Every year Blossom and I get together with the children and have our very own pre-Mothers Day morning tea on Friday. We find it far more relaxing than having the men around - mostly because they don't enjoy the feminine table setting, the vintage cups, and our 'girly' chatter. And you know what? They are rather relieved not to be invited.
On the actual Mothers Day (today!) Blossom is free to be spoiled and loved on by her hubby and children, and likewise I am spoiled by her daddy - my precious Mr E.
What Blossom and I have discovered over the years is just how important it is to celebrate special occasions in a way that works for your own family dynamics. There's no comparison to another's way of doing things, or guilt because we didn't do enough...we choose to immerse ourselves in what is calm, beautiful, relaxed, and especially overflowing with love and gratitude for each other. I do hope you are having a wonderful Mothers Day, celebrating in a way that brings all those things in abundance.
I baked one of Blossom's absolute favourite treats for our Friday morning tea - Honey Cakes! I used to bake them in patty cases but switched to Madeleine pans last year and oh my, they look so fancy now...
Some berries scattered around, a bowl of raspberries close by, and a dusting of icing sugar...beautiful on the eyes, and delicious to eat.
The table was set with special tea cups...
A setting for four this year as Rafaella chose to stay in school that day because her class had prepared a special Mother-child afternoon tea, and Blossom would be heading there after leaving my house. She had a wonderful day!
As an extra treat for Cully May and Charlie David I set out play dough on the plastic lined coffee table, and Blossom had a play too. She taught Cully May how to make a face with play dough...
Charlie decided to mix colours, much to Cully May's horror, so she did her best to separate his from hers. Ha ha!! He did play with the colours separately at first, but his mischievous mind thought what fun to mix them all together. You have to love the mind of 2yo...
If you'd like to make those little honey cakes I have a recipe card for you! I have an idea to make up a whole series of them with family favourites, and hopefully I shall follow through on that.
You can download the recipe HERE. There's two recipe cards in the file, one for you and one to give to a friend (or post off in a card?). In fact, print the recipe up on cardstock and perhaps cover with some clear contact.
Included in the file are some quantity replacements as mine are Australian measures, and the US have different measures. If you're in the US or use US measurements in your recipes, be sure to use the replacement quantities in your recipe PDF.
Yesterday I spent five hours in the garden, from 8am to 1pm, fertilising, pruning, spraying, mulching, planting, repotting and watering. I added more flowers around the place, as well as a different type of cucumber and some rhubarb. I also unearthed a very old swan planter pot and sat it next to the Sub-Pod in our newest raised bed (outside the laundry door) with a pretty pink dianthus inside.
I also cleaned up some other garden ornaments and scattered them around to cheer the space while everything begins to grow. The lovely bucket I hung last week from the elder tree with a tiny sweet pea growing inside will be beautiful cascading over the sides of the bucket when it gets going. Do you get creative in your garden?
The lemon and lime trees fruit all year round but I always prune in late autumn. It's also time to fertilise them and replace the mulch, and yesterday I thought to add some flowers near them as well to bring in the bees and good insects - two dahlias, a chrysanthemum and a pot of geraniums.
When I went up the back for a swim after all my hard work I noticed shiny green balls all through the large syzgium hedge...passionfruit! I remembered back when we had the chickens in that spot and grew the old passionfruit vine that one of the fruit dropped to the ground and began to rot so I simply threw it under the syzgium bushes, and now almost two years later there's a very productive passionfruit vine growing all through them. How wonderful to have a volunteer passionfruit!
With so many different growing areas in our quarter acre, and so many different vegetables, fruit trees and plants scattered throughout, I decided to make a garden commonplace book to sketch where everything is, take notes on all the plantings, jot down ideas, and any other garden type information which will be good to look back on for each year's subsequent plantings.
I bought a lovely hardcover journal with blank pages from Officeworks, so during my afternoon 'rest' after all that gardening, I sketched up a little flower pot design to make into a cover for my garden diary.
It's all needleturn and this photo was taken before I sat down and put my feet up to begin. I chose an old piece of Tilda fabric from the Bumblebee set of years ago as the background because it is perfect for a garden book. I may embroidery some tiny bees around the applique flowers before I finish. We shall both find out when it's completed.
If you'd be interested in the pattern as a free gift next week let me know.
I'll leave you today with a lovely quote about female friendships which I came across on
Alena's blog, and a photo of my apricot rose which is back in bloom. Happy and blessed Mothers Day!
"The older I get, the more I’m realising that nurturing friendships with women with the same values is incredibly important to me, I wasted too much time diminishing and hiding my own values in order to “fit in”, and I’m glad I no longer have to do that. Growing older, and more importantly wiser is such a blessing. Especially concerning your cultivation of friends." Alena Perritt
Hugs,
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