Freckle Stitch

Finally did something off Pinterest

2012-01-29T20:00:00.003+00:00

So one of my New Year's Resolutions was to do/make 12 things that I had seen on , and I finally did it yesterday. I did the "melting crayons on to a canvas" project that seems to be all over Pinterest.

It was very easy and very cheap. A pack of 3 canvases cost £4.20 and 6 crayons cost 15p a pack from Wilkinsons. You just stick the crayons on to your canvas and, once the glue has dried, put your canvas at an angle and heat the crayons gently with a hairdryer. You can really let your imagination go wild here. Let the crayon wax run in different directions, let the colours merge. I even scattered some crayon shaving on to the canvas and heated it from underneath which gave really good results. This is a technique that I want to explore again.

If I do this again, which I'm sure I will, then I would like to try using a different surface, maybe some old jeans or even an old chopping board or old plate?

M thought my work was so good that he took a picture of them and used it as his picture of the day on Flickr.

Rocky road

2012-01-29T19:44:00.000+00:00

L and I made rocky road today. She had great fun crushing up biscuits with a potato masher. We just chucked some dried fruit, crushed biscuits and a few marshmallows into some melted chocolate and the results were delicious. Here are a few recipes that you could try, or maybe you could just do what we did and search your cupboards for inspiration. Anything goes with rocky road!

http://m.goodfoodchannel.co.uk/recipe/634877/rocky-road/

http://www.cadbury.co.uk/recipes/biscuitsandcookies/Pages/Rocky-Road-Bites.aspx/?campaign_id=cadcouk_home_mainfeatp_2011rrb

http://anappleadaynutrition.com.au/2011/03/dark-and-fruity-rocky-road/

Pom poms

2012-01-29T19:43:00.000+00:00

I like to try and do craft things with L as regularly as possible. We have tried all sorts of things including painting, drawing and play dough. A few weeks a go we were made a collage (she really enjoys using the glue stick) and as well as various scraps of paper, I found a couple of teeny tiny pom poms at the bottom of the craft box for her stick to her picture.

Well, as soon as she saw one pom pom she immediately fell in love and got bored of the collage! She sat there play with this tiny fluff ball for ages, rolling it through her fingers and putting it in various pots and bowls in her play kitchen. So when I saw that Poundland do a massive bag of pom poms, I just had to buy them for her.

She has had a small handful of pom poms out of the bag in the last few days and they have kept her quite busy, but today we decided that we would get all of them out and really have some fun! We collected them in a big bowl and then "served" them at our tea party. They were put in bowls, in sandwiches, in tea cups and scooped from one saucepan to another. She also tried to scoop them from a bowl using a big spoon, I was thrilled as this is something she has struggled with when feeding herself.

Later that day, we gathered the pom poms in a bowl again and spent ages tipping them over our head and all over the floor. L would then kick and rub her feet on them. They also got thrown around a lot, but I wasn't too bothered as they are so light, small and soft that no harm could come. It was like messy play without any real messy.

After L went to bed, I slowly began to discover pom poms everywhere. But this just gave me a great idea; I can hide them around her toys and she can search through to find them. This will be great activity for her to do with M and will train her up ready for Easter Egg hunts!

Carroty orangey snacky biscuits

2012-01-29T19:42:00.001+00:00

I have been trying to get L to eat more veggies at snack time. She is brilliant with her fruit, could eat tonnes of it all day. She also eats a good selection of vegetables at main meal times. Obviously both fruit and vegetables are healthy snacks, but veggie win hands down on sugar content.

I have tried giving her crudités to nibble on but she is not too keen, which is a shame as it would probably help with teething. She will tuck into a pot of peas without any fuss and I'm very much looking foward to spring when we will have fresh peas on the allotment.

On my most recent attempt I bought a big bag of carrots thinking L would enjoy to have some grated with her lunch, unfortunately I was wrong and ended up with a bag of carrots that needed using!

I have always loved carrot cake so thought some variation of a carrot based cakey snack would be nice idea for a sort of healthy snack. I decided to try and find a recipe for carrot biscuits/cookies, but they seemed few and far between. I eventually found this simple biscuit recipe to which I could add my own flavouring. As per usual, I didn't have most of the ingredients so decided to adapt it. Now, you can follow the recipe on the Good Food site and just had 4 grated carrots and some orange zest or you can follow my recipe below.

I used soft brown sugar in my recipe for 3 reasons: I didn't have any other sugar, it makes for a softer biscuit with a more caramelly taste and it is also had fractionally less calories in it than other sugars. This recipe makes around 30 regular sized biscuits.

Ingredients

275ml of Flora Cuisine (liquid butter oil) or 200g of softened butter
150g soft brown sugar
Yolk of a medium egg
4 grated carrots
Zest of a whole orange
350g sifted plain flour

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 180.
2. Cream butter and sugar together then add the egg.
3. Sift in the flour and mix well.
4. Add carrot and orange and mix until a dough is formed.
5. The mixture may be quite wet so you may need to add some extra flour in order to be able to work the dough.
6. Roll out of the dough cut into shapes and bake for around 20-25mins.

Something a day...

2012-01-29T19:42:00.000+00:00

I have been trying to think up ways in which I can carry through with my New Year's Resolution to blog more and during a trip to the park earlier today, M came up with a great suggestion!

M is currently doing a 366 photo challenge where he aims to take a picture every day that is then loaded on to Flickr. This brings together two of M's passions: one for taking photos and one for his love of local history and wanting to document the ever changing environment. You can see his pictures here.

So M's suggestion is to try and take a photo every day of whatever I happen to be doing. Whether it be crafting, play time with L, cooking etc. I take hundreds of photos so I'm hoping that it wont't be to difficult to stick to this. I don't think I can commit to doing it everyday, but I will certainly give it ago!

So, my first picture is of Lu having fun at the park. I thought it a fitting choice!

Savoury Pancake Muffins

2012-01-23T13:16:00.001+00:00

L will usually have a sandwich of some variety or maybe some cheese and crackers for lunch, but today, as part of my effort to get her to eat more vegetables, I thought we could have a vegetable omelette. As it's usually easier to get L to eat if she can feed herself, I tried to think of a way that I could make a sort of omelette bite. That's when it occurred to me that I have seen, and always wanted to try, a sort of frittata that can be cooked in a muffin tin. Here is what I did:

Ingredients (makes about 6 muffins:

1/2 pint of milk

2 medium eggs

3 heaped teaspoons of plain flour

2 large handfuls of torn spinach

1/2 diced onion

About 100g of ham cut into small pieces

About 100g of grated cheese

5 diced mushrooms

Salt and pepper to season or some mixed herbs

Method:

1. Preheat oven to about 180. Put a small drop of oil into each section of your muffin tin and put in the oven to preheart.

2. Gently dry fry the spinach, mushrooms, onion and ham.

3. Beat eggs, milk and flour in a bowl. Add a splash of water if mixture becomes to thick. Try and get as much air in the batter as possible to help it rise.

4. Add the cooked spinach, mushroom, onion and ham to the batter. Mix batter, add seasoning and cheese.

5. Gently pour the mixture into each section of the muffin tin and cook for about 20 minutes or until risen and golden.

6. Serve warm or cold with a dollop of tomato sauce.

They are similar to a yorkshire pudding when they come out of the oven and taste like a pancake with a savoury filling. Would be great for breakfasts, snacks and eating when out and about. L and I really liked them and have one in the fridge for M to try when he gets in...if it lasts long!

It's all in the presentation

2012-01-22T08:09:00.003+00:00

Not sure why but some artistic flair came out while preparing L's breakfast this morning!

I think she has been going through a growth spurt and some other developmental changes but her appetite has been all over the shop as has her sleeping. Anyway, I thought I would make her breakfast look nice to get her interested in it. And it is the weekend after!

So what did I do? Simple, really. Cut a banana into 5 bits, popped a dollop of yogurt on top with a dried cranberry and a cornflake flake. Then I stacked her peanut butter toast in the middle.

Wonder what I can do for lunch???

Resolution no. 2

2012-01-12T12:36:00.001+00:00

I love ! It's always there when you're a bit bored or in need of inspiration or to distract you from things that you should be doing.

I often find myself spending hours on pinterest when I probably should be doing housework or cooking tea or revising for some up and coming work related exams. As a result I have accumulated over a thousand pins. This may not be a great deal in comparison to some members but it is still a lot. Especially as the majority of the pins have been pinned to give me inspiration for new crafty projects.

So this leads me to my second resolution for the year: make at least 12 new items which I have either found on pinterest or have been inspired by pinterest. This, I hope, is more than achievable as it is only one "thing" a month!

Right, I'm now off the search through my pins to find my first make of 2012! Will hopefully be able to get something done by the end of the month to keep on target.

Don't do New Year's Resolutions!

2012-01-11T20:14:00.001+00:00

My New Year's Resolutions never last more than about a week, so a few years back I made the resolution to never make another one! I did so well that I have decided that I should consider making one this year!

I will be thinking about resolutions that I can make over the coming weeks, however my first one is ready to be shared with you...blog more! Ok, stop laughing now! I know I have neglected my blog in recent months but I will be making a concerted effort to use my blog more like a diary to record what is generally going on in my life.

One way I will be trying to keep this blog regularly updated is by using the blogger iPhone app which I have also installed on my newly acquired iPad!

I always intended my blog to be a record of the things I do and make so that L can look back when she is older and see all the fun things that used to go on in her life before she could remember things.

Oh lovely cuppa!

2011-11-09T14:09:00.002+00:00

A few weeks ago, Grandma R gave me a Twinings Lady Grey tea bag to try. She told me to have it after lunch one day while at work and that it would perk me up a little bit for the long afternoon. I love a good cup of tea but I usually end up buying whatever is cheapest in the supermarket.

Anyway, I took the tea bag to work and decide to make a cup when I got to the "could this day be any longer" time in the afternoon. I let it brew for a few moments, as Grandma suggested. I then wondered back to my desk to sample the delights. I was very pleasantly surprised. The flavour was as refreshing as a soft drink. Very light with a very tiny hint of citrus. It certainly did perk me up for the rest of the day and I also found that having such a refreshing hot drink made me feel quite calm. The smell is also delicious, a lovely proper tea smell and slightly sweet perfumed scent.

So today, while doing the weekly shop, I treated myself to a box of tea bags. I'm going to save them for those afternoons when M is at work and L is having her afternoon nap. They are going to be my little treat. And the picture above is my treat today and is absolute heaven!

Soap Mud

2011-11-03T14:33:00.001+00:00

As it was such a horrible wet day outside, L and I decided to try the Sparkle Soap Mud activity from The Imagination Tree. I would definitely recommend trying out some of the idea from their website. I would never have thought in a million years how much you could have by mixing grated soap, tissue paper and glitter!

L had great fun, stirring the pulpy slimy mixture and putting in into different pots and cups. I did't know how messy we were going to get so we stayed in our PJ's just in case. The smell of the soap was lovely and it really did clean away very easily although there are a few patches of soap caked into my kitchen floor!

No tricks, no treats, just pumpkin

2011-11-01T20:03:00.002+00:00

We don't do halloween in our house. M and I enjoy the odd scary movie but don't really understand the hype of dressing up children to look really scary and sending them out to collect chocolate. But every year when the halloween stuff comes out in the shops, I always think to myself "what does pumpkin taste like". I like the flavours of
butternut squash, sweet potato and carrot and this is what I like to think pumpkin tastes like. No one seems to give me a straight answer about the flavour. So when I saw a pumpkin on sale in Tesco for 75p I thought that I might as well buy one and try it for myself!

Although we don't "celebrate" halloween, I could not resist carving something into the pumpkin before I took it's inside out to eat. It took a while to scoop the seeds and the flesh out and was quite a messy job. The pumpkin flesh smelt stronger than butternut squash so I assume it will be a similar taste. I them traced 6 star shapes around the outside and cut them out using a small, sharp knife. It took me around 5 minutes to carve the pumpkin and I think it looks really good! The glow you get once a candle is inside is gorgeous, so warming.

My plan for the flesh was to make Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins. I would have made them this evening but I ran out of enthusiasm for anything but sitting back with a cup of tea! If we decide that we like the taste of pumpkins then I may try to get one just before Christmas and we can carve it with Christmas shapes (I think smaller stars randomly placed stars would look good), and have it lit up on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day evening. The orangey glow next to the Christmas tree would look so cosy.

It doesn't have to be pancake day

2011-11-01T19:33:00.001+00:00

As I'm having a week of work this week, I wanted to make a nice lunch for me and L to tuck into. We would normally have sandwiches, but it does get to the point that we are both sick of sandwiches!

Pancakes are a big deal in the UK but only on Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday, as it's also called. I love pancakes and the batter is so simple to whip up that I decided that today would be Pancake Day number 2 for the year and, in a effort to have more vegetables with our midday food, we had them stuff with mushrooms, spinach and ham in a creamy garlic sauce.
Oh we are so posh in this house! It took me around minutes to make the whole thing from scratch.

You will need:
Pancake ingredients - My pancake batter recipe is the same as my yorkshire pudding recipe and as much as I would love to share it with you, I can't! It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I have been making it for years and years and have never once measured out ingredients properly. I just put as much flour, milk and eggs in and as I think feels right! So here is a recipe you could use: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8366615/How-to-make-a-basic-pancake-batter.html

About 5 closed cup mushrooms
Half a chopped onion
2 handfuls of spinach
About 100g of ham
A teaspoon of garlic powder, or one clove of fresh garlic
100ml double cream

This made enough for 4 servings

Method:
Wilt your spinach leaves in a dash of oil. Add mushrooms, ham, onions and garlic and cook for a a couple of minutes until mushrooms have softened.

Add garlic and give mixture a good stir. Leave to bubble away on a low heat so garlic will infuse.

Make the pancakes while the filling is cooking. As you can see my pancakes can sometimes be a little hit and miss with size and shape!

Serve and enjoy.

Cheesy scones

2011-10-23T15:09:00.002+01:00

Doing lots of housework yesterday seems to have put me in domestic goodness mode as I feel to compelled to do lots of baking today. When I woke this morning, I decided I would bake another batch of Christmas Biscuits, make a plum crumble and whip up a batch of cheese scones on top of cooking the usual family roast. My enthusiasm started to wane once I got dressed, so I thought I might just try the cheese scones and see how we go. As the scone recipes doesn't use any eggs, I thought it
would make a great activity for L to get involved with and it wouldn't matter too much if some of the mixture found its way into her month. Plus she is really good at stirring!

We don't have any low surfaces in our kitchen or a proper dining table that we can cook at, so we decided the best place to make out scones would be on a our massive TV bench. I wiped down all the surfaces, prepared the baking tray, weighed out all the ingredients and put them in plastic dishes before getting L ready for some baking fun. We used this easy recipe from the BBC Food website.

I rubbed in the flour and butter before we got started as this can take a few minutes to do and I didn't want L getting bored and wondering off before we'd begun!

I tried to get her to pour the cheese and milk, but she was a little hesitant.

She really enjoyed the mixing bit! We had a spoon each, but she wanted to do all of it herself.

Next came the rather messy business of kneading and rolling out the dough and then cutting the shapes. She really loved getting her fingers stuck into the dough and pulling it apart. Some of it ended up in her mouth, probably because she could smell the yummy cheese! And Mama was happy that she got to, once again, use her bargain cookie cutters!

We then popped our shapes in the oven and 15 minutes later we had some delicious cheesey scones.

After about 10 minutes of cooling on a wire rack, the scones were cool enough for some tasting. They seemed to get L's seal of approval!

I really enjoyed doing this with L. I talked her through each step and explained what we were doing and she seemed really interested in what was happening. It was also a good opportunity to start the habits of cleaning your hands before and after cooking, wiping down work surfaces and clearing away your dirty cooking utensils when you're finished. Grandma R ran a food business from home so doing these things is second nature to me and it's never to young to teach your little ones good food hygiene!

Tidy all the things!

2011-10-22T11:42:00.001+01:00

Today, M has taken L to Granny and Grandad's to do some work in the garden. This has given me a free day to do some "spring" cleaning in readiness for Christmas. I hate housework, but I do love sitting back and viewing the tidiness. Couple that with a cup of tea and bourbon and I'm in heaven!

My plan is to tackle the kitchen and lounge and these are the two most used rooms in our home. I'm a person who loves a list. In fact I love lists so much that if I have forgotten to write something on a list and have already completed what it was I wanted to write, I will go back and write it on the list only to cross it off seconds later! So here is my list of things to do:

Lounge
Clear out cupboards and shelves
Tidy DVD draw
Sort out behind the sofas
Dust all surfaces and ornaments
Organise Lu's toy's and play pen
Hoover carpet, curtains and sofas
Tie back the annoying bits of string hanging from the top of the curtains

Kitchen
Washing up
Clean and sort cutlery draw
Clean and sort crockery and glasses cupboard
Organise food cupboard
Clean fridge
Organise freezer to make more space
Organise bowls and pans cupboards
Think (that's right only think!) about cleaning the fridge
Clean microwave (bowl of water with a slice of lemon, whack in microwave on full power for about 3 minutes, leave to "steam" for 2 minutes, then wipe round with a clean cloth...one clean and fresh microwave!)
Wipe down cupboards
Clean floor
Clean window sill
Put washing machine on a cleaning cycle (put on hottest wash possible with a load of bicarbonate soda in the draw...one clean and fresh washing machine)

Anyway, there is no point blogging about it, I might as well put my Bryan Adams CD on (always been my favourite for cleaning to, ever since I was a teenager and had to tidy my room) get on and do it.

The Button Pinafore Dress Tutorial

2011-10-18T20:02:00.002+01:00

Brrrrr! Winter is definitely on it's way, so I thought I'd better start making some warmer clothes for L. I've had 1/2 meter of pretty pink and white polka dot sitting in my fabric hoard for a few months and didn't know what to do with it. What better item is there for a little girls winter wardrobe than a pinafore dress. Dress it with tights and a polo neck on cold days or on it's own as the weather turns warmer. The dress got it's name from the fact I used the button hole setting on my sewing machine for the first time and I'm pretty chuffed with myself!

You will need:

Fabric - my fabric was 1m x 0.5m which was enough to make a loose dress in size 12-18 months.

3 buttons - 2 for the fastenings and 1 for decoration (optional)

Thread, scissors, sewing machine, paper for the pattern

Instructions:

1. I used a good fitting pinafore dress to make the pattern. The "skirt" part of the edge is 31cm at the top, 28cm down and 40cm at the bottom. Along a straight edge of you pattern paper, draw a line measuring 15.5cm. Then measure 28cm down the straight edge and draw a 20cm line. You should then join up the two lines and this will form the skirt of your dress. The straight line will be where the fold is.

2. The bodice: I traced the pattern using an exisiting dress but here is a method you can use to do you own. For the front part of the bodice, draw a rectangle 18cm x 15.5cm. On the longest side, from 4cm up, draw a curve which goes in about 6cm and finishes 3cm from the top this will form your arm hole. On the top short edge, make a mark 3cm from the corner and on the longest edge (opposit to the arm hole) make a mark 6cm down. Join up the marks with a curve. This will form your head hole.

For the back part of the bodice, draw a rectangle cm 21cm x 15.5xm. On the longest side, from 4cm up draw a curve which goes in 6cm and finishes 3cm from the top. On the top short edge, make a mark about 3cm from the corner and on the longest edge (opposite to the arm hole) make a mark 6cm down. Join up the marks with a curve. This will form your head hole. Phew! Hopefully that makes sence!

3. Pockets: You can really go to town here with any shape you liked. Just remember that the more simple the shape the easier it will be to sew on to your dress. I decided not to use pockets in the end because of the pattern on my fabric. However the good thing about making your own clothes is the ability to change your mind whenever you like. In a few weeks time I might decide this dress MUST have pockets!

4. Pin your pattern to the fabric and cut. You will need 1 each of the front and back bodice, 2 of the skirt and pockets (optional).

5. Once you have cut all your pieces out, you are ready to sew.

6. Pin the skirt pieces right side together and sew along each of the angled edges and hem the bottom.

7. Sew on the pockets (optional).
8. Pin the bodice pieces right side together and sew along the short edge under each of the arm holes

9. You will need to close up the raw edges of the bodice. As the edge is curved, you should put a small snip every few centimeters, fold, pin and stitch. I find doing this a lot easier if you fold and press the edges with a warm iron before stitching. This just holds the fold nicely while you stitch.

10. Button holes and buttons is next. Mark out where you would like your button holes and following the instructions for your sewing machine sew in the button holes. Be sure to measure careful to make sure your buttons will fit through the gap. I practiced first on a scrap. I was so pleased with my first go at button holes that I did a little jump for joy!

11. Keeping your skirt turned inside out, you will need to turn the bodice part right side up and slip it inside the top of the skirt part. The waist part of each section should now be lined up. You will need to pin the two sections together and stitch.

12. Decoration: My obession with led me to a whole new world of fabric flowers. I found a really easy pattern for this gorgeous flower here. Most fabric flowers call for using a glue gun and a lot of sticking instead of stitching, but on an item that is going to be going through the washing machine a lot, I thought stitching it would be a much better idea.I just simply attached the flower to the centre of dress where the skirt meets the bodice.

13. DONE! Give your dress a quick iron and find a willing model.

As you can see L really liked her flower and wasn't too keen on showing it off to anyone!

If you do make this dress then I would love it for you to come back and show me a picture or offer any feeback on the actual tutorial.

Cobblers to your cookie cutters

2011-10-14T19:38:00.003+01:00

Ok, I may be slightly obsessed with my bargain cookie cutters. I like to get my money's worth out of things but I may be going too far now!

Last week I decided that L might like to try some plums so I bought a MASSIVE punnet from the shop. She loves grapes, eats nectarines whole so I kind of thought that plums would be a good idea. Anyhow, she didn't like them. In fact, every time I chopped one up for her,
she would put it in her mouth and instantly spit it out and hand it back to me "no thanks mum, you can keep that". I love plums but having been poorly for a few days I was stuck with loads of them and no desire to eat them.

Thankfully, gave me the answer...a Plum Cobbler! Perfect autumnal, comfort food. I used this recipe thanks to the guys at Waitrose. I read through the recipe, like you do, and found the words "using a pastry cutter". YES! I could whip out my gingerbread family of cookie cutters and stamp away until my hearts content.

So we had a cottage pie (my favourite comfort food) and finished with the freshly baked cobbler. It was enjoyed by M & L with some yummy vanilla ice cream. I found it a bit too sweet for my liking. I think next time I make it, I'll only add a small sprinkling of sugar to the plums and a smidge less sugar to the topping mixture.

Wonderful tactile play idea

2011-10-14T15:02:00.001+01:00

I just absolutely had to share with you this wonderful idea from Anna at Imagination Tree. Anna has some absolutely brilliant suggestions to keep your little one's amused while developing things like language and social skills. Her Snakes in Jelly has really inspired me try it out. I'm sure L will love it. And I know for a fact that if she doesn't enjoy it that I will probably have a great day and hey, who doesn't like jelly!

Freckle Veggie Patch

2011-10-14T11:34:00.001+01:00

This week our parish council has given us our very own allotment! We are very excited. Unfortunately our house does not have a garden, but now we are a 5 minute walk away from our very own veggie patch. There has already been talk of growing beans, potatoes and peas. But there is a lot of work to do between now and spring when the planting can begin.

M & L have already been working hard to clear the patch of stones, weeds and random potatoes that keep popping up everywhere. I'll be lending a hand by coming up with some funky Freckle vegetable markers. More news from the Freckle Patch to follow shortly!

Making use of my new cookie cutters

2011-10-13T20:30:00.002+01:00

Following my recent post about my Christmas biscuits and bargain cookie cutters, I thought it might be nice to use the cutters to make some or L's food look a bit more interesting. She is usually a very good eater (a little too good, like me!) but recently she has been a little monkey. So in a Lemsip induced dream, I decided that mini puff pastry pizza's cut into shapes would be a great idea! They went down
quite well considering the previous battles we've had around dinner time. They were just the right size for little hands and mouths and I think Papa was a little jealous that he only had a square pizza and not a more interesting shape! Here's what I did:

Ingredient:
One block of puff pastry
A few handfuls of topping (I used spinach, onion, sweetcorn, mushrooms and some cooked ham). You could really use anything you like.
Cheese
Tomato purée or tomato sauce
A splash of milk
A bit of flour to roll out your pastry

1. Lightly dry fry your topping, you will also be cooking it in the oven but it's a good idea to at least get it started, especially if using raw meat, and also to get rid of some of the moisture.
2. While your topping is cooking, preheat your oven to about 200 (based on an electric fan assisted oven) and roll out your pastry to about 5mm thick. I then trimmed off the edges (so I had a large handful of pastry left) to make Lu's pizza's.
3. Cut out your shapes. I had enough to do 4 gingerbread lady shapes.
4. Spread a layer of tomato purée/ sauce over your pizzas. I left a rim of about 2cm around our adult pizza. This should then be brushed with a little milk and will puff up lovely!
5. Add the fried up topping and sprinkle with grated cheese.
6. Whack in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the cheese has melted and the crust has turned golden.
7. Enjoy!

Christmas biscuit practice

2011-10-11T21:15:00.002+01:00

So all the talk about Christmas and homemade Christmas snacks made me hungry for my Christmas biscuits so I just HAD to whip up a test batch. I found a family of gingerbread people biscuit cutters in Sainsburys for the bargain price of £1.75 and although the mixture comes out quite wet the shapes turned out better than I expected. I then dipped them in some
dark chocolate (the perfect partner to ginger) and added a little sparkle.

They are currently in the fridge waiting for the chocolate to set in readiness for Papa to test when he comes off his late shift...if they last that long!

I like gingerbread people with faces, but I find them hard to eat (same thing with jelly babies, it's like being a cannibal!), but here are some ideas I found via Pinterest of ways to decorate your Christmas biscuits.

Pinterest!

2011-10-07T21:43:00.001+01:00

Just joined Pinterest! It's an amazing place where the pinboard of ideas that you keep in your brain appears magically on the screen in front of you. Ok, so i've only been a pinterest-er for about 5 minutes but I am officially in love. You can view my pinboards here.

Think Pinterest is going to take over my life for a while!

<a href="http://pinterest.com/frecklestitch/"><img src="http://passets-cdn.pinterest.com/images/follow-on-pinterest-button.png" width="156" height="26" alt="Follow Me on Pinterest" /></a>

Oh THAT dress!

2011-10-07T20:53:00.000+01:00

Last week, Grandma R and I went to Buckingham Palace to see the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress and what a dress it was! It was beautiful. The detailing on the lace was extraordinary and it was all sewn on by hand. Apparently the seamstresses changed their needles every 3 hours to make sure they stayed sharp and didn't have any grease on them. I wish I just had just a quarter the patience that the seamstresses did to do hand stitching.

If the dress ever gets put on display again I would highly recommend going to see it. It was a beautiful dress on screen but I don't think you can really grasp the true beauty of the dress unless you see it with your own eyes.

I would also highly recommend a trip to the Palace when its open during the summer. It's sounds silly as I knew it would be grand, but wow! It was so grand. Walking through the State rooms was a brilliant experience. Everything seemed golden. My main thought, as the tour came to an end, was what would it be like to live here? The Queen and Prince Philip have their own living quarters within the Palace, which I'm sure is just as a grand but with some comfort. The State rooms are obviously only used for state occassions. But once upon a time the State rooms through which we walked were used for "living" in. Try as I might to imagine walking around those rooms in my slippers and dressing gown or curling up with a good book, I really couldn't imagine it at all. Give me my simple sitting room with reclining chairs and flat screen tele any day!

New Christmas Wreath

2011-10-06T21:26:00.002+01:00

As part of my preparation for Christmas I've been thinking about the massive list I need to write of things that need to be done at home in readiness for the Christmas period. Christmas is a very special time of year for our family but even more so this year as it's L's first proper Christmas and we have two special guests coming for Christmas lunch; Grandma & Grandad R (B's parents). It will be the first time that we have had guests for Christmas lunch and I has a lot of hard work ahead of her as she tries to come close to Grandma R's wonderful Christmas roasts!

There will be more blogging about Christmas dinner as time draws near, but in terms of preparing the house I need to start at the very beginning; the front door and the Christmas Wreath.
There are many different traditions surrounding the hanging of a wreath on the door at Christmas but for me a wreath should set the scene for what is behind the door, it should be a reflection of the people inside the house.

Our current wreath is fine, however I don't think it suits us! So yesterday, we went to collect pinecones at the woods to make a new wreath. What a great activity it was. L was brilliant at picking up pinecones and putting them in the bag. Although some of her selection did not pass my quality control!

So my pinecones are soaking in some hot water and vinegar as I type and will hopefully dry out in around 24 hours ready to make my Christmas wreath. In the interests of repurposing and recycling, I will be using the old wreath to make the new one.

RIP Mr Jobs

2011-10-06T13:06:00.001+01:00

Today is a sad day in our home as we mourn the passing of Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple. He truely did make a huge impact on the way the world uses it's technology. In many of the news articles I read about him today he was described as a visionary, and I cannot think of a more fitting word to describe this amazing man.

We are big fans of everything Apple; iPhones, iPods, Mac's, Apple TV and I'm sure it won't be long until we have a iPad. If Apple made a washing machine, we would buy it and it would probably the best washing machine the world has ever seen. I hope that the untimely death of Mr Jobs will not put a stop to the innovation coming from Apple as I'm sure there are great things still to come...fingers crossed for the iWasher.