Its a New Year! HUZZAH!

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Yes folks. Its 2016! Woo hoo!

AND WHAT AN AMAZING YEAR IT IS GOING TO BE!

Well, Ive decided its going to be anyway. :-)

Its been a busy Xmas and New Year period with lots of family and friends celebrating, which has been wonderful but exhausting at the same time! I feel very blessed to have all these people in my life, but now I'm looking forward to getting into 2016 with lots of ideas about art which I'll chat about in my next post. But for now....

Australian Grey Kangaroo

What s been happening in this neck of the woods? 

Well, we have this little darling kangaroo and her young baby living on the property. Food, water, shade and protection from feisty young bucks. What else does a young girl need? Anyway, she is now called Mollie. Hubby just calls them big bugger and little bugger, because they eat the garden. But so cute! How can I turn them away?

Fresh cherry tomatoes

With this hot summer has come an abundance of cherry tomatoes. Actually they are wanting to take over the garden at the moment. I think it is the one plant Mollie doesn't eat. :-/
What to do with this surplus of red goodness? You can only eat so many fresh tomatoes in salad and cooked up on toast! So it was out with the Vacola jars and time to get preserving.

Preserved tomatoes.

 Its the first time Ive preserved tomatoes, so we'll see how they go. But these were blitzed in the blender first, cooked up for ten minutes then placed in the jars with a little lemon juice as per Vacola instructions.
We eat a lot of pasta, so I'm looking forward to using this as the base. Nom nom!

What else? There's been lots happening but crikies! Its been very hot and dry over here on the West coast of Australia! With bush fires on our side and floods on the East coast. This make me think of a song that I was taught in primary school called 'My Country' by Dorothea Mackellar

I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains.

Of rugged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons, 

I love her jewel seas.

Her beauty and her splendour.

This wide brown land 

for me.

I always thought this would make a wonderful national anthem. It describes Australia perfectly! Yep, droughts and flooding rains in the same week in the same country.
Got to love it! Well, I don't love the 43 C heat, that's for sure!

So I'm off for now to cool off and  I'll tell you my BIG NEWS next time, so take care and we'll chat soon.