Thursday 27 December 2007

Belated Xmas

A Belated Merry Xmas to all!

It was fun, we played a game! caught up with an old friend, J! and of ourse L and S, and the family too :-)
We ate far too much, and the kids enjoyed their myriad of presents and still are in fact ( a miricle surely)
and now its back to work again.....
Still it was nice to have my dh at home for the only two days this year, and in fact no doubt, unless we get on the holiday we have reserved (which is looking more unlikely) the only two whole days we'll see each other together until next Xmas.....I think we're going to have to get staff for the shop you know.....

Friday 21 December 2007

It's ok

Panic not folkes, I'm not falling apart after all...at least I'm not certifiable anyway ;-)

I have 3 different types of excema, and 3 creams now, one for each area!
One lot for eyelids! (do not ask, I have no idea what's going on)
another for my symbolic side, with more again for my hands, sigh....still have to say its good stuff, my hands rapidly improved within 24 hours, hurrah!!

Gota dash as busy with work, ahem...

Tuesday 18 December 2007

Plague of sorts

I appear to have plague of sorts.....dr's at 9.30 to find out their next rough guess!

A few weeks ago, I developed a horrible rash after putting on a garment, unwashed, straight from the store (you may remember?) This left me with a lovely rash, which I went to dr's with, got Timodene and it cleared up.

Forward roughly one week, and my left hand developed a weirdy thing on two fingers, which started to spread to three, this time I got Anti B's for 5 days and some hardcore Caneston to stop a fungal infection. This has just about cleared up, but isn't quite gone.

In the meantime, late sunday/early yesterday I developed itchy eyes.....its down to one eye this am, on the lids on the outside and now this morning I have a crescent shaped rash on my side??? am I a religious symbol, or do I have plague??? I also have a few spots on insides of wrists.....which all the kids at nursery have had......

I think I'm slowly falling apart!!!!

Sure I'm not contagious????? mind you, oh yes, there's a blob selection I've neglected to mention! I went to a friends on Sunday and she has the same two blobs that I have on my chest (near where your bra goes) top of armpits type place, and has been told its fungal, and given cream.........(this is where I got my 1st reaction after the fabric incident) oh heck..... this is the last thing we all need.......

Tuesday 11 December 2007

The Start of a Phase

I've been looking through Meridians blog and am thinking she's doing a wonderful job of keeping it upto date and very nice looking, unlike my sorry excuse for one here.....

Mind you she's a damn sight more crafty and arty than I am, so that explains things. I think the most arty I've gotten today is putting up some Christmas lights outside the front of the house. They had the desired effect for dd1, who went oooooh look mummy are those our lights, followed by why aren't they flashing and LED Blue like our neighbours......I informed her ours are tasteful dahlink, nice white star lights (may get around to photoing a string and eventually downloading to jazz my blog up!)

Still the shop blog is getting more notice from me at the moment, although even that's only had one update in the last week. Mainly due to the fact its been busy, hurrah! and dh has been in there mainly by himself this week, as I wrestle with the year end accounts. A horrible experience, which is nearly over, bar a few credit card statements I could do with.

I also attempted the xmas shopping with Meridian yesterday and she did a fine job of assisting me, balancing my parcels, when I got overloaded and feeding us both coffee in the right places!

As you can tell I'm starting to get sorted for Xmas.....I've done quite a few cards tonight! and no doubt more wrapping tomorrow, did the kids stuff Monday night. Tree on Friday I think, so we can all attempt to decorate it after I finish work, and dd has done her concert for her dad ( who has been chosen to go over myself! even dd2 got to see the dress rehersal today, I will be watching the video, sob)

Managed to get my hair done yesterday too, so good run at the week, all in all, so far!

Attempted Hula Aerobics tonight, which was fun, in a probably bruised tomorrow way. I managed to be the person most hated in the room, by launching my hoop, not once, but twice at another girl in the room.....eeekkk.....luckily she was a mate of a mate, so hopefully took my apologies in good faith.....either that or I may have lost the mate who took her there to be battered by me, but I think not, as they both stayed around for a quick chat afterwards, whilst I grovelled some more. Made the mistake of exercising next to the woman who takes tomorrows aerobics class, who said pointedly 'you are coming tomorrow too aren't you?' so now I kinda feel I have too.....ah what the hell, I may even discover some stomach muscles in there somewhere!

Monday 26 November 2007

Where's that gone then?

I seem to have run out of creative thought today.
I'm supposed to be writing a press release for the shop, about last weekends Grand Opening, for the local free press. I've done 3 posts for the shop blog ok today, loads of orders, put more bits of the slat wall together, schmoosed the dhl guy and sweet talked a fair few customers, but what I've still not managed to do it write this damn release. I just can't seem to get the right angle on it that they want....which is that of a rare comic angle....hurumph, ya know when what ever you write, just doesn't sound right?
I think I'll give it a rest for an hour or two, try again tomorrow am maybe, when I'm 'fresh' again!

Saturday 17 November 2007

Yawn

Just grabbing a few secs and thinking how tired I actually am! yawn!
Its just gone to lull time in the shop. 2-3 usually goes quiet, I guess whilst people grab lunch and stuff? can't wait for someone to get here so I can go to the loo though! my dad is supposed to be popping over, what with Andy and the rest of the LARP group running around the woods at Shining Cliff but so far he's not here......they've alledgdly taken the girls to Bakewell this am, so probably still there?
dd2 was being clingy stroppy this am in a whingy way, Gareth, who is staying over due to LARP, was laughing about my attempted walking around the kitchen with her stuck to my leg....small children eh! no particular reason that I could see, bar me heading for work shortly afterwards. I guess I'm being missed.

We've got a girls night in at my friends on Thursday, but I'm still waiting to see if anyone wants me to bring/cook anything? hopeing someone may read this and let me know?? girls??

Tuesday 13 November 2007

Pustules and Trade

I've not posted for a week or so, as have been busy doing nothing, or so it seems to be. Work is mainly taking up the day time, with stocking the shop and keeping customers happy, whilst trying to update the shop blog, access from www.chimeraccg.co.uk and liasion between printers to finally get our flyers and vouchers printed, which hopefully as I left it today, they have finally gone to print! Fingers x'd nothing messes up and they'll be available next week.
I seem to have also got myself invited onto the New Ripley Chamber of Trade comittee as well? I managed this feat by turning up to a random meeting about a month ago, to discuss the Christmas light switch on. It appears the retailers of Ripley were so happy for someone else to join them (does that give you an idea of how many bothered retailers there are out there) that they jumped at the chance of recruiting me, and thus at very short notice yesterday (someone came into the shop at midday and said meeting at 17.30!) I ended up at the new inaugral meeting of the new Chamber of Trade! a quick re arrange of childcare with dh later and there I was, sat in Clarkes Dept Store Coffee Shop after closing, with my fellow bothered retailers and a nice glass of wine! Thanks for that! I got to voice my concern, along with the manager of Wilkos, and two other retailers from our street about the need for another Zebra Crossing, so you never know, our pleas may be heard at a higher level? either that or filed in the bin.....hmmmm.....still hopefully if we campaign and get more people attending, Ripley town centre may get the boosts it needs.

Dd2 is a bit poorly this week, temp and 'orrible cough, boooooo I'm going to skip her swimming lesson tomorrow because of this, oh yeah and the fact I have horendous pustulant fingers. Seems I have something like infected excema.boo and in fact there she is crying now, so I'd better go see to her. I have drugs from dr, plus cream for my skin, so nice.....

Tuesday 6 November 2007

Party Party

Which is what we've all been doing since last Thursday, dd1's 4th birthday. Where did that time go?
dd1 is now a very happy bunny, having been in receipt of two ton of presents.
Her best friend, although absent in USA brought her a fabulous Dora dressing up kit, which she loves, although grandma looks very funny in the wig :-)
We got her a computer learning game, her first in Dora pink, with a Dora game, so happy bunny all round.
dd2 got dd1's 'baby' a new cot and ss got her a nintendog.
Dh managed to close the shop for two hours, and thankfully Richard was in the shop when I rang him in a panic.....as dh had gone to work, leaving my car trapped on the driveway, which I only noticed just before I was supposed to be picking him up!! not wanting dd1 to be late for her own party, Richard kindly brought him home asap for me. Much thanks honey!

Planet Happy was the party venue. That and a gallon more presents on Sunday with her friends has made her ecstatic. With the Yellow Power Ranger currently taking pride of place from that batch of presents, although the new colouring kit and cards are also being favoured nicely too :-)

Later on party Sunday, we were all back at the same play centre again, as one of dd1's friends also had her party there! This time it was private hire, so mainly the other girls large family and a few of her nursery friends. I finally discovered who the 'other' Aimee mummy, Big Aimee, mummy, was, it's one of the nursery nurses, lol. Who also happens to be related to the other child whose party it was, which is why she was there. Took a bit of explaining to dd1, who'd also asked to have some other teachers at her party, but I'd refused!

DD2 has been loving the influx of presents, the best so far being dd1's new rollerskates from Grandma.....she's been whizzing around the carpet on them, whilst dd1 is still clinging onto the nearest available adult, nothing physical seems to phasing dd2, must be that youngest competative streak!

Tuesday 30 October 2007

Other things

So the other things that I've forgotten to mention that have happened over the last few days are these.....
Saturday, whilst the boys and dd1 were all in the shop, Julie , dd2 and I headed back to the house, so dd2 could run riot for a while. Whilst there Julie, the brave woman that she is, attempted to show me how to crochet and do you know what, I think I may vaguely have it! not that I've had chance to do it since mind. I was up till 10.30 last night doing the accounts, followed by dd1's school application. Still it's a start, I may have to go and find a lighter ball of wool than the one I was using though (kidnapped from ss's room, his dark blue ball of wool from his knitting that he keeps starting and giving up on) .......
dd2 on the other hand, had other ideas about me going to bed last night. I'd nearly finished dd1's online school application, when, mummmmmmyyyyyyyy eminated from dd2's room, followed by her in person at my side (11pmish)
I put dd2 back into bed. Thus ensues 15 mins or so of us messing around, me putting her into bed, her getting out. So eventually I say, right that's it your back in your cot if you do it again. Dd2 says no, and settles for 5 mins, then gets out again.....I put her in cot, retire to her screaming....dd2 then re appears at my side in 2mins flat. Hurumph, I guess I can get rid of the cot then........eventually she settled when I sat with my back to her for 10 mins, slowly edging out of the door, sigh, we're at that age now!

Sunday 28 October 2007

Halloween Preparation

Seeing as its the Sunday before Halloween, I thought it would be nice to do some fun things with the kids, so this morning ss, the dd's and I have been busy hollowing out pumpkins and carving faces in them. We made soup with the insides.

Pumpkin Soup:

Sweat a small chopped onion, in some butter or olive oil, in your saucepan for 5 mins or so.
Add the Innards of two chopped up pumpkins in our case, use what you have available though.
Peel, chop and add two potatoes to the mix
Chuck in 1.5ltrs of veg stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Cook for 20mins
Add cream or creme frache to taste, or even a bit of Chilli!

So even dd1 ate some soup, after I threatened to cancel her birthday party, if she didn't try it! (evil mummy) anyway she decided in the end it wasn't that bad (triumphant smile from me!) We also did Candy apples for desert decorated in orange and black sugar strands. It turns out these turn most peoples mouths black, mwah ha ha, and indeed the smallest family member black from the neck down to tummy too!
To top our pre Halloween feast off, we've also created with the help of Super Cook, some gummy sweets, which I'm sure will taste horrible, but the kids can't wait to try them, so seeing as we're off to try out the local fair in an hour or two, I shall insert these just before we go out, so they can run all the energy off!

Dh is in the shop at present, so we shall shortly be heading over to see him, and pick up a few bits for Sunday dinner from coop on the way back. I'm thinking mainly parsnips and possibly broccoli/cauli, we have carrots, hmmm oh and milk and some cream, as my mother, kindly, has taken pity on my new busy working lifestyle and sent me an Apple Crumble home with dh on Friday night this week! So better get cream to go on it, right?

Tuesday 23 October 2007

Chaos Ensued

We're open! we did it!! on Thursday at 11am I finally managed to open the shop. Dh only called me every 2 hours or so, to see how it was going, sigh. He was very excited too and thus very upset not to be here himself, but someone has to pay the bills whilst we get on our feet and he volunteered to, so there you go! It could be said I have the sympathy of Miss Piggy :-)

The result of the last month of my hard work, is showing on the link from here. Just in case its not http://www.chimeraccg.co.uk/ In fact the website is Richards hard work, so much thanks should go to him, once again for bailing me out! as my technical ability is appalling as he will attest. Today I've also knocked up a blog http://chimeraccg.blogspot.com/ to link to it, so we can post latest updates, and keep the world upto speed with what's happening in shop. I'm hoping we will have our sign up on Thursday, and the a-board to put on the street, then we can look at advertising and progress to selling our grand opening to everyone. Saturday 24th November is the day, just in case you were wondering.

So its all been a bit mad really, Richard kindly came in and played Saturday girl at the weekend, as Meridian is in the USA and we'd reserved that position for her if she wants it?!
The response so far has been good. People are happy to see a decent shop in Ripley :-)
Dh even opened the shop on Sunday, and surprisingly we sold lots. Guess being opposite Wilkos helps, what with them being the only other thing in town open on Sunday, oh and next door but one to the Church, so when people leave there, they come here! hurrah!

This week we also bravely moved dd2, aged 19mths into a new bed. H, dd1's friend has got a new bed. I don't think he knows this yet, as he's on his hols, but his mum and dad kindly said dd2 could have his old one, so we got it on Sunday, just before his dad flew out to join them. The bed went straight into dd2's room, with the cot shoved against the window, just in case the bed didn't work out, but we needn't have bothered. The worst bit was dd2 discovering that her dog had dropped off the bed and she couldn't get him back by herself. So once he was retrieved, she went to sleep like a dream. She only got up at 6.30 am because dh accidentally woke her, this morning she slept until gone 7am! hurrah!!

Monday 15 October 2007

The quest for shelves

I've been attempting to obtain shelves for about a week now, out of stock has been the stock phrase, but wait! possibly in???? so I went to the hallowed halls of Blue and Yellow.......

Then I lost my rag. Had a nice breakfast there for 95p! and then made the mistake of joining the throng, in an attempt to get served in the shelving department. The girls and I, formed a nice que just before 11am at an information point, along with about 10 other couples. Eventually someone in 'customer service' dragged themselves to the area to say, oh, no staff here yet (11.08) you'd better go and join the que at the sofa department. Took one look, 30 deep minimum. Left in a huff along with several other people. So my search for shelves for the shop window began in ernest elsewhere, having waited a week in vain.

B&Q we're not far away, so we payed them a quick visit. Very quick, as they had no free standing shelving at all........why not????

Next on the list was Argos, which luckily for me had two of the shelves I settle on and two TV stands as well :-) (small stack on one side?!) Even got a nice young man to help me to the car with the lot, although his manager didn't look very happy about it! I just waved 4 items, a buggy and a 3 year old at him and he told the young gentleman to help :-)

Popped into Homebargins, which was fortuotus for dd1, as they had the last Dora Blanket on sale, so its residing on top of the freezer as her end of week, been good as gold treat! The threat of dd2 getting it if she fails seems to be working ;-)

So that was it really, more trudging than I'd have liked with the kids in tow, but you can't have everything, right?

They're now up in the shop window, ready for opening on Thursday (one day I'll get photos on this blog) mainly with stock on them, although I'm expecting 3 deliveries tomorrow, which should complete our little venture for now! I spent the rest of today putting the GW (Games Workshop) racking together, then getting the stock onto it. I'm getting quite excited now, I even have throwing dice for the first person who tries to rob us, improvised weapon right ;-)

Friday 12 October 2007

A moment to breathe

and relax.......that's how this evening is feeling. Dh is away running LARP in York, the last Strangehaven event of the year www.ascendencylrp.co.uk there's also a link on the side of this blog if anyone fancies a look! The kids are in bed and have finally fallen asleep, even though dh rang and spoke to them, dd2 still doesn't quite get it and has been randomly yelling dada for approx 2 hrs, bless her. So here I am, with Ugly Betty in the background, taking two minutes to post on here!

The last few days have been hectic, but we're getting there with the shop www.chimeraccg.co.uk. We have signs up in the windows, the shelvings all in, mainly with stock on it too! just 3 final deliveries on monday, then we have the window displays to do, the till manual to read, then once thats running, so are we :-)
As you may guess that's mainly what I've been doing this week!

Very annoyed at my phone today though, found out, totally by accident, why no one has been replying to my texts since Wednesday. I appears something went wrong with the sending? as I turned out to have 3 days worth of stuff in my outbox going nowhere when I looked. V Annoyed, luckily someone called from the shop fitters to check why they'd not received a photo message I'd sent them two hours previously, otherwise I'd still be thinking everything was ok! Had to delete 3 days worth of sent messages, and re message a few people, none of whom had received anything from me, and all of whom were no doubt thinking I was an ignorant git!

Hmmmmm, its rather nice to have time to post on here, quite like a bit of time to myself. Dh doesn't understand that much, he likes my company, but I've always liked a bit of quiet me time, so its nice to get the odd evening when he's away. It also means I can eat what I like, tonights odd combination was noodles, (he hates them) with broccoli and fishcakes (on the cheap pile in shop) followed by cheesecake, which my waistline says I probably shouldn't be eating, but well, its a weekend, right?

Monday 8 October 2007

Blinking spanner things?

So does anyone know how I get rid of those spanner things on the links at the side of this page, damned if I can seem to do it?!!

Shop is coming along, if I ever manage to download the photos on my phone, you'll be able to see what it looked like last Saturday!! its come on since then too. Today I have finished fitting all the plastic slats into the slat wall, cleaned them all down, hoovered the shop, brought a door mat and fabric for the window displays and spent ages on the phone to various companies chasing and placing orders! Not to mention putting the new phone onto charge (24 hrs it needs apparently) and firing up the new stereo! music! yeah!!

and on that rather illeterate note I shall go to bed, get some beauty sleep and do it all again tomorrow, deliverys ahoy!

Monday 1 October 2007

Coming Soon

There will be more coming soon on this blog honest!

I've been rather busy, with my dh, opening up our new comic, games and collectables shop :-)
so apologies for being AWOL, but sometimes that's how these things go......once I'm in the shop, I'll be blogging every day!

So in the big, live, real world, I've been upto the following during Sept and probably a whole lot more as well.

We've morphed from http://www.shardslrp.com/ to http://www.ascendancylrp.co.uk/ so as you can imagine, the larp team have been very busy bees, and I'm very grateful to them all, especially Richard and Julie who have put lots of effort into sorting out the new website for us :-) Many thanks!

Dh and I have been running around like loonies, sorting solicitors, loans, phones, stock, tills, signs etc - Much thanks again to Dave P, for his fantastic logo, which the printers are currently working into a huge over the shop and small in the window type signs. Shop fittings are brought and arrive today! It's all very exciting :-)

I also snuck out for a day, the other saturday and joined Meridian at a 1 day writing course, to kick start my writing again. Much thanks to Daniel Blythe for running it and booting me up the arse to do something, soon, honest....I will be doing more soon, once things calm down a little, shop 1st etc!

No time for any more, have lots to do, but thought I'd get my poor little blog updated ;-)

Wednesday 5 September 2007

Our new venture......

So much for my pledges to post frequently.....life is a bit hectic to say the least!
I'm hoping that its safe to say on here that we should be opening a comic, collectibles and games shop in the very near future, its still not 100% as waiting on the bank manager to agree funding, which he should do by tomorrow am....so am sat her nervously waiting to find out if we're all systems go or not.....

I have spent the last week and a bit running about getting everything sorted to bring us to this point, as soon as we have a go, go, go, green light from the bank (whose provision for dealing with things when one of their managers goes off sick for a week is crap, they will be hearing from us re this...) the solicitors will kick into action, and we have 4 weeks to shop fit and stock our new project. The adrenaline is pumping, I'm so hoping that it all goes smoothly and we can get up and running virtually straight away in Oct, in time for Halloween and Xmas!!

So why do I have time to write on here? Meridian has kindly lent me her computer, as I'm down at hers babysitting her ds! at last time to catch up on a few bits n bobs, actually I should be looking up magazine distributors locally, but thought I'd pop on here 1st! lol.....

I've been a rubbish mate to lots of people recently, as I've had my head down doing all of this, so many people I need to catch up with, that I haven't over summer, so sorry guys if your reading this, you know who you are, I will aim to see you all before Xmas, honest!! You can all come to the grand shop opening, if you're still speaking to me ;-)

Wednesday 29 August 2007

The weeklong!

Ok, so we're home and just about adjusting to life after the Shards weeklong event www.shardslrp.com

I'm still feeling very tired, not helped by us all having to be at the Dr's today at 8.10 re Andy having the snip! All booked now though......mid September, yikes for him.

I hope everyone had a good time at the weeklong event. It seemed to go well, even if the arrival of the pirates on Thursday night threw the players who had been there all week, as they revived some old plot from 5 years ago and attempted to top one of the main NPC's......(good job it was his doppleganger eh!) and everyone who followed to find out where he'd gone!
I seem to have an assorted collection of bruises, mainly on the knees, although I can feel one lurking on my arm, but its not put in a proper appearance yet! I got away with only one hit to the eye as well (Oli!!) so not too bad a week, although I may have trapped a nerve in my lower back, as getting the odd twinge there too down my left leg, I blame the summersault over OJ after he tackled my legs.......So anyway a huge thanks to everyone who came (should anyone read this!) we hope you had a great time and mega thanks to the ever enthusiastic crew! We love you all.

The weather was good once we got the first weekend out of the way, the few bad days, the Saturday and Monday caused me to locate Bridgends outlet mall and partake in Starbucks, whilst the kids played on their covered playframe, shucks eh! to be fair we did try softplay on the Monday, but it was closed for a special needs session.

We got to the beach twice as well, once on the Wed morning, when Meridian and her ds and dh came down. That was Porth Cawl (SP) always nice in the sun, even the water was warm for paddling! and then again on the Thurs when we took an am trip to Barry Island. Again a great beach and dd2 took delight in waving at the planes on the flight path into Cardiff International every 10 minutes or so.

So now I have to get down to business and do some work, more on that soon!

Monday 6 August 2007

Neglect and the time inbetween

My poor blog has been very neglected recently, cripes when was it I last posted?? OMG over a month ago, now that is bad........

So what have I been upto?

We did finally decorate! the day of the evening that we took the girls away for a few days, they were both in nursery, so I talked dh into decorating!! hurrah. We have nice, clean plain old magnolia walls again (is magnolia nice? well its fresh anyway!). The paint smell after decorating wasn't a problem either, as we whizzed down to Christchurch to see mum and dad in a caravan for a few days.

Had a lovely time in Christchurch and Bournemouth, although was upset that borders closed at 9pm, just as I was finally getting into looking around a bookstore with no kids in tow! was even more peeved that Starbucks had shut at 8pm.........why can't you get a decent coffee in this country in the evening??? grrrrrrrrrr and grump. Met up with Flame and her family, for a fun afternoon of soft play too :-) and she didn't manage to convert me to real nappies :-) not much point now really, dd2 will be out of them during the day soon (6mths or so)

Erm what else have we been doing? Oh the Edgewater event, now that was fun! Lets see, the whole country got rained on very heavily, so hardly anyone made the event on time. Dh took 12.5hrs to get to site, Gloucestershire went under water and some of our crew got stuck on the M5 overnight. Putting the tents up for everyone was a nightmare, but we all managed it in the end, and thankfully by Saturday am, it wasn't raining over our bit of Wales, hurrah, so we could LARP in the dry, always better :-)
I can report there were some top totty at the rescue command HQ on the M5 on our return journey :-) dh has already berated me for looking, but what's the harm eh?!

More recently I've spent a lovely weekend with the Feb 06 girls at CSWS's lovely house in Hertfordshire, one of these days I will get a lovely dream house like hers.............although I do have to once again apologise to them all for having to leave so early on the Sunday am, which in turn caused me to be Cinderella the night before and pack up drinking and wander off to bed at midnight, most unlike me, it won't happen next time, promise!!

I left early as headed for BIL/SIL's house at Bromsgrove. Met dh there and just as we were driving out for dinner, disaster struck! I received a call from a friends dh, asking me to babysit their eldest ds, as yikes, she'd gone into labour......erm sorry, I'm miles away, ahem...anyway luckily they had backup plans, and 4 and a bit hours later, she had another lovely little boy, so well done to you!! you know who you are :-)

OMG I nearly forgot my birthday weekend!! that's what getting old does for you, ahem....
Julie, Richard and Dave came over on the Saturday, bringing the HUGE Egg that is still lurking in the living room, not quite sure what to do with it yet, Meridian says make cake with it, I think I might. They discussed game stuff with dh during the afternoon whilst I was out, then I re heated us all Pizza and Dave's fantastic selection of Garlic Bread when I got back. Followed by wine and chocolate or berry torte, depending on your preferences.

Sunday had a lovely day, went out for lunch with my dh, ss and our two dd's, plus Meridian, her dh and ds. The Bear at Alderwalsey, Derbyshire (SP) was the venue, and I highly recommend it, but book first as they get rather busy! Carvery, very good VFM and the views over the Derwent valley are spectacular. That evening dh did a feed the 5000 buffet for the same people who'd been there for dinner, we were still eating it on Tuesday.......its taken all of us, over a week to clear the house of cake. I am now on a diet again.

Ok, that's my quick summary of July and a teeny bit of August, here's hoping I can keep more upto date in future?

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Filler

This is it! I'm on a roll, not only have I purchased filler, for the bit where the curtain rail fell off the wall a few years ago, but I've gone and put the stuff in the hole/on the wall as well......not only that I've done the holes in the en-suite as well (shelves fell off the wall).
As you may have guessed our walls are not good at holding things up. I should have guessed about the curtains, when the guide 'your new house' said to only put blinds up :-O , but being British, a nation of curtain lovers, up they went.....and down they came. Currently they're back up, being held up by 4 brackets, which means, yep, I can't actually close them. This is what happens when you leave your husband and your father, both builders by trade, in a room with four brackets and a curtain pole. Sigh. Still at this rate, I might actually get around to decorating sometime soon, the colour and staining on our lovely magnolia (ish) walls dictates I should.

Monday 2 July 2007

The Dentist/Yorkshire!

Ouch! have had to go to the dentist today. After our lovely weekend in Yorkshire, I've gone down with moderate toothache. It actually started last Thursday, but I've managed to numb it both Friday and Saturday with booze ;-) but this am, having finally sobered up, something had to be done about it. A 1.45 hr wait later in the dentist and I got seen, got some drugs and managed to get their next proper appointment in 2.5 weeks to be drilled out and re filled (the old filling has a minute hole, so things have been niggling away behind it). They have 5 dentists on the go and I have to wait that long for an appointment, unreal. If it still hurts on Friday, they've told me to pop back for a repeat prescription.....I think I may end up going back. So have had to beg my lovely friend Meridian to babysit both girls in two weeks! Still they can all have fun giggling at my frozen mouth when I get back, coffee through a straw please!

We all enjoyed Yorkshire at the weekend, made a change for me to be at the seaside with dh in tow, as usually its me and the girls round at PorthCawl in the rain, when they're bored of the tent on a wet event! We had fish and chips for lunch as you do, then headed for our friends with a smattering of grazing cheese, wine and cheesecake. My friend has just qualified as a Reflexologist, so had a fiddle with our feet, apparently my tooth should have been hurting, and lo it did today!! my hip is apparently dodgy (it is genetically a bit clicky, dd1's was out when she was born) and my uterus is tender, takes time after kids to settle apparently. Dh has a dodgy bladder and sore gums! Dd2 decided to amuse us all about 11pm and got up for 3.5hrs, dh's fault as we were doing pick up, put down (think she got woken by the rain) but then he brought her downstairs, so that was that. Madam didn't want to go back to bed, in fact she was most perturbed to find herself in bed with us and carried on screaming (even though calpol had been added) I woke just as it was getting light, to find her hogging the whole bed in between dh and I, on a diagonal slant. At this point she went back into her own cot.

Sunday saw us all on a lovely short walk in a square fashion with the kids through the fields surrounding our friends house. Dd2 loved the puddles. I had to physically pick her up and carry her into my friends house for dinner, as she didn't want to get out of the one at the bottom of the drive :-) Dd1 most enjoyed playing with our friends boys. Fabulous Sunday roast, courtesy of our friends as well, dh even got to go to the pub without me or the kids in tow before hand, so that made him very happy. We headed home about 3.30, as I could see a storm approaching, and I wanted to get us all in the car dry. It was a magnificent storm too, we drove through it, on the way back to York, floods all over the roads and some great lightening strikes!
Just a shame I've gotten this damn toothache today.

Friday 29 June 2007

Yorkshire

That's it really off to Yorkshire for the weekend, lets hope we don't get stuck in floods.......
Here's to drinking lots of wine and catching up with much missed friends.

Wednesday 27 June 2007

Weather and Jams

OMG! nearly a whole week since I last posted, yikes.

So what on Earth have I done?

Erm, had to attempt tent put up on own, saved by Gareth P, bless him :-) and just in time too, as the rains then fell nicely for the rest of the evening.....got away with rain Sat pm too though and was dry during Sat and Sun daytime, so hurrah for that. Still had to dry the tent out yesterday though......event went ok me thinks? might have to find time to log onto the Yahoo forums to find out! seeing as the website is still down, and Webmaster has gone away for the week, so won't be back up anytime soon. Hope she's having a nice week away, although I'm imagining the Isle of Man, is as rubbish weather wise, as things are here? She's thinking of moving out there, do I smell a tax haven per chance! Oh to have that much spare cash......

Rained a lot on Monday, watched Sheffield flood on the news, the shopping Mecca of Meadowhall is currently rather wet it appears.......my friend will be gutted as two of her favourite Starbucks are currently underwater!! The M1 is still shut as well it appears, with the threat of a dam burst lurking between J32-34, feel very sorry for those affected :-( On a personal note, good job we don't have to fetch SS this weekend me thinks. Mind you as we're heading for friends in Scarborough on Saturday, looks like we're going to have to find some other way north, along with the rest of the diverted traffic no doubt. Could indeed be a nightmare again on the weather front, as more heavy rain is forecast too, aww shucks, stuck in Yorkshire, could be worse :-) so long as the booze supply holds out, we should be fine! Our friend has the sanity to buy a house in a village with a pub, (the only local facility, I like Yorkshire for that!) so we should be sorted ;-)

Had a nice time on the M5 on the way back on Sunday. I was comparing notes on the jam with another Mum today, she had the joy of the same experience, although she was on her way back from Glastonbury, sans children. Reckon I could write a book on my experience.......things to do with a small child, like leave them on the roadside, with a note on where to deliver them to when they've finished screaming.......or wondering if anyone would think I was mad for getting out and sitting on my car roof, just for the peace and quiet. Dd2 had a nice time too, as she discovered how to rip open the window blind at one end. Pull out the metal bit holding on the sucker, followed by hitting the window with the said metal rod, sigh....the things a 15mth old can do when bored.

Thursday 21 June 2007

Web agro

Seems like a week for Web agro to me, wrestling with trying to get the correct info out of Supanames for us to swap the web site over to their hosting, you'd think I was trying to get the Queen to sign a blank cheque.........seems they think they're helping me by sending the same info, over and over again.....I keep writing back saying, yes thanks I have this, but I need the nameserver details as well.......its driving our current webmaster M nuts as well........

So have spent last few days firing emails back and forth, attempting to deal with this, whilst also dealing with poorly dd2, who having just about gotten over a week long illness, yesterday decided to teeth 4 molars at once. They don't do things by halves our girls!

Today she is happier, we've all been to Planet Happy for lunch and discovered what fun life can be again, hurrah!!

Event tomorrow, lets hope the rain stays away whilst I attempt to put up our tent on my own, hmmmm wonder if Ash and Jane will be early again?

Monday 18 June 2007

Birmingham

Been to Brum this weekend! went to see my oldest friend in the universe! not old age wise, just old as in, we've known each other since 18mths, courtesy of our parents living on the same street :-)

Got there about 4pm, had brief tootle about Warehouse, whilst waiting for her to escape the que in Marks & Spencer, to meet me. Have to say disappointed in Warehouses sizes. Lots of lovely stuff, well 3 x items I may have considered purchasing, were I to have any money (which I don't) but none in size 14 anyway, bah! Friend caught up with me at Krispy Kreme (maybe I would make a 12 if I stopped with the do-nuts?) where we used the last of her student voucher printouts (she's just graduated Med School) to get 2 dozen of their finest. These were brought home and shared between myself, dh and our friends down the road, who share our passion.

We went back to her's via Sainsburys to get tea, chicken with Mediterranean veg, yummy and two nice bottles of red wine. Friend prepared tea, whilst we gossiped, and painted my nails, a luxury I've not had time for, minus interruption, in a while. After Dr Who (girls can't go out without watching the Dr ;-) ) we headed into town and caught up with our other friend and her new girlfriend :-)

The Hotel du Vin was the venue for our evening, will defo be staying there at some point, thought it was lovely. Wine bar had lovely squishy sofas and olives. Doesn't take much to please me mind :-) We merrily talked the night away, although we didn't end up clubbing as the friend we met, sadly had been on the receiving end of laser treatment for a tooth problem and was the sober judge of our drunken wafflings. I think we all enjoyed ourselves though? I certainly did, everyone needs a good girly night out once in a while!

Dh in the meantime was looking after two girls, on his own, overnight for the first time ever.
This meant that dd2, whom we thought was on the mend, chose to be ill again Sunday am, threw up all over poor dh, bless him. He was not impressed when I rang him. Fathers day and all.......seems my telling him at 10am what a wonderful lie in I'd had, was not the done thing :-(
I then made the situation worse, by advising I was off out for breakfast and would be back around 1ish, which I duly was. However dh did say to me previously, in martyr like fashion, take your time, don't rush back. Only to then sulk, when I did just that! men eh, bah!

I got home to find stressed out dh, whingy dd2, and apologetic dd1, who it seems had forgotten to get out the Fathers Day prezzies, another cause of dh's consternation! So we rectified that, whilst dh told tales of having to get up with dd2 at 6am, to which I pointed out I'd let him have a lie in on Saturday, because I'd feared that might be the case. (note he still got up at 8am cause he couldn't sleep) So the rest of Sunday was spent trying to cheer him up, men. I think he needs a good night out too, if only he'd go for one.........

Thursday 14 June 2007

Busy doing nothing

This week I appear to be busy doing nothing. Not nothing as such, but just the nothing of day to day life. A fine example of nothing being yesterday. Took dd1 to nursery, dd2 and I baked a cake, cut the grass (before the torrential down pouring of yesterday evening) did some washing, hung it out to dry, took both girls swimming, went to gym. Not all in that particular order either, but you get the drift. Made tea, yadda yadda......all in all pretty boring stuff.

So in an effort to make my life more interesting dd2 decided to eat part of a float at swimming yesterday. Hurumph. A few slaps on the back and she swallowed it instead of spitting it out (oh she's a right one dd2) not sure if that caused the throwing up yesterday evening, however after the state of her nappy twice this am, think it might not be the cause after all. Poorly baby alert!!

Luckily dh is off work today, for two reasons. A) he's gone to see the Dr re getting the snip. I am very proud of him re this, not just because he hates the medical profession, but also because, lets face it, to any man, the thought of someone tinkering about with your manhood cannot be a happy one. It also means he's taking ownership of the fact that it takes two to tango, so is behaving respectfully in this manner :-) He is, in short a star. I am very lucky to be married to him. B) Its throwing it down with rain, and thus outdoor building work is a no no today.

Ah sigh, dd2 has just created another mess for me to clean up, dettol at the ready!! fingers x'd we don't all get it again.....
Still at least with dh being at home, I have the excuse to leave dd2 behind, whilst dd1 and I go out to see her friends (we have done this virtually every Thursday since she was born) and as its one of the mums birthdays tomorrow we can't possibly not go!!!

Monday 11 June 2007

Strangehaven

More Brioche, that's what I'm going to get, when I've finished this I think?
Have scoffed two so far, but need to get rid of them from the weekend right? so one more can't hurt, and my cuppa tea, is just begging me to go and get one right now! or I suppose I could get a pain au chocolate.....Some friends accidentally left those with us, ummmm which one....I'll be back!

Yummy, pain, that is au chocolate, not pain, as in ouch, funny thing language eh? do you think the English made it pain on purpose?? the pain with chocolate......? drat just dribbled my tea as well, this is not an auspicious start to the morning (mind you nor was dh and dd2 waking up at 5am, at least managed to get dd2 back to sleep) anyway I digress, so what did we get upto this weekend?

Stranghaven http://strange-haven.blogspot.com/ that's what, at the Danelaw Viking Village in York
http://www.murtonpark.co.uk/html/dark_age_village.html
I think everyone had a good time? as it was the first event ever, its hard to tell, but those that played seemed to enjoy themselves. The crew player ratio was high, which is always nice and the plot went to plan without too much nudging in the right direction or from my view it did!! It was wonderfully warm as well, which is always nice when your living in a mud and straw hut, and I didn't scream once at Spiders above my head :-) in fact I was very good and went to sleep with three of them in plain view :-O

Dh and I did laugh at last nights Dr Who re run when we got home though, they've been copying his time line ideas again!! ( or did he whip it from them? will we ever know?) liked the stone angels though. Imagine lots of very frightened children this weekend. Mummy our fountain is coming to get us!!!! far better than attacking Bassetts sweets any day.

Hmmm 9.15 better get on with updating everyones stat sheets me thinks, and drumming up trade for future events, flyers to write, much crack on!!

Thursday 7 June 2007

Random waffling

Well it has to be said I'm feeling like something horrible is lurking on the horizon. I've got one of those icky headaches, that lurk around the corners of your brow. I'm probably not helping matters by drinking the cup of coffee I've just made, which is currently residing in its Krispy Kreme mug (courtesy of my friend) next to the laptop.

I guess feeling like marginal pap, I should be considering drinking the 'cleansing' tea bag that came with a magazine ages ago, which has been lurking in its sealed glory, beside by assorted fruity, drunk only by people other than me, teabag collection in our cupboard. It alledges to be made from Milk Thistle (hangovers? or prevention of I recall) Nettles and Spearmint.....that's not sounding nice to me, but maybe if I do get ill, I shall brave it and see if it does the job it purports to do.

I do have a lemon, minus its zest, waiting to be used or drunk with hot water too. The zest got used yesterday in my fantastic salmon fishcakes. Eaten by all, without a mutterance of, yuk, what's that. Although dd1 did say you can't put fish in a cake! which I'd have to agree with, in a desert cake fashion. She's come round to the idea of fishcakes rather rapidly though, and declared them yummy, hurrah for home cooking. Dh said I was turning into a domestic goddess, ha! I blame him for buying me the cookbooks!! anyway it wasn't one of Nigellas recipes that did the trick, much to his amazement. Simply a basic cookery book that someone once gave me for Christmas. I'm assuming that the person who gave it, passed it on as an unwanted present, as I'd seen it lurking in their own kitchen, and they sure don't cook much European food! but I don't care, cause it has some good recipes in it.

I've just totally lost my train of thought, as ss has arrived in the room and spouted world of warcraft at me for 5 minutes. This is not helpful, as I'm popping between this and trying to write something for my strangehaven characters, as we have an event tomorrow. All I can think of now is peanuts and Captn Jack Sparrow. I blame ss, he was just waffling on about peanuts, although apparently he's an elephant he's trying to get to? don't ask me, I only live here.

I shall say nothing more about Pirates, which we saw last night, as several people still haven't seen it yet and will shout at me!! but for the ladies,mmmmmmm Capn Jack! whom dh says I wouldn't like in real life, as he'd be all horrible and smelly, however you can always chuck a pirate in the bath can't ya?

Tuesday 5 June 2007

Lets cancel Mondays

Well that's my vote anyway. Cancel Mondays, they're invariably rubbish. They seem to come in three forms:

1. A bank holiday, which means you spend the day trudging back from where ever you have been for the weekend. Sat in hours of endless traffic ques, arguing with whomever is in the car with you, or watching them sleep. Which is even more infuriating, as that's what you want to do too!

2. They are the start of the working week, so you always have to get up early. Sort the rest of the household out (in my case at least) before settling down to a hard days graft. Only to be met by a tired and grumpy household at the end of the day, who are grumbling about it not being the weekend any more.

3. They are the day of the week you realise someone in the house is ill.

This week, we have point no 3. The ill person is Dh......and boy, oh boy, is he ill......I think he has what dd1 and 2 had last week, so I'm just waiting for my turn. (that'll be in time for the coming weekend then) Tis the pukes and trots you see, a lovely way to start the week, at precisely 2am, he went bleurgh, luckily in the toilet, and he's been at it ever since. As its Tuesday now, the frequency of this has all slowed down, due to his lack of intake of substances, bar the re-hydration sachets and a few plain biscuits. He is not a happy bunny.

Unfortunately for us this is also the week ss is off school too. He's not happy, as he wants his dad to play with him, but all he can do is sit there feeling poorly, with the occasional dash to the porcelain halls of relief.

I'm really hoping he's better for tomorrow, as we need him at work for the money.....self employment doesn't pay sickness.
We also have an event at the weekend. Please, please get better soon.

Monday 4 June 2007

Fun times

Spent the weekend attempting to have fun with the kids, whilst fielding the rest of the families requirements........
Popped into town with dh and assorted small people on sat am, managed to shop and have coffee with no tantrums, hurrah success.
PM arrives we do cycling around the close, then grandad rings up and demands an audience. This splits the camp, as it turns out for the rest of the weekend. Dh declines to come, (he works with him 5 days of the week) so I decide its ok for him to have self time, we all need it right, and go out to see Grandad with the kids.

We have a great time, buy strawberry plants from Garden centre, (shoot me I spent 2.97) then end up with an impromptu visit to Wonderland, a kids mini theme park, with small run away mine train. Dd1 decides she hates this, as her dad is not on it with her, sigh.....however all is made better by the choo choo train, horses and a drive around a track in a car. Dd1 steered whilst I did the pedals. Forgot how scary small children driving vehicles is, think my dad was very brave to do it with me when I was younger and there was less protection and safety in place! All happy and home for tea, which dh has kindly put in the oven when I rang him to say 'on way'.

We had got dvd's out for Saturday night, but failed to watch them, instead bickering between our various Internet sites of favour and Simon Cowell on This is your life. There is still hope for us, he didn't make it until he was 43. Ok, well there's hope for me anyway ;-)

Sunday came and went in a barage of miscommunication. Dd1 woke dh up early at 6am, weekends are meant for lie in's, so dh not happy about this. Dd1 then woke dd2 up, so dh huffs n puffs and takes them all downstairs. The day is off to a bad start.

10.30 and we loose dh to get ss, he has to sit for 3 hrs at a Karate Tournament to watch 5 mins of fighting......

2pm and I take the girls to Toy Library for its 7th Birthday Party. Toy Library is good, magician is entertaining, balloon swords go pop, to dd2's disgust, but the bouncy castle is nice and treats are won. We go home happy.

Get home, offer to make tea, but dh and ss are 'down a dungeon' World of Warcraft for those of you who don't know what I'm twittering on about. So give up and rather than sitting on my own with two kids, bail out to a friends taking tea with me. Have fun evening at friends having tea and coffee, whilst our assorted kids play.

All in all not a bad weekend if a little disjointed in communication at times.....

Friday 1 June 2007

Tantrums

I'm guessing its because she's in the tiresome 3's that dd1 is becoming more of a screetching pain every time she doesn't get her own way.

This last weekend her screaming at being showered at Candleston, drew a 1st aider running and my dh, who accused me of shouting back at her, but to be honest, I wasn't shouting, so much as trying to get myself heard over the noise she was making to calm her down (although I did tell her off loudly for pooing in her pants, which is a no no these days) I do try not to sound like a fishwife.

To this end, yesterday whilst walking back from a friends, I turned to go down the next road over, which has at the end of it our road (you can see the houses at the begining of our road from the top of this other road). Dd1 however did not want to walk down this road, oh no, she wanted to walk home the long way.....up the road, along the top road, down the other road, to get to the point that we could see, the end of the road we were on. She proceeded to throw a blue screetching fit, as I insisted we walk along this street.

Embarassingly and perhapse re assuringly, several people opened their doors to check that I was not murdering my child (or trying to kidnap her) who was shuffling about 10 meters behind me, screaming that she did not want to walk down this road. I on the other hand remained calm, and kept asking her nicely to try and keep up.

Todays only incident so far has been the hair brushing, which was just met with more tantrums, screams and tears, and yet no knots we're found, it brushed through in 6 brushes, like the clean, newly cut hair it is.........

Thursday 31 May 2007

Cake day!

Hmm actually that title sounds like something the Order of Pie might like......

So yesterday we made cake! and have been eating it ever since, yummy. I didn't have any choice but to make cake, as need to do something with all of the apples I seem to be left with after the event. Seems the crew didn't take many of them out for HAP points as they should have (reminder to boot Andy to sort this out for next event) So as I'm sinking under apples, the girls and I made Apple Muffin loaf yesterday. Loaf, as my muffin tins are lent out at present.

Details are:

7.25 oz Self Raising Flour
5oz Plain Flour
1.5 Teaspoons Baking Powder
2 Teaspoons Ground Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon Ground Nutmeg
3 Tablespoons Caster Sugar
5oz Unsalted Butter (or Marge)
3 Tablespoons Honey
2 Eggs
5.5fl oz Milk
3 Apples peeled and chunked
1 Teaspoon Cinnamon extra
2 Tablespoons Caster Sugar extra

Oven 200 oc (Gas 6)

Either Grease Muffin Tin or Loaf tin, or put in cases/baking paper into tin

Sift the flours, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar into a large bowl, then make a well in the centre.

Melt butter and honey in a small saucepan over a low heat. Stir continuously until smooth.
Remove from heat
Whisk eggs and milk in a small jug.

Add the butter mixture, egg mixture and apple chunks to the well in the dry ingredients, all at once. Then using a metal spoon stir until just combined, do not over mix, mixture should be lumpy.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin tin, fill each 3/4 full. (or loaf tin if you like) Sprinkle with the combined extra cinnamon and sugar.

Bake for 20/25 mins or until skewer come out clean in the centre.

Leave muffins to cool in the tin for 10 mins, before lifting onto a wire rack to complete cooling.

As I said before, yummy, eat with Custard, Ice Cream or just on own with a cuppa, mmmmmm

Now to have a think, as to what to do with the rest of the apples, caramalise perhapse?

Wednesday 30 May 2007

The Bank Holiday

So we went to work as usual. Took some friends with us, which went OK for us all, I think? bar the small incident with the Tesco version of Fabreeze and the rain.

I should elaborate really, I can see my friend is waiting to on her blog, fire away says I ;-)
Seems we nearly had a disastrous mishap with the aforementioned bottle of stuff, courtesy of the 3 year olds......who managed to get it out of the boot of the car un-noticed, take the lid off it and put it in the middle of the drinks on the table, Que dd2 grabbing it for a drink.......argh! luckily for us all, when it hit her head and eyes, she shut her mouth. Dh spotted it happening and yelled 'dd2 NO' friend rapidly turned around and grabbed bottle, I dropped everything, dh and I grabbed dd2, ran to the standpipe and lobbed her under it at full pelt. She was not amused. It was rather cold. Dragged a 1st aider over and saline administered to eyes, dd2 all ok, didn't look like she'd drunk any of it, no soapy taste/residue in her mouth. Kept her hair smelling nice for a few days though, not that I'd recommend it.

Re the rain, it absolutely pelted it down on the Sunday, so we decamped to the arcades, a nice Italian coffee and ice cream shop and finally the soft play, until it stopped. Funny thing in the soft play, CD on was playing Spanish music from our hols, so now we have the details of the music, to get it off the Internet for dd1 and 2 to learn the words properly :-)

Friend also came back with kitten from the weekend. Alys is her new name and she is the cutest little stripey grey kitten I've seen in a long time. She was being given away free at the cream tea place in the village near where we run events, what a cutie :-)

All in all a good weekend. Think friend and her ds had a good time, if anything my dd1 was the annoying child of the weekend and that was only on the Sunday night, when it also turned out she was feeling a bit poorly too :-(
Guess its not a bad thing when you can get two three year olds to get on for four days on the trot! Let alone the adults!

Tuesday 22 May 2007

Lemons and Blackbirds

So I guess I should start by telling you I'm not going to stick any blackbirds in a pie, certainly not 4 or even 20 of the cute little things and especially not because I have an ickle biddy baby one toddling around the back garden as I type. I spotted him this am. The border looked odd, kind of ruffled, so I took a look out of the upstairs window and there he was, with mum and dad, hopping around looking out for him taking him food, bless. He should be fine, as he's shuffled into the budlia tree base, which is in range of the cat scarer. Wonder if the birds picked our garden to learn to fly in because of that?

Now this is where the Lemons come into it!
Have made yummy Lemon Trickle/Drizzle Cake :-)

4oz Butter
4oz Caster Sugar
3 Eggs
3 Lemons (or in my case 1 lemon and some lemon essence)
8oz Self Raising Flour
Pinch of Salt
50g Icing Sugar

Oven Gas 4 or 180 0C

I Chucked the lot in the blender, bar the icing sugar and and the lemons. But I'll tell you what your really supposed to do with them

Heat oven! Get a load tin and grease it.

1. Cream butter and sugar until light n fluffy, gradually add eggs, beat well between each one. Stir in 2 teaspoons of lemon rind.

2. Sift flour and salt together, add to mixture and fold in gently

3. Stick in tin, level surface

4. Cook for approx 1 hr, test with skewer, when this is clean take cake out of oven, leave in tin.

5. In separate saucepan, heat 50g icing sugar with juice of 3 lemons (I used 1 and had previously bunged in lemon essence as an extra into the cake) whilst it melts skewer your cake approx 12 times all over the top. When its melted, pour over the cake (which is still in its tin right!) and allow to absorb. Once its fully cooled, put in an air tight container and it'll keep for 5 days or so, but I bet you eat it first!

Yummy

So that's been my day really. Oh I did get our new tent today too, quick pick up from shop, it can stay bagged until I need to fathom it on Friday. I did also manage to squeeze in a trip to a friends for a cuppa and a borrow of her drum!! and a trip to twisting tots, so all in all busy day.

PS: No aches from the Aqua Aerobics last night!! for those that want to know?

Monday 21 May 2007

The weekend

Well the weekend got divided into four sections really

Sat am I took the kids out to a friends, got two nice cups of coffee and an ear to listening to my whinging about dh working all morning. I know he has to do it, but just wish he'd share the workload a bit, when he could if he wanted to, if you get my drift. He's just rubbish at delegating/letting go of control! arggggghhhhhhhhhhhh she screams.

Sat pm, Strangehaven writers meeting, they assure me this went well, cause I was upto my eyeballs in kids as usual, I love em, but sometimes I wish they'd play happily by themselves you know! still I'm sure they'll grow up too quickly anyway, and then I'll be wishing they were small again. We did get to go out for a nice walk around some local woods (bar the dog muck, people don't do bagging very well round here at all, hurumph) so the woods may get used for the odd smaller event at a weekend!

Sunday am we dashed for a swim, then upto Leeds for ss's birthday. Bowling with the step family, all rather odd, dh said his ex FIL was being nicer to him than when he married his daughter, lol. SS had an ok time we think, bar the middle bit, where he decided he hated bowling? but they did Quasar as well afterwards, so hope he enjoyed it, meal and Dalek cake too.

Got back here and fantastic friend did us a BBQ, so didn't have to faff with food for everyone, love you lots mate!
Shame dd2 had to fall down the step mind and graze her hands, but she's gotta learn, right?
So bed for the little ones, then more work for us!! the joys of self employment.

Friday 18 May 2007

Cats n my garden!

Whilst I'm on the subject, my newly working anti cat device is doing the trick again. No poo on the grass today. Don't mind cat's myself, if they use the borders and bury their doings. Very happy for them to use a litter tray . Quite happy to have them in the garden, so long as they don't poo on my grass!

We did have a cat, Gandalf, whom we inherited from a friend with bad asthma. He was a huge furball, fantastic cream thing, but bar his rotting teeth,stinky breath, his inability to not sit on the keyboard when dh or I typed, he was fine. Just the extra small people make it hard on him to stay. Dd1 used him as a duster for the hall floor........when dd2 came along and he tried to sleep on her face for 3 days running, we had to say goodbye. The kids still miss him and ask when he's coming back. Although there has been bleatings for a Fish and a Rabbit lately.

He's gone back to his old owner, whose asthma has gotten worse again since he's gone back, but she loves him so much, and she was glad of the break he got down here. Up until then he'd been an indoor cat. Now he's big and brave and goes outside! He also stands from no rubbish from the other cats in the house. He was bullied before by the others in the house. So looks like a bit out outside battling over the use of our garden sorted his macho side out. Saved our grass from poo for a while as well. Still now we have the anti cat device powered up again, we should be sorted. Either that or dh will get an air rifle......

Party Plan

Did the Pampered Chef thing last night, wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting. The woman who did it, was very good at her job, didn't seem as hard a sell as some of these things I've been to. Apparently she used to do Tupperware before, lol. So Pampered Chef is the new Tupperware! they've gone from flogging plastic, to flogging other types of assorted plastic/silicone and stoneware.

Anyway I got suckered in a bit and brought a tart dish with a push out bottom and fluter. It does mean I can now make the white chocolate and cherry tart in this months Sainsbury Magazine though. I think I'm having delusions of being Nigella. At least on the cooking front, lost all hope on obtaining her lifestyle. Makes mental note to ensure kids marry millionaires.

Mind you money isn't everything. The kids are however our current pension plan, which is a dangerous game at the best of times. Time to start making some money soon me thinks. Might try to hang on until Neve is two before doing anything major though. Or maybe three. Its so unfair for them to have to loose me to work, when they're so small. I know thousands upon thousands of mothers do have to work full time and have no choice, so I should consider myself very lucky to be self employed and ticking by not earning much at the moment, and working around the kids needs. However realistically we do know this situation cannot go on forever, as long term there will be nothing set aside for retirement. Should I set myself a goal to be a millionaire by 43, that gives me 10 years right!

I tangent! back to the party. Can you believe I also managed to win something!! only the smallest of small prizes, but lots better than nothing. I got a kiddy safe knife for dd1, which no doubt dd2 will end up using at the right age too, hurrah! I also ordered a silicone spatula, as managed to melt my plastic one that came with my mixer/blender thingy. This one swears it won't melt, which is great as far as I'm concerned, as I appear to be far to good at melting apparatus accidentally.

Dd2 has just squeaked at me for a few minutes, turned out she was trying to say she wanted to sit on the sofa, and 'read' a book to herself, but silly me, I interpreted it as she wanted her books on the floor. Que lots of screaming, until I realised that clawing to get up my leg, onto the sofa, then pointing at what I'd put on the floor for her, meant 'mummy your rubbish, just give me the books and I'll sit here in comfort, thank you'.

My stalker was at the party, but looks like we're over that phase now, phew! There were enough people there too. None of whom myself or my poor friend who I dragged along for moral support knew. So she really needn't have badgered me into going so much. I know every little helps for these party plan things. Also they did spend money with me, when I did a virgin vie, to help out a friend last year, so guess we're quits then? No doubt there will be more around on the run up to Christmas. Bodyshop anyone?

Thursday 17 May 2007

Toy Library

What a grotty start to the day eh? more damn rain....yuk....still its doing the garden some good me thinks. Bar the new tomatoes that have gone out, they appear to be a little distressed at the sudden change in weather, but they were getting a bit leggy, so had no choice really.
That damn cat is back to poo'ing in the garden as well, grrrrrr, have rung dh and told him to bring home a 9v battery, to get the anti cat device going again. Bah!
Did Toy library this afternoon at Belper. I don't think its as good as the one at Crich. Actually its not that they toys aren't as good, because they are. But the setting that's lacking. Its in an old hut, also used for playgroup. But there doesn't seem enough adult chairs for my liking, which I think is actually my main beef with the place! I'm odd eh?! But when you get to my age, a nice seat is so much the better!
The dd's didn't seem that impressed by it either. It's more suited to the younger ones than the older ones.....dd1 has asked if we can NOT go again.
Off to Pampered Chef party tonight with my stalker and another friend, so shall see what the evening brings.

Tuesday 15 May 2007

The weekend and everything after

So for the rest of Saturday, we got the girls their measles jabs (I've gone single vaccine route, as neither dh or I could live with ourselves if anything did go wrong that we could have prevented) so dd1 had her pre school booster and dd2 had her 1st jab, neither of them cried, so hurrah big brave girls. Dd1 is currently fascinated by the Dr's as her 'Auntie' has just qualified as a Dr, so she insisted on watching the needle go in, with a look of horror on her face, but she didn't moan until we got outside, and she didn't cry at all, which is a huge bonus.

It's ss's (stepsons) birthday next week, so we did birthday tea at Grandma's. Dad's old friend and one time worker, G popped over to see him, he's just been promoted at work, so now has nice office and car :-) great to see he's doing well for himself. I do like to see someone whose worked hard get up the ladder. It was even nicer to hear, he's earned so much in the last year, he's just had two months off to prevent him going into the next tax bracket! Oh how I dream of doing that!! Mind you if I'd have stayed in my old job, I would be doing that by now, only without the two months off a year like G, and that's really not worth it with the kids, after all they're only young once!

Sunday we were supposed to go to BIL/SIL's for the day, but BIL ill, so I ended up sorting out washing/ironing, boooooo, cleaning dd1's room with her and putting up a pile of pics, I've been meaning to do for ages. The boys played world of warcraft, sigh......there's something wrong there isn't there? me working on my day off?

So got revenge yesterday and once all kids at school, pre school and nursery, I dragged myself into Derby. Got dd2's broken buggy swapped, got a new phone and tariff, hurrah! can now do photos, vids and music on phone, very techno for me :-) and did coffee and cake with Daemara. Then another friend popped by in afternoon, so shucks, more coffee and nattering. I successfully didn't get any work done, so better make up for it today, the accounts are looming, bah!

Mile for Maude

So we did Mile for Maude on Saturday www.mileformaude.com with the Derby Crew, was a nice walk, it even managed to hold off with the rain, bar one quick, heavy shower! M came and did photos for us, Clary has ensured they're in the paper this coming weekend, with a bit of spiel :-) so hopefully we've raised a bit of money for FSID www.sids.org.uk . Maude's case will be in the papers over the coming weeks, as her mother has sold the rights to make money for FSID. This is indeed a truly worth cause. Her case is unusual, as she was aged 2, when it happened, having her afternoon nap :-( most cases are babies (under 12 months) when this happens, so its vital that further research is done into the matter, to try to save other parents the heartache and pain that Maude's family are going through.

Tuesday 8 May 2007

Aftermath

Well and truely shattered today, now sorting out the aftermath of our event at the weekend.
A nice long sleep tonight and all will be sorted. In the meantime I've been busy washing clothes and kit, and cleaning the house up, as have a friend coming to stay over tomorrow night, so figured the least I could do would be clean the bathrooms and mop the floors.
Poor old dd2 keeps falling over, think she's on the grow a bit, mind you she did bang her head on the radiator earlier, hoping it's not that, making her all wobbly.....which reminds me, as its mile for maude this weekend, I should really go and email Clary.....

Saturday 28 April 2007

I'm Back

Whew, I'm back from an exhausting week of sitting by the pool with the kids. As anyone who has kids, will know, a week by the pool, actually means a week either a) in the pool with them, preventing drowing, b) a week chasing them around the pool preventing drowning, c) a week fishing them out of the pool having nearly drowned, which only happened once with dd1, and we discovered she actually could swim for long enough to shout 'help' twice at dh, who'd just left her on the steps on her own and turned his back for a second. Ahem.

I did actually get a few seconds by myself/with dh this hols too, eternal thanks to my mum and dad, for taking the kids to the kiddy club for a whole hour, two days on the trot. I used this time wisely and read a book! yep, I actually did it. For the first time since I gave birth to dd2, I actually started and finished a book. This surely must mean she's growing up and I finally am starting to get time to myself, hurrah!

So what else did we do, hmmmmm, lets see, I ate a lot. Half board, 3 course breakfasts and dinners........gym required for my post holiday belly again me thinks? before I get harpooned preferably. I danced the silly crocodile dance with my kids every night for a week. I drank lots of cappuccinos and a few cold Budweisers, lurvely. Oh and I debated with dh, whether the guy who looked like Matt Damon, with his pregnant wife (they had the rings) by the pool, was in fact Matt Damon in disguise? guess we'll never know, but it sure looked and sounded like him to me.

More later folkes, don't wish to waste my whole saturday night with dh on here!!

Friday 13 April 2007

Sussed it!

ok, sussed it! maybe I'm not that thick at all, or even blonde ;-P

Damn blogger!!

So here I am, faffing about trying to get this blog to show links, have done everything within my power to get it to work, followed the instructions time and again and it's still not working!!! Even have Apryl on msn and she reckons it must be me being crap, but I swear its not!! The preview page is showing everthing as on there, just when you click on my blog page its not, bah!!! if only I had my very own helpdesk....

Thursday 12 April 2007

I'm alive!!

I'm still here! I'm still alive!! at least I seem to be....

Slowly recovering after last weekends hectic working schedule. It all went ok. Eternal thanks go to Liz for saving my sanity with the kids and Ash and Jane for the gaffer tape, as oopse I'd forgotten the tent had popped a springy, joint thing last year and so had dh.......que huge, I've just driven 3.5 hrs with the kids in the car row, as soon as we arrived. The reviews on the website indicate everyone enjoyed themselves, so hurrah, 1st proper weekend of the season, happy punters :-)

Anyway, hope to post more tomorrow, as must bung the kids in bed, not even had chance to get on mumsnet this week!!! Am I being missed???? girls???????????? We have friends coming round to cook us dinner (yes, you read that right!) so must dash.

Wednesday 4 April 2007

Washerwoman/Seamstress

Well I can honestly say these have been a blur of washing and mending!
? I hear you ask, what on earth are you on about?
I've been brave and tackled the LRP Crew kit in the garage....(LRP = Live Role Play if ya don't already know) see link to our website once again! www.shardslrp.com
So after 3 weeks, yes it's taken me that long! with 4/5 washes per day going through our poor, battered, old washing machine. I can now say, its done!! the kit is
a) Clean
b) Mended to the best of my ability, although a few items still have the odd in-character tear in them, the majority now have sleeves back on, collars in the right place, backs and sides sewn up again! Still have a feeling there's probably a few buttons could be replaced, but that can be an on site thing, as an when items are needed.

So now I guess that all of that is done, it's time to tackle the house again.........I feel the dust mites are enjoying themselves too much, yuk, yuk, yuk, just thinking about it. Where's the hoover!

But not so fast! oh no, as we have an event this weekend, and I'm not quite done yet with work 'issues'.

I still have pouches to make (3 down, minimum 3 to go) and flyers for the next event to write.

In the meantime I sound like I have a herd of elephants over my head. This is due to the Easter holidays, so SS and dd1 are currently bashing about in his room, this is possibly disasterous, as they could we'll be trying to find various 'dressing up items' which ss may well have forgotten, he has thrown out! (wasn't me, honest guv, no really, honest it wasn't, not for once!) They were jumping around in blankets earlier, pretending to be caterpillers, bless. Dd2 in the meantime is 'reading' a book to herself, awwwwwww. Gran is visiting today, so hurrah, should be able to catch up on myself quite well.

Not much to update on my stalker at the mo, she's gone quiet for now, just waves at me as I sail by in the car with a bunch of kids in tow, maybe mass ammount of kids has scared her off? even Domino's managed to deliver on time at the weekend, all seems to be going too swimmingly, if you see what I mean?

So what else have I been upto, not much I can tell ya!
Oh we (dh and I) did drag ourselves off to Poole for the weekend for our anniversary. This was a much welcome break from the kids, although a little odd whilst we got the lay of the land. It seemed when we got there that no one was out of an evening, must have passed a total of 3 cars on the way in to town and our hotel, very odd for a friday night we thought? on saturday things seemed a bit busier, and by the time we'd walked the half mile into town, we went in the back of the shopping centre and came out in the middle of town, thronging with people, great we thought, but then we noticed a distinct lack of places to enjoy the evening.........so we thought stuff it, grabbed the car (after a bit of retail therapy, 1 x dress, 1 x new trainers, hurrah water was leaking in my old ones, 2 x new tops) and we went exploring.

We drove round to Swanage for a quick look, as I vaguely remembered going here once as a kid, it was blowing a gale, so we went back inland a bit.....dh wanted to look round Corfe Castle, I was happy looking at it from the road, seen one, seen 'em all point of view! why climb a hill when you don't have to eh? Was told this wasn't in the sprit of things, but lucky for me, the castle was on winter hours and was shutting soon anyway, hurrah. So back to poole and the search for nightlife.

Lets go to the cinema and see Hot Fuzz (we have had several abortive attempts at this, due to cinemas in Derby being full on Orange Wednesdays) So after a drive round, we found where everyone was hiding, one of those out of town entertainment sites!! Cinema, TGI Fridays, Nandos, Frankey n Bennies, etc etc, all in one big out of town lot. This meant only one of us could drink, so neither did, we saved oursleves for the delights of the Brewers Fayre attached to the hotel.......ahem........still we did get to see the movie at last, GREAT!! just in case you've not been, but I think the whole world has by now.

Anyway must go, pouches to sew, will try and update this more often, might one day do my writing career some good!!

Tuesday 3 April 2007

April!

April, OMG it's April, how the hell did that happen??? coming soon, more on this blog, honest!!! between a house full of kids, Easter hols and sewing kit, bah! anyway more soon promise and I will tell more about the Stalker!

Tuesday 20 March 2007

There's a theme here.......

......and it appears to be lack of time to blog!!
So what have I been doing since I last wrote?

Well, we managed to get the £40.00 worth of Pizza credit eaten, which was nice! Our friends came over on Red Nose day and we demolished it then. Many thanks to them, once again for our lovely presents from the USA.

Saturday saw us trekking to Birmingham, for a day out at the Science Museum. Enjoyed by all, although dh did scarper half way through the day to meet up with his friend, (but we had pre-arranged that) So went round some of it with just my friend and the kids. We did a split, so ss could do the Lego robot thing with my friend. I got to do Kid City with the girls, who loved it and could have stayed there all day.

Do-nuts called however, so I dragged everyone to Krispy Kreme Do-nuts (thankfully for my waistline they're an hours drive away!) So we brought 12, got 12 free thanks to my friends student discount! and then due to friends tall, blonde, slim ability to chat up random blokes behind the counter, we got another 6 free! plus the kids had blagged two whilst in line, so we were heaving with sugary fatness.

Met dh and his mate back at the museum. Pizza hut was selected as the venue for tea. This didn't go down well with dd2, who was starving/wanted to run around too, so I spent some of the evening walking around with her outside, at which point she stuck her finger into some, horrible persons spit.......... I just about got it before she put it in her mouth. Lots of wet wipes later, I was happier, dd2 obviously, didn't care. Que me gibbering about it for the rest of the evening. My mind was put at rest on Sunday tho, as friend, who is nearly a qualified Dr, assured me she'd looked it up and all risk was minimal. The things kids do!

I wasn't overly happy with Pizza huts quality of food that night either, as I wanted pasta, they had none........so the Pizza I ordered, sadly did not conform to Domino's standards, and arrived half burnt (I like my pepperoni none crispy), sigh. Then with dd2 kicking off again, I spent the next half hour, walking her around outside in the buggy (no more spit incidents please!) whilst everyone else ate desert inside (my waist line didn't need it anyway!!)

Sunday woke me up at the sprightly hour of 7am, so I stuck my head back under the covers as it was mothers day. Dh begrudgingly got up, particularly as he'd also got up twice (I love mothers day!!) The kids and dh pounced on me at 7.30, with 7 cards (some homemade) the Mothers Handbook, Gordon Ramsey's latest cookbook and a pen and notepad, awwww, oh and Izzy's latest painted plate!! Checked out the weather, ummm snow!! Did I say spring had sprung, March for you, in like a lamb, out like a lion.
We scoffed breakfast and headed for Great grandma's. Once we'd picked her up, popped to Carolines to grab the post, and examine the fence (it belonged to the bottom neighbours and they've fixed it, hurrah!) and then onto Grandmas.

One toilet break later, we trekked to Spalding in Lincolnonshire, for a day of shopping (outlet mall) and a bash in the play centre. Happy everyone tho, so that's what counts, I even managed to get a new bra in my size in the M&S outlet!! woooo hoooooooo
McArthur Glen take note, get some soft play at your outlet malls!

Monday was spent with the kids at nursery and after the trek to Leeds to drop off ss I layered up (snow) and sorted out the garage, I now know where things are! Can reach the fuse box when required and have a pile of kit in the kitchen, which I'm slowly washing and mending!!
Hectic, moi?!