Afternoon tea

This afternoon I had an afternoon tea for the children I care for and their parents (and one sibling). Janet and Sarah from the office also came. It was lovely to catch up with you all - especially the dads who I don't often see. Nice for everyone to get to know each other a bit more too.

Sophie and her friend Imogen (who was staying the night) made raspberry muffins. Thanks Poppa for the frozen raspberrys! S also helped making sandwiches.

(The photo is from google, not the actual article - which got eaten!!)

Lucia di Lammermore

Bern and I went to the opera on Saturday. Lucia di Lammermoor. This is something we regularly do - approximately once every 17 years so far!! Might have to be a bit more regular in future as it was great.

It was in the Westpac St James theatre, rather than the Opera House (where you have to dodge pillars in the cheap seats). My Italian is limited to foodstuffs and music terms (fettucini adagio!) so fortunately the surtitles were in easy view, and I fairly quickly worked out how long a line of Italian would take to sing. Longer than you might think!

Wikipedia has this to say about the opera.

What really impressed me was the emotion - the way that, instead of rushing through a book, say, with lots of plot, the amount of plot was kept to a minimum, but the emotion content of it was so much to the fore. (This could also be because the story is a tragedy in the Romantic style - where it's no good unless the lovers (and several other people) all die.)

There was some theatre in another sense on the night too. Just as the curtains went down for interval, there was an almightly crash from behind them. It transpires that part of the set fell down, slightly injuring 2 tech people. As we came back after the break the sound of hammering and power tools was noticeable! All looked fine when the curtain went up though. Word was that the injured staff went to hospital to be checked up, but don't know how serious that was.

(Wednesday) this last drama was mentioned in the paper on Monday, and on Tuesday there was a note to say the staff were fine and had gone back to Auckland.

Sewing dress ups

I'm miles behind in blogging - I keep thinking of things to blog about, but 'thinking' is not the same as 'doing'. And you can't cheat and backdate (or at least, I haven't figured out how to fiddle with the dates).

One notable event last weekend was the "Trucks and Cars Ball" for the youth group at church. Katie and her friend decided to go as road cones (see picture). (You'd think you get past sewing dress ups.)

So, on the Thursday before, we had about 1 1/2 hours to turn 4m of bright orange parka nylon (which the girls had bought) into some approximation. This was after work, and while also making Bern's birthday cake.

The hoop dresses are held out with hula hoops tacked into the bottom. Kate looks pretty solemn in the photo, but it's the best one for showing the dress.

And the final result? They won the prize for best costume!

Brrrrr!

It's flipping cold here today. Southerly, and rain on and off all day. I've made vege soup so the kids can have something hot when they come home from school. (None of them are very good at putting on a rain coat in the morning.)

Here's my vege soup recipe. I call it "Five Vege Soup" because you need at least 5 different vegetables, for preference, for a nice blended flavour.

Five Vege Soup
Start heating 2 litres water in a big pot. Add 1 cup of barley or lentils (or some of both) and then one or two of at least five different vegetables, chopped into small dice, as you prepare them. When it boils, simmer for 20-30 minutes. Add 1 1/2 tsp salt and other seasonings. Enjoy!

Today's version had the lentils, an onion, a carrot, 2 sticks celery, 1 potato, some peas, some cabbage, a little bit grated ginger and crushed garlic and some chopped parsley.

It is actually very like "Stone Soup" but without the stone.

Tips:

• if you're using lentils, don't add the salt (or any tomatoes) until lentils are cooked.
• Add the quick cooking veges (eg, cabbage, silverbeet) when the rest is nearly ready

Actually, the reason I'm publishing my recipe is I have just received an e-mail newsletter from somewhere with a soup recipe in. It goes as follows:

Chunky Monkey Vegetable soup

One Onion finely chopped

One tablespoon of Olive Oil

3 tubs of Chunky Monkey (any combo)

One carton (375mls) of beef stock

Heat Olive Oil in saucepan, sauté the onion.

Add remaining ingredients

Bring to the boil and gently simmer for 5 minutes

Salt and Pepper to taste.

I don't know what "Chunky Monkey" is, but I sincerely hope that it's not true to name!!! If this is the level of soup recipe being circulated in cyber-space, then I'm doing a public service publishing my own recipe.

Excursion today

We had a lovely trip today. The little kids have been getting into the train set recently, and starting to talk about trains. So, today we took the bus to the train station and went on the over-bridge to watch the trains go through. If you time it right (near the hour or half-hour) you get a few within a few minutes. Anyway, we watched 5 trains go past under us, and then went off for morning tea and a race around in the highly echo-ie station!

Birthday time

Yesterday was G's birthday. She brought cupcakes to share at playcentre, and we made her a cake to have at afternoon tea time. so, she got lots of chances to blow candles, and we sang 'happy birthday' a lot!

I and E will be turning 2 soon. It was also good practice for I to learn about birthdays, cakes and candles.

Katie's Party

We have had a busy, fun afternoon/evening having Katie's birthday party. It was a pot luck dinner, held at church, for her and two friends who also have birthdays this month. In the end there were about 30 girls (and one brother), plus the 3 sets of parents.

There were a few games (like stomping on balloons which are tied to peoples ankles - the last one with a 'live' balloon on their ankle wins), and a movie on the big screen. The movie was Stranger than Fiction and was very good. The parents watched it too.

The food worked out well - plenty without having miles left over. Bern made a meat curry and I did a vego one, and we have enough left for our lunches on Monday (ha ha). There were three cakes too and lots of candles. I had made a Bonnie's Chocolate (and banana) Cake (some of you will know who Bonnie is) in a 12" tin. Half was left over so that will do for our church lunch contribution tomorrow.

Nice to meet some of the parents of Katie's friends. This doesn't happen so often nowadays as teenages don't seem to 'come over to play after school' so much!

Above are Katie and her friend Susan.

I helping me to blog

I was just doing my e-mail and I(child) came and found me. (She has brought in a dandelion - she had a go at saying it - "daa-dee".) She asked to see the duck on the blog. No ducks today, but I showed her E with the goggles and herself on the bike. More interesting than a duck!

Cafe review

Must be time for another cafe review.

Bern and I went out last evening "just because". We were going to check out Katapo, but it was shut. So we looked at a couple of 2nd hand book shops (no luck there) and went to our old favourite, Espressoholic.

It is our old favourite because it is the one 'coffee and cake' place that seems to be open any time we are in town of an evening, whether early or late. If anyone ever left comments on this blog (which they don't seem to) they could perhaps recommend other coffee places for 10pm and later.

The latte is generally good there, though seemed only average last night. I often go for chocolate cake, but they had something new last night - citrus coconut cake - so I had that. It was a good idea in theory, but a bit dry, and needed more citrus flavour. Also, the cream was overwhipped. So it'll be back to the chocolate cake next time.

They have funky painted tables and walls there, so if nothing else you get to feel hip and cool just being seen there!

Here's a link to someone else's review of the place.

Premmie baby cardie

This is what I have just finished off this evening (while playing a board game with family). I had already knitted the body and most of both sleeves. I was at the playcentre federation conference last weekend and got most of them done then. I am now well known for taking knitting to conferences. I have people come up to me and comment on what I was knitting last time!

Mum is contributing to a project down South were they are aiming to knit 1000 garments for the prem babies in the neonatal unit at the hospital. This will go to that when I go down South next week. (One less for those ladies to knit.) Actually, mum has a friend at the hospital, so she can just knit things for them and pass them to Colleen, but funny how you don't often get around it things like that unless there is a particular focus. I think the project was organised by a wool shop (not surprisingly).

The ruler, if you can read it, is to give some idea of size. (Actually, I can't read it - it's in inches, so the cardie is about 7" from neck to hem.)

Looking at the world through orange coloured glasses

Sophie and Elanor had swimming sports yesterday. In the course of getting sorted, some goggles were left lying around. E and I(child) have had an interesting time trying on these goggles and looking at the world through them. From E's expression, this was quite a weird experience to start with, but intriguing, and she kept on with them (many turns), and wandering around inside and outside looking at all sorts of things. Finally she was able to put them on by herself too.

I haven't found out how the swimming sports went yet.

I picked up this ride-on in a skip across the road recently. That was just before mum and dad came to stay (for my graduation). The handles weren't attached, but I though dad would be able to fix it - and he did!

I(child) is totally into anything with wheels, so I though she would like it. Actually, most little kids like bikes. She can only just reach the ground to propel it, but she has learned to manage.