Making paper

There is such a constant stream of junk mail coming through the door every day and no matter how much i ask companies to just email me to make it paperless or tick the boxes to say don't send me your mail outs, they blindly ignore me and tear up loads of trees to send me information i'm not going to read and put straight in the bin.  What a waste of time money and resources!

McQueen Cookies

We went to Sophie's best friends birthday party on Sunday William had hit the ripe old age of 2. William loves cars and actually likes the movie Cars too, so Sophie and i got cracking in the kitchen to make William some lighting McQueen cookies.

After making some chocolate cookie dough and rolling it out we cut out a picture of Lightning McQueen and placed this on the dough and cut round it with a knife.  I could of hand made a cookie cutter but the shape was simple enough to cut round as a template.

While the cookies were cooling we counted up the colours and made a big batch of icing and started to mix each colour up ready to put into piping bags, Sophie got busy stirring and did a great job.

First we did the red outline and let it set then filled in the windows and teeth with white and let that set.

Once the red outline was set we flooded the red for the car and black for the tires and mouth and let that set. Finally adding all the top layer of detail such as eyes, lights and flashes etc.  They look ok but i defiantly need more practice with my flood icing and i forgot to put an addition e on Rusteze, but i dont think William noticed as he was licking all the icing off them. Happy Birthday William !

Garden bugs

Sophie and i had a crafting day today and decided to turn some used bottles into bugs with a little help from some foam and glue.

Pea pods Little explorers

Here is another great ap Sophie loves, as she learns about animals by the letters of the alphabet and gets to see how they look, move and the sound they make as there is a link up to you tube, you get to see video footage of the animal.  We think this is brilliant and Sophie sure does know a lot of animals now as well as all the sounds she loves to make around the house.

Duck Duck Moose Word wagon Ap

Sophie loves her spelling Ap word wagon by duck duck moose even though she doesn't know her ABC yet although she can do her ABC's up to D so far and she is only just learning to talk at 21 months.  She really enjoys forming the letters into the words and learning the sounds and practising saying the word which help her development in speaking.  She usually like to do the reward which is forming stars into a animal shape constellations but when we filmed this she only wanted to do lots and lots and lots of spelling which is great as practice help her to remember the order of letters into words, and practice makes perfect.

Since 18 months she has really enjoyed spelling simple 3 letter words and then at 2 years she can now spell up to 5 letter words with no visible prompts her record so far is 21 words in a row, what a fantastic ap.

Nightgarden App

Sophie's Nightgarden ap is fun and easy to play with and she loves the characters there are 3 activities to do dancing, finding and washing faces, what fun. The creators are really good and since getting the ap they have added new content with more activity to alway keep little ones occupied.

Gingerbread men

Today's play date we decided to decorate some gingerbread men, ladies and teddies.  After pre-cooking the cookies so they were nice and cool to work with for the kids, the batches of brightly coloured icing were mixed up and put into little tubes for the kids to squish out onto the awaiting ginger cut outs.

Here is Sophie quality controlling the cookies and icing, she cant wait to be involved and creating a sweet mess.  Much squiding and squishing got all the cookies covered in pretty colours and surprisingly none of the cookies were eaten in the process of creation, and i don't think they actually knew what they were decorating.  Sophia who is 18mths here in the blue dress could take on Jane Asher with her skilful control of culinary decoration.    

William took to design with flair and was defiantly in control on what this season colour palate should be. Sophie had a blast but soon worked out that the squishy stuff was in fact a sweet and tasty treat. Nothing gets past her, what a smart cookie excuse the pun, soon that licky tongue was out clearing up any dripped icing that didn't make it onto a ginger teddy.

 Finally the creative artworks were completed and were put in the oven to set.  While the kids waited all went out into the garden to run about and have some fun, Sophie leading the way to all her toys to share.


                                 
William was Evil Knievel racing on his super fast motorbike

Sophia was Calamity Jane the fastest tooting horse riding woman of the west 

Sophie was King Kong astride her tower  

With much running about to be had by the kids, the mummies took a cup of tea and a relax on the lawn 

Soon the kids stopped playing and gathered by the chairs to have a quick chat as Sophie spread the word that what she had tasted earlier was sweet and that she suspected that had been painting cookies.  The kids decided that they were on strike till cookies had been handed out, after all they did create them.

GIVE US THE COOKIES!!

With the mummies scared at this organised bunch and that there could be an uprising of toddlers they finally gave in and handed out the much coveted treats and everyone was happy again.

Flying Kites

Today Sophie's friend Freya came to visit for the weekend. Sophie had been looking forward to Freya's visit.  

Friday nights home made kofta kebabs

Mmm kebabs are great, not the greasy version you get from the pub on the way home after too many beers something we probably all scoffed up when we were in our 20's.   However i don't think my heart and ever expanding waist line of middle age spread could take eating that version any more. Here's a kofta kebab version that is fresh healthy and very tasty minus all that grease.

Spiny Norman strikes again

We have hedgehogs, we first noticed them in September when it was still warm and i left the back door open in the kitchen and they were happily scoffing back the cat food our cat had not eaten. We were really surprised and quite astonished, they ended up being regular visitors as i left door open nightly for them and they cleaned the bowls at the end of the day much to the annoyance of the cats who were powerless to do anything against all those spins.  

Vanilla bean Soap

Well i made another batch of soap, this one will be a lovely bubbly variety and is a beautiful vanilla bean soap, it just smells good enough to eat as i have used cocoa butter and a vanilla bean fragrance as well as using a pure vanilla bean paste made from vanilla seeds marbled all over the top.  I cant wait to try this one in a nice hot bath and pamper myself.

Why am i making all the soap?  Well i'm toying with the idea of trying to sell a few bars at a craft fair my friend told me about and is confident i could sell some.  I wonder if people would be happy to splash a few quid on a bar of soap, gourmet they may be but these are hard times when the pound shop rules, but i wont know if i don't try and it feels a little exciting, but knowing my luck i would probably only sell 2 bars.

Citrous soap

I made this soap inspired for Ali, it is very foamy but also has some added special ingredients to make it a multi functional soap.  Ali loves to pamper his skin with face masks and also shaves the old fashion and eco friendly way of using a brush and foam pot with tends to last a year, rather than the aerosol cans of foam that last about a month or so, cost more and have waste in the metal cans.

Kids craft caterpiller

Grey Day today so we decided to break into the craft box and see what we could make.  Finding glitter, coloured card and stickers we got busy making a googly eye zig zag caterpillar.

Blenham and Peppa pig

Sophie loves Peppa pig and watches it every morning so when we saw Peppa was visiting Blenham palace we just had to take her to see the attraction.  Boy was it busy and really we should not have been surprised, this was our first ever trip to see something like this.  

We turned up to Blenham which i have to say wasn't that well sign posted and the entrance was also badly posted to anyone could have easily driven past it, and we would have if we hadn't of been driving at 10 mph, we parked up and the guys employed to directed traffic were either young guys or old men and none of them seemed the slightest bit interested in doing their job they all just stood there not even pointing as to where we should go, so we just headed in the direction we thought we should go and parked where we liked.

The whole Peppa Pig experience had been set to one area of the grounds and had a tea cup ride and a fair ground carousel with horses on, which we got Sophie very dizzy on the teacups and the carousel we felt was a bit of a rip off as it turned 3 times for £1.50.  We headed to the walled garden that was sectioned off for Peppa and George and there was a big straw bale ring rammed full of adoring little fans and their parents and poor ol Peppa and George having to make endless circuits to say hello.  As you will see from these pictures it was a hot day and i mean HOT so i really felt for the poor guys that were probably paid minimum wage inside those suit, although we were glad to see they changed the suit wearer every so often.  

Sophie could not believe her eyes when she saw Peppa and George and was so excited and happy when they were on the far side of the ring and looked small, but as they moved round the ring and got bigger and finally reached her she had a massive change of heart and was really very scared.   Poor little thing, we ended up taking her away and giving her strawberry cable from a stall that was conveniently placed right next to Peppas ring and she had spied and duly proved how tough she was by trying to tear it in bits. 

After this we headed to another garden that had a hedged maze in and daddy and Sophie had fun going in and getting lost and trying to find their way out again.  We discovered a small model village and Sophie enjoyed looking through the little windows and feeling big and brave again against such small houses.  Finally we headed to the butterfly house which was dismal we saw 5 finch's and 5 butterflies and the butterflies weren't that interesting looking which was a real shame as we were hoping to see so much better here.  The day was ok but not the one of  the best we have had, i think our expectations were probably higher than what we got and we may go back one day to look around the house when Sophie is older and more patient. 

Roast potatoes

I love Roast potatoes, i when i cook them i will tend to make a really big batch of them that could last a few days or be popped into the freezer for a later date.  Pre cooking roasts potatoes a day ahead for entertaining or for Xmas dinner and it can taking a bit of stress out of cooking

How i make my roast tats:  Cook in salted water and when boiling leave to rapid boil for 10 mins, then drain these and leave to stop steaming.  The potatoes should come out of the pan looking fluffy like the picture below, which when roasted gives the nice crispy bits.  you can also bash them up a little in the colander to fluff them too.

I always always use goose fat to cook my tats in and make sure its nice and hot in the pan before adding the potatoes to it, giving each potato its own coating and space, my big Xmas turkey roasting pan is just perfect for this job.

Next the tasty bit, i add 1 or 2 bulbs of garlic still in their pink papers as this keeps the garlic sweet, fresh sprigs of rosemary and a good sprinkle of dried too as well as fresh and dried thyme, a very good sprinkle of sea salt and cracked blacked pepper.  Zest of a whole lemon and about 3 lemons juiced over the potatoes add the squished skins in with the tats when roasting too then cook at 220 for about 25 mins then turn them all and baste in the oils and put back in for another 25 mins in the oven.  They should be ready then but i tend to leave them in till they look like they re slightly over cooked so i do this by eye as they tend to taste crisper.

When you remove your potatoes from the oil, never throw the oil away always keep it for roast potatoes in the future, i treat my goose fat like gold in my house especially as i have infused so much flavour into it. 

These potatoes taste so good your end up scoffing them when they come out the oven and when they are cold.  They are great as a bowl if your doing a nice bit of meat on the BBQ and not just for roast dinners.  Sophie loves a roast potato for her dinner too and they can be taken out of the freezer in the morning and reheated in the oven when needed for an evening meal when they are defrosted or the same if you keep them in the fridge for a day or 2 just reheat and enjoy.

Friday nights home made Pizza

Part of my home made take away range blogs this week we are doing home made pizza, and i really should of done a Ta Da finish cooked pizza shot but little miss had been making the pizza with me and when the dinger went on the oven she started chanting dinner dinner, so i had to cut it up for her and put on a plate for her to eat.

We started by making our own dough but of course you could buy ready made pizza bases if you want, but the dough is pretty simple enough to do and i buy my fresh yeast off Ebay of all places since i have stopped shopping at Tesco's where i used to get it from, you can also use dried yeast too.

Pizza base recipe

40g fresh yeast 

30g sugar

1/2 pint of warm milk

250g strong bread flour

1 tbs olive oil

3/4 tsp salt

warm the milk and the sugar, i just put mine in the microwave for a min then add the yeast and stir and leave for 15 mins to active and get frothy.

Sophie then measures out the rest of the ingredients with me and we add them to the bowl one at a time together.  Once the yeast mix is ready we turn on the K mix and gradually add the milk until we get a firmish dough sometimes i need all the milk and sometimes not, so mix and add the milk until you get the dough consistence right using your eye rather than the qty above.  I leave this dough on top on my oven to keep warm and rise about an hour.  

In the mean time Sophie and i get lots of vegetables out of the fridge and look, smell and taste them, i let her have a butter knife so she can cut and play with the vegetables she is rather keen on raw mushrooms now, and loves to copy me in chopping and organising the veg.

After an  hour we get our hands into the dough and knock it back and kneed it, she get a small lump of dough to move around the work top, them she helps me roll out the main bit of dough singing her rolly rolly song.  Once rolled we leave on top of the oven again to rise a little, we like a thin base so it isn't left to rise to long.  Then the fun begins as we place all the vegetables we cut on top of the pizza, over the tomato paste, although Sophie just tends to luz them all in one area, we will work on placement later, next we finish off with the pepperoni else daddy will have words with the chefs and top it all off with grated mozzarella, and put it in the oven for 15 mins.  This is such a great way to get kids eating vegetables and Sophie ate 2 big slices which had courgette red and yellow peppers, red onion, chestnut mushrooms, olives, pepperdew peppers on it. What a good girl, mummy was so happy with her, and i think she was happy being included in the process.    

Recycling water

Well as you know were growing our own fruit and veg in the garden and recently it has been really hot and dry and the garden is parched and there is a danger of loosing all the hard work that has gone into the plants we have tended to so carefully in the previous months and seeing as this is the food that should help make a bit of a saving on the food budget this year we needed to come up with a plan.

Hell fire caves

Today we decided to go out and visit the Hell fire caves in West Wycombe. Excavated by Sir Francis Dashwood in 1750 amazingly these caves are 1/4 mile long and were all carved by hand, in order to give the local men work to do as there had been a succession of crop failing, the chalk that was excavated was used to create a road from west Wycombe to high Wycombe.  Strangely our thoughts were if you were going to excavating chalk for a road it would have been simpler to have made a big hole and gather the chalk, but here is a series of tunnels, chambers and even a banquet hall that are intricate and designed and we wondered there must have been something else going on here.

As we entered the caves the temperature dropped immediately and there was faint damp smell from the moisture in the chalk and the walls felt very damp.  It was also very dark in places and a bit spooky.

As you can see the map of the tunnels very organised and when they were finished Sir Francis Dashwood established a Hell fire club and held meetings with secret members who were aristocrats and statesmen such as Lord Sandwich, John Wilkes as well as others, it seems these meetings were notorious and as you can see by the map there is a banquet hall in which they all met and had fun with drinking and women and it reminded me of a film and maybe it inspired the film eyes wide shut.

There was even an order with in the aristocrats with 12 being the superior part of the club meant to hark back to the 12 apostles and the rest of the members being inferior, and after there dinner the 12 who dressed in exotic robes would rise and follow the tunnels deeper into the caves, going through a triangle cut tunnel meant to represent a females private area and go over the river styx which has many stalagmites and stalactites and also had meaning to separate this world from the underworld. This finally lead to an inner temple where the men carried on getting up to mischief with the woman who had disguised themselves as nuns to gain entrance to the tunnels with out raising suspicion from the locals.

Sophie really loved the caves and she even had her little torch to light the way and really wanted to catch 1 of the 3 ghosts that was supposed to haunt the caves.  We found a couple of dubious looking characters flying by but they didn't scary Sophie and in the end she decided to do the scarring by making shrilling echoing ghost OOOoooOOooo noises to scary the other visitors

After our visits to the tunnels we decided to take a hike up the hill and were rewarded when we got to the top by a wonderful view and more famous landmarks built in the 18th century by Sir Francis Dashwood who had been on the grand tour and brought back many of his experience with him and above the tunnels is the grand  St Lawrence church with its iconic golden ball and beautiful ceilings inspired by his trips to Italy.

There was also the Dashwood Mausoleum and in the short distance we could see west Wycombe park which is boast the finest theatrical and italianate houses hosting grottoes and an ornamental lake as well as Rococo gardens, we would save the house for a visit another day, but had a look around the mausoleum.


Well it nearing the end of the day and we had a large hill to climb down so after taking a brief rest we started the descend and came across some pretty scary looking witchy trees.  All in all we had a really nice day out and Sophie really enjoyed her self running around the caves.