Sunday, March 17, 2013

Poffertjes delight!

Poffertjes are mini dutch pancake treats with a very light spongy texture. Traditionally poffertjes are served with icing sugar and butter and sometimes syrup.

Jason and Ethan had there first taste of poffertjes down in Busselton while I was racing the Busselton 10km race recently. Apparently Ethan downed them like there was no tomorrow!

So for part of Jason's birthday present I bought him a poffertjes kit. It came with a cast iron pan with 14 dimples in it for the poffertjes mix, a 1 litre dispenser bottle and some metal turning skewers... everything you need to make the best mini dutch pancakes in the comfort of your own home!

Check out the cast iron pan with a batch cooking!
We have been serving ours with icing sugar, maple syrup and ice cream (great for the diet... not)!
All in all a great after dinner treat, or a special brunch idea! They can be served with anything, berries, stewed apple and custard, lemon and sugar... the limit is your imagination!
Poffertjes with maple syrup and ice cream get the thumbs up from the little one in the house!!!

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Home decorating!

 So for those of you that haven't been to our house our main bedroom had a really ugly feature wall that I really did not like at all! Its difficult to capture truly how ugly the colour was, but I am sure Ethan's nappy has been a similar colour at times hahaha! You will have to excuse the unmade bed and the pretty bad photos... but here is the bedroom wall in question pre home decorating!
Here's a look from down the hallway!
 So a couple of weeks ago I had finally had enough of "the wall" so off we went to Bunnings to get some new paint.... and we came home with a couple of rolls of wallpaper!

Jason was a wall papering machine, he papered the whole wall in Ethan's afternoon nap! Here is the hallway shot again for you... again, excuse the unmade bed! How much better does the wall look!
 Here's the whole wall! Jason did have to deal with a very old and crooked house so there is one part of the wall where the wallpaper just didn't meet/match up (bottom right under the windowsill). But we have a plan to fix that!
 Here is the pattern close up! Its sooooo pretty and no longer resembles a baby's nappy!
I have also been playing round with the off cuts and will make some art work for the other walls! This one was just an experiment... watch this space for the finished products!
So as you can imagine I am very happy with the new improved bedroom.... but the new wall paper really highlighted how awful the carpet is in the bedroom....

Friends of the Zoo

Ethan loves anmals (animals), he also loves the Movie Madagascar 3.... so two weekends ago we visited Perth Zoo, and enjoyed it so much that we became friends of the Zoo (i.e. buying an annual pass so that we can go as many times as we like!).

We started off in one of the bird enclosures... I didn't manage any photos of the birds, but it was a lovely setting!
We then headed off to see the elephants! Ethan was mesmerised!

We got to see turtle shells... they must have been sleeping when we visited!
Ethan loved "talking" to this furry fellow!
I really enjoyed the Zebras and loved some of the photos I got... so I have included a few of them here for you! Sorry if some of them look very similar!




While Ethan and Jason were checking out the lions den, I got a couple of old favourite shots of flowers... these ones were very interesting and made me wish that I had my macro lens with me!

Jason called me in just in time to catch the big cat up and about...
It was a warm and humid day and lots of the animals were happy to sit still... we willed them to move but they were staying put!
Ethan LOVES birds so we spent a bit of time checking these fellows out, which I was pleased about as I got some great photos!



Finally we said hello to the penguins - having a nice swim!
The following week we decided to take advantage of our passes and visit the Zoo again. I stupidly said - I won't take my camera this time as the animals weren't very active last time.... well the second visit was SOOOOO different. It was a cooler day, later in the afternoon (just before closing time), there were very few visitors and the animals were all very active! It was a whole different experience to the previous week and I missed getting the photos! But in saying that, I got to just enjoy being at the Zoo and enjoy seeing Ethan's reaction to the animals!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Happy Birthday Daddy... from Ethan

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY! 

Thank you for doing all the fun things that you do with me! 
You are always there for me, no matter how late it could be.
I am always excited to see your face, it is something that no one could replace. 
Happy birthday Daddy, I love you so much.
 I can't wait to see you and feel your gentle touch. 

I LOVE you Daddy, hope you have a great birthday xxx


Monday, March 4, 2013

Another year, another paddle to Rotto!

Every year since we have lived here Jason has support kayaked for a local swimmer in the annual swim to Rottnest Island (19.2km off-shore).

Jason borrows a kayak off our friends Sandy and Nathan, its very lucky that we can do this otherwise Jason would most likely need to use his canoe polo boat - which wouldn't be a pleasant 5 or 6 hours!

As you can see below, our boat crazy baby LOVES it!!! He runs round saying "mumma, its a boat", and "Dad, its a boat!"...
In the last few days leading up to the race the forecast was for pretty horrendous crossing conditions so Ethan and I declined the offer of tickets over the Rottnest Island to meet up with Jason when he finished. As it happened the bad weather never eventuated!

On race morning we needed to get Jason and the boat to Cottesloe beach by 6am. Ethan was such a good little boy - it probably helped by all the boats, planes, helicopters, and birds that he could spot! All we had was "mumma, its a boat, birbie (birdie), pane (plane), its a boat!!!!!!!". He was sooooo excited and had a great time!
The race itself was a bot different for Jason this year,his swimmer is usually a solo swimmer but this year he was swimming in a team. It meant the race start was later than usual but they were passing lots of people along the way - which is always good for morale!