Camping

Stephanie, Smudge and I are off camping for a week on Sunday. Dylan and his girlfriend are staying home to look after the house and the rabbit. This is a week away on a budget. I have saved for the last couple of months for this, as it has been planned for a while. My sisters and their families are coming with us. We have a stay in the Peak District booked, I can't wait. I planned out the meals and things we will be eating today, based on what is easy to cook on a camping cooker and what we have int he cupboards already.

 This is what I have come up with:

The main items on this list are in my cupboard and just needed packing. The BBQ food will be taken from my freezer and pack in the cool box with ice packs to keep it fresh as will take us 4 hours or so to get there. We then will need to unpack the car, put up the tent etc etc before we eat. BBQs on the first night are always fun, especially when you meet others there as they are fun social meals allowing us time to catch up as we share.

Excuse the dog's nose- food is around so he's not far away! HAHA

I shopped through the cupboards for the meals on the plan. Then headed to the fridge:

This bits are fruit and veg that we can use for either snacks, or to enhance our meals. Not enough for the week, but once we are settled we will head to local shops/farms to buy the bits we need as we go. we won't have a fridge whilst we camp so we will buy fresh bit as needed.

This is how I keep costs down when we go away.What things do you do to keep the costs down?

what's a girl to do when an ex hurricane passes by??

Today it was very wet and windy soon after we got out of bed. We had been planning to go to a castle but upon looking out the window we decided a rainy and windy day means a craft day. We watched the thunder and lightning then Stephanie disappeared up to her bedroom and came back down with her rainy day book. I think we should do this and this and this and this as the list came out. Eventually she settled on some paper plate weaving, Whilst I dug out the paper plates Stephanie went and raided my yarn stash.

"I need all of these ones" she declared as she put them on the table. Then she got started;

I decided to sit alongside her and join in .

Once Stephanie declared weaving was complete for the day I supported her to make a hospital for her soft toys with an old shoe box

The only real casualty was my foot when Stephanie dropped the Stanley knife, nothing that couldn't be fixed with a plaster though.

Then we had a message inviting us round to see my aunt's new puppies born last night;

Such cute little bundles of fluff. Seven of them in total and Mummy dog is an absolute star with them all.

Crafting on

Yesterday I got home from work to be asked by Stephanie is she could paint some of the clay pots she made a little while ago. So out come the paints.

I had been planning on coming home and getting this beast out so that I could get on with extra large pile of paper work I need to do this week;

 

Oh well I thought it's only another half hour, it'll wait. My baby won't. So we painted her pots. Then she found her old shaker maker set, can we do this?

 

So we did. Then the hamma beads were found, so we did those;

A crafty box set for eraser making was discovered lurking in the cupboard. So we did those as well;

 

By which time it was 9pm. Hmm I said its' already late when you have a swimming lesson first thing in the morning. Shower and bed. So Stephanie showered and I took the beast upstairs. My foot was hurting you see so I thought I would sit in bed and get on with the paperwork. I could use my headphones and listen to the radio as I worked. This was at 9.30pm. Something must have gone wrong with the plan though as the next thing I now it is 6.30AM and I have a little lady showing me that the eraser models we baked before she went to bed had cooled down. I was getting a good morning story from the characters we had created.

 

I guess I was a little tired after all. The paperwork is still here, I have managed about 1/5 of it this afternoon in between house work and loom bracelet making on the new kit Stephanie bought herself whilst we shopped this morning.

 

 

 Oh well I have had fun with my baby girl, soon she'll be a teenager (eek!) and won't want to spend time with me. I'll just have to manage to work through my lunches this week to catch up. sandwiches and easy to eat at the computer food. It is worth it!!

Devon snaps

Just to share a few pictures from our holiday. We had such a great time that I had Stephanie sad face sat next to me all the way home as she didn't want to leave! LOL

 

Some of the stunning views from various hills in Ilfrascombe. Lot's of do we have to climb up there mum, but they enjoyed the views as much as I did once we were at the top lol

These are some shots of the Ilfrascombe aquarium, it is a small aquarium that shows only fish native to the area. The staff were very friendly and answered Stephanie's questions and explained lots of different things to her. It cost £10 in total for the 3 of us to go in.

 

At Exmoor zoo, it was a little bit of a rainy day so coats on hoods up! Off we went. you can get really close to the animals here, it was a fantastic little zoo.

 

At the Linton and Barnstaple railway. This little railway is trying to fix up the line so that I t runs further. At the moment it is a 2 mile round trip. We got off at the other end and had a short wander around. The line has potential once it is completed but currently is in the early stages. There wasn't a huge amount at the other end to occupy the children so really you are just going for a 2 mile round trip. We wandered along some country lanes and across fields but still didn't find much- other than cow pat and the resulting discussion surrounding this lol.

This has turned into a longer blog post than I had intended already. I shall leave it there and post some more pictures etc later. There are a couple more things from our holiday I want to share :-)

 

 

 

Camping

We have been away again on a camping holiday this week. I love to go camping and enjoy the simplistic life that it brings. This time we have been to Devon, a little site just outside of Barnstaple.

The site is a small site with basic facilities; showers, toilets, washing up area, washing machine, tumbles dryer and a small climbing frame for children.

The site is up a hill overlooking the town- the view was stunning. The owners of the site were very friendly and chatty- always nice to be greeted by a smily face. The site is called brightlycott barton. I would recommend it to anyone who would like a small place to stay and is not looking for the bright lights/ evening entertainment that you get at some sites. The toilets were clean, the washing up area was in an actual room! Anyone who camps a lot will know what a rare treat that is! The washing machine was free to use, and the tumble dryer was £1 for 30 mins of drying. I used both- well when your daughter is travel sick and you drive around Exmoor without a tablet they are muchly needed! (Ooops!)

We arrived on the Sunday of a bank holiday weekend and the site had several families but not too many. Most people left by the middle of the week leaving just three families onsite for a couple of days. Then Friday night several more groups arrived. There were 3 showers in the ladies and I believe the same in the men's and we never queued once. There was another toilet block with showers, in an old outhouse building which we affectionately named the 'spider toilets' they had a lot of spider webs in them and both Stephanie and I were too scared to use these because of this. That said the main toilet blocks weren't too far away and were clean/ almost web free so we were happy to use those. The showers are the worst thing about the site- they just were not warm enough. The first 2 showers I had were freezing! I learnt to go down as soon as I got up at 6.30 and get the first shower as then they were almost warm.


We have had a fantastic week. I will show you some of the places we visited another day as it has been a long day and I am tired! It took us 7 hours to get home, not that there was traffic it's just the site is almost 300 miles from home, we needed to collect something from a shop before we left Devon and then we had 3 stops along the way.

Oh and we are planning on coming back in the summer :-)

Another birthday!

Last Tuesday it was Stephanie's 8th birthday. It doesn't seem possible that my baby is 8 already.

She still likes to come in for a snuggle in the mornings;

And a little more of a snooze.

I did learn on her birthday that the easiest way to wake her in the morning is to bring her a bowl of her favourite cereal;

Although at over 32 a box! it is not  a treat she will get often. her dad supplied this particular treat.

She had time for a couple of presents before heading off to school

she was very pleased with her little pile of goodies. What she doesn't know is she has her main present in a couple of weeks. Both Stephanie and my niece want to go to Harry potter world in London. So my sister and I have booked a treat to take them together. As their birthdays are exactly a month apart we decided to book it smack bang in the middle of them both and keep it as a surprise.

 

After school we headed off to pizza hut for a family meal, birthday girls' request!

we all enjoyed her birthday cake;

Of course it was a Harry Potter themed cake.

 

Lots of fun was had and I now have a niece and nephew who a Harry Potter cake!!

 

Where has the time gone??!

 

 

 

More of our Devon minibreak

While we were in Devon we managed to go to the beach,

A ride on a couple of trams

Stephanie had a swim in the onsite pool,

 we went on an adventure tour where the children call out the directions for me to drive in.

 

Whilst we were on our tour we found a lovely little pub to have dinner in called the The Otter Inn. We thoroughly recommend their food. It was delicious- cleared plates from all 3 of us. And fantastically reasonable- £22.10 for the three of us to have a meal and a drink. If you are ever in the area it is well worth a visit. The staff were friendly and quick as well.

 

I even managed to get some eggs and vegetables at a roadside stand. I love using these :-)

And finaloly just for fun a clip of Stephanie playing in the onsite park;

 

Devon mini break

Last week I booked us a last minute weekend getaway in an effort to relax before we all started back to school. I decided that we would go to Devon. I likeit there the sceneray is very pretty and it is a relatively short drive. It should have taken us 3 hours 25 minutes to get to where I had booked. Unfoirtunately there was a traffic incident- along the 3 motorways we had to tracvel along; meaning we did this a lot:

yup!! we sat at a complete standstill. A LOT. the journey took us 7 and a half hours in total!

Nevermind it was sowrth it. I had booked us to stay in a little 'pod' as I thought it might be warmer/drier than the tent. The days a relatively nice at the moment but evenings are still very cold.

The pod was £103 for the three of us to stay in for three nights. The pod did cost us almost double what the tent would have cost at the site we stayed on. But look at it!!

 

Inside there are 2 single beds and one double. It was the perfect size for us. Friday was a beautiful day ( our travelling day!) So when we got there ready to stretch our legs we went straight out for a walk. The site leads straight out into the woods so we had a wander. We saw dg walkers, cyclists and horseriders all out enjoying the weather. We made up stories about fairies we invented as we walked.

 

We even found a rope swing to play on. Unfortunately my phone died before I got to take any photographs.

 

We then headed back to have dinner.

I decided to give the children their Easter egg from me early so that they could enjoy them whilst we were away ( and I didn't have to panic over the fact they might melt, like I was on the way to Devon!

We played some card games before we crawled into our sleeping bags for the night.

FAKE SLEEPING! LOL


So that was our first day of our get away break. I'll show you some more tomorrow as I should be doing some paperwork about now!

fun in the sun

I have some family visiting at the moment, well they are not staying here but at a local aunt and uncle. it's lovely to see them. tonight my niece is having a sleep over. As I sit here and type the girl's are in the garden making dinner;

 

I love our mud kitchen it brings endless jours of fun for the children.

 

I do have a back up dinner planned just in case, we have roast turkey (left over from a previous meal and frozen), mashed potato and vegetables. Stephanie is still vegetarian so I have some quorn 'chicken' cooking for her.

 

I'm off to watch them play.

what is that mysterious orb in the sky??

Yesterday was a very sunny day so I collected Stephanie from her dad's with her bike and we headed off to the park.

for a little lady who initially getting on her bike said she didn't want o. she suddenly decided that she did want to ride her bike, she went off around the lake 4 times! She is a funny girl at times.

Only one hair raising moment when a goose decided to chase her! Turns out that particular goose doesn't like bikes! Once she decided that we had been around the lake enough times we played in the park before going for a swim.

I hope you have all had a lovely start to the half term and those of you that have suffered through the last couple of months weather are able to get sorted out soon.