Christmas Cookbook Loot

As you can imagine, Christmas is much anticipated in the Turner household, as it is in any household with children.

 Eliza is the most excited around Christmas time, probably because she is the youngest, but also because she loves get togethers and parties, and lets just admit it - she just loves presents!  She was very much looking forward to receiving some "My Little Pony" loot this Christmas, and she wasn't disappointed.  Here she is pictured with her new Canon camera.

Jasmin is less about the presents - she loves the traditions of Christmas, putting the Christmas tree up on the 1st of December, building and decorating gingerbread houses, getting the little goodies out of the Advent Calendar.... In fact when you ask her what she wants for Christmas, she normally can't tell you, and says that she's happy to receive what ever we give her. She was most impressed with the Mountain Bike that we gave her at Christmas, as she just wasn't expecting it.

Dave - well, he just loves to shop - so at Christmas time he is in his element. Hunting out the bargains, shopping around, browsing the web shops. It's very much a case of buying a present for family, and then one for himself - in fact it's hard to buy for him at Christmas, for fear that he'll just buy the latest nerdy toy when he sees it anyway!  We managed to find some nerdy things for him though (that he didn't buy himself - although we had to tell him on a couple of occasions not to buy something he spotted that he wanted!)  His biggest present this year was a Go Pro camera. We are looking forward to using it in Phuket.

Me. I'm excited about Christmas, not only because everyone else is excited - but this is the time of year, when all the celebrity chefs decide they need some extra cash, and publish their latest cookbooks! So, for me it's all about the Cookbooks LOL!




This year I received 5 cookbooks at Christmas, I also bought myself a cookbook, and ended up with a seventh cookbook on account that I had lost a cookbook which I had bought for someone else, had to re-purchase it, and then of course found the cookbook later on (queue evil laugh!).

So here is my round-up of the latest cookbooks:

1   Donna Hay - The New Easy

Super excited about this one. My friend Mel got this for me for Christmas - and it is a signed copy!  I have looked through it about three or four times already.  I think I have all of the Donna Hay cookbooks published in the last four-five years now. The only one I have been disappointed with was "Fresh and Light", only from the viewpoint that every page seemed to have a Quinoa or Kale recipe on it - there's only so much Quinoa one can eat! So she has redeemed herself with this cookbook. It is a lovely hard bound cookbook, with the Donna Hay trademark blue cover and beautiful food photography.

The book is broken up into five sections -

• Weeknights - so lots of quick one dish recipes in this section. I can see myself cooking almost every recipe in this section. You could even use this section to prep some entrees for a fancier dinner. For example - the Goat's Cheese, Pear and Pancetta Tart recipe would be ideal as a starter, as would the Zucchini and Feta Pancakes.
• Weekends - for when you have a little more time for cooking, so these recipes require more preparation time or more cooking time. I picture using this section for when I have larger groups of people around. I'm looking forward to trying the Smoky Pulled Pork recipe.
• Salads and Sides - a selection of recipes you can prepare as sides to either the Weeknight or Weekend recipes. In a lot of cases she has simple side suggestions included with the Weeknight and Weekend recipes anyway, but this section would be handy for feeding larger groups of people.  Some recipes in this section could also form most of a meal - For example, the Rustic Vegetable and Pancetta Gratin and the Baked Lemon, Parmesan and Basil Risotto.
• Baking - I love her baking recipes from the viewpoint, that a lot of the time I can just whiz up the ingredients in my food processor. These recipes don't take a lot of prep time. I have my eye on the Chocolate Chunk Share Cookie, and I might even make the Salted Caramel Chocolate Brownie recipe for Dave one day!
• Desserts - more often than not, if I prepare a dessert, it's normally a Donna Hay dessert. She has a knack for creating simple yet delicious, and easy to prepare desserts. I have already made the Mango and Coconut Icecream from this section. She uses a lot of fruits in her dessert recipes - either tropical, stone fruits or berries, my favourites.

So the other interesting thing about this cookbook is that every so often a recipe takes up a double page spread - nice picture on the left, recipe on the right, with an additional two ways to restyle or reuse the recipe. For example, the Mango and Coconut Icecream recipe can be restyled as a Chic dinner dessert recipe served in glasses, or as a frozen pop where the recipe is frozen in paper cups with Popsicle sticks in them.

I have also cooked the Dukkah Crusted Schnitzel and Radish and Fennel Salad from the Weeknights section. I served these with a Rocket, Lettuce, Tomato and Basil Salad as well.

 2   Delicious - Love to Eat

An ABC book - once again in Valli Little's trademark style, with some fabulous food photography. This book is broken up into ten country sections - Italian, Spanish, Australian, Indian, American, Asian, Latin American, French, British and Middle Eastern. Each secton is 28 pages long - with one recipe per double page spread. A back section also provides some suggested menus, where the dishes are mixed and matched. There is also a couple of double-pages on basic recipes eg. pastries and so forth.

I can see myself using the Spanish section for some Tapas style dinner parties. The French section has some really lovely recipes for dinner parties. The Australian Section has some great recipes for informal al-fresco style dining (eg. Barbecued chicken salad with passionfruit dressing, Barbecued Sausage rolls with Beer Braised Onions, Barramundi baked in paperbark with chilli ginger dressing to name a couple of the recipes). I'll have to try the Cola Cakes in the American section for Dave. 

The Asian section has one of my favourite current recipes in it (which I have cooked multiple times before from the Delicious magazine) - Baked Ocean Trout with Smashed Cucumber Salad. It can really be served with any salad, and I also cook this one with a whole Salmon fillet rather than the Ocean Trout. We even had it Christmas Eve as well as Christmas day:

I cooked the following gems this week from this cookbook.

Scallops with Peas and Pancetta recipe, which was from the Italian section:

This Salmon en Papillote with Honey Mustard Sauce was from the French section of the book:

3   Local is Lovely

My friend Michelle from Sydney has this cookbook, and I thought it was so Lovely that I ordered myself a copy. The book is split into four sections - one for each season. The whole premise of the book is to cook using local seasonal produce in your cooking, and each section has information about several NSW-based producers. The recipes are simple, and not weighed down by a list of fifty ingredients, the recipes focus on the fresh produce.  The Summer section has quite a few berry and stone fruit recipes, which is where I have started. This week I made the delicious little Blueberry and white chocolate tarts. I also have the Brioche and Berry Pudding, Bacon and Nectarine Salad, as well as the Peach Crumble cake on my list to make before the end of summer.

I visited the EPIC Farmers Markets in Canberra for the first time before Christmas, and am inspired to go regularly once we get back from our holidays. There are about 150 stall holders that come to the markets (maybe all not at the same time), but there was a wonderful variety when I went - fruit, vegetables, honey, wine makers, vinegars and oils, meat, plants and herbs, bakeries and more.  I'm also inspired to do the Eat Local Challenge which my friend Michelle pointed me to, on the cityhippyfarmgirl.com blog. The idea is to be more aware about the local food that is available and to prepare an entire meal with local produce. You start by defining how local you want to be - eg. all Australian products, products from your state,  products within a certain kilometre radius of your home and so forth. I might start off wide and then get narrower and narrower. So next year 2015, I will do the challenge once a month (starting in February), and then try to get narrower and narrower during the year. The idea, is to know where all the produce came from.

4   Matt Preston Cook Book

This is Matt Preston's latest addition to his cookbook efforts. It's very much along the same lines as his first cookbook, and contains 187 recipes that are broken down into what I call the standard chapters of a cookbook - Breakfasts, Soups, Salads, Snacks, Pasta, Seafood etc etc. It's very much a home cooks cookbook, with lots of family shared plates in the cook book, and it will be very useful for cooking for large groups of people as well. There are quite a few hints and tips spread throughout the book, and it's got a fold-out section in the middle - with the ingredients that should be illegal. He has come up with a handful of recipes for said ingredients - for example, Deb is one such ingredient.

So far I have cooked Leiza's Greek Pasticcio made by An Asian (sorry - forgot to take a photo), and even though I halved the ingredients - there was enough for two meals serving 5-6 people each time!

One thing that made me laugh as I looked through the cook book was the fact that some recipe titles took up half the page - eg. Warm Middle Eastern Herb Salad with Zucchini, Pepitas, Crispy Chickpeas and a Lemon Tzatziki Dressing (what a mouthful). Not sure I will be giving the family the full name when they come and ask me what's for dinner!

5   Jamie's Comfort Food

This cookbook was my secret Santa present from the Aussie girls I have dinner with once a month. I still do not know who got me the book, but it was definitely on my list of cookbooks to get. Like Donna Hay, I think I have most of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks.

This one is a hard copy volume, and you certainly would not want to drop it on your foot or on your face if you happen to be reading it in bed (yes, I take my cookbooks to bed and read them like a novel LOL)!  

It is full of Jamie's favourite comfort food recipes.  There are lots of full-page photographs of the recipes, lots of one pot shared dishes, and each recipe has a calorie count per serve for the dishes, which is handy when I am looking for dinners to cook on Dave's fasting days. This will certainly be the go-to cookbook during Winter, when some comfort food will be in order.

Having sourced some frozen Vongole from Costco a couple of weeks ago, the first recipe I'll cook from this cookbook is the Blushing Spaghetti Vongole.

6  Julie Goodwin's 20/20 Meals

This cookbook is all about feeding your family for $20 in 20 minutes. There's nothing original about the recipes - they are Julie Goodwin's versions of standard recipes eg. Minestrone, Pasta Boscaiola, Pad Thai and so forth. The focus in this cookbook is budget meals prepared quickly - so everyday weekday cooking. This cookbook will be my go-to cookbook on nights when we get home later, and we still want a home cooked meal eg. Wednesday swimming nights when we don't get home til 8pm.

There are five sections in the book - Faster than Pasta, Race the Rice, On a Roll, In a Flash and What's in Season. As you can see, half the book is heavily focused on Carb-based foods, probably because carbs represent value for money - fill you up for less $$$$. There are a few re-works of family favourites in here which I will have to cook eg. Pork Larb, and there are also a few recipes with Dave's favourite ingredients in them - Haloumi and Chorizo. So the book will get a good work-out. Haven't had time to cook anything from it as yet!

7  Family Food - Pete Evan's

This book follows on from Pete Evan's last cookbook which started his push with the Paleo Diet. Just when I thought I know all the new "trendy" ingredients, he manages to introduce a few more that I haven't noticed in the shops as yet. I bought this book for my sister, as it is chock full of Gluten-free and Dairy-free recipes, so has to be good for her tummy. This is the book I bought and then promptly lost, so had to buy another copy, only to find the original. So I got to keep the original.

There looks to be some great recipes in the Kids' lunches section, which I would probably cook as dinners including Pad Thai,  Chicken Nuggets, Chicken San Choy Bau and Meatzza (yes a pizza made with a meat base). There is also lots of Paleo friendly versions of dishes such as Butter Chicken (served with Cauliflower rice), burgers using large mushrooms for the bun components, Lamb Korma (once again with Cauliflower rice), and so forth.

When I got his last cookbook, I went out and purchased coconut oil and coconut flour, cacao powder, almond meal, buckwheat and other paleo friendly ingredients.  These are all heavily used in this cookbook as well, and to the list of strange new ingredients that I haven't seen before, the following has been added: yacon syrup, coconut sugar, dulse flakes, jamaica, licorice root powder, maca powder, spirulina and tallow. I will have to go and see if I can locate these ingredients in the supermarket or the health food store, before cooking any recipes that require them! I have also noticed that Pomegranate Molasses is starting to pop up in more and more recipes - not just in this cookbook, so I'll have to see if this is readily available as well.

One thing I learnt from the last Pete Evan's cookbook is that it's not cheap to eat the Paleo way. The coconut flour was pretty expensive in the supermarket and the health food shop, but it was less than half the price at Costco, so worth checking them out for some of these coconut based ingredients.


Well - that completes my round-up of the latest cookbooks, well the ones I have anyway. There are a stack more out there. I'm thinking that I need to clean my cookbook shelves up again to make room for this new Christmas cookbook haul!

Happy Cooking
Di :-)

September and October Project Life

OK - I forgot to post the September Project Life pictures - so I decided to do them along with the October Project Life pages, which I have only just completed this morning.

September Project Life

The start of Spring - thus the flowers on the bottom of this page. Eliza loves Spring - she thinks she is lucky to have her Birthday in Spring as well.

Week 36 

Eliza's birthday week - what more can I say. I surprised her on her birthday with a punch of balloons, including a My Little Pony Balloon. As you can imagine, there were lots of My Little Pony themed presents including a new quilt cover and wall decals! Evan and Jane also came up for a visit, as Annie and Oscar couldn't make it to her Dinosaur Museum Party.

Still Week 36 - needed a couple of pages for Eliza's birthday. Here she is at the Dinosaur Museum with her school friends. I made a Pinata cake for her - it worked out really well (lucky Julie had popped in that morning to give Eliza her birthday present, as she saved me from a huge failure)!

Week 37

LOL - the birthday celebrations continued. This week was Cameron's birthday, so I volunteered to make him a cake (reference the Batman Cake in the photos - the girls helped me with some of the decorations). I also made another cake for Eliza, so that she could celebrate again with a My Little Pony Cake (I made the rainbow using icing).

Week 38

We had some lovely spring weather this week, so there was lots of opportunity for jumping on the trampoline, and we also decided to go to Floriade with Mel and Kate. This week we also caught up with some friends - Jo and Andrew, whom we hadn't seen for over a year.

I created two additional layouts for Week 38 of our Floriade visit. This page includes pictures taken by me - I used some lovely spring themed papers.

This second layout of Floriade, includes the pictures that Jasmin took. She loves to get hold of the camera sometimes, and take pictures, which is lovely. I love the picture of her in the beanie she bought herself at Floriade as well - can you tell she's right into owls?

October Project Life

The second month of Spring - and the month of Jasmin's birthday, this month also featured the school holidays.

Week 39

Some more lovely spring weather this week, so opportunities to once again bounce on the trampoline after school, and go out for Cold Rock ice cream. Eliza also went to a friend's birthday party on the weekend.

Week 40

This week featured my sister-in-law Gen's Hens day. We had a heap of fun playing sports games, and then went out to an Indian dinner at the Southern Star restaurant. It was also the first week of the school holidays. So the girls spent some time in Goulburn with family, and then I had them on the Thursday and Friday - so of course we had to go and watch the latest "Step Up" movie!

I did this extra layout to include int he album as well, so that I had a couple more pictures from Gen's Hens Day.

 Week 41

The second week of the school holidays - so Nan came up for a visit, and the girls were most pleased, she also brought up her dog Bo as well. We went out to Sirens while she was here to try out the Tapas menu as well, it was a very nice meal.  At the end of the week, when I looked after the girls for a couple of days, we managed to fit in a trip to Tulip Top with Jeff, Fiona, Daniel, Nan and Pop, and Hellie. We also went rollerskating with Jasmin's friends from school (and yes, I rollerskated as well and didn't break any bones), we also went to Flip Out with Mel and Kate. The weekend also featured several BBQs. On the Saturday we had a BBQ with Mel and Kate, Mark and Ness as well as the Holloway clan, then on Sunday we had our friends Shane and Leanne for a BBQ. The weather was just perfect for BBQs.

This week I also included an additional layout featuring photographs taken by Jasmin at Tulip Top. She did such a great job, that I'll have to give her the camera more often!

Week 42

This week, Dom and Gen came up for a visit and stayed the Saturday night. We had a heap of fun playing board games (namely Camel Up and Kings of Tokyo), as well as eating Thai food. Eliza also went to another birthday party this week for a school friend - a Dr Who themed party.

 Week 43

This week was Jasmin's 12th birthday - as you can imagine I also needed a couple of pages this week. She wanted to change her room again to an Owl theme, as well as the colours purple and turquoise. Her main present was SIMS4, she has been hanging out to get this game - and she wasn't disappointed as her Dad got her the special edition which has a diamond which connects to the computer via USB and changes colour depending on the mode of your sims.

These are the pictures from her actual birthday party with her friends. I made her an owl cake - which she designed for me, so I knew how I should make it look! Her party was at Flip Out - the trampolining arena in Hume. She had a heap of fun. As this is her last year in Primary school, the birthday parties are scaling down starting next year. We will revert to having a BBQ or something at home with family members and she can invite a couple of friends.

Julie and Leslie also came up for a visit on the weekend with her cousin's Bai and Darien, so they could give her a birthday present. She got lots of owl stuff from Aunty Julie, and Bai and Tux gave her a new purple bean bag to match her new room decor. The kids all had a great time together, and we even managed to squeeze in a late lunch BBQ.

Week 43

The week of Halloween. Unfortunately we had to go back to Goulburn to do the ordering, but fortunately for the girls Arlene takes her kids trick-or-treating so the girls went with Dave and Arlene and the kids this year in Goulburn. Eliza was most upset earlier in the week, when she thought she may miss out!  This weekend Dave also went to his future brother-in-laws Bucks party in Sydney, so while he was there I took the opportunity to help Hellie out with a slide show for her 40th birthday, as well as popping in to see Nan and Pop - the girls had a bit of fun playing with the playdoh - as did I, I made the roses in the bottom left corner of the page! They had a new puppy dog as well - which Jasmin just loved.

So that's it for another two months....
Di :-)
xxx

Super Simple Challenges

Started a class on Big Picture Classes - Super Simple Challenges, just to get back into doing some scrapping and catching up on 2013 and 2014 pages mainly for the girls albums.

The idea is that the pages only take 15 minutes to do, so I can do one in the morning before I get ready for work.

Here are my first four layouts from the challenges:

Challenge 1 - was to create a layout using two 4x6 portraits and one 6x4 landscape, with the idea being to fill in the gap at the left bottom corner with some embellishments. Since I wanted to do a Halloween Disco layout, I found this great skull paper, so I decided to print smaller 3x4 photographs instead, so you could still see the background paper. This layout is going into my Project Life Album - so appears in the November section as the Halloween disco was a week after Halloween.



Challenge 2 - The challenge was to line up four pictures in a row and add a pocket for the journalling on the right. As you can see I used more than four photos - I added an extra row, so that I had enough photographs to remember and represent the event - my sister's 40th birthday party. This layout also goes into my Project Life album in the November section.



Challenge 3 - The challenge was to use 4x6 photographs in the below configuration, but cropped to 4x4. I decided instead to use 3x4 photographs, as I could save even more time, by not having to crop them, as well as giving me a little more white space on the page. I also omitted one photograph and replaced it with a journalling block. These photographs are from Eliza's birthday last year at Let's Play, with her friends from school, and her younger cousins. This layout is for Eliza's album.

Challenge 4 - The challenge was to use cropped photographs, presented in staggered columns - which is exactly what I did. The photographs are of Eliza opening her presents on the morning of her 8th birthday last year. This layout is also for Eliza's album.

Off to make breakfast for the girls and to contemplate the next challenge - journalling using a number.

Di :-)

Kitchen Kapers versus Kitchen Wasters

I've spent the first six months of this year, documenting the food that I have cooked (and Jasmin has learnt to cook), and the food that we have eaten in my Kitchen Kapers blog posts. In June I went back to work after having five months off to do most of a Certificate IV in Bookkeeping (these 5 months passed in a blur!). You may of noticed that the food blog posts dried up, apart from Jasmin's Hunger Diary escapades of course!

Kitchen Kapers kind of disappeared because:

1 - I think six months of documenting the food we eat is quite enough for now ( I do love the six months worth of Project Life pages I have created in the process). I'll do it again in another few years to see how things have changed. Perhaps Jasmin will be regularly cooking meals, perhaps Eliza will be learning to cook more dishes, perhaps Dave will learn how to cook (LOL), or perhaps food replicators will be invented by then (probably more likely than the previous comment)!
2 - I started to forget to take pictures of the food we ate. Dave remembered more often than me!
3 - My meal planning kind of "fell off the wagon" a bit, OK, maybe a lot!

So, I am now back to planning the meals, but I find myself rethinking my methodologies for meal planning and purchasing as things have changed around here a bit.

Many of you know that I used to plan up to 5 weeks in advance - this meant that I could shop once every five weeks - NICE!!!! Means that you can also buy things in bulk and doing shopping once every five weeks is better than doing it every week, right? There are a couple of disadvantages to this approach though:

1 - We don't really have enough "Spare" space to store five weeks of groceries
2 - Things get put all over the place (eg. the garage, the back of the cupboard or freezer) - and sometimes you just can't find that thing you thought you bought!
3 - We really just don't have enough freezer space (a nice big Chest freezer would be great - but I have nowhere to put one anyway!)
4 - You still have to go and get the fresh food - fruit, veggies, bread, milk and so forth (this we solved by doing it through Aussie Farmers).

I say - if you have the space - doing a shop once a month is the go! But, it's not working for me now - so therefore I have to change.

I now work 10 minutes from home, which means that if I leave work on time, I have a spare 30 minutes in which I can actually "pop" into the big supermarkets (Aldi, Coles and Woollies) to pick up what I need for the week on the way home. This is a luxury that I have not had before. I have gotten back onto the meal planning wagon again - so I know exactly what I need.

That leads me to my point - last week I cleaned out my fridge and cupboards. Yes, I know, amazing! I threw out all the out-of-date food, I cleaned all the shelves, and I actually organised the fridge and cupboard back into some semblance of order. I must say that I was disgusted with the amount of food that I threw out! What a waste! My parent's never wasted food, probably why we had to sit at the table and eat everything on our plate before we got to leave the table. Now I'm not suggesting that anyone these days should do that - I personally think it leads to over-eating, obesity and an inability for people to stop eating when they are full. I'm all for the girls trying a little of everything on their plate, and not overloading their plates to start with - afterall, they do have smaller stomachs.

So what did I throw out? There were a few offenders -
1.  Unused Fruit, Vegetables and herbs
2. "Special" purchases
3.  Pre-made jars of pastes, conserves, sauces and dressings.
4.  Left overs.
5.  Bread and rolls.

So my new thing is about food wastage and how I can reduce it. We waste a huge amount of food in Australia. Did you know that we waste about $5.2 Billion in food? That 47% of domestic waste is food and green organic waste, and food waste in Australian landfills is the second largest source of methane – a gas 23 times more harmful than CO2 from cars. All these stats come from this document which I found on the Secondbite organisations web-site.

So why the food wastage and how do I fix the problem?

1. Fruit, Veg and Herbs - We purchase a weekly fruit and vegetable box from Aussie Farmers - the quality of the fruit and vegetables are great, it represents value, and I like supporting Aussie Farmers. The problem is that I get food that we don't eat or use - I can't eat a bag of carrots a week, we don't eat a lot of potatoes and onions, the girls don't like mandarins, and I often still need to buy ingredients I need for some meals. I want to continue to support Aussie Farmers, but I am time poor and don't have time to go to the Farmer's markets. So I have decided to stop the delivery of the boxes, but purchase the items that I need from Aussie Farmers instead. It's costing roughly the same amount of money - but I'm getting what I need, and I can feel better that I'm not throwing out a heap of uneaten food.

2. Curb Dave's "Special" purchases - ie. jars of special preserves, lollies and so forth. Instead of buying 5 jars of special stuff, perhaps only buy 2! For example -  jars of special jams from IKEA, he doesn't even eat breakfast - not sure when he was planning to eat them? Anyway, I had to throw most of them out.

3. Jars of pastes and so forth - I will make my own pastes, dressings and sauces. Benefits - they don't have preservatives in them, you can make just the quantity you need, and for the most part they will taste better.  Way too many jars of Indian pastes were found in my fridge, they were still in date, but had furry stuff growing in them. Also - we are only going to have 1 or 2 preserves going at a time, and will only purchase new ones once these are finished. I think I threw out about 6-7 jars. Dave no longer eats breakfast, and Jasmin has them intermittently.

4. Leftovers - some foods just aren't suitable for freezing. As a result you put them in the fridge so that you can eat them later on, except the next night you generate more left-overs, and the cycle continues. My solution to this one is to cook less, try to cook what is required, so there are no leftovers, and if people are still hungry they can have a yoghurt or some fresh fruit to top them up! Also, if there are left overs, use them in another meal. Prime example is Corned Silverside - my girls love it, but we can't eat the whole silverside in one night. The last time I cooked it, I made the left-overs into a soup the next night.

5. Bread and rolls - there's only so much leftover bread you can freeze before you run out of space!  Once again I was getting fresh bread and rolls from Aussie Farmers. I was getting a delivery of bread and rolls every week. Only problem was that the girls go on and off bread and rolls, so sometimes you get left with almost a full loaf. My solution was to just cancel this regular order and just buy whatever is on special at the shop as I need it.

So - every so often now you will see a blog post about things I have put in place to reduce food wastage and food going to landfill. I am also keen to get a compost bin - so perhaps over the Christmas Break I'll go and buy one, and start composting all the food scraps eg. peels etc.

I finish this post with a picture of my newly organised fridge. I am so much happier, now that it is all organised. I spend way less time trying to find things, and therefore my food prep time is reduced :-)

Di :-)

August Project Life and a Layout Share

Here are my August Project Life layouts. I have almost finished the September ones as well, only the summary page left to do, so I will share those soon as well.

Here they are (it was a big birthday month)

The Summary page:

Week 31 - Main events during this week were a Trivia night on Friday for Di (the team she was on won), Jane and Evan's combined 30th birthday party in Goulburn on Saturday, and then a pre-screening of Guardians of the Galaxy at Hoyts with Mel and Kate, followed by dinner at Chong Co Thai.

Week 32 - Some lovely weather, so much bouncing on the trampoline. Jasmin started her cooking project, making a Lemon Jelly Cheesecake as a birthday cake for Dave.  We went back to Goulburn for Chloe's birthday where we also had the cheesecake for Dave. Di also went to another trivia night this week!

Week 33 - At the beginning of the week we managed to have a meal with the girls at Jamie's Italian. They were very impressed with the kid's menu which came on a flick master. Di scored a second dinner out on Thursday with her ex-Aussie Scrap Source colleagues at Trev's in Dickson, and then Dave turned the big "46", so we went out to dinner with Dave's family at Belluci's in Dickson. His sister made him a very impressive R2D2, and Jasmin and I helped construct his R2D2 Lego over the weekend.  Jasmin made pasta from scratch as part of her school project, as well as a slow cooked Bolognese sauce.

Week 34 -  Bookweek this week, and the girls went as Red Riding Hood and the not so big bad wolf! They looked adorable. Jasmin even made choc-chip cookies for her basket, which she handed out to all her class mates at recess.  Jazz went to a sleepover birthday party on the Saturday night, and on Sunday we all traipsed over to Woden to the Brick Expo - a huge exhibition of Lego. Jasmin ran in to two of her three besties at the exhibition, so she got to spend some time looking around with them and then building some Lego. There were some very impressive displays, and there were some Star Wars characters you could get photo with as you were waiting to get into the exhibition.

Week 35 - A games night with Eliza's best friend's family on Friday night. They always provide dinner so Jasmin and I make a dessert and take over some gaming snacks and drinks. Wade is a master of games, so it is always a fun night. We also enjoyed a trip back to Goulburn to spend with my sister and niece - and her best friend, for a girly weekend. We watched movies, did facials, painted our nails, played games and ate lots of food (and consumed a little wine :-) ). We also popped in to see Bailie for her 8th birthday.



I had an extra page to fill in for the month (the back of the Week 35 page) so thought it would be nice to put in a few of the pictures of Jasmin doing her school project - learning to cook. The pasta and pavlova were two of my favourites - and I could not have done a better job!

Layout Share

I've also found a little time to do some scrapbooking pages - which hasn't happened in a while. I've managed to finish all of Jasmin's New Zealand pages for her albums (which I do a separate post on), but have also completed some 2013 layouts to go in her album.

Pictures of Jasmin at her cousin Anthony's wedding to Naomi (affectionately known as Omi to the girls).  The top picture is a picture of Jazz and Eliza with her younger cousin Annie, and her second cousin - Bailie.
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We haven't managed to make it to Wyangala Dam yet this year, so it was nice to do a page from one of last year's visits to the Dam at Easter time. The weather was fantastic so we got lots of water and sun time.

At the end of last year one of her best friend's moved away (she is a Defence child), Jasmin misses her heaps, but continues to Skype her on a regular basis. It will be nice for her to look back on some of the friendships that she has had over the years.

Jasmin's birthday is only a week before my Sister's birthday. Jasmin had a school friends birthday, but also got to share a cake with Aunty Hellie at her birthday. I made the cake, thus it was a fairly simplistic affair - a lady bug!

Last year Jasmin started violin lessons at school, and has continued them this year. I'm not sure she will continue them next year, she mentioned the other day that she didn't want to do any outside of school activities next year, as she just wanted to get through her first year of high school (she is expecting a much bigger homework load).

Off to play with Eliza - think we will take the chalks outside and do some drawing, it is a stunning day!

Di :-)