholemeal plain flour and it turned out beautiful. It took about 2 hours from start to finish to make 2 loaves of bread - that includes taking the time for the loaves to rise twice. And kneading it myself which I surprisingly found really relaxing and quite satisfying.

Below is one of my loaves - how delicious does it look!

So for all those who want to jump on board for the Bread Challenge leave a comment and start blogging about it. And we all must pledge to come clean if a bought loaf of bread is snuck in for convenience sake. Hopefully we can keep each other on track.

Let the great Bread Challenge begin......!

Reality hits

Have you ever got to the end of the day and your office looks like this?!

In my other life I do the books for our two businesses. One of the businesses closed down last week and now I have to reconcile everything I have been putting off for a few months now. This would be much easier to do if I didn't have baby brain - today it has hit me so hard!

I am just sitting in the middle of this trying to ignore it all listening to my husband screaming at the Wallabies on TV. We have very strict rules when it comes to rugby watching - no talking, well basically no making any sounds. I find it better to just remove myself from the room. When we do talk it has to be rugby related - I just got the run down on the John Eels kick to win the Bledisloe about 20 years ago. Not my idea of riveting conversation.

So to cap off a day filled with me running around like a lunatic because of my vagueness and because I forgot absolutely everything, I am going to read my blogs, have a nice long shower and then off to bed to escape in some really bad historical fiction. And to dream of a day of complete focus tomorrow. Goodnight!

My weekend just gets better and better

We bought a new lounge. Now I know you don't know how big a deal this is but it is a really super huge big deal. My husband refuses to replace things until they are kaput. We have been sitting on a lounge suite he bought 15 years ago with his first wife, for so many years now. It is green tartan and horrible. Finally he succumbed to my pressure - and the fact that he had to pull me out of the damn couch on a number of occasions helped. We pick it up this week and I can't wait.

Mum came to stay last night and I cooked the best Lamb, Mint and Rosemary meatballs in a tomato sauce. Super beautiful and super easy. Want the recipe?

Woke up this morning with my Mum here (which I love) and after doing some washing and chatting, chatting, chatting we headed to Uncle Reg's house.

Uncle Reg was like our granddad who passed away 1 year ago and left us kids his house. We have been putting off emptying out the house for so long and today decided that we needed to just get in and clean it up. It was always going to be a hard day but the silver lining is that Mum and I picked up some goodies like.....

my new sewing cabinet and cupboard. Can't wait to redecorate these puppies.....

a red stool so I can sit while I am cooking dinner......

a red juicer - how funky is this! Oh and an old teapot and teacosy - too cute to leave behind...

and these old tablecloths which we are going to turn into aprons

Now it is time for an afternoon nap me thinks. Perfect ending to a very productive weekend.

In my last year of my 20's!

Yes I turned 29 yesterday. Spent some time reflecting on my fun 20's and missing those times but then had a midwife appointment and when I heard Paddy's heartbeat I realised how many better times are ahead.

Best part of the day - I got my first sewing machine! My mum bought it for me and I am dying to get my mits on it.
This weekend you will find me pouring over my machine manual, and looking up my list of "Things to do when I get a sewing machine".

Now to dive into my 29th year - a year I expect myself to be full of honesty, to keep close to the people that I love and who make me feel loved, to live every day doing the things that please me, to give birth to my beautiful baby boy, and to create a home that feels comfortable for myself and my family and that people feel comfortable being in.
If I can achieve all that I will have a wonderful 29th year.

The Beginnings on the Advent Calendar

I spent way too much money at Spotlight yesterday but now I can start my advent calendar. This is the design I am doing at Purl Bee http://www.purlbee.com/felt-advent-calend/ but in my Christmas colours.

The pressure is on - only 20 days until the start of December. Ahhhh!!!

Insomnia...

Well I don't think it's quite that bad yet but why am I waking up in the middle of the night all the time?!! I hope my sleeping patterns now don't reflect how Paddy is going to sleep when he comes out.

The trouble is a vicious cycle is occuring - I can't sleep, I get up, I read blogs, I get ideas from others, I get excited then I can't get back to sleep.

Must learn to wake up, have a hot chocolate, read a book and fall peacefully back into slumber.

Maybe I should do that now...... Or I could just read one more blog..........

My very own Frangipani Tree

I have always wanted a tree of my own. This is in our front garden and has just started flowering.

I couldn't resist putting one of the flowers behind my ear. Well I do live at the beach....

My weekend

Super super relaxing was this weekend.

Started by roaming garage sales on Saturday morning. This is slowly becoming one of my favourite weekend things to do. I came across the jackpot of all garage sales - wall-to-wall baby stuff. Picked up so much including a baby bath for $8 and some play things, first to be tried out over Christmas by my beautiful neice baby Amaya before Paddy gets to them.

Then the afternoon was spent with my girlfriend Emily at the beach and shopping and cake at Mooloolaba.

Cooking and crafting was the aim of Sunday.

Cooked and then grazed on Blueberry Muffins

Then finished painting and cutting the first batch of Christmas Decorations and red drink coasters. They are my three theme colours for this Christmas - lots of inspiration from this months Real Living magazine.

Started another crochet grocery bag to add to the small but growing Christmas gift collection. I love the colour of this cotton.....

And then I trawled the blog world for more projects. I have decided on trying to make an advent calendar, some Christmas bunting, and a mobile for my niece made out of fabric hearts. I also want to get stuck into making burp cloths and baby wipes for baby Paddy. So out of that came quite an extensive "Craft things to buy" list. Might have to start on the shopping for that today.

Now for coming up with some creative ways to get out of going to work today.......