Lots of fun.

Hello, firstly a Thank you to April over at Cupcakes make the world a better place for the lovely gifts she sent through the post as a Pay if Forward. What did I recieve ? Lets take a look,

A lovely drawstring bag ( I love pink), a Vanilla Cupcake Yankee Candle Tart (smells wonderful, I have to keeping picking it up to have a smell) and a cross stitch of my name with magnets on it. Oh and a cup cake post card. Thank you so very much April.

In a bid to increase the fruit consumed by the children we decided to make smoothies. My son is not what I would call a fussy eater but there is a huge list of things he thinks he does not like, when he tries to taste them he puts them on the tip of his tounge and then claims to dislike it. So we decided to make Old Fashioned Lemonade, I admit that this was probably too bitter for little taste buds but my daughter loved it. I didnt really follow a recipe but we squeezed the juice from three large lemons,

Squeezed the juice from one orange.

Put this in a jug and added some honey disolved in water (honey syrup)for some sweetness.

Then we put in cold water until we got the taste we were looking for. You can add more or less honey syrup or water until you get a taste you like.

Serve with lots of ice and a slice of lemon or orange.

We also made a smootie using fresh strawberries, one banana and one orange peeled and cut into segments. You whiz it all up in e blender and here you have a delicious healthy drink. We made up a second batch and have frozen them into lollypops for the children. My son turned his nose up at first as the drink appeared to have bits in but he eventually tasted it and loved it .

This was taken this morning when we took the dog for a walk on the beach nearby. What a lovely way to start the day, the kids collected sea glass to add to the collection.

Colours

Oooo would you just take a look at the colours of these fabric swatches I got from here , you can send for five free swatches if you follow the link.

How can they fail to bring some sunshine into a dull day, I have no idea what to do with them yet but I love them. Perhaps I can put them to some use in the bathroom when we get it decorated. I have lived here for six years and hate hate hate the bathroom but these little stripes of candy may just add a little something to the smallest room in the house.

Talking of colour I took this picture of the sky when we were at the beach the other day. I like the colour of the sky, it is so nice to look up and see the beautiful blue perhaps with the odd fluff of cotton wool floating on by. Lets hope that the sunshine is here to stay.

No trip to the beach would be complete without the obligatory bucket and spade hastily cast aside for the finer things in life.... ice cream.. Again I am loving the green of the grass . My son asked me why I was taking a picture of an ice cream, only a blogger would understand.

Talking of children here is a snippet of a conversation I heard between my two the other day,

Daughter " Mam you used to go Horse Riding didnt you? Do you still have your riding gear?"

Me "Yes it is in the attic"

Daughter " Will Dad get it out?, I could use it."

Son "It will be no use for you"

Daughter "Why?"

Son " They used different riding gear in the Victorian times"

What the ???? At only 34 I am sure I was not around during the Victorian times, perhaps my Great Grandparents were but not me, IAM YOUNG !!!!!!!!

Procrastinating

Oh why is it that I have put off and put off doing things until they have piled up beyond belief. I think if you were to knock on the door right now I would hide behind the chair for fear of actually letting you enter the house. Honestly there is so much stuff everywhere that you may never see light of day again in an attempt to make it out of the door. My house is yet again fit to burst and I have all the time in the world at the moment in which to actually do something about it. Bleurgh !!!

Anyway moving on to something a little more important here are my kiddlets moments before asking,
"Please Mummy, I will look after it"..
"Of course cherub just open the gate and we can stuff it in the back of the car with the dog"

Please note the horse riding gear my Princess is wearing, I was convinced she was due to go to the stables today, it was lucky I rang on route to check only to find it is not actually today at all. Opps silly Mummy.. Still we had a wonderful walk with the dog and we got to see ponys at the same time.

As you can see the daft dog was happy.

Grandma's Peppermint Creams

Mt Grandmother used to mka ethese using a handwritted recipe from a book owned by her mother. They are easy peasy to make and I actually let my eight year old make them whilst I snapped away with the camera. You can easily half the recipe if you need to and you can always substitute the raw egg whites for the dried eggs you can buy in the supermarket and you will make them up as directed on the pack .

1lb of icing sugar ( I think this is confectioners sugar in the US)

Few drops of oil of peppermint

Whites of two medium eggs

Few drops of oil.
Few drops of food colouring.

Whisk the egg whites until they are frothy.

Add the icing sugar and peppermint oit to the egg whites and stir until it forms a thick paste.

Add a couple of drops of green food colouring if you like.

Kneed onto a surface covered with icing sugar and either roll out and use cutters to cut or roll small pieces into the palm of your hands and place onto a greased baking tray.
Leave them for a couple of hours to harden.

Eat and enjoy.

Your dentist wont thank you but the children sure will

( I will be sending mine off to brush their teeth the moment one passes their lips)

Winner Winner

I am so sorry that it has been some time since my last post, things just got kind of crazy. However we are now finished with school for the summer and now let the fun begin.

I used one of those random number generator sites and the winner of my giveaway is

Marit

So if you can email me your address using my email address on the top right of the blog I will get your parcel sent off soon.

I appreciated all of your comments and apologise for not replying to them but it has been very busy here recently. Hopefully now we are in the holidays things will calm down and this means we have much more time for the fun stuff.

4th July and a giveaway.

Happy 4th July to my American friends.

Why is it that in England, we celebrate nothing. I mean St Georges day passes without anyone noticing, Remembrance Sunday is of course remembered by some, to name but a few. I can remember as a child having street parties for things and certainly during my Grandmother and mothers time people would remember and celebrate event. But in modern day England "Certainly not" unless it is Christmas when people rush out to buy all sorts of crap and junk to get themselves into debt over. Halloween is kind of celebrated but only by children out alone in the dark wearing garish masks knocking on peoples doors for money and not sweets. Most of these children are teenagers who have gone into the nearest shop and bought a £1 mask. (sigh!!).

We have no national days, no special celebrations, remembrances or partys..

WHY ????

Because we are British ... (bleurgh)

OK so I am not feeling all too patriotic today, perhaps I should go out and buy a Union Jack to display, oh but there are rules about those too. grrrrrr..

Ok so as I have American relatives, who granted I have not seen in years (but my Mum keeps in touch with)... am I aloud to celebrate things like Thanksgiving and some of your other fun stuff. Can I be made an Honourany (is that spelt right???) American for the sake of my children who will grow up not having fab celebrations apart from their birthday and christmas ( yes I am probably one of those who dashes around getting stressed buying crap ;> ..... )

Now my English friends if you can prove me wrong then please do so and tell me what we celebrate over here.. Is it just that living way up north we are not civilised enough to know about these things, is there a whole party scene going on that we dont know about and the county dont tell the rough and ready Northerners for fear of invasion.. OK so I am kidding please dont send me emails!!!

BUT please do tell me what as English people we celebrate for our country. Please leave your ideas, links or suggestions in the comments and I will enter all of your names into a hat for a fab giveaway. I am happy to post overseas, please leave your ideas.

The children and I have been enjoying afew days away. It was truly wonderful and we cant wait to go again. I have wanted to take them for ages, I have been before but didnt have children at the time and I think it is so different when you have your own children with you. Magical.

We are looking forward to the summer holidays, only two weeks to go. Although I have nthing planned at the moment I have lots of ideas of places to take the children and things that we can do at home. I have been searching the web, blogs and the huge amount of activity books I have collected over the years to come up with some cool things to do. My daughter is now ten and I wonder how much longer she will want to do things with me, I know it wont be long before she would rather be out with her friends doing their own thing and Mummy will be the taxi or the personal bank supply. LOL....
I have decorating that I need to do also, My daughters room needs to be done an the front room also needs to be tidied up. Then there is the BIG DE CLUTTER I have planned (shudder) we have lots of old toys and books that have been dearly loved but surely it must be time for them to be passed on to someone and then there is the forest (garden) that my house sits on. It has become so overgrown recently due to lack of time to do anything with it that the dog and children could get lost in the long grass.

I hope that there will be lots happening that are worth blogging about and not just the usual day in day out stuff.

Take Care.