Flickr is one of my favourite things at the moment. I love browsing through so many beautiful pictures and getting inspiration and enjoying other people’s creativity.
Some pictures that are making me happy at the moment…
Browsing Category
Make It Perfect
Our humble abode has been turned into a creation station. I am trying to be patient while there is stuff EVERYWHERE taking up every inch of our tiny little loungeroom and kitchen. Because I know we will be moving soon I kind of don’t care as everything will have a good clean up and sort out soon enough.
This is what we have been doing:
I covered these wooden letters in scrapbook paper for Jayne for her birthday…
Jaron has been busily making models for his final presentation next week.
Oscar has been having fun with play-dough – today he is wearing 3 different outfits…his trackies and jumper, over that his thomas pyjamas and over that his rashie!
Some pretty flowers…I spent all day yesterday in Launceston running around collecting things for Jaron’s model and picking up assignments. It was pouring with rain, Lil and I got wet and waited around for hours for his assignments to be printed. When we got home flowers awaited us! 
Grrr…I am really frustrated! I made an absolutely to die for delicious lentil and vegetable lasagne and I have spent the last hour looking for the recipe and I can’t find it! I really want to make it again because it was so good and I wanted it to be my recipe post this week! Oh well, I will keep looking, I’m sure it will show up!
So, today’s recipe is for a yummo stirfry that has become one of our favourites and we have all the time.
CHICKEN & CASHEWS WITH BROCCOLI STIR-FRY
2T vegetable oil
500g chicken thigh fillets, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 small leek, thinly sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
250g broccoli, chopped
1t cornflour
1t chicken stock
½c water
2T oyster sauce
½c unsalted roasted cashews
Heat half the oil in wok. Add chicken in batches, stir-fry until tender, remove.
Heat remaining oil in wok, add garlic, leek, carrot and broccoli. Stir-fry until leek is soft.
Add chicken and blended cornflour, stock powder and water, sauce and nuts.
Stir until mixture boils and thickens slightly.
Serve with rice.
Jaron starts work in Burnie in 2 weeks so today we decided to go there for a drive and check it out. We hardly ever go to Burnie, we always tend to go towards Launceston for shopping and haven’t really had any reason to go to Burnie so we had a bit of exploring to do.
Its quite an ugly city – lots of industrial areas and smoke, but is right on the water which is always beautiful. We had lunch at a new restaurant called “Fish Frenzy” which is attached to the Surf Lifesaving Club. Pretty cool building – I love the curve in the sloped roof.
Food was yum, Oscar loved his chippies and discovered a liking for lemons too!
I had a marinated octopus salad – I love octopus, especially in salads. I love how chewy it is, but if I think about what I am eating it kind of makes me feel sick! Especially when the little sucker things on the tentacles come off and I can feel them in my mouth!
It rained all day, Oscar played at the park while we were waiting for our lunch and got so wet, but he was having too much fun to care! We had plans to walk around but didn’t want to get out in the rain so drove the streets and then headed home again. So now Jaron just has to finish uni and then he will start work. In the meantime I am house-hunting and hoping that something decent turns up soon. There is nothing about at the moment, we are looking to move to Ulverstone and want to do it in the few days Jaron has off after uni ends and before work starts, but would rather wait for a house we are going to be comfortable to live in becomes available rather than move into something that we don’t like.
Halloween came a few days early in Deloraine with our spectacular Halloween Party. After a week of lovely warm weather we had a terrible night with lots of wind and rain, not good for an outdoor party, but we still had heaps of fun.
Halloween isn’t Halloween without dress-ups…here we are – I am Little Red Riding Hood and Jaron is the Big Bad Wolf! We made his wolf costume last night and I have had the red cape for ages and made a skirt to go with it!
I thought Oscar would love to come as Thomas the Tank Engine and made him a Thomas costume out of a box and some coloured cardboard – but he wasn’t too keen to wear it! I think he wanted to play with the box instead. 
Lucky Uncle Cade came along (dressed as a bogan…hmmm…isn’t that what you always look like Cade??!) and had a go wearing the train costume! 
To start off the night we did some “trunk or treating” – like trick or treating, but the kids go from car to car collecting lollies instead of knocking on doors. We all had to decorate our boots…lots of fun! These are my chocolate crackles with little black worms!
And our wind-blown boot…
Love this pic of Mel with the cows in the background…who else would have a Halloween party on a farm??! It is really weird, Mel and her family bought the house that my Dad built before him and Mum were married. I lived there for the first 18 years of my life. We moved out and since then it has had about 5 different owners…Mel and her family moved from Alice Springs last year and we are really good friends now. It is cool going back to our old house (where the party was held) and reminiscing.
How cute it little William-bear?
His parents aren’t so cute!
Cool kids all dressed up…
After trunk-or-treat and a sausage sizzle we had a few games and then Uncle Kim took us on a hay ride around the paddocks. The kids loved it (big and small!)
Louise, William, Mel, Simone and I.
The Young Men made a spooky Haunted House, it was actually pretty scary, they did a great job.
Happy Halloween!!