Sunday 4 April 2010

Happy Eastes Sunday /Gardening against the odds

Happy Easter Sunday! Whaddya think of my biscuit then? masterpiece eh! well the girls, their friend and I had fun doing those yesterday afternoon, kept us entertained. This morning however I have been doing other things.

The morning started with my lovley REM sleep being disturbed by a very excited daughter wielding an Easter Egg, all good, the Easter bunny has done his job well. REM 0, Kids 1. So dh distracted the kids by letting them eat an egg each and I got half way through my friends 'Kick Ass' Graphic, before an almighty crash signaled the end of 'A's plantpot and stand (very sad as inherited from his deceased mother) and one very upset dd1, as she realised the significance of what her dancing had done........

Fastforward a few hours, graphic finished (yay) and breakfast out of the way, I decide to pot on a few of our attempts at the growing of veg and flowers for the year.




Above are our lettuce seedlings, nestling in garden fleece, in a hope they may survive.

This is when I discover that a) its blooming freezing outside, despite a mixture of sunshine and showers and b) that dd2 has been attempting to kill several of the plants all by herself....it's enough to drive you to chocolate (and more coffee) I tell you!

Below is a picture of a surviving sunflower, dd2 has discovered that you can happily kill them by slotting your finger nails through the stems.......she's also re-discovered the naughty step and an unhappy mummy, I'm hoping she's learned her lesson?

So in the end I managed to pot on the remaining few Sunflowers, (shame dd2 killed the best 3, sob, sob) 6 Tomatoes and 6 Sweetcorn as well. The results are displayed on our dining room table below, with a variety of other flower seedlings still waiting to grow. I've dragged the table in front of the window in the hope that this will assist the growth, should the sun every escape the cloud for 5 mins?





Saturday 3 April 2010

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to whom ever is out there reading this blog!
Today has been a busy one so far, but as Meri is away I thought I'd pick up the batton and post for the 2nd time this year about our baking adventures!

A, the girls and I whizzed to Beeston briefly this morning, and whilst dh did things at the Bank, we legged it around Wilkos to get big pots for our seedlings to transfer into (more on that in another post), I then snuck into Cafe Nero for a quick frappe latte, so dh had no choice but to join me :-) mwah haha...then grabbed some cupcake cases from Sainsb's and dropped A back at work in Ripley.

Got home, grew another child from down the road immediately, so I thought right, I know what will keep the kids entertained, a spot of baking! told them, they all ran a mile, seems playing mums with babies is what they'd rather be doing today. So I baked in peace instead!

I've created some lovely chocolate biscuits for them all to decorate later this afternoon, when their friend gets back from swimming, we have lots of sprinkles, eggs, and a variety of coloured icing to knock up, which they can spoon over to their hearts content.

I also knocked up the lovely vanilla cupcakes that you can see in the picture, what do you think of my piping, not bad for my 1st ever attempt eh? dd1 did the box at school, it says to mum on the other side, alas the chocolate goodies that were in it seem to have disappeared before I got a look in?! and the smaller daffodils, now in the cup, were on dd2's easter bonnet (which was minimalist, as I only realised about it all the day before, ahem) I'm sure the friends we have popping by tonight will help us shift this abundance of cakes, failing that I doubt very much that we'll struggle, in fact I may just try one now, with some lovely Mocha coffee that my mum brought me back from the Caribbean, mmmmmm.