I have not been planning our food again ... I fall into this slump on a regular basis, I know. Here we go again. Brand new week, fresh start!

Monday: Portugese marinaded chicken breast, baked potato, silverbeet, corn. Dessert: Lime jelly (jello, for you international types) and custard

Tuesday: Beef casserole, polenta, broccoli and carrots. Dessert: Bread and butter pudding.

Wednesday: Chicken and lemon spaghetti carbonara, baby spinach salad. Dessert: Cup cakes

Thursday: Home made chicken nuggets (using tenderloins), chips, carrot and beans. Dessert: Fresh fruit salad.

Friday: Lasagne, fresh bread, salad. Dessert: Brownies.

Saturday: Crumbed fish pieces (from a box ;), chips, salad. Dessert: Jelly and icecream.

Sunday is the Cook's day off. She gets stroppy if she doesn't get it. I need to hire better help ;)

Edit to add: Silly me, I forgot to link to Laura's Organizing Junkie blog, without which there would be no Menu Plan Monday, and I would still be dithering somewhere in the back of my freezer!

Creativity Abounds



On a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, feeling breezy and relaxed, I finally got together the things I needed to embroider some linen. It's a project I have been wanting to do for a while, so it's a joy to actually begin. I spread myself out on the floor, with my light box, sheets, pillow cases, patterns, two kids and a packet of felt pens (aargh! Not near Mummy's sheets! No!!), and got artistic. Well, no, I just traced - I am not a good artist, by any stretch of the imagination.



Joshua thrilled me this week with his first drawing that wasn't a blob of scribble. This is a picture of Blue, from Blue's Clues fame. The blue blob is her body and the balloon part is her head. The artist's endeavour is now hanging in pride of place, under the Superman magnet on the fridge. Up high, so that the artist can't get it down and wreck it. He's a temperamental little artist.

You should see the other guy!



Christopher is in the wars at the moment. His mother's heart can't take much more. This morning as we walked to his classroom, his usual bout of enthusiastic scampering ended in disaster. He lost his balance and landed face first on the concrete step. Of course, the broken arm didn't help, and he had no way to break his fall. He came up with blood pouring from his nose, and an impressive collection of grazes on every limb excepting the one that's plastered from shoulder to finger tips. (That cast was optional, and I must say, one of the better decisions of my parenting career!) Ice, painkillers and back home to bed was the prescription for the day. As you can see, his eyes are blackening. I have nearly chewed through my tongue in my efforts not to say 'I told you so!'.

Poor kiddo, maybe now he'll slow down!

No pictures to show, due to flat batteries, but Darling Hubby and I have been on a bit of a demolition derby in our house this weekend.

We planned to remove an accumulation of larger rubbish that the regular collection wouldn't take, also to remove a concret ramp leading to our back door, in preparation for a slab to be poured for our new patio. We ordered two rubbish skips, one to be taken away last Friday for the regular junk, and then replaced with a special concrete collection skip for us to fill over the weekend. All went as planned, except that the first skip was not removed.

So we did all the work we'd planned, and sat down for a well earned Sunday evening's rest. Darling Hubby looked down and said 'We should get rid of this carpet sooner, rather than later'. That was all the encouragement I needed, since I have loathed the living room carpet for years. By 8:30 pm, we'd rolled up the carpet and put it and the underlay into the overdue-for-pick-up skip. Glad they forgot to get it! We unearthed some rather tolerable floorboards, so now I need to get them clean. Darling Hubby has gone away for work (on a public holiday, grrr)

Needless to say, we're a bit tired today, after getting a little over excited with our skips. Darling Hubby says next time he'll order a really small one, so I don't get carried away trying to fill it.

Queensland - Beautiful one day, perfect the next.

Could this be the rain we've been praying for? Overnight we have almost reached the magical 50 mls we're told is needed before any runoff heads towards our dams. Water supplies in Brisbane are down to 18 percent of the dams' capacity, and rainfall is desperately needed. The outlook for today is wet, wet, wet, so we can only hope!

My garden has gone green overnight!

This time last week, Christopher was hooning it up on the Dodgem cars at Dreamworld with his Dad. Today, it's a whole 'nother story. He's nursing a newly broken arm after a particularly dangerous soccer match. Now before all you family members start thinking maybe he's NOT taking after his father, Christopher was not actually on the field when he sustained this injury. No, he was tripped by a friend while they were fooling around on the sidelines.

I can't say enough about the school, particularly the teacher's aide who called me. She asked if I wanted them to call an ambulance, but I didn't know, since I had no way to gauge the severity of his injury. I was about 20 minutes away, so the aide jumped in her car, and drove down to the match oval (about 5 minutes from the school), and called me back once she'd seen Christopher first hand. Once I arrived at the soccer field, Neurofen in hand, she then drove back to the school, pulled Samara out of class and had her waiting at the gate so that I could pick her up and head off to the hospital.

He's a very lucky boy, the fracture was borderline, but the surgeon hasn't contacted us, so we're confident that he'll heal without needing more drastic treatment. He's in a collar and cuff sling, with appointments being set up with the fracture clinic next week.

So we're having a quiet weekend, loaded up with painkillers and interspersed with nice healing naps.