Howdy

Toby is a little camera shy at the moment but happily agreed to this photo last week. Jake suggested the arms around each other. Awhhhhhh. Cute.

Ukki was here

Ukki(Finnish for grandpa) recently came to visit. Here he is with the "twins" as I call them as they even to share taste in sense of humour, energy levels, food likes (everything sweet), skin complextion and screaming habbits.

5 children

This is what 5 children at the beach look like. They are a lot noisier in the flesh. Malabar twice in a week. Yippee

I'm going to make an excellent old lady

Imagine how good my jam and chutney will be in another 40 years by the time I start making it for the CWA.

First batch of green tomato chutney is excellent.

Tomato central

It's amazing what you can find growing under a pile of weeds. These tomatoes are very hardy. My ambition is to make the green tomato chutney recipe I saw somewhere....

Jake says

Me: would you like to go on holidays to Finland and see Santa?
Jake: No, I've already seen him twice, I'm over Santa.

No doubt I'd get a different answer if I asked would he like to go fishing in Finland.... And here he is at swimming today.

Finally hot

Hello summer, we've been waiting for you to arrive. New years resolution? To go to Malabar more often. What an awesome place. We just did the beach n playground today but there is the great ocean pool too.

How cute is B with her friend Finlay?

Toby 1, Jules 0

I have my first ever black eye. Thanks Toby. The only surprising thing is that it didn't happen sooner. Toby is a very strong little lad. He also moves fast. He'll be good at rugby I reckon.

New furniture 1

Bianca was the first to score in the easing of the furniture freeze. She got a new bed. I was hoping that the boys could hand their beds down but we're now thinking loft beds for them and I'm not getting one of those until we have generally dry nights. She's thrilled.

Apart from that, we were surprisingly restrained. Just one more platsic kids chair to replace the one that broke and we left Ikea.We're so good now.

Project 10 book escape

December 31 was a big day for the Cutbushes. I didn't quite make it to my 12 projects for the year, but I certainly did say goodbye to at least 20% of our stuff. Probably 30%. The last to go were the books and remaining boys baby clothes. Now we have no clothes in the 0-1 year old age group. Hooray.  Though as the next post will tell you, we do now have a spare cot.

Have I learnt anything from the furniture project? Maybe. Maybe Connah and I should be more considered when buying furniture. We tend to have a see it, like it, buy it immediately approach. It's not bad to think about it for a while. Our problem there is that by thinking about it, chances are we will not be back to get it for a year or so, until our next free day together, but that's good for the budget, right? It's been good putting of purchases, sometimes I've come across something better and it's not like most of our stuff is falling apart. some is. you don't want to see our sideboard. Now that Bianca occupies a seat, and 8 seat table would be handy for when we have more than one guest, so I look forward to buying that. Hello New Furniture 2012.

Project 9

We have this join in our living room wall. I think it's the join between the original house and the extension done in the 70s. We've wondered what to do with it for a while. My suggestion, a wall of built in custom build cupboards........cos I like a bit of dreaming. Connah's solution, more plaster n render to build up half the wall to the same level.
Spend virtually no money solution and add to the colour of our living room (and score a trip to Ikea to buy material) was to do a panel. I got the idea from Ikea actually. It turned out rather nicely and Connah got the curtain rail up just before the year finished.