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.

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.

Flying Kites

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

Wild grizzly bear rampages through local town

Aylesbury was brought to a standstill today as reports of a wild grizzly bear was sighted in the peaceful sleepy town.

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.  

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 so your not having to worry about another thing to cook plus you can spend time focusing on making your tatties taste really yummy.

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.

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 some 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.

Friday nights BBQ spare ribs

With money so tight and the recession not showing any signs of easing up just yet we really have to count the pennies and pounds, finding new ways to save money so getting ride of some luxury items such as take away food or going out to dinner was one on the hit list, but just because its Friday night doesn't mean we are missing out, we still have the take away type food its just come a shorter distance from my kitchen.

Ladies that lunch

Its sunny and its warm and there's nothing for it but to have a little ladies gathering, bring the latest swimwear fashion to parade around the garden to relax and chill out in the pool, to share the latest toddler gossip. Introducing 3 angels Sophie, Nevaeh and Phoebe