Five.

And on the fifth anniversary of her birth, she squeeeeeeeeezed her eyes shut tight and she made a wish. I'm certain it was an extremely important wish but none of us asked her about it in case it stopped it from coming true.

And as she made her wish I took a deep breath, shut my eyes and made a couple of my own. I think mamas are allowed to make birthday wishes too. It makes sense I think.

I wished her a life filled with as much love as she was smothered in today. I wished her so many, many, many, many more birthdays and excuses for celebrations and parties. I wished her a life time of laughter and dancing and magic and yummy food and family and friends.  I wished her confidence and creativity and wisdom and strength. And compassion and courage and respect and resilience. I wished that one day she be comfortable with her time tables. And inspiration, I wished her lots of that.

And I wished that every year when our Daylesford Organics orchards are bursting with blossom, when the smell is intoxicating and the bees are buzzing about doing their thing, that she remembers and knows in her heart how adored she is.

Happiest five our beautiful Pepper Berry, you certainly are adored. xxxxx

The other Kate. x

I have this gorgeous friend called Kate.
She is the mama of two cute girls and guess what?
One of her girls is called Pepper.
Fancy that!! Two Kates and two Peppers.

Anyway, Kate has this business where she goes into people's houses and hangs out with them and takes photos and captures them in their real life. You might have seen the pics of when she visited Pip's house recently. Her photos are really amazing. Really clear and very, very inspiring.

So Kate came to our house to shoot us today. And her two girls and Ro and his two girls came too. And in the end including our girls there were seven girls and it was fun and it was wild. And we baked fancy four stranded challah, we made and ate a big meal with the farmer boys, we took the alpacas for a walk and played with the baby chicks. And the girlies took their clothes off and put them back on again  several times, swung on the inside swing, did nail polish and ate lots of eggs.

We adore those guys and loved spending the day with them.

And in the end we had a bit too much fun and had to make a plan for Kate to come over again soon to take more photos with less little girl distractions. We'll wait til after the school holidays I think. I'm just happy to have an excuse to have her over again soon. Yay!

Pic 1 - The kitchen pile of stuff.
Pic 2 - Me and Jazzy.
Pic 3 - Our bedroom wall.
Pic 4 - The Esse stripey pipes.
Pics 5 and 6 -  Braiding the challah.

More of Kate's gorgeous pics and her business details are here on her blog, go and say hello.

I hope you are having a wonderful week.
I hope you've had a chance to spend time with gorgeous friends.
And I hope you know how much your encouraging comments on my last post meant to us.
Thank you! I'll keep you posted.

I'm off to knit a few rows of my poncho.
What are you doing right now?
Bye!

xx

My loving list.

Just for fun, because today is the first day of the school holidays and I feel happy and lucky and filled with love, I thought I'd make a list of some of the things that I'm loving right now. The things that are making me smile. The things that make me want to get out of bed in the morning. 

Ten things.

My loving list.

Top of the list are my gang. I heart them the most. They are my everything.

I'm loving crochet. And baskets of wool. And a blanket that is growing. And that meditative feeling that comes from having busy hands and a project you don't have to think to make.

I'm loving the autumn produce: apples and tomatoes and quinces and pears and carrots and grapes...

And I'm loving turning this into that, and that into this. It's like kitchen alchemy. It's quite magical don't you think?

I'm loving posies from my princesses and a kitchen table FULL of the gorgeous Gourmet Girlfriend's family. Great friends, beautiful food and lots of laughter is so much of what it's all about, I think.

I'm loving spotting little caravans around our town and imagining their road trips and what they've been up to.

And I'm loving the thought of Ms Frankie Blue taking us on many more adventures soon, after her time at the fixer uperer this week and next.

I'm loving knitting again. It's been quite some time between knitting projects, but it's lovely to be back. I'm using Kate's beautiful wool and knitting my first ever shawl. It's a very basic pattern but will be gorgeous to wear.

I am loving autumn's light and colours. Wow! She certainly is putting on quite a show this year.

I haven't had much time for treasure hunting lately but the little has been fun. A new to me dress and cardi, a bunch of Fowler's jars (soon to be filled with apples), some of my favourite pie crust edged Johnson Brothers crockery and a couple of pink floral cuties too.

I am loving farm life and it's variety of colours and flavours and jobs. I feel happy and proud to live here at the moment. 

And I love that my farmer boy has discovered a passion for turning a humble handful of flour into the most gorgeous loaves of bread, pies and pasta. It used to be my job but somewhere along the line he took over and I am in awe of his creativity and passion.

There's mine.
How about you?
What are you loving at the moment?
Have you got a loving list?
I'd love to know.
Let me know in the comments.
Or write a list on your blog and let us know and we can come and visit.

Happy week you guys.
I hope it's inspired and a bit silly.
xxhttp://gourmetgirl-friend.blogspot.com.au

Cider-fest.

It really feels like Autumn!

The early mornings and evenings are getting chillier and darker by the day. The light seems different somehow. Baskets of summer fruit and veg are slowly being jammed and bottled and put away for leaner times. The rows of the kitchen garden are being picked, pulled out, turned over, composted and seeds of winter greens are being planted. And summer's apples are finally ripe and being plucked from the trees.

At this time of the year the farmer boys drive around the area with trailers on the backs of their cars scouting out and picking from the wild apple trees they find along their ways. Baskets and buckets and bags are filled with the juicy fruit.

Last weekend families and friends gathered with their apples nearby at Liam and Kath's for the annual cider pressing.

Farmer Bren brought along his cycle powered apple scratter/grinder/mulcher and others brought their inventions too. Whole apples are fed into the top and turned into apple mush that comes out the other end.

Oops, and there's the photo of me in the ear hat you asked for...

After the scratter, the apple mush is wrapped up in bits of calico called cheeses and layered between wooden racks. Pressure is applied to the top of the pile and the apple juice is sqeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezed out and caught in a bucket below.

The apple juice is then drunk by little passers by, or poured into bigger drums for cider.

The dried out, squished apple cakes look like this at the end. Apparently they cooked one on the fire after we'd left, but from what I hear they wont be repeating that again.

And then of course there was the drinking of last years' cider, the campfire cooking and the Cider House String band.

I barely saw my kids the whole day. They were off running around with friends having as much fun as we were.

I love days like that. I love community and celebrations of seasons and fruit and time.

I do love a bit of cider too. Don't you?

Bye!

Friends, road trippers, caravanners...

Yesterday we spent the day with three other road tripping families celebrating a friend, Ali's, 40th birthday. Between us we were eight adults and 10 kids. All of us around the same age, all having left the comfort and security of home and work for a six month trip around Australia and all of us having met one another in the past few months.

In his birthday speech to his wife, John spoke about how originally Ali had planned to fly home with her family for her birthday. How she had planned to spend the important mile stone celebrating with family and life long friends. But as the weeks grew nearer she realised that what she really wanted, was to spend the day somewhere on the road with her caravanning friends.

I totally get that.

Road tripping is intense. Road tripping friendships are quickly intimate and true. They are based on an experience in common and they share a language of adventures and memories.

All down the west coast of Australia we have bumped into the same families again and again. The kids have formed packs and have spent hours bike riding, playing at the playgrounds, swimming, exploring and adventuring. More than once a child has been dragged kicking and screaming on a family outing when they would much rather have stayed at the caravan park and played with their friends. 'Who cares about dolphins when I can do handstands with Grace and Tom!'

And to an extent its the same for us. In the absence of our families and community, our new friends have shared the journey with us. They share newly made memories and similar experiences.

They remember camping under the air force flight path in Darwin, the grumpy four-wheel driving cleaner in Broome, the wind in Geraldton, the heated shower floor in Busselton. We commiserate over stories of snoring neighbours, fighting couples and crying babies. We empathise over blown tyres and wet beds. We share the experience of parenting in public, of bathing and laundering in public, of wearing the same thing day in-day out in public, and letting our hair cuts and colours grow out in public.

We share our camping secrets, we copy the movies off each others' hard drives and we swap books

We share stories we've heard of the best camping spots and places to visit and the must nots.

And over time we share bits and pieces about our real lives too. Who we are at home, what we do and why we are doing this trip.

Sometimes I think that in the days and years to come, it will be the friendships and camaraderie that we remember as the highlight of this trip. The excitement of watching a car and caravan full of friends pull up at a caravan park, nights spent chatting and laughing and drinking, trips together to tourist spots, having the van full of kids watching a movie, and the long sunny days filled with children running back and forth between vans and jumping pillows.

I guess in life the friends you relate to are often those experiencing the life stages that you are when you are. School friends, uni friends, work friends, friends with little kids, school Mum friends, craft group friends, road tripping friends...

Happy travels my friends. xx

ps. This night eleven years ago was my last as a non Mother. Wowee!!

Crafternoon.

We've just come home from a wonderful crafternoon at Miss Doily's house.

The kids were entertained for hours by this magical box of Hama beads that Steph found at the tip shop.

Apparently the kit was brand new and still in its sealed box when she brought it home. Can you imagine someone leaving such a treasure at the tip? I know I'm going to look more carefully next time I drop off the recycling.

There was some dolls clothes making.

Some cutting and pasting.

Some rug crocheting.

Some love heart cutting out.

Some who just came for the conversation and great afternoon tea.

The start of my bunny.

And of course, where ever Jazzy goes, there's always some potion making.

Happy birthday for yesterday (today for you) to my littlest sister Abby! We miss you so much and thought happy things about you all day.

I hope you had a lovely and crafty day today too. XX