I was going to turn this…

into lovely, glorious, home made strawberry jam, but the Goddess of Jam (I am sure there is such a woman and I am sure she has PMS right now) had other ideas. I should have known better really, my last attempt at jam ended in diaster and this one was no different.

The 1.5 kgs of our precious home grown strawberries, the ones the small boy hasn’t eaten were lovingly picked, hulled and popped in the pot carefully following the recipe from my new book A Year in a Bottle (thanks Mum) and some wonderful instructions from You’ll Eat it and Like it. All was going so well until it came time to figure out when it was ready. I kept testing and looking and wondering…Then Muski woke up so I got him out of the hammock wandered back into the kitchen - not two minutes had gone by - and the jam went from not ready to burnt.

BURNT!
1.5 kgs of our precious strawberries…. burnt!

The Twinadoes, sensing the dark cloud that had arrived in the kitchen, came in for a taste and assured me that it was great, but I think they were just being nice. The Baldy Boy suggested we label the four jars I managed to salvage ‘Smoky Mountain Strawberry Jam’ but I didn’t appreciate his humour. I raged and clanged and bashed my way around the kitchen cleaning up the mess and lamenting the loss of our delicious strawberries. I don’t even like jam (the rest of the pickle farm residents do though)… I would have happily eaten the whole 1.5 kgs straight from the garden… what a waste.

I’m trying hard to find something good to have come from this disaster… so here are a few things I have learnt from today’s events…

- Throwing in the lemon halves as suggested by the Divine Miss C is awesome. That was the only delicious thing to come out of our pot and the girls were in heaven!
- I need a thermometer to test for temperature and therefore readiness and forgo all the guessing on the saucer stuff.
- Jam will burn and burn big time if it gets too hot, next time I need to make it boil nicely but not incinerate the crap out of it.
- It’s really really really bad when you burn sugar black in the bottom of your only decent pot. I’ve googled for ways to fix it and in the process of trying the first idea, I will report back on my success of failure on that front.

This afternoon I vowed I would never bother with jam ever again… but a few hours of pot scrubbing has made me think I might try again. Maybe I will learn my lessons from today and attempt to win the jam wars again sometime in the future…. or I might not.

I know it’s a good cause and all, but please, please, someone make the Baldy Boy shave it off already!!!!!

It started out with him just not shaving for a while, growing a straggly beard and a mo. I didn’t like it. Today he shaved off everything except the mo and I REALLY don’t like it. It looks like some nasty prickly caterpillar has crawled out of his nose to die on his upper lip. It is creepy, and tacky and totally grosses me out. I don’t even want to look at him let alone kiss him… euuuuuuuuuuwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I’m sorry, really I am…. it’s one heck of a good cause, it’s awesome that it’s got most of the guys at the Baldy Boy’s work growing facial hair, getting sponsorship and talking about men’s health issues, but I just can’t have it in my house…. in my bed.. on MY HUSBAND!

I’ll donate $50 if he will just shave the bloody thing off… now!

For the past two years we’ve used a kikki k family calendar which I really quite like, but it’s not perfect. For a start the birthday column is wasted as we rarely write any birthdays in it, and while I love that it has a column for each member of the family, so often one event involves more than one of us and I am yet to find a way to get The Baldy Boy to read more than just what is written under his name! Plus this year’s grey borders are a tad boring… I’d like my calendar to be just a little bit funky!

I came across a link to this lovely diary - Milestone Press’s The Master Plan - The designer diary for parents. It looks to be set out really well, it has lots of the things I’d like to have on a calendar/diary - especially the dinner bit, but it’s a diary. I am not good with diaries. They tend to sit in the bottom of my bag unwritten in until I find myself making a dentist appointment and I still have no idea what days are ok for who. I think I really need something that goes up on the wall, for everyone to see.

Maybe I’ll try the Weekly Planner Pad from Kikki-k. But then it only shows a week, I am not sure that is enough to keep us organised. I am not a fan of the timed slots for each day either and no spot of meals, but I could just pop that on the side I guess. It is cheap enough to try and not to be a huge waste of money if it is a disaster I guess… and I am not sure I can find a better option…

What I really need is something big that I can stick up on the wall. That has big spaces to write in multiple events for each day. I like the idea of a weekly planner with a space for menu planning, but it also needs to have a little calendar for the rest of the month, and maybe the month after too. I don’t need a special space for birthdays, nor timed slots in each day. It needs to be functional, but also a little bit groovy.

Yeah I know… I am picky… I want a lot from my calendar, heck I’ll only be truly happy when the thing screams at me to remember the milk as I run out the door. You know, if I had a wide format printer I’d just design my own - now that would be fun… but I can’t see it working on a little a4 sized sheet.

Anyone got any nifty links to great family planners you’d care to share?

“Mama….” said Zoe. “When I am ten (the girls think that ‘ten’ is VERY grown up)…. can I change my name???”

“Change your name?”

“Yes, when I am grown up, can I change my name.”

“I guess, if you really want to. What will your change your name to???”

I admit I feared the worst “Barbie” perhaps? Or Tinkerbell? For a long time she made everyone call her Nemo…. so I held my breath and cringed just a little as she told me…

“Tiger Lily…. you can call me Lily for my short name”.

Hmm Tiger Lily… Lily… you know, as far as names go, I don’t mind that at all.

“Sure” I told her ” When you are ten, if you want to change your name to Tiger Lily, that is just what we’ll do”

Though I have to confess, I kind of hope that particular promise doesn’t come back to bite me on the bum in ten years time, cause Zoe is the one I was sure about when it came to naming my children.

It’s a momentous occasion in this house, not only because we had two very excited five year olds to celebrate with, but because according to the odds we shouldn’t have either of them.

The girls were born almost 11 weeks early due to twin to twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). When things first started to go wrong when I was 25 weeks pregnant we were told that if labour couldn’t be stopped and if the TTTS couldn’t be slowed, the odds of having two live babies were very small. When things got bad again at 27 weeks the odds of two healthy babies were still slim… and when the final call came that they were better out than in at 29 weeks and 2 days, the odds of both of them surviving were not good. We were told to expect the worst. At best we’d have two very premature babies with lots of complications, most likely only one of them would survive and there was a good chance neither of them would make it.

We were lucky. We were very lucky. We had an awesome team of people looking after us, an amazing doctor who knew just when to deliver the girls to give them the best chance at life and an amazing paediatrician who looked after them when they were born… but really, we were just lucky. Since the girls’ birth, I’ve met, corresponded and spoken with lots of people who have been through the nightmare of TTTS and I know the harsh reality of how many babies don’t make it…. I know just how incredibly lucky we are.

When I first got pregnant the thought had never entered my head that I might have more than one baby in there…. That was something that happened to other people, so was having prem babies. It was at my first visit to our OB at about 10 weeks that he did a ‘quick scan’ and announced “definitely two, maybe three babies”. That was the first time I did a double take and thought “No really… seriously… that doesn’t happen to me”. But it did. In the five and a bit years since then I have had that thought almost every day.

“No… seriously…. those kids are mine???”

Those two crazy girls, that are so alike in every way, yet so incredibly different. Who love each other with a passion and bond that I can’t even begin to understand. Izzy, with her serious face that breaks into a crazy, lopsided smile. Zoe who starts off being shy but later will break out her wicked gappy grin. These two girls who exclaim with total sincerity after each ballet lesson “That is the best thing I’ve ever done in my whole life”. These two girls who love mermaids and princesses, hanging in the shed with their Daddy and jumping on the trampoline. Those two tiny babies who took only one breath on their own when they were born enough to let out a cry to prove to us just how stubborn they are. Those two girls are mine.

I look at them sleeping each night and get that familiar pang - a combination of fear, amazement and love. No way Universe… no way…. how did I get to be the mother of twins? How did I get to be so lucky?

Lots of thanks to all who have already birthday wishes, they were very happily received. I will write more about my gorgeous mermaids tomorrow when we have all had a little more sleep and a lot less sugar.

Now they are only hours away from turning five.

I thought I was organised to early this year. I planted our first seeds way back in September… but now mid November it is still a mad rush to get things in the ground and we’ve got no early spring/summer crops to show for all our hard work. I blame frost, and ear wigs and seeds that just would not germinate… and well probably a good dose of laziness too. But whatever the reason, we are madly planting at the moment and so I have a lot to blog for both Belinda’s Back to Basics Challenge and The Growing Challenge.

Planting
A handful of seedlings that germinated and survived the mass earwig attack on their first day outside ‘hardening off’:
Pumpkin - butter (new for us this year), turks turban and one saved from last year and I can’t remember what kind it is.
Zuchini - lets hope this one survives after frost killed the early one
Water Melon - shining light (new variety this year) and ditto above
tomatoes - replanted a heap of volunteer seedlings that have popped up everywhere, they are much bigger than my tiny seedlings that I started from seed weeks and weeks ago.

Seeds - directly into the garden in the hope they will grow!
corn - have stared sowing the corn we saved from last years crop, if it all grows we’ll be drowning in the stuff
sun flowers - same as above.
water melon - two varieties
rockmelon/cantelope - last ditch attempt to get it to germinate and grow anything more than the initial seed leaves
Carrots and radishes - our clay soil is hopeless for root veggies but I found a really nice patch of dirt that seemed deep and loose and rich so giving them another try
zucchini - putting in heaps as these always do well for us, even if we only get two plants we’ll be swamped.
Lettuce and Bok Choi - from seeds saved from last year, in a spot that gets arvo shade in the hope they won’t go to seed straight away.
Beans - scarlett runner beans (have planted before but with little success) and some that we saved from last year.
Marigolds - second attempt after slugs and earwigs feasted.
Chives and spring onions.
Pumpkin (three kinds) and squash.
Watermelon.

Harvesting
Strawberries!!!!! - We got enough delicious berries for everyone to have a couple on their pancakes on the weekend and we’ve snacked on the odd one or two while out in the garden. Muski has become very good at spotting the red berries and stealing under the net to eat them - I have had to make the bird net Muski-proof as well! Still loads starting to ripen and still more green ones and more flowers… crossing fingers we may get enough to attempt some jam!

Sugar Snap Peas - finally the peas are looking good, they have a few flowers and Izzy spotted pods the other day - about 6 of them which she and I promptly ate. Shhhh don’t tell the rest of the family, they were delicious!

Spinach and Lettuce. The spinach is going great and I keep finding new ways to sneak it into our food. The girls quite like it, even on pizza but they LOVE lettuce at the moment and happily sit and eat a plate full of the stuff with a little salad dressing.

Planning
We are trying hard to get the watering system in and working. We are lucky to have bore water we can use to water the garden and over the last few years have tried a few ways of setting up automatically timed drip watering systems. We are yet to find the perfect, easy and cheap answer. All that black tubing and trying to get the drippers to water in the spot we want them to this year as opposed to last year when we made the holes… it’s driving me mental. Still it is important to sort out and time is running out - it needs to be done and working before we go away so that the plants will survive on their own for a while.

I have been working on collecting some new recipes and ideas for how to cook the veggies we are growing. I bookmarked a great post from You’ll Eat it and Like It on making strawberry jam, if not for this year, then maybe next year as we are thinking of ways to grow our strawberry crop.

We’ve been discussing the idea of planting some kind of ‘bush food’ trees/shrubs in the space between the house and the dam. Looking at our options as to what would grow happily in our area and so be reasonably maintenance free but also maybe one day bear a small crop. More for interests sake and our own use than anything else, but it feels like a better use of the land than grassed paddocks since we don’t have any grazing animals. Maybe pepper berries?

Arrghh… I think the craziness of this coming week is getting to me already, I am sounding like some housework obsessed crazy woman, when in reality, it’s a good day in this house when everyone has a pair of clean undies to wear… and heck this is not at all what I wanted to write about… how on earth did I get so side tracked?

Ah yes… washing… I’ve been doing some today. Taking advantage of the sunshine and the fact that I won’t need to go pick up the Twinadoes until 4pm (all good vibes to incredibly wonderful kinder mum who invited my girls to play!) I’ve attempted to wash a big back log of clothes and put them away and while I was taking washing off the line, folding and sorting as I went (cause I was being a good house wife today) I came across a clothes storage dilemma and I need some help.

The girls share a bed room, they share a wardrobe and storage unit and more and more often they share clothes. In the past I’ve kept their clothes separate to make it easier to grab and run in the mornings but these days I have little to no say over what they wear and I can never pick who is going to go for which t-shirt. So now I am thinking (yes dangerous I know)… it would make my life easier to stop trying to sort t-shirts and undies in a Zoe pile and an Izzy pile… so maybe I could just chuck them all in together?

I know… really stupid, crazy, ‘who cares’ kind of question…. but seriously… before I go spending hours rearranging things and finding that it doesn’t work and having to spend more hours putting it all back… surely someone out there has some advice for me?

Someone with twins? Or someone with kids who share a room and share clothes????

Is this going to make life easier or harder? Chuck it all in together or keep separating?

I know… I ask the most life altering, important questions don’t I!!??? LOL