Spiritual Sunday

The Past is Over

This is a new day
one that I have never lived before
I stay in the now and enjoy each and every moment

Now that Autumn is here it is far too easy to get wrapped up in all the upcoming events, Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas and sometimes I am guilty of focusing on them, rather than just enjoying being where I am.

I am measuring time by the number of sleeps before I go into hospital, rather than enjoying each day as it come, so this week we I am going to try and forget about hospital and live in the now, rather than worry about the future.

Home Made Pasta Sauce

Cooking, baking, making, gardening, cleaning, well everything in TheMadHouse is a real family affair.  We tend to really enjoy doing things together.  Some may find that strange, but I love spending time with all the men in my life, including that very strange cat too.  Anyway I digress.  Remember all those green tomatoes from the garden, well some had ripened and we decided to make a sauce for pasta.

So we set too, kind of in a production line way.  MadDad and I deskinned and deseed the tomatoes.  Maxi and MiniMad strained the seeds and juice.

DadDad prepared the peppers and onions and MaxiMad chopped them.  I then cooked all the ingredients for a couple of hours and gave them a good old wiz with the hand blender.  If you are interested we used:

Fresh Tomatoes (home grown)

3 peppers

3 onions (home grown)

8 garlic cloves

handfull of basil

tomato puree

Salt and pepper to taste

I then jarred up the sauce.  Same way as I did the pear butter.

We still have a box full of tomatoes ripening, so I will need to locate some more inexpensive jars, but it is wonderful to have home made sauce, that I know what is in and that we made as a family and will eat as a family too.

More Halloween Crafts

Seen as I have the colour changing pens out already for the Autumn tree collage I did with MiniMad this morning, I decided to do some secret Halloween pictures for when the boys came home from school and preschool.

Again you can not get much more simple than this.  I used the white (colour changing pen to draw Halloween shapes and words on white paper and let them lose with the others, so they could find their messages and pictures.

Not elegant, but fun none the less.  You dont need to have colour changing pens to do this though, you can use a candle or a white crayon and water paints as we did over the summer, wax relief painting.

Autumn Days and the Grass is Jeweled

My wonderful Fly friend Wendy sent this craft all ready prepared for the minimads all I added was the colour changing felt tips which had been supplied by my mother in law earlier in the year.

Basically she printed out the tree and the leaves and we coloured them in with the colour change felt tips and then changed them to represent the autumnal colours that we see all around us at the moment. 

This became a discussion on photosynthesis and why some tree lose their leaves and others dont - quite in dept for my 35 year old head, let alone minimads 3 year old brain who thought up all these questions.

He really enjoyed the colouring, cutting, which I helped with and all the sticking (this boy loves glue).

A nice simple Autumn activity.

Inspired

I am inspired to write after receiving the "proud to be meme" from Sandy over at Baby Baby.  I need to list 5 things that make I am proud of, but they have to be about me.

This is hard, I find it much easier to be proud or grateful of others, but here you go.

1. I am proud that I can bake even if it is at 2 in the morning and I eat all the scones by lunchtime the following day.  Baking feeds my soul as well as my ever expanding tummy.
2. I am proud that I am alive and will not have to live my life looking for cancer and waiting for it to bite me on the bub.  You can read my story at Bah to Cancer
3. I am proud that I managed to eventually pass my driving test, even if I was pregnant with MiniMad and 33 years old at the time.
4. I am proud that I have my two boys and that I am trying to raise them as well as I can. 
5. I am proud when I realise that my husband loves me regardless of how I look and that we work at our marriage to keep it strong and that it is worth working at.

Now I have also been inspired by Kat's post at Slugs on the refrigerator today, about moments bringing her such joy and I wanted to add five things that have done just that over the last few days.

1. Opening up a parcel yesterday from an Internet friend which contained reading and activity books for the boys, a little magazine insert and a lovely necklace for me - all for no reason at all.  Thank you very much for bringing some joy and a little tear to my eye.
2. Watching my boys play drums on tins yesterday
3. When asking minimad what the weather was like this morning his reply was "doggy", when I asked what that was he said "misty" therefore, Fog will always and forever more be "dog" in my head
4. I am grateful that my tomatoes are turning red
5. I am so grateful to MadDads boss for the loan

 

 

 

Boo - our Halloween ghosts

You will have gathered by now that I like simple ideas, often the simpler the better and you dont get much more similar than ghostie paper chains.

The only prep work required by me was to fold the roll of paper (ikea) and cut out the ghosts (I didn't even need a template - smug).  I then drew the eyes and mouth on one and maximad did the rest.  Voila, effective, simple, inexpensive and family inclusive halloween decorations.  I saw this originally on Skip to my loo and she has templates there if you need them too.

Keep an eye open for more easy and simple Halloween crafts you can do with children.

My Little Drummer Boys

Pa rum pum pum pum.

When is a tin not a tin - when it is drum or shaker of course.

The mini's have had a fun evening playing with my tins and wooden spoons.

I love the fact that they are getting so much more imaginative as they grow.