Yum

Easy Peasy Florentines

300g sultanas
200g cornflakes
80g flaked almonds, roasted
240g glace red cherries, cherries
1 tin condensed milk
300g chocolate, melted

Method:
Preheat an oven to 165C.

Combine well the sultanas, Corn flakes, cherries, nuts and condensed milk in a bowl.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and drop a tablespoon of the mixture into a round pastry cutter on the baking paper. This will help to shape the Florentine. Continue until all of the mixture is used.

Bake until just turning golden brown, approximately 6 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow cooling.

Spread the bases of the Florentines with the melted chocolate and allow the chocolate to set.

A bit of nostalgia...

I loved these movies when I was little, there are a couple of Christmas ones, Little Drummer Boy, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer first screened in 1964 with Burl Ives singing his little heart out. I found the DVD in Myer the other day and now Max and Jemima are watching the same old animation classic that I did every Christmas. Hopefully it will become a tradition every year.

It seems the classics are still appreciated. I found this clip on You Tube with Regis Philbin singing and Donald Trump making an appearance. Love it.

A sneaky peek for Jan

It still needs some tweaking. I photographed it at home and since then I've added loads of ribbon around the rings. It's much girlier now. I still have more bits to add when the class is finished but at the moment I have to have it prepared for a budget.

We can make one for Ella when you're down at Christmas.

The end of the year...

I really don't know where the time has gone this year. It seems like only yesterday that we were preparing for Max to start 3 year old kinder at Coonara, and here we are, the year at an end. Kinder finished this week and Max performed in fabulous singing concerts and ate an awful lot of party food. I took so many photos but I really can't share many because of the other children in them, their parents may not be too keen to have their child's face plastered all over my blog and the internet. Here are a couple I can share.

Max with his Teacher Trudy and Lisa, the Assistant

Max plays a mean Tambourine!

Along with the end of Max's Kinder year, we finished up with Occassional Care. It's held in Max's classroom on thursday mornings and Jemima and Max have both been going for the past 6 months. Jemima absolutely loves it. There have only been about 8 children in the group, with 3 staff members so it's been the perfect introduction to spending time away from me with other children. On thursday, the group performed a little play about The Innkeeper's Story, not quite a Nativity play but it was lovely to see just a little bit of the real Christmas story peeping through. Max played Joseph and Jemima was an Angel. Despite her dirty face she was still the most beautiful Angel I have ever seen. My heart melted. I was so proud of both of them with all their concerts, there were no tears and no tantrums.

Now I just have to figure out how to keep them both occupied until the school year starts again ..... in 7 very long weeks!

This is what I made for the staff for Christmas.There are 8 of them altogether between Kinder and Occassional Care so Andrew and I were busy beavers. Andrew made the trees using blocks of wood and dowel and I covered the bases with patterned paper and made little felt birdy decorations to hang on them. I was pretty happy with them and I think the girls were too.

HE CAN DRAW!

I honestly thought Max would be at school before he would delight me with a drawing of anything remotely recognisable. Lately though, he has been wanting to spend time drawing at the table, and he's been labelling his 'drawings' verbally but there was nothing visually recognisable on paper.

Until today.

I came home from work and Max's drawing was on the fridge. He was so excited to show me that he had drawn Mummy, Daddy, Max and Jemima with Daddy's taxi when he arrived home this morning after 3 weeks overseas.

I was so thrilled I could have cried!

He can draw!

The return of MoJo

I've been in a bit of a scrapping funk lately. Too may things to concentrate on making for work and for Christmas. I have 4 or 5 projects on the go at the moment but nothing is finished. It was lovely today to just futz around and play with some photos for a change and I actually managed to finish something!

I seemed to be in a bit of a green mood today. No idea why.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Love it!

We put up the Christmas tree and house decorations tonight. It was lovely to see Max and Jemima SO excited about getting ready for Christmas and having so much fun decorating the tree. I can't wait too see them become involved in the activities leading up to Christmas day. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get a decent photo of the 2 of them with Santa. Jemima screamed her head off last year. We've been paying Santa a visit every time we go to Knox just so she can warm up to the idea of maaaaaaaybe sitting on his lap for 2.3 seconds. We just say hello and wave as we walk past and so far she is happy to do that, but we'll have to wait and see about the photo.

Santa Claus is coming to town.....

Happy Birthday Princess

Well, Princess Jemima is 2

If I thought Max turning 4 meant that time has flown by, it seems to have flown by even faster since Jemima was born. She was so little when she was born, and she seemed tiny for so long. I look at her now and she seems so grown up. She is definitely Miss Independent.

Look at that face.

We had a combined birthday party for Max and Jemima on her birthday. It was lovely to see them celebrate with all their friends. I made cupcakes for their birthday cakes. Max made one eyed monsters and Jemima had flowers. The kids were happy with them and they were SO much easier than doing big birthday cakes.

*sigh*

They're growing up so fast.

How to get revenge on Telemarketers.

This made me giggle....a lot.

Goodbye 3 and Hello 4

On saturday night October 27th 2007, Max went to bed as a 3 year old for the very last time. I think you can tell from the photo that he was pretty darned excited at the thought of waking up and being 4...and getting birthday presents!

I can't believe my baby boy is 4. 4 years old. Wowsers. Where on earth did the time go? It seems like yesterday that he was born and at the sime time I find it hard to remember him ever being so small.


Anyhoo, enough sentimental Mummy ramblings. He had a great birthday. he came running into our roon unbelievably early which was hardly a surprise given how excited he was the night before. I think we felt more tired because daylight savings started overnight and we lost an hour's sleep. Max had a ball opening presents and exploring all his new toys.

We went to Zagames Bistro for dinner with my Mum and Dad. Max ordered his favourite, pizza and chips followed by some delicious birthday mud muffins

The hightlight of our evening had to be impromptu concert Max and Jemima put on using the new keyboard Jan, Col, Ella and Hudson sent for Max's birthday. Rock on!