the boys

I just love these two little boys

boogie on the dance floor

Just got back from my cousins wedding. Had a wonderful day! Beautiful weather, gorgeous bride, lovely service and reception. Totally shattered. Will do a proper post soon. Here is Aniah showing her moves on the dance floor!

Getting arty

If I'm ever doing a DIY project or doing something crafty, I usually set up an art activity for Aniah to do too.

I was quite impressed with the way she was using the paintbrush with both ends to make brush strokes and also dab smaller marks. 

This was another good opportunity for me to teach her about colours as we started off with the 3 primary colours. I made an effort to really over use the name for each colour she was using. Then we had fun experimenting to see what colours we could make when we mixed them together.

A simple activity with great potential for teaching about shapes, colours and I assume her fine motor skills too.

A crafty morning

A few days ago my good friend Elisabet came over so we could have a go making some more signs for our homes.

I must say, when you're under pressure with time you become so much more productive!! She had to go pick up her son from nursery and I had a limited amount of time before Aniah woke up from her nap.

In just over an hour we painted wood (cut and sanded to size by Elisabet's husband the night before), stencilled and painted our words.

Here it is in our living room...

I'm quite happy with it :)

Here is Elisabet's...

digging for treasure

How I love the sun. It means I get through all my laundry. The jungle of a garden gets some attention. The kids are happy to play outside for hours on end having a great time. Not to mention the much needed vitamin D my skin will have been producing as a result of the beautiful ultraviolet radiation I was getting.

For a while now I have been thinking how fun it would be to make a kind of treasure digging game for Aniah. But the weather and temperature has been so rubbish the past little while I've not had the opportunity. Well, yesterday I finally put my idea into action.

I buried toys, eggs filled with raisins and beads and chocolate coins...

Oh, I should add that I don't dress my child in odd fluorescent clothing ... this is her swimsuit (I decided to put her straight into it before we got into the garden. I've had several incidences in the last two days where she has plunged straight into the paddling pool fully clothed)

 

I'm commanded to open it after she realised the outside wasn't edible

Martha and Joshy popped round for some time in the sun too.

After getting nice and dirty with the first activity I gave her some water balloons to play with in the paddling pool (red, yellow and blue so I could get her to practice saying each colour... I started teaching her about colours recently). This was a great way to get her clean whilst still getting a little bit of learning through play!

She was quite shocked when one of them went splat!

I have a load of really cute pics of the two boys together which I plan to put up in a separate post soon.

Here is hoping there is lots more sunshine coming our way!

desserts!!

Just after I fell pregnant with Zak I developed a serious sweet tooth. On a daily basis I was eating anything remotely sugary with shocking gusto. A couple of times I told myself I would give up sugary things for a weekend - not hard right? Well, apparently it was for me... I was raiding the snack cupboard by Friday evening. Bad, bad, bad.

It was suggested by a few that my sweet tooth could result in a hyper child. That did worry me slightly. But not enough to stop my cravings. I figured it was just 'pregnancy cravings', but alas not... I am still (7 months after giving birth) eating WAY too much chocolate and sugary stuff. It was a big thing for me that I gave up chocolate for lent this year for the first time in my life (I will not be repeating this... torture).

Anyway, I digress. I figured I'd post something about some recent puddings that have been tried and tested with my stamp of approval. 

(apologies for the quality of the photos)

Hi hat Cupcakes

This is a recipe Martha and I tried for our bake day. The original recipe for this can be found here. These don't look all that impressive, they look WAY better in the recipe we found. My personal suggestion is that you ditch the cake recipe they suggest, because it's really fiddly and actually didn't taste that good, they ended up sinking in the middle (probably down to my mixing skills). So we made another batch of plain chocolate muffins to use instead (which tasted better in my opinion). 

We had a slight disaster on the first couple of cakes we dipped, so decided to let cakes cool overnight and dipped in the morning when the mirangue icing had hardened enough. 

Lemon Drizzle Cake

This is one of my own made up recipes. Very zesty and lemony. 

Serves 12 (approx)

Ingredients:

Sponge 

8 oz Butter/Margarine

8 oz sugar

4 eggs

8 oz flour

Zest of 1 lemon + squeeze of lemon juice

Icing + filling

2 cups of icing sugar (sieved)

3-4 tbsp lemon juice

Lemon curd (jar)

Method:

Pre-heat oven to gas mark 5. Grease 2 round 20inch cake tins.

Beat together sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Fold in flour gradually, then beat thoroughly. Mix in lemon zest. 

Divide cake mixture between two tins, bake for 20-25 mins (oven dependent). When you take them out they should be firm to touch. Leave to cool. 

While cake is cooking, slowly add lemon juice to icing sugar a table spoon at a time until it reaches a runny consistency. 

When cakes have cooled, spread a generous amount of lemon curd on the top of one of the cakes and sandwich the second sponge cake on top. 

Pour over the lemon icing and watch it drizzle gradually down the cake... 

Enjoy!

Strawberry + blueberry pavalova

Ok, so this is a super easy recipe, but tastes divine and will impress guests when you bring it out!

Ingredients:

2 egg whites

1 cup of sugar (about 4 oz)

red food colouring (optional)

300ml double cream whipped

A box of fresh strawberries + blueberries (you could also use frozen, but in my opinion fresh tastes infinitely better)

Strawberry sauce (I used ice cream sauce, but if you're feeling adventurous you could make a coulee from the left over fruit)

Method:

Set oven to gas mark 1

Beat egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Add the sugar a teaspoon at a time (use a high speed on the electric mixer). Continue to mix until it looks like a glossy white colour and it stays in the bowl when you tip it upside down! At this point I added a touch of red food colouring to give it that pink hint of strawberry. 

Transfer onto a baking sheet or greaseproof paper and form into a nest. Bake for 50mins -1 hour. 

While it is cooling, whip double cream until stiff and set aside until mirangue is cool. Add the cream to the centre of the nest (don't worry if the mirangue cracks at this point, mine always does too). 

Arrange fruit on top of the cream. Then, drizzle strawberry sauce/coulee over the top. Finish off by sprinkling icing sugar over it. 

7 months today

Wow... how quick this little (ok not so little anymore) man is growing!! Can't quite believe he's 7 months old already!