Creative day

So with Mothers day gone (for the UK at least) and Easter approaching, what better thing to do on a Saturday afternoon with the girls, than create an Easter basket, in which you can store a multitude of things! These baskets were courtesy of Home Bargin's, cause I'm a busy mum! and they had a fab selection of quick things to do for Easter, so for about 79p each, we now have these all made up. There's an Easter Hen stuck to each side of the basket, with lots of great ready to stick eggs, eyes, beaks, which is fab, as it means dd2 doesn't need to be let loose with glue, always a good thing. So whilst the girls decorated their hens, I made the baskets and handles for the middle (i.e. I stuck them together). Everyone is pleased with the end results though, will be good for Easter Egg collecting, should an egg hunt arise?

Keeping with a crafty theme for the afternoon, we decided to make chocolate cup cakes (I tried to sway the girls to lemon, or vanilla, with no success) here's our recipe if you get the urge to try it.

8oz Self Raising Flour

8oz Margarine/Butter

8oz Sugar (in this case not caster, but brown, as it was all we discovered we had left! if you find this, I recommend extra beating)

3 Eggs

and around 6 teaspoons of Green & Blacks Coco Powder. (its an add to taste thing)

Oven 180 degrees, for around 20-25 mins.

We then waited for them to cool and iced them with Water Icing (icing sugar and water to desired consistency for those of you who aren't at all familiar with this sort of thing) and decorated in an assortment of ways (I did mine with just jellybeans, but as you can see the girls let rip!)

Dd2's cake

DD1's cakes

We had a lovely afternoon creating these cakes and can all testify they are yummy to eat too!

Changing Rooms

As you can see the Buzz Lightyear orange has disappeared and we're now looking at a rather pink and purple room! Grandad came over today to paint the bed white at dd1's request and I think its looking quite good, although it needs another coat yet, and there are still all the skirtings to do and the inside of the door, plus windowledge to paint and re seal (inside and out, damn the poor quality of our houses windows/the people who put them in, but that's another story) Dd1 is very happy with the quality of things and is looking forward to choosing her new curtains, lampshade and no doubt other adornments.

Owl Swap

WOW! How fabulous are these goodies? Can you tell I have a very big smile on my face! They arrived in the post today from Naturegirl in USA.
I have to say I'm very chuffed, as are the dd's. As you can see we have two lovely crafted Owl bags, an owl oven glove, A little blue owl, who is hanging up in the kitchen as I type, some lovely green owl fabric for me to craft with, and some funky napkins and owl and heart chocolate lollies, which I have managed to stop the girls all eating in one go.

I'm now hoping my swap was ok, as I'm sure there's more here than I sent to Naturegirl, which is a bit embarrasing, ahem.

Dora Birthday

Dd2 was 3 on Wednesday, so as she was faced with a mid week birthday, which is always rubbish by celebratory standards we had a party on the Sunday before, so ss could join in too.
We didn't have anyone round really, just family, plus Auntie Lizzy and two of dd1's friends! We didn't invite any of dd2's nursery buddies, as she can hardly name them, or at least she didn't bother to name them until the morning of the party, when she suddenly started checking that a naughty boy she doens't like, wasn't coming! yikes.........I explained that this year she's just having a small party, she gets a bigger better one next year, once she knows who her friends are.

So Dora the Explorer was the theme, so I made a cake and cheated, by purchasing Dora figures and sticking them on top, well at least you can play with them afterwards right? Underneath the icing was a scrummy chocolate cake, in fact it was that lovely I'm debating replicating it this weekend so Richard and Dave can take some home with them (as Dh informs me they are visiting Saturday night) after all you can never have too much of a good thing.

Dd2 got lots of lovely presents, including a lavender wheat bag, which can be viewed on Meridians blog. Her actual birthday on Wednesday saw an additional glut of goodies including a fabby hobby horse from Auntie Liz, which I have had to extract from bed again tonight, as it appears one should sleep with ones horse and not put it in the stable, as I keep insisting!
In fact I'm that worn out by this week of partying I can't wait to slow down a bit on Saturday, I'm just hoping I've not accidently arranged to do anything? I think I need a day at home in peace and quiet.

OWL Swap

Finally I can blog my little owl!
I stitched and sent this cute little fella across to Nature Girl in Meridians owl swap the other month, but it took slightly longer than the stated 7 days to get to her! She finally received it last Wednesday, phew! so now I can publish the picture for the world to see. Its not too bad for only my 2nd attempt since school! from Nature Girls blog, she seems to like it too, hurrah.
Also included in the swap were chocolate for mum and Nature Girl herself (though I think dad got the choc!) and some wool (or yarn if you prefer to call it that) but silly me I forgot to take a picture of it all together, doh, well it was my 1st swap, can't get it all right eh?
Will post more in the next few days, as have been very busy with dd2's 3rd birthday, but more on that tomorrow.