Easter 2016

Easter time once more and its great having Ella just a little bit bigger and joining in a lot more.

 Every year we have a hunt in our garden and we use the plastic eggs and fill them with treats and the girls go hunt for them around the gardens, and we use nests and they each get a large egg container as the prize one plus plenty of golden eggs to find along the way.  I found 2 eggs 2 weeks later as I was out mowing or moving things around that they had not found and I forgot I hid. 

Easter gardening

I love our new life in the country the wildlife is totally fab check out this handsome chap who has taken to our garden and has been trying to persuade a lady to move in too, he is so brave he even comes up to the patio to look at us.

I really want a herb garden next to the kitchen and have the perfect spot outside the kitchen window on the drive.  There is a raised boarder with sleepers and i have already started planting my chives and thyme that we brought from the last house there, also there is some existing rosemary and sage in potion too.

 I spend a fortune on fresh herbs at the supermarket as i use loads of them in my everyday cooking salads and drinks.  the soil is really great here well drained in good sunlight and you can pretty much plonk what every you like into it and it will grow, so my aim is to save some money and grow a tun of flat parsley, coriander, dill, soft salads like rocket and spicy leaves to see us through the season and hopefully not have to buy anymore from the shops.

I have also been moving loads of lupins and foxgloves from the front garden to the back new flower bed to pad it out a bit as they grow like made in a 1 foot square patch i managed to get 24 of each as seedlings that had self seeding in the herb section so i have potted these up and am planning to sell them outside the front of the house as a little plant sale.

 Ella and Sophie were given there own garden tools for Christmas and Ell helps me with the hoeing and raking and her she is checking out the soil.

 We have a massive patch for veg but it is fast filling up and daddy spent the Easter hols creating a potato bed which is massive and has early and mid season spuds growing in it, Yum cant wait for that first new potato smoothed in butter.  He is already growing peas beans and soya beans as well as onions, garlic and pumpkins.

 Sophie has been given a patch to grow strawberries in and we made her a little house with pea netting so the birds don't eat them all.

 At the start of the year we bought one of those plastic greenhouses and got busy planting up loads of seeds for both veg and flowers to support the garden, a few weeks back we had that gale and the whole thing blew away ripped to shreds and the seeds scattered everywhere.  So we have had to start all over again we have had to turn the hallway of our house into a seeding nursery and all the windowsills are now heaving under the weight of plants grabbing sunshine, that reminds me i must turn my parsley.

Chocolate crispy cakes

Half term is nearly over yet there is still more time for a little cake making in the kitchen, and as it is Easter what better than the chocolate crispy cakes, just incase you had not had enough chocolate yet.

 So while Sophie is stirring up a storm of melting chocolate Ella is polishing her rolling pin skills on some pastry.

Ingredients 

200g of cornflakes
6 tbsp of golden syrup
100g butter
200g dark chocolate


Method 

Melt the butter, chocolate and syrup together, we have a dish over simmering water.

pout over cornflakes and make sure they are all coated before spooning out into cake cases

Waddesdon Manor Easter Egg Hunt

Easter Weekend and we headed to Waddesdon Manor for the annual Egg hunt, the family had a lot of fun and the day was glorious with wonderful sunshine as we explored and searched out the tricky eggs 

Sophie got a great explorers hat which she shared with daddy and Ella.

We walked around hunting high and low searching for the clue boards and working through our clue book 

 The house and grounds were magnificent as always and we all agreed that Waddesdon was our favourite gardens to visit.

Easter egg hunt

Our Easter egg hunt 2014 at Granny and grump house

The many eggs and the 2 hunters, Sophie and Ella all ready with their magic ears on to help them find the eggs.

We have 4 special GOLDEN EGGS these contain special prizes and are a bit more harder to find 

Easter Bunny face painting

Easter bunny face painting using  bumper brushes from Baker Ross

Crafting Easter Eggs

Easter will be with us very soon and we have cracked open the crafting cupboard to make some pretty eggs to decorate with.  We have bought some polystyrene eggs that you can jazz up in your own creative way so we decided to decopatch  them in bright papers before blinging them up.  

We have been sent a few bits from Baker Ross that we used some self adhesive pearls, mini holographic stickers and self adhesive bows and some Giotto decorating pens we we used on some of our eggs, check out their web pages they have anything and everything you might need for crafting.  Sophie was so very careful taking her time to apply the pearls and i told her about Feberge eggs so she tried to make her eggs look like one of these and i think she did a nice job, especially as we had such nice and pretty materials to work with.  We also worked with lots of our own materials that we had in the craft cupboard.

Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients
250g strong white flour
250g plain white flour
125ml warm milk
125ml warm water
5g dried yeast
10g salt
50g caster sugar
1 egg
50g butter
200g raisins, currants & saltanas mixed
2 tbsp whisky marmalade (see base of post for recipe if you want to make it yourself)
ladle of starer optional (see base post for link)
1 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp cinnamon

Crosses
50g of plane flour
100ml water

Glaze 
 2 tbsp of sugar
1 tbsp of water melted together

These remind me of brioche using eggs and butter in the flour mix and it is very sloppy so use a food unless you want really messy hands.

• Combine flour, water, milk, yeast, starter,salt and sugar and bring together with a dough hook 
• Add the egg and butter and mix up to a combined sticky dough
• Add fruit, marmalade and spice mix till silky and then leave to prove till doubled in size
• Knock back and divide and shape into buns and prove again until doubled 
• Mix up the water and flour for the crosses and pipe this across the top of the buns
• Bake at 200c for 15-20 mins 
• Mix up the sugar water glaze in the microwave and when the buns come out of the oven give them a brush