This and that!

Monday nights is our family dinner night, when the kids come over, so there is the six of us and grandson Owen. Monday night I made a stir fry with loads of veggies, chicken strips which i marinated in a Mongolian sauce and fried rice. I fried the veggies in about six batches for a few minutes each and then did the chicken separately. It was delicious.

Adrian and Chelsea have chooks so I usually have a bag of scraps for them to take home!

Owen is a good little eater....here he is munching on a corn cob

I took a selfie the other week with Owen while we were both munching on an apple...fun!

At foodland this week I noticed a special deal....buy 2 Philadelphia products and receive a springform pan FREE!! Ok,don't mind if I do!! I like to keep Philly cream cheese in the fridge anyway, so I bought 2 packs and received the pan. Very cool.

Once a year we have a weekend away somewhere catching up with our friends from when we used to live in adelaide (which has been over 23 years since we lived there). There are 5 other couples and us, so it's great to get together. This year we chose the barossa and stayed at a motel in tanunda. We wandered around the region Saturday afternoon, visiting a few foodie places and ending up at Maggie Beers which was really nice. Lots of tastings and purchasing was done as well as enjoying a coffee. Here are some pics from there.

Out on the decking at Maggies there is a pond and there were heaps of turtles leisurely swimming around.

I must say thank you to Joolz from www.simplyjoolz.blogspot.com for giving me some tips regarding blogsy. I have been using it to type this post and it's working fine, so hopefully it publishes ok....here goes!
Annette (couldn't work out how to get my signature in there!)

Posted with Blogsy

Our new outdoor area

I started this post last night on my ipad through Blogsy, BUT when I went to add the photos it just wouldn't work properly...aaahhh!!  This had been my second attempt with blogsy but I don't seem to get on real well with it....so this post is coming to you from my normal desktop computer where I spend most of my days!!

Last Christmas we demolished our pergola area in preparation for work to commence on a much larger under cover outdoor space. It took a few months after that (5 in fact!) before the structure finally started.

Once it did start, it was a continual procession of tradies and all was finally competed about 6 weeks ago. Watching all our planning come into fruition has been exciting.  We have been enjoying the space so much, it's great to have an outdoor area again.

Here are a couple of before shots.

And here is what it's like now! Having the blinds make it such a protected area if the weather turns bad or is a bit windy. I LOVE IT!!!

 

Our son Daniel built the walls and rendered them and also built the outdoor bbq area. I am often found after work hours sitting in a tub chair with my feet up, having a cuppa or cold bevvy, reading, checkout things on my ipad, or chilling with family and friends! 

We will be enjoying Christmas at our place this year with some of my family.

Enjoy your day !

Our 2 boys are married!

What an exciting month we have had. Firsty on October 4th our youngest son Daniel married Telesha who have a one year old son Owen. They had the wedding and reception at their home, which is set on a 1 acre of land which they have landscaped over the past couple of years and finished just in time for the wedding.

It was a perfect day all round, I'll let the photos do the talking.

They actually had all their official photos taken before the wedding, which was nice, as once the ceremony finished they didn't have to leave their guests.

 

 

Let the dancing begin...the fairly lights strung over the yard was really beautiful.

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!!!!!

Our eldest son Adrian and his partner of many years announced just to immediate family a few weeks back of their engagement, but they didn't want anyone else to know at this stage. They arranged for the immediate family to go to their house on Sunday just gone (19th) for an intimate engagement lunch. Well, when we turned up, they announced that they were getting married!!
It was really lovely, very casual but just the way they wanted it and it suited them.
So within a few weeks both our sons are married and we couldn't ask for better daughter-in-laws, they are lovely girls, very easy going and family orientated. Here are the photos of Adrian and Chelsea's wedding at their home.

 Owen loved playing on the red carpet (tablecloth!).

 

Paul with his 2 daughter in laws

So, it's been an exciting and very happy month!

I love being in my kitchen

One of my enjoyable pastimes, especially on the weekends is to spend time in my kitchen. Whether it's preparing meals for family or entertaining, baking up a storm to stock the freezer, baking goodies to take down to our parents in Adelaide or whipping up some scones or something sweet for an impromptu coffee with friends, I find it relaxing and enjoy having home baked goods to share.

Here are a few shots of what has been produced over the past couple of weeks (when I remembered to take a photo!).

Cake and slices to fill the freezer

A few of the tradies working on our back entertaining area, got lucky with some scones for morning tea one Saturday morning!

Coffee Mousse for a dinner with friends

Always a favourite...sausage rolls.

Even though I have many cookbooks, I tend to just google for recipes now and have my ipad sitting on the kitchen bench. While perusing Pintrest I came across this fabulous idea for an ipad holder...I might make it one day. The instructions are here.

We are doing a day trip to Adelaide today to catch up with family, so here is what will be going with us....some Apricot Slice for an afternoon tea and in the blue lidded container is Chocolate Crackles with marshmallows, my Father-in-law's favourite!

 

In the kitchen

Would you believe I started this post back in May and got distracted so 'saved a draft' and now here I am some 3 months later, picking up where I left off!!!

May

After having a high cholesterol reading quite a few months back and elevated blood sugar, I decided to take stock of what I was putting in my mouth and research some things on food. One of the additions I've added to my diet is blueberries. For breakfast now I make a juice which contains our local orange juice (no preservatives etc), blueberries, strawberries, banana and spinich. I love it.

I've amended a few other things as well, and when I went back a few weeks back for another cholesterol test it was all good and had dropped quite a bit. Yay!

For Mother's Day Paul and I did a day trip down to Adelaide to see our Mums
Here is Mum and me out in the garden where she lives at Resthaven.

I baked some Raspberry Struesal Muffins to take down to Adelaide. Here was the recipe I used for the Muffins but I added a dollop of custard in the middle for a little surprise. I also bought some lace cup cake wrappers to make them a little bit fancy!

Fast forward to August!!

I feel like I've been in a bit of a 'work bubble' over the past few months with lots of projects on the go and one taking quite of lot more time than expected, but think things are getting a bit more manageable again now.

In my quest to watch what I put in my mouth, I have been eating more nuts, especially walnuts. I tend to always put crushed walnuts into my cake mixes now too, along with replacing one cup of flour for almond meal. My most favourite kitchen gadget at the moment is my Tupperware 'Chop n Prep Chef' which makes it super easy to crush the walnuts. Takes only a few moments.

What is your favourite kitchen gadget?

We are having a new undercover outdoor area built on the back of our house at the moment, so the back yard is in a bit of a mess. At Christmas time our pergola was dismantled to get ready for the new structure.

Before

 After the pergola was taken down and the bullnose along the back removed, the poor back of the house looked a bit sad! However things started happening, the structure was delivered and the tradies got to work.

 

Our little grandson Owen had a good vantage point from our window to watch all the action!

 

And I just took a photo of where things are at, at this moment in time.

In the coming weeks a few walls will be built at the far end and around the corner, along with an outdoor kitchen, some outdoor blinds will be installed and a new stacker door will go in to replace one of our window bays. Very exciting!

And Daniel and Telesha get married in October, so we are enjoying helping them plan for their special day!

Nice to have finally done a post after quite some time!