Home Made Cordial

I have been trying so hard to finish off the oranges from our tree because the new leaves are just starting to grow and I thought it was time for the tree to put energy into growth rather than sustaining old oranges. I was reading a blog and got the idea of making some fresh cordial using citrus juice - perfect for my oranges.

Don't these bottles of cordial look great! We are not huge cordial drinkers and Caitlin actually won't dring commercial cordial, but she loves this one! I made 5 bottles altogether but have already given a lemon cordial away and one of the orange ones is earmarked for L and her family.



Here is the recipe if you are interested:

Citrus cordial (recipe from a sustainable living blog)

First, make a sugar syrup: * Combine 1 part sugar with 1 part water in a saucepan. * Heat mixture, boiling gently, stirring to dissolve sugar. Then, your basic cordial recipe is: * Combine 1 part fruit juice with 1 part sugar syrup. Chill. * To drink, dilute cordial about 1:10 with water, mineral water or soda water. * Keep refrigerated and drink within about a week. Citrus cordials: If you are making a citrus-based cordial, you can add 1 teaspoon of citric acid or tartaric acid (both are derivatives of fruit, found in the baking aisle of supermarkets) per litre (quart) of cordial as a preservative, which will mean it lasts about a month. I also suggest adding the finely grated zest of one of the fruit too, for added flavour.

I am off to bed - early nights for me for a while because Caitlin and I have school sores. We went to the doctor today, thinking Caitlin had chicken pox and came out with a highly contageous infection that requires us to be house bound for a while, so no scrapbooking classes either!

The Scrap Room

Here is a picture of the room at the scrap shop (Keepsake Krafts) where I teach scrapping during the week.

Kung Fu Panda

I took Caitlin to see her first movie today!

My friend C and her son T wanted to go to see Kung Fu Panda, so we tagged along. The kids had so much fun. Towards the end of the movie they both got quite fidgety, but that was to be expected really. On the whole they were both great. Caitlin was frightened at one stage and sat on my knee, but was generally OK with the big screen and the dark. I thought the movie was great too!

Poor Cal and Craig stayed home! Callum slept pretty much the whole time that we were away and Craig pruned some more of that hideous vine (now dead) from a tree at the side (near the dove cote) that has suffered from it being so invasive. He got just about all if it trimmed out I think.

It is raining here. The bureau of meteorology says that we have only had about 5 mm, but I believe we have had quite a bit more. For about 3 days now we have had heavy rain at night and drizzle on and off during the day and the garden is looking great for it. Now the weeds will be even more out of control than they were before! My patch of spinach that I had to re-sow is up and looking good. The new patch of corn is still not up, but I think that takes a while.

CSI is about to be on TV, so I had better go and get my weekly fix of TV!

Scrap Classes

I had my first class at the shop on Tuesday night! It was fantastic. I love the room and the dynamics were great. I have had lots of positive feedback too. I am teaching there again tonight, so hopefully it will be just as good. I have to get the hang of payments now. Thank goodness Renaye is there for the first few classes because I would have felt a little swamped otherwise!

I will post some pictures when I have some.

Ten Pin Bowling!

Can you imagine a group of 11 three year olds ten pin bowling - no? Well, we did it today. And it was the cutest thing ever! Caitlin LOVED it. "I can do it myself Mummy" was about all I heard this morning. She would get her own ball off the shoot thing, carry it over to a special stand they have for kids, get me to put the ball on because it was too heavy for her to lift up that far, then she would roll it down the stand (it was sort of like a ramp) and towards the pins. She did so well. I think we will make an endeavour to go as a family some time because we all had so much fun. Can you believe they even had shoes small enough for her? I wish I had taken my camera.

Child Health Visit

I took Caitlin for her 3 year old check up and Cal for his 8 months check on Tuesday.

Caitlin had a full audiology check because the speech therapist wanted to check that her hearing was OK to rule that out as a cause for her lagging speech. She heard every sound that was produced, so that is promising. On height and weight, she is going well too. She is 100cm tall, which is almost right on the 75th percentile, which means that only 25% of girls her age are taller. She weighs 15.8kg with clothes and shoes, which is between the 50th and 75th percentiles, which is also great. She is on track to be a bit taller than me. Maybe I will end up the shortie of the family like my Mum has!

Callum has lost a small amount of weight since I weighed him at 9 months - he is now 8.06kg (he was 8.14kg at 9 months). When he had the bad cold and tonsilitis he hardly ate or drank, so I can fully understand that he has lost some weight. The CHN was onto it and wants to make sure that he has put on some again by 10 months because of his weight loss when he was 3 or 4 months. I am sure that he is fine though. He is growing longer despite being sick - he is now 72.5cm long. He has suddenly decided food is OK too. His appetite has increased heaps and he is starting to tolerate lumps and loves rice rusks and toast crusts. I expect that he will be beefing up from now on!

Some Photos

Both of the kids just love us reading to them. I am so grateful that Craig loves reading as much as I do and is setting a great example for both Caitlin and Cal.



Caitlin is loving her babushka dolls at the moment. Every day I have to open the biggest one for her so she can stack and sort and line them all up. I think there are 15 in the set and goes down to the size of a grain of rice. I worry that we will lose the smallest one or two, but hey, if they go by the wayside it doesn't matter I suppose because they have had good use so far!



Our little acrobat has learned a new trick (trained monkey!). She loves to hang upside down. She is getting stronger too. Because she has always had weak shoulders I have been paying attention to getting her to pull herself up using her arms and try to get herself high enough to flick her legs over the bar. She perhaps gets about half way by herself, which is pretty cool.



Dad's earmuffs are also the flavour of the month. Doesn't she look cute?



I have just realised there is a distinct lack of photos of Callum in this post. I will have to make up for it in another one. This is just a classic photo - I get this frown all the time at the moment. He uses it to full effect. Whenever I do something that he doesn't like, I get this huge frown or scowl! I know I do it to Caitlin so that she knows that I don't like what she is doing so I don't need to discipline her in front of her friends, so I must unknowingly be giving the same look to Cal. Classic really! I must scrap this one!