Winter is Upon Us in Antarctica!

So Winter has arrived, and for all I was expecting it to be horrendous, I'm actually really enjoying it! Yes, it's cold, but we have heating here! We didn't have heating in Sydney because it was too expensive to run, so we really only used it when we absolutely had to. We used heating for two nights last Winter, one of those was when I was in labour with Angus. The wood fire heater here makes us toasty warm! Everywhere in the house is comfortable (except the rumpus room which isn't insulated)

Our firewood finally arrived! After four months of ringing them and telling them that they owed us three tonnes of firewood (we won it in a raffle for the QLD floods, way back in January). After four months of the most tireless excuse making I've ever encountered (protesters were inhibiting their ability to get it here, their machinery had broken down, they lost our phone number - countless times - they had our address wrong, they couldn't remember how much wood it was meant to be ... you get the drift?) So I rang them for the last time and, as usual, was polite but assertive, and the next day a huge truck appeared on the street with full logs! The wood was meant to be all cut up, ready to use, but what were we going to do, send them away? So they dumped it in the drive way and across the foot path and at long last we had a good top us to our supply! They were meant to being 3 tonnes, but in actual fact what they left was closer to 5 or 6. We had to buy a chain saw. A spent 3 whole days sawing, and then chopping with an axe, and Stylish and I took it in turns to help him hauling it up the driveway, across the yard to the wood pile. Back breaking work! 

I plucked a good harvest of rose hips and made apple and rose hip jelly. It's delicious on sour dough toast, and I have about a litre of it so it won't run out any time soon. We've been doing lots of good cooking, my favourite thing we've discovered is a chicken baked risotto with marinated capsicum, and butter beans. 

Yesterday was Stylish's birthday, she is now officially a teenager! We gave her a new bike and took her out for dinner to the Chinese restaurant in Huonville. We had a lovely day all round! And ate lots of disgustingly rich chocolate, mousse, and raspberry cake.