A productive Sunday.

Today I woke up full of beans. Okay...so not quite straight away...After Hubby had picked us up our favourite coffee, from our favourite cafe. Then I woke up full of beans. This morning I had to share a little something about our amazing get away to Sista's conference at church. (Kristy has already done a cool blog about it here.) I was a little nervous. Speaking to a bunch  of  people(200)  is a little daunting...but they are extended family, so hopefully it went well. 

I had a sleep day yesterday after my night shift so a more productive day was in mind for today. After a monster clean up of the house, Joe and I got to work and juiced a whole bag of lemons picked from Grandmas. I have this cool attachment to my Kenwood mixer that juices citrus in no time. 

I put some in an ice cube tray for juice when you need it and  decided to make lemonade out of the rest. Normally I would just add sugar and water to the lemon juice. But this time I made a sugar syrup, using 1 cup of sugar to about 1 cup water heating it in a pot until all the sugar was dissolved. I added it to the jug of lemon juice but it was still a bit tart so I repeated the process until the desired sweetness was achieved. It eliminated that dreaded "sugar sink". Will definitely do this again. 

I thought  the kids might like a lemonade  ice block...but I couldn't find the top bits to my ice block molds ..So used a bit of Kiwi ingenuity and improvised with some plastic forks. Yeah...Nah. I think I will dig a little deeper and try and find the real ones next time!

Christmas Advent calendars 
Tracy from "The Scrap Heap" was advertising these on her FB site.  The Left is what came in the kitset...which by the way was way cheaper at Tracy's shop than at Spotlight...just saying. And the right is what it could look like. COULD being the operative word. I'm a little rusty in the crafting department. There were a few times I felt like a five year old...you know when things stick to places they aren't supposed to. Ahem...

I did enlist in hubby's help. This is not just a one afternoon job! Each little box needed to be put together. Its not finished yet though. I do have twelve (!) more days to go until we start counting down until the big day. Better get cracking!

While we crafted I managed to put together the yummiest dinner in ages. Slow Roasted Pork Belly with crispy skin and roasted trio of root vege (spud, kumara and pumpkin) and fresh garden Asparagus and the yummiest "Jus" ever. The pork belly recipe was from Jamie Oliver. And yes....I followed a recipe...okay... mostly.
While I was dishing this delicious dinner up, I was thinking to myself...My kids probably won't appreciate how yummy this dish is at all, my talents are wasted on them...yadda yadda. Boy was I  wrong. They all loved it. Joe said "this was the best dinner I have cooked him in his whole life". A winner then. Restaurants charge loads for "pork belly".  I found a nice sized one for $12 from the supermarket  that fed all 5 of us and it wasn't too hard to make when I followed Jamie's recipe. Give it a try at your place.  

Yep. That was a productive day...and now I need a nap!

Monkey moo...enjoying his lemonade ice block.