4wd with our wonderful friends.

Well a big hello!  As the school holidays draw to an end and my lil' family winds down I thought i would blog about the day we enjoyed last Monday with our beautiful friends...Claire, Dave and their lovely daughters Megan and Olivia, Maddona and Eric, Larissa and Paul and their gorgouse kids Tiana, Jay & Ally....and the 4 of us, of course.

About a month ago my husband was lucky enough to get a 'brand spankin' new, off the showroom floor' work car.  It so happened to be the new B-50 Mazda 4WD duel cab ute.  It was a bit of a treat for us as we've never had a new, new car ever before.  My hubby is 40 at the end of this year and feels a bit chuffed that he actually got a brand spanker before he hit 40, LOL.

Somthing we never expected to ever have...that along with having our own home!!  The 2 things we NEVER  in our craziest thoughts we'd have...pretty exciting huh?

Anyhoo...back to last Monday.  We, along with our friends decided to head out west...just past beau dessert (around the scenic rim) and head for a 4WD track.  Now as ive mentioned many, many ties me and my husband are coasties.  We've only been 4WDing a couple of times and it was on Stradbroke island...along the beach another once when we camped at Balina beach.  So heading out to the dust and hills was a tad different...but it was such a fun, fun lovely day.  Just check out the scenery...

Can you see the waterfall in the distance?...

Sooooo Pretty....

Through the water....

Our friends poor car suffered a little...

When we pulled over a few horseback riders passed, was pretty cool...

  ...and moo cows greeted us on the road side, perfect...

After a big days driving we got home, tired, dirty and happy!  We all slept well that night.  It was the funnest day ever.  I must say, it does help when you have friends that make you laugh the whole day.  Im very thankful and lucky for that.

Our very busy holidays! (my relief from reality)

Today I had bit of a blah! day....Looooooooooooong story short, my mum went to rehab, somthing Im not totaly wanting to get into but I thought I would blog to focus more on the positves in my life.  It has been school holidays for the last 1 1/2 weeks and we have been going non-stop, which has been good. 

We've done the Southport Rockpools...

brisbane museum and science centre,











botanical gardens,

Beach...

Park...

Fishing...

Loungeroom camping...

We even went 4WDriving with friends (will do another blog on this...was fun)...

I have truly enjoyed having my beautiful lil' babies home from school but I think we will take it easy over the next few days...Lil' T was feeling a bit weary this afternoon, lol.  Im very thankful for my family and the good times we have.  They are what keep me going each and everyday with the sadness I cant avoid.  I love my family...
                                                                                   *mwah*

My new love...Pinterest!

I've been hearing all this hype about 'Pinterest' over the past year and a few months back  It seemed like my kind of thing...some described it as "Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes." and "Pinterest is an online forum for creativity. Users can create inspiration boards that link directly to the source of each project/recipe/photo etc. They can follow someone else’s boards, whose tastes and interests they admire. And there is space to open a discourse about what is pinned via comments and “likes”. 
I read more about it HERE
Creative, inspirational, arty...this sounds like my kinda thing!!
 I signed up for an invite (yes, you need an invite...for some reason you cant just join??)  (you can find me In this link) Once I got my invite Imust admit I was a little confused/overwhelemed by it.
I went off it for a few weeks and discovered a blog raving about it.  So I got back onto it and gave it another shot.  Ok, after spending a couple of hours 'playing' last night and I was pleasantly suprised.  Ithink Im now 'in love'...IGET IT!
You can get onto this site and click on a pic, save it and then it takes you to the place it came from (i.e if its a tutorial on DIY for example).
Pics like these...

It is just fabulouse and I am worried I may be just a bit addicted now....eek.

A duck walked up to the lemonade stand...bopbopbopbadadabop!

These school holidays my kids have been realy wanting to make Lemonade and sell it on a stand outside.  Our little neighbor also wanted to help out.

I thought what an absolulty cute idea.  So the kids googled 'homemade lemonade'.

We found a recipe and we made it...it was actually alot simpler than I thought.

I helped the kids make the lemonade and the dad of the little girl next door set up the stand with the kids.

...

How cute are these lil' munchkins.

The new buisness venture was a roaring success with most neighbors buying more than one cup of ice cold lemonade.  Even the home icecream man that comes around every saturday morning bought a cup, i was so impressed!

Gee, I LOVE our little neighborhood!!

At 50c a cup, they made about $9 between them.

I was impressed and proud.

This was the song {learnt from school} that inspired the whole idea.

Here is the recipe we used...

Perfect Lemonade Recipe { got from here }

Prep time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

1 cup sugar (can reduce to 3/4 cup)

1 cup water (for the simple syrup)

1 cup lemon juice

3 to 4 cups cold water (to dilute)

Method

1 Make simple syrup by heating the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar is dissolved completely.



2 While the sugar is dissolving, use a juicer to extract the juice from 4 to 6 lemons, enough for one cup of juice.



3 Add the juice and the sugar water to a pitcher. Add 3 to 4 cups of cold water, more or less to the desired strength. Refrigerate 30 to 40 minutes. If the lemonade is a little sweet for your taste, add a little more straight lemon juice to it.



Serve with ice, sliced lemons.





Yield: Serves 6.

I've been wanting to blog about this for quite some time but I've had issues with uploading pics, for some reason.  Anyway, after a looooooong process I was able to download some pics tonight {apologies for the sideways poics...not sure what happened there as Ive turned them}.
At the start of last school term My husband and I told Little T that if he tried his hardest at school we would throw a party for him in the summer holidays.
We'll im happy to say he did exceptionally well the last term of school so he got his party.
He thought of a 'dinosaur' theme as he & his little mate Jay, is totally into them at the moment.  Its so cute.
So we picked a date, made a list of names and got organising.
I looked up paperandcake.com and it was a total life saver.  I downloaded, printed and cut and pasted EvErYtHiNg!!!!
It saved me a ton load. 

We used all of lil' T's dinosaurs as table decorations.

I also had a strip of green and white spot fabric that I hadnt used yet sitting in my sewing box.  I decided this would be perfect for the table runner with all the little dinosaurs standing on it.

Both the kids helped by making the chain draped above the table.

Great job, I think!

I did it all so cheap.  I made 90% of it all.  The cups i purchased from Ikea at .99c for a pack of 10 and I wrapped the dino logo around the cups.  I even made the personalised hats.

Yummmmmm....Homemade dino pizzas, nuggets and sanwhiches, as well as dino rocks {meatballs} and Lava sauce {tomato} and mud sauce {B.B.Q}

Dessert: chocolate cupcakes with dino toppers {also printed out on the computer}

Homemade popcorn {with home made popcorn cup}

When the fun & games were all over everyone went home with a fun party bag and a bag of 'dino skeleton' cookies....

We had loads of fun and so happy we did it.  it was great hanging with 'the boys' for the day ♥