We like to party

Last night we went to a family 60th birthday party. It was one of those lovely relaxed evening where people do what they want. This involved Stephanie and her cousin running/dancing around and around the dance floor, Dylan and the older cousins playing pool with their uncles and us girls doing well in Stephanie's words "Mum you didn't stop talking and laughing all night why didn't you dance?"
It was a lovely evening for all, I think the state of Stephanie's new shoes show what fun she had

Still, a little bit of nail varnish remover on cotton wool and a gentle rub and they look new again;

We didn't get home until just after midnight, when we got home Stephanie asked if we can do some of her cross stitch she is working on, she wasn't very impressed when I said no it's bedtime. She really did wear herself out as it is 9am now and she is still snoring. Still that means we get to have a lovely relaxed day now. I just hope later on when we pick up Dylan they are not both so tired they squabble, maybe I'll dig out a film and have a home movie night with them to try and keep it all relaxed today.

Happy Sunday everyone

A promise of things to come

I have spent today at the allotment and doing the garden ( we'll gloss over the shopping trip and day dreaming of escaping someone green on my own for now). At the allotment the potatoes have been earthed up a couple of times and poking through lovely and green, there are 2 pea plants that have grown- Mr Slug go away! and the cabbages are looking fine!

At home have lots of fruit growing;

The strawberries are growing fantastically I'm rather excited as I have 8 baskets of these!

The raspberry bush is very green. It's starting to get it's berry on too

It's getting to my favourite time, all the fruits are getting ready for me to eat :-)

May aspirations update

Is it me or is time absolutely flying this year? I can't believe that tomorrow is the 1st June already. So here is the round up for this month lets see how I am progressing through my list for the year. On my original aspiration list for this month I had;

decorate my room - bumped as I am still trying to do the hallways

make curtains for my room See above

summer dress for Stephanie She has several already so I am reluctant to make anymore until she needs them

Knit school cardigan for Stephanie Does thinking about this count?

Summer skirt for me

plant seeds  I have planted all sortrs of seeds this month, some are growing nicely in the green house, others have already been demolished by snails! GRRRRR

I also set myself a target of taking more exercise, I have not done as planned and been swimming and cycling. I have however began running I have been getting up and running before work for the past few weeks, I have been using the NHS couch to 5k pod casts. I am due to start week 7 tomorrow.
I also finished the swoon quilt.
I am still working on the Henry the eighth cross stitch I am optimistic of showing you the completed thing in the next couple of weeks.
Decorating the hallway- I have began this the banister has been painted as has the ceiling. I am trying to find someone to borrow a ladder that will enable me to paint the top part o the wall above the stairs- does anyone have one I can borrow?

So aspirations for June are

• Knit school cardigan for Stephanie
• summer hat and dress for Stephanie - I think I my alter this to just the hat as she has lots of dresses
• Summer dress for me
• plant seeds
• harvest

I also want to add;

• finish Henry VIII cross stitch
• decorate hall way
• Organise allotment, it is looking dire again! I am struggling to keep up this year!
• Sell unwanted stuff to raise extra cash

In love!

Just wanted to share my latest purchase with you and I have to say I am in love with them, they are everything I expected from the picture. So much so that I eagerly ripped open the package and put them in as soon as I got home from work today.

These are hand made earrings by Astra They are described by Astra as "The white beads are hand spun, fair trade glass beads from India. The flowers are brass and they hang on silver plated findings"
They are just perfect, I love them. As they are hand made you won't be able to get a pair exactly like mine, but take a look at Astra's Etsy shop and find a pair you love too.

Thunder storm

We have been blessed with  some absolutely scorching weather the past week or so. I love the sunshine and can never wait for summer to arrive. This afternoon just as I was getting ready to leave work we had a thunder storm and some very sudden and heavy rain. When I got home this is what I found;

It looks like a lovely country park or somewhere where we may go walking at the weekends doesn't it? It is in fact the main road leading onto my estate. The rain came down so suddenly the drains could not cope and the road flooded. A lot of people turned around and went alternate routes but some people decided to chance it;

When I got home the neighbours and children were all trying to guess what was causing all the traffic and sirens that they could see and hear. They could not see this road from our houses. They thought I was exaggerating the state of the road so I walked them down to have a look. This bottom picture shows the children being very excited and trying to jump over the waves of water as if they  were at the beach. While us parents/ other adults were disbelieving that some of the cars tried to get through or the way people were (on the other side of the road from us) driving on the paths instead of going a different way in order to try and avoid becoming stuck in the water.

A little light entertainment for all before we came home for dinner!

Our week

I have been so busy this week with work and home I haven't managed to post. I am going to do one round up post too give just a brief over view of our week in the glorious sunshine.
I have been starting each day with a run, I am running the race for life in a fortnight so I have been training, I have used the NHS couch to 5k programme as a basis. I did not start the plan 9 weeks before my race as I should have if I was organised. However, my beginning level of fitness wasn't too low. I adapted the plan to work for me. I have been running everyday rather than every other day as is suggested because of the time I have to do it. I have found this fine I have done the first 4 weeks as daily so instead of doing the same run for a week I have done it for one day then moved on. I have completed week 5. I hadn't downloaded the podcasts past week 5 I realised this morning when I was planning on beginning week 6, so I ran to the podcast of week 5 run 3 but took myself on a 5k route to gauge where I am at. It took me 25 Min's to complete, not bad but I am aiming for 20 minutes. I'm progressing towards this hopefully I'll be able to make it in the next fortnight to my target.

Then comes work, I have been taking salads for lunch, the children are enjoying my home made bread and have told me they would like it if I never buy bread again! That is indeed fine praise. We spent the beginning of the week going to the allotment after work, we need to empty the pallet compost bin as it is collapsing. We are currently at 2/3 of the way through the first side. Once it is empty I will be rebuilding it.

Stephanie had a Jubilee party at school on Friday where they could bring in a food treat to enjoy. I had forgotten (oops!) Thursday night I asked what she would like to buy and she said I don't want to go to the shops can we make choc chip cookies? So we did;

They were yummy and best of all the ingredients were already in the cupboard.

 Yesterday Dylan and I decided that we wanted a barbecue for dinner. I bought one of the £5 barbecue packs in Iceland's. We cooked less than half of it; the rest will be saved for another day. I made the bread rolls myself. I used the recipe I got from Astra for making a loaf and just split it into roll shapes after kneading. I had much more success with the round buns than forming the sausage shaped buns, I need to work on those more.

Now my bread bin is filled with scrummy fresh bread rolls. Perfect :-)

As well as all this I have managed to begin decorating the hall and have moved flowers out of seeds trays into their final positions in the garden. I uppotted my tomatoes as they were outgrowing their little pots, but I fried my poor little seedlings, I forgot to open the 'door' on my little greenhouse before going to work the other day, my garden is a sun trap so very warm even on the not as scorching as it had been days. So poor little things now look cremated I need to get some new ones now or will have no lovely tomatoes this summer.

Independence day challenge

I've not got around to writing a challenge post for a couple of weeks so I am doing a post spanning the past couple of weeks as I can't remember exactly what slots into where since I last posted.

1. Plant something
I have panted lots of different seeds over the last few week as many of the previously planted ones have not survived. I have planted squash- butternut and pumpkin, peas, beans, Brussels, cucumbers and a couple of varieties of tomatoes. I have also potted up some that had outgrown their previous pots I am hoping to plant them out properly in the next couple of weeks.
2. harvest something
I have harvested some rhubarb, cabbage and leeks.
3.preserve something
I have frozen 3 cabbages for later use. I have yet to do something with the leeks.
4. waste not
I have donated a lot of plastic/ cardboard waste to the school junk modelling trolley meaning it gets used again.
5. want not
I have bought a LOT of yellow labelled foods I rarely buy anything else it seems! I have also got some plant pots which were left out by another allotmenteer with a note saying they were free, I have bought some home and planted into them. As there were still a lot there nearly a fortnight after they were first placed there I have taken some more; I am planning on taking them into school as another teacher is trying to improve her outdoor area and do some planting with her class.
6. eat the food
We have been eating a lot of homemade bread as well as [reserved food out of the freezer and jam.
7. build community food systems
By taking in the plant pots for another class to use I am helping do this as the children learn about where the food comes from.
8. skill up
I have learnt to make snail/slug traps that work. A little gross to empty but there are a lot less on my cabbages now. I put some beer (left over from Christmas) into old plastic party cups and 'planted' them amongst the cabbages and they worked; lots of slugs and snails to empty out when I went down a few days later. RESULT!