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!

Is that you Cindy Lou?

Nope, it’s Millie but it looks to me like the kind of craziness Miss Cindy Lou would wear. This is for her Brownies Christmas party that she has gone to tonight. It was a team effort. I made the dress, she made the ornaments (with a bit of help). The Candy Canes idea came from Felt Cafe and the hearts and stars from Bugs and Fishes. The sweets were based on the same idea as this one on the Ga Ga For Garlands Flickr group – check it out there are some great ideas!

While I was busy adding the finishing touches (and checking for remaining pins!) she busied herself with this little project from Art Projects For Kids.

I think she did a fantastic job!

Will hopefully be back at the weekend with pics from Isaac’s first play at Montessori – very exciting!

Go Elf Yourself!

…If you haven’t already. We have had lots of fun playing with this this week – Elfing Grandad proved most popular!

You can see us here since I can’t seem to embed it.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Halloween out the way…bring on Christmas!

I took the children round to friend’s last night for a Halloween party. They had a great time (despite Emily being on the brink of illness, she is in bed with a fever today). Here they are all dressed up and ready to go.

Spooooky!

Isaac was a the witch’s cat by the way – he didn’t like having the hood up!) I realised all was not well with Emily when she burst into tears over marshallow toasting (!) but she refused to go home until the end, by which time she was feeling quite poorly, poor thing.

We had lots of trick-or-treaters and I had to put a sign on the door in the end as we ran out of treats!

So yes, with both the children’s birthdays in the week before Christmas things are usually a tad busy round here. Not this year though, oh no. I will remain cool, calm and organised this year and not still be wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. I have my battle plan (tweaked from SimpleMom) and so far have stuck to it.  We have ordered our cards and have the address labels ready to print, bought (and wrapped) some presents and I have started making some gifts too so I am feeling pretty good. Need to start on the baking this week and stock up the freezer!

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)

Back to School

Ok, so we never really stopped doing “school” work over the summer but this  project popped up on Art Projects for Kids and I thought it looked like a fun way for Millie to record her summer.

Would she write about our visits to London or York, travelling on the NYM railway doing another (much harder) Maize Maze? Would she write about staying at her grandparents, paddling in the river at Hubbard’s Hills or paddling in the sea at Anderby Creek?

Nope, none of those things. She wrote about last week and DIY!!

September Self-Portrait

Back to blogging for me and a permanent move over to WordPress (finally) – so give me at least a month to get everything sorted ;o)

Kidmade Again

 

Oil Pastel and Watercolours

Isaac didn’t do a self portrait (unless its showing the inner workings of his mind!?!) but wanted me to show everyone this.

Self Portrait

 

This is Emily’s Self Portrait for this months Kidmade challenge. I helped her with shaping the nose and cutting out the top lip but the rest is all her. The headband is particularly her, lol, her fantasy headband!