summer goodness

I finally worked out the "picture" problem with my blog, so thought I'd get back into the swing of things by sharing with you in pictures some summer goodness that we have been enjoying as a family.

Simple crafts. Using some remnants of an old ripped shirt to cover this milk bottle and make a pretty vase.

Here's the next craft project ready to go...an old scrap of material becomes a ball of cotton yarn to play with at a later stage.

Roses and geraniums from our very own garden, sitting in old jam jars and making me very happy.

Riding our bikes MORE and driving much LESS.yay.

Apricots on our tree in the community garden. Everybody from the community has been getting in on the action, and have been dropping by to pick apricots, which is lovely to see.

I stewed this batch of apricots, which we have used for lots of different thing including HOMEMADE ICECREAM!!

Speaking of which....introducing our newest piece of modern technology, an icecream maker, bought with some money given to us at Christmas time from my lovely Grandpa. Thanks, Harold!! Mr. Coleman's addiction is now not only confined to eating icecream, but making it too! Much more yummy and ethical, as it's quite hard to find a brand of icecream that we are comfortable buying for various reasons..and it's also nice to know exactly what's going into it!!

Apricot frozen yogurt.

Strawberry icecream, without a doubt the best strawberry icecream I have ever had!!

(Some other flavours Mr. Coleman has made include choc mint, banana, rum and raisin, chocolate and vanilla and honey frozen yogurt.)

We have been Op Shopping fairly often, I found this stretchy fabric, and intend to make myself some undies with it!!hehe.

Still waiting on getting the oven fixed, so in the meantime we got this breadmaker from Freecycle, and have been making our own bread each day.

Mmmmm...a "Ploughman's lunch" sandwhich, my favourite. Cheese, chutney, tomato and lettuce with some salt and pepper, and in homemade bread.

Bought this sweet little shirt for Miss Coleman at the Op Shop, took it home and realised it had a big horrible brand logo on the bottom, not my thing at all! Well, problem solved with a stitched on granny square!

I hope you have enjoyed seeing a bit of what summer is looking like for me. This is only the tip of the iceberg really, we have been swimming a lot at the local pool (in my vintage bathers of course!!), having lot's of BBQ's with friends and family, I have totally become addicted Downton Abbey and have been hiring all the DVD's, and it's always a constant Bealtes Fest with the kids. We are looking forward to Mr Coleman's brother and wife coming from the UK to spend some time with us for the next 10 days, and other then that, just enjoying the general laid back nature of having the summer holidays at home, and taking things SLOW, because it's only a few weeks really til life will be nuts again!!!!

If you are a Northern Hemisphere reader, I hope you're having a lovely Winter by the way. Don't let this post make you jealous, I ommitted the pictures of me crying and stressing and sweating and being generally quite horrible to be around on the 40+ degree days!!!

Mezz

xx