March happenings....

I love March! The weather is fantastic, the sun is actually warm and the days are long and lazy!
The veggie garden has pretty much had it and I harvested the pumpkins this week and the last of the beans and we've let the chicken free range again to help fertilize ready for spring. I don't have much luck growing things with the bad frosts we get.

The Inspire Handmade Market which I helped put on for the school turned out better than I had hoped and we raised almost 3,000 for the school on the night.
Pics are here www.inspirehandmademarket.blogspot.com
I finally got around to doing up a dolls house I picked up at the tip shop for $1. It was a hideous blue and red and had some unsavoury things written on the roof by some naughty children over the years. I sanded like crazy before I realised that a lot of it would just wash off with a good scrubbing brush! One of the shades of blue seemed to be a different paint and that took some reall sanding to get it back to something I could stain.
After stinking the house up (it was raining outside so I was doing it in the kitchen!) I stained and varnished it a dark ceder colour and I'm really happy with how it turned out :) The girls have it in their room as I type and are busy making furniture and dolls for it.

While I was sanding it one day Mary was up at the table chatting to me and asked
"Mum, what are you doing?"
"I'm sanding the paint off this dolls house"
"But Mum, why are you doing that"
"So I can get it all off?"
"But why?"
(perplexed as to what she was getting at?) "So it can have no paint on it?"
"No, Mum, why are you doing it?"
"Hmmm....because I thought you and your sisters would like a dolls house?"
"Oh, yes! That's what I wanted you to say!......(sigh).....sometimes I wish you were in my brain Mum so then you would know what I wanted you to say!"

Here's a picture of how we find Mary most days.....good thing I make them wear bike shorts under the skirts! Don't you just adore those nuggety little legs!

I've added some pictures that Hannah took the other too. She loves the Jenga blocks, never for actually playing Jenga but for building and creating with.

Notice the little ipod in the corner, we picked up one secondhand for them to listen to their audio books on. They adore audio books and Hannah listens to the Chronicles of Narnia constantly. They alos love the Friend magazine on audio and we just download them from the church site. Our library also has some audio classics to borrow as well, things like Dr Dolittle, so fun!