Sewing and Sowing

I’ve been so busy the past couple of weeks, hence the lack of updates. First priority was to finish the remaining show costumes in time for this weekends dress rehearsal. I had to make 6 swirl skirts in black satin and they were not fun. I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to do them but when I showed my first attempt to the woman organising the costume making she said it was fine. I set to on the others and to my astonishment managed quite well! So I spent all of last Sunday and a big part of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday finishing them off.  Hopefully they fitted as I didn’t hear anything when Emily returned last night. She had been at the rehearsal all day 9.30-7pm, so was very tired. The show is next weekend!!

The rest of us were equally tired after two busy days in the garden. I finished preparing the veg beds for planting by adding manure, fertilizer and soil conditioner where necessary. I have now covered them with black polythene to help them warm the soil ready for planting.

Isaac helped me plant a couple of rows of onions, not much but it is really all we have the space for. We also added a row of late raspberries, yum! The ones we have are a early variety so it would be nice to get some more eventually that fruit around abouts July.

I  did a little  more sowing, this time mainly flower seeds  for my soon-to-be cutting patch. Lots and lots of sweet peas, cosmos, and rudbekia. For the time being, however, we are enjoying plenty of these…

The seeds I planted in Feb are looking good, the only failure were the peppers. I only sowed 4 seeds as last year all the seeds germinated and I ended up with too many plants. Not sure what went wrong this time, old seed maybe? I’ll try again and if no success i’ll probably just buy a couple of plants from the garden centre.

The frogs in our little pondhave finally woken up and there was much excitement from Isaac last weekend when he spotted one on our patio. Or as it subsequently turned out to be, two frogs mating!

Menu Plan Monday

I forgot to post this yesterday!

 

Monday Cheesy Potato Skins with avacado and tomato salad

Tuesday Pasta Bake From “101 Cookbooks”

Wednesday Fish cakes (Scroll to the bottom. The whole book is on this link, worth a look) 

Thursday Tomato & Lentil Soup 

Friday Easy Fried Rice   From “Planning With Kids”

Saturday Out

Sunday  Tuscan-Style Beans with Garlic Crust (Slow Cooker)

 

A new month, so I’m trying some new recipes. The first one is fishcakes. I’m veggie so avoid cooking meat/fish at all costs gererally, but find that as the children get bigger they want more meat/fish in their diet. This recipe looks fairly easy and “hands-off” so suits me! Second new recipe is the fried rice. I used to do a similar one to this ages ago until Isaac refused to eat it, so we’ll try again, fingers crossed.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday – Risotto (For us, from last week as we never had it due to my parents being here), Pacific Pie (children)

Tuesday- Gorgonzolla Gnocchi (us), Homemade Pesto Pizza (children)

Wednesday– Leftovers from last night

Thursday– Leek and potato Soup with Cheesy Corn Muffins

Friday- Quorn Mexican Stirfry

Saturday-Corn Fritters with Lime Mayo

Sunday- Thick  Onion Tart

Birthday Outing

 

It was Mick’s birthday last Tuesday so he took the day off work and we went on a family outing to this place , we had a lot of fun.

The planetarium was a big hit. We saw two shows there, a film show called “Astronaut” which Isaac, in particular, loved and a live show called “Flight Through the Universe” which took us on the most amazing journey. The woman giving the talk obviously had a real passion in the subject which made it very enjoyable, so much so she over ran the time slot!

Here is Isaac learning about pendulums - or more accurately trying to hit Mama on the head whilst she is busy taking a photo.

 

 

Here is Emily placing magnetic cogs in sequence so that the alram bell will ring.

 

 

Isaac having lots of fun.

 

You can't see this very well but it is a big tank of water used to demonstate a vortex.

Menu Plan Monday

Strange, I just posted this but it only posted the days of the week 

Monday – Enchiladas and Rice

Tuesday – Out

Wednesday – Homemade Veggie Burgers and Potato Wedges

Thursday -Celery Soup with Cheese Scones

Friday –  Spaghetti/Tortelloni with” Sneaky Vegetables” pasta sauce  (Isaac has become really fussy of late.

Saturday – Pumpkin and Hazelnut risotto

Sunday – Tuscan Style Beans with Rosemary (Slow Cooker)

Menu Plan Monday

I get a lot of inspiration from seeing other peoples menus, so thought I’d start posting ours each week*

Monday – Crispy Black Bean Tacos with Feta and Slaw

Tuesday – Falafel in Pitta with Hummus

Wednesday – Quorn in 3-Mustard Sauce with Mushrooms and Brown Rice

Thursday – Sausage and Mash

Friday – Leftovers from Wednesday

Saturday – Homemade Pizza and Potato Wedges with Salad

Sunday – Lentil Croquettes with Sesame Brown Rice and Broccoli

*Okay, so you could call this a slight cheat on my “write at least one blog post per week”

A Spot of Baking

 

 

Melting Moments

I haven’t made these for ages and had forgotten just how good they are. The problem is when you see just how much butter goes into making 25 of these little mouthfuls it kind of puts you off consuming them.

Melting Moments

Well for about five minutes.

Melting Moments

makes 25 approx.

250 g  Butter  (I warned you)

80 g icing sugar

225 g plain flour

75 g cornflour

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the Butter Cream

80g butter

100g icing sugar 

1tsp vanilla extract or grated lemon rind plus a furthur tsp of lemon juice

Raspberry jam (opt)

 

Method

• Fan Oven 160°c . Line 2 baking trays.

• Put butter, sugar, and vanilla in food prcessor or blend by hand  until fluffy. Then add the sived, blended flours in two or three lots. If using a food processor now is the time to pulse until you see it “ball up”.

• Flour hands and get large teaspoons of mixture and roll into balls approximatly  2.5cm across. Place on baking tray and flatten slightly with a fork. Make sure they are about 3cm apart as they will spread a little.

• Bake for about 15mins, they still want to be pale not browned! Leave to cool for 5mins before lifting onto cooling racks. Leave to cool completly before icing.

Icing

• Mix all the ingrediants together until smooth and use to sandwich two biscuits together. If you like you can spead with a thin layer of jam before adding the icing.

• Dust with icing sugar to finish.

• Put the kettle on and enjoy!

Happy New-ish Year!

Well I never did manage to post the photos of Isaac’s birthday celebration did I? The camera went doo-lally and I’m still not quite sure if we ever managed to get the photos off it. I didn’t manage any posts after that as I was ill for most of December, but well for both birthdays and Christmas and really have just been lazy since ;o)

Birthdays December '08

Despite the laziness on the blog front I’ve been super busy round here. I am helping make costumes for Emily’s dance show next month so that is taking up any spare time I have. Speaking of Dancing, Emily got her Grade 1 exam results back and she got a distinction! She had set her heart on it since getting one in Primary and I kept trying to play the whole thing down just in case she was disappointed, thank goodness she wasn’t! I was so pleased for her, she worked really hard.

Isaac’s big news is that he has started one full day at Montessori. Each Wednesday he has lunch there and in the afternoon they do cultural activities (this term it is about magnets) and French(which he adores). He has also started bringing home pre-readers which he was very pleased about! He feels very much a “big boy” now!

Busy busy busy

Activities are in full swing once again.

Both children are now doing football on Thursday mornings which is great. They seem to be enjoying it immensely. It helps, of course, that we have had glorious sunshine every week since we began. Not sure how they will feel about playing in the cold and wet ;o)

Emily has started a tap class which runs after her ballet class, on Thursday afternoons, making it a very long and tiring day for her. She loves it though and I have a hard time getting the tap shoes off her feet! She also has extra ballet classes each week to prepare her for her Grade One exam next month. Oh and she received her first Brownie badge this week, very exciting, which she is very proud of. Must remember to sew it on.

DH has been busy putting the finishing touches to the playroom. It has been a long time coming together but I’m very pleased with how it has turned out and so are the children. It is certainly good for their sense of order after having nearly 2 years of having things moved about constantly!

I desperately need to get out in the garden and start the pre-winter tidy up. I did a bit last weekend but not enough. DH did an excellent job of tidying the shed so I can actually get in the door now!

The children are getting very excited by the idea of having some pet chickens but we’ve told them there is a fair bit of work to do before we take that step. We certainly need to replace the two wooden compost bins as they are completely rotten through. I’m considering getting a couple of Link-a-Board ones. Not as pretty as the wooden ones but much more durable and very low maintenance ;o)

Considering we hadn’t much planned this week, we seem to have filled it nicely.

On Tuesday we spent the afternoon at a local nature reserve with friends. We looked around the information centre (which has been closed for ages due to flooding) and Isaac had a great time playing with the microscope, looking at the various specimens. We then walked around the lake in the sunshine/dark theatening clouds but managed to escape with just a trickle of rain.

Yesterday our parcel from Harrod Horticultural arrived which was a new watering can and container set for the children. We have a veggie garden but i thought success was more likely if they could view their crops from the kitchen, we’ll see! So after lunch we went into the garden to fill the containers, but ended up planting up a some flowers to go on the patio. Meanwhile, Emily got chatting (bellowing) to the children 2 doors down (over nextdoors garden!) and got invited over there which was nice, she had a lovely time. She sort of knows the girl from when she was at Rainbows but never got to know her that well so i was pleased for her. It would be nice if they become friends – very handy.

This morning Isaac and I had the house to ourselves as Emily was doing a jewellery workshop with her friend, Polly. They each made a lovely necklace and bracelet. P is sleeping over here tonight so we are expecting a couple of tired girls in the morning, judging by the chattering that’s going on still.

Oh, does anyone know if you can merge flickr accounts (a free with a pro) cos i just discovered we have a pro account we didn’t know about – for nearly two years!!! (comes with bt apparently, probably should read emails).