Easter

Easter took me by surprise this year. It is very confusing that is on a different date each time. Dan's birthday was once on good Friday, but this year we got a whole week inbetween. Here are some silly fairy cakes which didn't get iced until stupid 'o' clock the night before:They're meant to be rabbits in their burrows, but not sure how successful they were...also completely inedible for adults due to the excessive amount of icing.

We had a little easter egg hunt (which I of course forgot to take any pictures of) after a lovely brekker of boiled eggs and toasted soldiers. Ben helped cook the eggs, which might be why he looks a bit stressed, although I expect he was just enjoying pulling silly faces for camera:

Hope you had a nice Easter too.

Pram

Here is a picture of our lovely new pram. Well, secondhand new. It can't really be described as compact, but then nor can the babies our family tends to have.

Isn't it nice? It has lovely big wheels and very bouncy suspension. You can't tell from this picture but the inside looks and feels all smooth and padded like a traditional pram with a mattress, which is unusual in a pram which can also be made to sit up. It can face forwards or backwards, and the wheels come off easily for getting it into small spaces. Fortunately it fits in our boot without having to do that.

It was also described as having 4 wheel drive, which I thought sounded a bit gimmicky. But then I tried pushing it and realised it really does - the front wheels are connected to the handlebar a bit like on a bike, and the back wheels just follow along. I was amazed at how tight a corner it can turn when pushed with just one hand, which would have been impossible with Dan's old pram. This function can however be disabled in order to enable logical reversing, something with which women notoriously have issues.

The handle has been turned down so the pram can fit in the room which makes it look a bit odd, but this also happens to be the ideal height should D wish to push it. He has shown quite a lot of interest in it, and admitted he had thought about getting in it, and then thought that maybe that wouldn't be a good idea without consulting me first. I don't blame him for thinking of it as it looks very cosy. I would sleep in it if I could.

Here is a picture of D eating a huge marshmallow kebab which my dear brother brought him from Holland. D was very excited until he realised that, after eating a couple, you feel a bit poorly, and declaring the whole thing yucky. I explained that with such things, the yumminess factor tends to be in inverse proportion to the amount eaten, which reassured him I think.

These pictures actually give them impression that my house is reasonable tidy today, don't they? At least I didn't take any pictures of upstairs.

Moomins and Falafel

Mmm today we had fresh falafel and it was surprisingly nice, and very economical. We will definitely be making that again.

I don't really have anything to post about but feel bad for neglecting the ol' blog, so here's a picture of the moomin drawing I finally found a frame for, and Grandad kindly noticed today. I wanted to put it in D's room but he wanted it in the living room, so its staying there for now. Til I get bored of looking at it anyway. I like this picture though because, if you know the moominland midwinter story, it will immediately make you feel chilly and spooked out, just like little moomintroll was when he woke up halfway during hibernation to find the world felt completely different.

One day I must try copying another story picture, it was good fun. But so irritating if it goes wrong. B and D would like me to try one of the hobbit pictures (especially a scary one of Smaug), and admittedly they are lovely, but they are heavily stylised watercolours and there's no way I can even be bothered to try.

Some things we did today

Today we baked a proper cake for the first time in ages. Dan got promoted from his usual tasks of buttering dishes and stirring and fetching things to official egg rbeaker, which he proved to be very good at. We are saving the cake til after dinner, which is very restrained of us.

Dan says the grated chocolate on top is little worms. I personally felt this to be a little offensive to chocolate but am prepared to admit that that might be OTT and so stayed quiet.

While I am cooking tea (sos mix meatballs - not sure how that will turn out yet) and writing this, Dan is playing with the hammering wooden shapes thing. He just showed me this and told me it is a man on a tightrope. I agreed that its really very good and so we are putting a picture of it here.

Also here is a jumper for baby which I finished last night, modelled by my Koala bear. I kept thinking it would go wrong, but it seems OK. I always think things are going wrong.

Something weird has happened to the layout today, never mind.

Love is...

...a man in Mexican costume.

Ben might be a bit grumpy if he discovers I blogged that picture (don't think he looks here though), but we had such a laugh and he is so lovely I felt it must be shared with the world. I also felt it only fair that his parents get to see him with all that hair!

So, in preparation for the fallout, I am also sharing my advice for how to turn your man's frown upside down. All you need is a sandwich toaster, bread, cheese and onion sliced thinly.
Instant brownie points.

Proper Snow!

Today it is proper snowing! There are a couple of inches on the ground, and its been falling most of the day. It certainly makes for a pretty view from the kitchen whilst washing dishes. Although this is a picture from the front door, because my garden is not presentable.

B's parents are going to pick D up from school, and take him sledging on the downs! There should be just enough. I'd been planning on at least having a snowman making session with D this afternoon because there was no time for snow play before school, but this sounds really fun! I'm going to wrap up warm and come watch - not sure baby is up for sledging yet, though it managed some impressive gymnastics earlier.

Here is a colourful jelly I made yesterday. The green section was cooling when my brother visited yesterday, and he looked so sad when he realised it wasn't set yet. He gave me the disappointed look usually reserved for Ma which implied I ought to get out my magic jelly setting wand so that he could eat it all right then. Maybe sometime I will make a special one for his birthday with lots of stripes, he'd probably prefer it to cake anyway. Some of this is in D's lunchbox, I wonder if he'll even notice the stripey effect! It tastes nice.

Ball for Baby

This week's project theme at unplug your kids is 'ball'. The only ball thing we've done together is a very short game of football at the weekend - it was rather chilly, but fresh air was in order. I did, however, make a ball for the baby this week. I sewed it by hand for once and found it very relaxing. Apparently grown-ups are allowed to join in with the projects too, so I'm posting about it. Here is a picture of it, trying to get close to its future recipient. Its quite small.

Here is a picture of a dinner we had the other day, in our quest to enjoy more nice fresh veggies and have meat less often, so as to justify buying nice stuff from the butchers when we do. I wasn't mad on the couscous because I don't much like kitty (kidney) beans. But we all love roast butternut squash (well, Dan tolerates it - he loved the couscous) and ma's mushroom recipe was absolutely fab. The most important part of making this meal is choosing the most phallic squash possible. They look so funny.

Friday Declutter Challenge - utensil drawer!

Grrr I don't want to declutter my utensil drawer. I definitely wanted it decluttered, but the idea in the passive tense is more appealing than when it is written in the first person. Never mind, organising queen at http://organisingtips.blogspot.com/ says I must, which is very reassuring. As it sounds like we might be moving house within the next couple of months, gradual decluttering is definitely necessary, and there was waayy too much stuff in the utensil drawer. (The challenge was also for the cutlery drawer, but mine just needs a quick wipe out which I'll do later when I wash up. I had a more pressing drawer today!)

That is because it used to be shared between two drawers, one for everyday utensils like wooden spoon, knives and potato masher etc, and the other for baking stuff like spatulas, sugar thermometer (that I've rarely used but love!) etc. I emptied out the overflowing drawer and decided that it was maybe time to revert to that system. But now the 2nd drawer was overflowing with jars of herbs and spices spilling everywhere.

So I sorted those out too. Baking ingredients like baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, arrowroot (what is that?), cream of tartar (same question!) and jelly diamonds went into the baking cupboard, as did some stray bottles of food colouring and flavouring. Some very lovely spices I was given for Xmas in pretty pots that don't actually do up properly - well, I don't use them, and the pots don't work, so I'm afraid they're in the bin. Some open packets of spices went into a tupperware thing where they can hopefully keep a bit longer, and not spill everywhere. My fave spices are in marmite jars which now take up a lot less space, so I can fit some baking stuff back in.

And the rest of the utensils fit a lot better in the other drawer. I chucked out quite a few bits, including defunct oven lighter, broken jacket potato skewers (normal skewers are fine), a cheap, blunt knife, a barbecue thing that is huge and a give-away gadget that makes lovely carrot curls, but it utterly superfluous. The rolling pin is relegated to the pan cupboard because it only fitted in diagonally, which had been bugging me so much. And I was a good girl and made sure to use the opportunity to clean those drawers right out, and then used some bits of double sided tape to stick my chopped up table cloth drawer liners in - hopefully they won't get all bunched up now.

It's gonna take a while for me to get used to the new arrangement. But it feels good. Absolutely knackered now as the midwife came this morning and I had to sit on wooden chair for ages filling in forms, my back is really hurting. Also up with poorly D again last night, though he is a lot better and I got more sleep than the night before. Did manage to bake some cookies though, hurrah!

Today Barack Obama is President

D has picked up on all the media excitement about Obama, and we've been discussing American politics and history in a brief, vague 6 year old kind of way. I've picked up on all the crafty excitement about Obama's inauguration on the ol' interweb, and eventually decided that being in the UK doesn't need to prevent us from joining in with the celebrations and learning a bit about our friends accross the pond. So we painted the stars and stripes (not very accurate I'm afraid):




And while D was at school I baked some 'cupcakes' which we later decorated with red, white and blue icing and silver balls for the stars (I'd forgotten how horrid silver balls are to actually eat). Meanwhile we had the ceremony blasting enthusiastically from the radio, and finished off with what I told D is an 'American' dinner of spicy chicken drumsticks and potato wedges. Not sure how authentic it actually was, but never mind. We had lots of fun.

Positive reason to give up smoking #1

There are many reasons to at least try and give up smoking. Most of them are so depressing they make me want to smoke. Here is a good reason not to smoke:

Nice food! The time, inclination and funds to make it, and enough of an appetite to enjoy it. Today I bodged some hummus for the first time, it was quite nice actually and very garlicky, And some roasted sweet chilli peppers and onions and tomatoes and stuff. And some cheese and bread and butter, and berries with greek yoghurt. MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm. Yummy. And fresh hot coffee. I woke Ben 10 minutes before lunch so he had a bit of time to get down stairs for it. He said - will there be nice cheese sandwiches from the toasted sandwich maker as well?

Could have strangled him. Chose to ignore him instead and fortunately he didn't want toasted sandwich after his lovingly made lunch.