Bike Rack, Weed Eater, Puffins and Pumice towers.

Stage 1 of cleaning up the garage. I made a bike rack, all the bikes are nice and neat.

Didn't look at all strange riding down the street with this on the back.

Fern made some Puffins.Nom.

Decorations for the Garden: Pumice Towers from one of our friends up the road.

Ahhh weekends without children

Yup, it's been a weekend without kids, so what amazing jobs did I get done round the house?

Umm, not a lot, but I got another 4 quests done, 23 levels and my nails are now a reverse French manicure of dark purple and neon orange :).  Yup, I hit the bonus xp weekend on Runescape hard, while Sam studied his little heart out and got through his final assignment :)

It's nice to take a break sometimes

Otherwise, it's well into spring now, and the garden is blooming furiously.  Not long until the roses are all open, but my Dublin Bay, Iceberg and my daughter's Sweetheart rose are all in bloom.

Some of the flowers in the front garden

Sweetheart living up to it's name

The ledge garden outside the kitchen window

Anyway, I'll try and post more soon, but for now, only 10 hrs of bonus xp left :)

Love,
Mama Fern

Riding along in my automobile

Just a few pics regarding the co-op we're a member of.

a full load of Dry goods and fresh fruit and feges for the week. 60kg on back of bike.

"and I already went to the gym today."

What it looks like in the larder. Zombie apocapolypse here we come.

and the Pantry.

--
Papa Sam

I built a fence and painted some walls

Ok so my first post here for a while, been working on the gaming blog, but I did a couple of things in the last week. So I painted the boys walls and built a fence to keep the chickens aout of the front and top planting area of the backyard. Then snipped all their flight ffeathers off one wing each. Chicken apartheid.

Aidan's room, a nice tree frog green. one tester pot 20ml covers the whole wall, need to get another and We're all done here.

Max's room, in Picton bay blue, another testerpot and we're all done with this wall as well.

I'm building a fence yo, so chickens can stay on da uvverside.

--
Sam

Dashing toward the end of the year

Hi All,

Well, I was just starting to get into the habit of posting regularly when things went into a bit of a whirl in our lives, and the blog well and truly went on the backburner...  But we're still here and still keeping busy.  For those that know us well in real life, we're coping fine and moving foward :)

The kids haven't quite finished making their aprons, although the two girls did theirs

We also had our youngest daughter's birthday party.  She's really keen on Taekwon Do, and was turning 10, so I did my best to make a dobok (Taekwon Do uniform) and put what I'm hoping is actually the number 10 in Korean on it.

 She got her first Warhammer Fantasy army for her birthday - Dark Elves.  She's been so busy putting them together.

We raised up the shelves in our storage room, and still have some work to do to turn them into a large wall, but it's already giving the girls a whole heap more privacy.

And, what is this?  An artist busy at work?

Yup, Papa Sam is busy painting our boys walls with some test pots, so that we can see how we like the colours, then we'll be completely painting the walls and brightening up the place.  This colour is called "Tree Frog" by Resene...  Gorgeous :)  (the paint isn't bad either)  ;)

We've also put up some gorgeous blue thermal curtains in our room and the living room - it makes a huge difference to the house

Oh yeah, and I learned that I make a MEAN plate of pork ribs!  Yum!  Might I mention that this pic is dedicated to two absolutely lovely vegan regular readers I know  ;)  You know who you are....  Mmm, pork ribs marinated in ginger, garlic, soy sauce, red wine and sugar....  DELICIOUS!

As for the rest of the news from the past month or two, I spent a wonderful week in the South Island with family, getting to know parts of the country I haven't seen before and spend time with my awesome cousin and her family.  Thanks so much for having me down there to annoy you, guys!

As for Papa Sam, he's busy playing wargames most of the time, so you can find out what he's been up to on our Warhammer blog - http://napalmelfrebelscum.blogspot.co.nz/

I think that's about it...  Here's hoping I can get more posted up here again soon! 

Love to All,
Mama Fern

Teatowel aprons stage 1

Hi All,

Our kids are working on their second sewing project of the year, so I thought I'd put up a work in progress blog letting people know how they're going.

We got the plans from this site - http://polkanuts.blogspot.co.nz/2010/04/tutorial-easy-apron.html

Will post up more pics once they're done


Love to all,
Mama Fern

The Hen Den: The Day After

So it's a couple days after and Fern decided to decorate the Chook house and personalised it. So it is now called THE HEN DEN... and it can haz prty flowrz.

And the ashes of the fire the night after.... so many mites...(Shudder!)

--
Sam

Supreme Lord of Poultry and Pyro

Finished the Chicken Coop v3.0. It's basically a shed with a laying box attached and some roosts.

and some interior shots with the female models.

And I'll leave you with me burning the old chicken shed to get rid of the mites. Every single bit was infested. I had to have a long hot shower after.

I AM THE GOD OF FIRE!!!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!1!

The littlest things

Hi All,

Sometimes it's the littlest things in life that make you smile.  Like a warm cuddle from the child who clambers into bed in the morning, or the smell of bread baking in the kitchen.

Today, I decided to shine my sink...  Yup, you heard right, I went and made it shine, clean and bright, and it made me smile.  There's been a lot going on lately, and I've only just managed to stay on top of the housework, but I finally decided to go back to the FlyLady website (flylady.net), and start getting things back on track.  So hopefully it means I'll be getting a few more posts up here, and that I'll be getting more done around the place.

So here it is, in all its before and after glory!

Before

After

Because sometimes in life, you just have to take that first step.

Love to all,
Mama Fern

Alien pikelets and new furniture

Hi All,

Just lately, we have got the kids to try lots of things they wouldn't normally do.  For instance, they've all had a chance to light the fireplace, and we've got a ginger bug going, to make our own ginger beer.  But I have to say, our oldest boys pikelets have to be one of the cutest results from all our work lately.  I left him alone in the kitchen, with a pikelets recipe and told him to make pikelets.  Not bad for a 10 year old with no parental assistance!

Strange looking, but tasty all the same!

We spoilt ourselves with our first ever matching bedroom set (two dressers, two bedside tables and a bed frame), which has made our room feel so much more homely.  I'm absolutely adoring it!

And, we replaced the bed of our middle boy.  The youngest has to wait a little longer, but we're slowly getting them more organised.  We still have to change around his walls a little, but he's keeping his room a lot tidier as a result of the extra storage space.

Anyway, that's all from me tonight.

Love to all,
Mama Fern

Last six months catch-up

Hi there,

Still no camera cable, but we've managed to extract the photos that were on the camera via the memory card.  So here's a rough round-up of some of the things that have happened in the past six months:

We bought a couple of beds for the girls, and left Sam to assemble them all day.

Mr Assembler man, on the job!

Our girls rooms, moved into the dining room

Bed number 1 done

Bed number 2 done

 We managed to make a store-room out of the rest of the room that the girls are in now.  More room for Warhammer and books!

Storeroom shelves for Warhammer

Storeroom bookcase and shelves

We got our first batches of carrots and onions out of the front garden.  They were absolutely delicious.  We've also had a rush trip to the vet for Major Tom, who had a big bite taken out of his shoulder.  He's much happier now, and stopped limping, but has a bit of a jumpy personality ever since.

Major Tom, chilling with Sam's phone

Carrots and onions

Ahhh, Christmas...  We decided to try out a couple of new family traditions, which everyone in the house thought was amazing.  Borrowing from some European traditions, we spent the afternoon of Christmas Eve making chocolate truffles and writing Christmas cards for our friends and neighbours within walking distance.  The kids and I then walked around the block, delivering our gifts, while Papa Sam cooked a light fish and salad meal for us.

Once we got home, we had dinner together, and then opened our presents (yes, on Christmas Eve).  On Christmas morning, the kids already had their presents to play with, and we surprised them with stockings full of little bits and bobs and sweets.  They thought it was awesome, having a whole Christmas Day just to relax and hang out with family.  It was the most relaxing and happy Christmas I've personally ever had.

Cards and flowers for neighbours

Chocolate truffles

Our Christmas tree

We also continued our normal tradition of Olliebollen for New Years Eve

Olliebollen for New Years

Papa Sam had his birthday first, and I quickly painted a couple of miniatures to go on top of the yummy passionfruit white chocolate mudcake.  In case you don't understand Warhammer, there's two miniatures on top of the cake, one Eldar and one Ork, hence the "F-orking Eldar-ly" on the top of the cake.

Yup, Sammy's getting older

Our youngest was next, and I made him a cupcake train, while our second youngest got a gorgeous monkey cake, made by Papa Sam (his baking and cake icing skills are really getting good). 

And then came my birthday, for which Papa Sam made me a lovely lemon madeira cake, iced my favourite colour :)

   

Finally, so that we can keep the Warhammer and general wargaming enthusiasts in our lives who read this blog happy, we started another blog.  It's called Napalm Elf & Rebel Scum, and has all of the pics of our progress painting miniatures and wargaming.

But one last Warhammer pic, for the road....  In the words of the Doctor....  Monsters are real :)

 There's lots more to update you all on, but that will have to wait a little while longer (the camera cable should be on a courier to us right now).

Love to all,

Mama Fern