Hobbit Day 2012

Last Friday we celebrated Bilbo's birthday and the official Hobbit Day that was encouraged around the world.

We made plans for this day that involved a lot of food in fact 6 meals for the day.

Eden prepared the invitations for everyone. Handwritten on a rough looking parchment type invitation. I especially like the Elvin script. Complete with a Hobbit name for each of us

Rogan was very keen to make the banner that we put up on the balcony for the 'party goers' to see

 So to start the day off we had First Breakfast which consisted of mushrooms, with sourdough fried bread, eggs, bacon and tomatoes
 Through out the day we had tea and coffee Drinks -Ginger beer, honey and lemon drinks.
 I LOVE HOBBIT DAY, IT GIVES ME A MAJOR EXCUSE TO PIG OUT AND NOT FEEL GUILTY COZ   I'M A HOBBIT :] thank you for writing this Autumn sweetie.

Second Breakfast - strawberries with cream,

 Elevenses  was scones with jam and cream.
Corbyn loves making these Spelt flour soaked scones

We set the table with our beautiful white table cloth and of course we had to have our special  tea cups

Oh yes these were extremely yummy

Our little Hobbit kept getting in his hobbit hole over and over again

Each year we add hobbit feet by simply drawing on with textas

Our Hobbits are all dressed up and ready to party. We left the elf, who seemed to be unable to keep up for the day asleep inside.

Some of our youngest hobbits, Arwen, Corbyn and Myffwyn, all dressed up and ready to party

Moran and Rogan ready as well

Could this be Merry and Pippin? NO it is Vellvin and Eden!

Musical chairs was one of the  most favoured games we played on this day.

Back to the food.
Luncheon  was fried potatoes, onions and apples. Might I add by this stage we were starting to feel a little full

Our children love to decorate and we had fun preparing our new home  with streamers and balloons (well they got blown up but the little kids played with them before we could  put them up).
We had Luncheon out side on the decorated balcony.

Afternoon Tea  consisted of Apple pie and custard

I did print out some pictures for the children to colour in. It is so sweet to see our littlest on enjoying sitting down at the table and  colouring.

Have I mentioned that this year we made a gigantic cake for us to light up and sing Happy Birthday to Bilbo. One of the funny things about the day was the children themselves decide on characters and Arwen wanted to be Bilbo. So all day she kept going around telling us all that it was HER birthday and it was her birthday cake.

Starting to decorate with whipped cream.

Saxon with the help of the little ones decorated the cake.

The finished cake complete with Frodo on top of what I called "Mount Doom"

We made these glow stick lanterns to decorate the table for dinner

Glow stick lanterns were super easy to make. I cut up the glow stick into the jar and shook it up. I left the the cut sticks in the jars, even though I know other instructions did not say to do this, they added to the glow effect

We had dinner outside on the balcony with the glow lanterns.
Quite frankly we had had enough of preparing and eating food by this stage and of course washing up so we actually combined Dinner and supper together.

We had meat pies, cold cuts, pickles and eggs  as well as the supper of cheese, crackers.

Lighting the candles on the cake is always exciting and I love how the kids set it up so that  it looks like Frodo is lighting the candles

See that huge slice of cake being cut out? Well we did not each much of it due to the fact that we had eaten almost non stop it seemed all day.

This is the remainder of the cake after we had taken that first slice. In fact we did not even eat all of this slice and the rest is in our freezer waiting to be eaten still.

After the clean up we all pretty much went to bed as it had been a very long and exhausting day and we had a big day the next day with our Kynan coming home to celebrate his birthday late too. It had been months since we had seen Kynan and we were all so very excited to be seeing him in the morning.

So until next year we hope you  had a Happy Hobbit Day in your homes too!!

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

The Road we are Travelling.....Our Fresh Beginning

We are slowly settling  into the new life here in Wagga Wagga.
Our unpacking is still continuing as we are moving into a much  smaller house than the home we built in Tassie.
There have been some lovely things with moving and as I said some adjustments in living conditions. One of the beautiful things is the view we have from this house and the gardens are just a fairy-tale land for our imaginative children. They have had the most fun exploring these areas.

The time since we started to pack up our home in Tassie to settling in here has been rather quick in one way, we have been here over two weeks now, and in another the unpacking and finding new places for our treasured books and space to live  has been rather tiring.

Here are a few scenes from packing up at our old home..............

It was very messy for the last week of living there and I admit I found it difficult to live in such mess.

We did spend a bit of time photographing our home, both inside and out about our 5 acres. I do wish we had kept a better photographic journal of our building this home like my friend Erin has but alas I wasn't blogging then and so the presentation of ideas was much different.

As the movers left gear behind each night, they arrived on Monday morning and came everyday until they finished on Friday afternoon, Eden and Saxon just HAD TO have a ride around in the trolley thing.

The movers taking a break part way through the fourth container load on my rocking chair.

We ended up with four containers and that little truck full of our belongings to move here. This is them going around 3pm on Friday afternoon.

Of course we had to get some empty home shots and this was a bittersweet moment for me especially.
We walked through as a family from one room to the other as our final farewell to this home we have lived in for over 7 years.

In fact we had never seen this home completely empty as we moved in to only part of it, while continually building it and the frame work  was only wrapped in the paper with no doors and one window and an outside pit toilet. We built as we lived in it continually and finished building it within 4 years (I think)

It will be a memory for us all but sadly I don't think our little ones will remember much except through stories and photos.

We spent most of our time in this big kitchen area. We called it 'The Great Hall' and it was a place of many family celebrations

One of the photos I had to have of everyone was underneath one of our Wattle Trees. These grew up over the years as this was all cleared for our building site.
Vellvin above

Moran

Myffwyn

Arwen

Eden

Corbyn

Saxon and Trahaearn

Sweet Angel, Trahaearn

Saxon

Me

Braedon, who came home to help us move out. He lives in Wagga too so we are doubly blessed by this. Kynan was way to far from Tassie to be able to get the time of work to make a last trip home

Stephen, my love

Autumn

Rogan

My love and I

Under the stairs we made a last tribute to this home we have loved and then we walked out the door.

 Stephen was the last to walk out the door and lock the door for the last time.

 Waking to the Taxi and our van loaded with everything we will need for the next few days until the trucks arrive with our gear.

We had the trailer full and both our canoes on top of the trailer......there is nothing left behind, except our memories and good friends.

I look forward to sharing our new discoveries in the 'great new world' we live in now!

To remind us that life is a journey that we travel I thought this poem/song from The Hobbit appropriate~
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

 Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

Blessings to you and your homes,