It's raining here. We've had about 100mm of rain in the last three days. Our water tanks are overflowing. The yard is all soggy and muddy. Walking to school with a pram has been "fun", but only because we can come back home again and get warmed up.

So we've been doing lots of wet weather appropriate things.

{Some gardening over the weekend} We bought two lovely wine barrel-style wooden pots, and planted up our tomatoes, basil, lettuce, rocket and parsley. I think we'll get another pot of tomatoes growing soon, as we do eat a lot of them in our family. This was a lovely activity that we all did together; the kids + me digging in the soil and then the plants, while Sam built some wire cages to keep the cheeky possums away. We also put in some flowering plants at the front steps; both kids chose sweet little pinkish flowers, and I choose some sweet peas (I cannot wait for these to grow and flower. At our front door, too. OH!).

{Baking batches of biscuits} We made up a yummy batch on Saturday, that was meant to last at least for Ari to take to school on Monday. hmmmm. Nope. We had to whip up another batch on Sunday afternoon. Both recipes came from this book, but of course I changed things a little bit. And, just for fun, I let the kids ice them - tiny little sprinkles of icing making them happy. 

{Making fairy princess crowns} Using eco-felt and scraps of fabric and ribbon (came upon Mishi cutting some of my ribbon into teeny tiny unusable pieces - so had to make use of them. I guess that was her plan!). And playing queens and princesses all day.

{Teaching my daughter the love of simple polenta} I make this the quickest and easiest way possible - just put it in a saucepan with some water and stir stir stir. It can stick a little, but I've never really had too much trouble. Depending on if you want to have it as wet polenta or dry/fried polenta you put in more or less water. I make it wet, and often put in things like spinach, herbs, fresh tomatoes, feta cheese and some pepper. You can make it as flavoured or simple as you like. I do like it when the feta melts through, and goes all gooey. She loved it, even licked the plate clean. 

{Playing Barbies} Dressing and undressing those little things. One is the mummy, one is going to kindy and one to school. Hmmmmm - sounds a tad bit like our life. Of course, they all have quite trendy, shimmery, shiny very fitted pink outfits with matching pink shoes. Mishi has two new Barbies and two older second hand ones (that I found for $5 one day). Not sure if I'm the only one who's ever noticed this, but the new style Barbies are very different looking to the older ones (that we had as kids). The new ones have larger eyes, plumper lips and rounder faces, compared to the older ones. Check it out next time you're at a toy store. (I wish I knew where our Barbies were, as we had so many really lovely clothes that were passed down to us and that we made....).

{Reading} The latest issues of both Mixtape and Thaw arrived in the post yesterday. We've all been slowly reading through them. Sam included.

*Biscuit pictures taken by Ari, with his camera. I do like seeing his viewpoint of our life.