The Children Made Irish Soda Bread

For all my American friends out there who asked about Irish Soda Bread, we finall got round to making some.

Irish Soda Bread

1lb 2oz of Soda Bread Flour
1 teaspoon of salt
12 floz of buttermilk

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl, when sufficiently mixed turn out onto a floured surface.
knead and work the dough into a circle shape and cut into quarters. This mix is enough to make a huge 'circle' and this will give you 4 generous quarters of soda bread. I made double the quantity and the soda bread lasted the kids a couple of days as a snack.

Cook on a hot heavy based pan or griddle with a little bit of butter.

Serve hot with butter and jam.

Seb's Birthday

Photos from Seb's Birthday party in October. We don't usually go for parties away from the house purely from a cost point a view. But we shared the costs with another and had a joint party in one of the near by soft play areas. It was fun and the children all enjoyed themselves, it felt strange coming home to a tidy house too.


In the morning opening gifts.

The party table!



Mag was really getting into the swing of things (NOT).


The food was nuggets and chips!

Toni's Birthday!

Its been a month since I updated my blog! I have lots of photos and probably too many stories to tell ..... I will post what I can over the next few days until I get caught up.



Toni on her birthday way back in September!

More photos from our holiday

I did this vertical drop - it was scary! Oh and this was at Port Aventura Theme Park, in Salou, Spain.

This is the Dragon Khan - oh and I rode on it twice, Mag five times!

We visited this beach but did not take the children on to it to play - too many people to be safe. We had a little more private beach at the hotel where we were staying.

SOME of my photos from our holiday

 We went to Salou in Spain for a fortnight recently, as usual i haven't had time to blog or chat about it.  I am swamped with all the catchy uppy stuff.

Cleaning up my greenhouse

Today I am clearing my twenty-odd tomato plants, eight cucumber plants
with cucumbers attached, and a dozen or so pepper plants. I have had
to throw every single plant out, barring a water logged chili pepper
plant.
I spent all summer nurturing these plants, twice a day watering,
feeding, spraying and loving. Space, effort, money and most
importantly my time.
In August my tomatoes were healthy green and swollen. I went off on my
holidays at the start of September, handing over the care of my two
greenhouses to my much trusted neighbour. On my return from my
holiday I discovered not one single plant had survived. Well one left
and it is a chili plant which is water logged and half dead.
I don't know what went wrong, some were water logged, some were bone
dry, none of the plants appeared healthy. One greenhouse was closed up
and clearly never ventilated, the other destroyed in the wind with
little done to rescue it's contents.
I want to cry over this, my friend who came in to help me clear up did
cry as she saw every week the progress we had made. I can't say
anything my neighbour, as I am sure she feels guilty enough. It's
hard, when they were gone in the summer I looked after their crops of
tomatoes and peppers for three weeks, it never occurred to me that
things could go so badly wrong.

Saunas and Storms

I treated myself today to a sauna. Well to be perfectly honest I had
some difficulty shaking off all the ankle biters the last couple days,
especially Sol. So yesterday I bought this little pink plastic
mobile phone that contained sweeties, and I used it. But not to make
calls, no I am not that crazy, but to bribe my four year old into
going to the creche for a while. She did, and the others duly
followed. Kids got rid off now it was my turn to look after ME,
something that does nor happen so often. Our hotel has a lot of
facilities including a gymnasium, Turkish baths, sauna etc. So I did
the Turkish bath first, I lasted about 20 seconds! Didn't like it one
bit. Unperturbed I tried the sauna, ooh it was warm, smelled lovely
and it did me the world of good. I have circulation problems and
despite the warmer climate I never get my feet thawed out, well the
sauna was magic. The first time in a long long time my feet were warm.
After the sauna I did a lovely jacuzzi followed by 20 lengths on the
heated indoor pool. And just when you thought that this was the end to
my story I had another jacuzzi. Lol I am spoiled. Finished up just in
time for kids
to be collected!
Now back to yesterday ....
It was warm and we decided to head to the beach. We watched forks of
lightening move up the coast from the waters edge. Eventually it was
hitting our town so we headed up to our apartment for a much needed
siesta. That night we watched the most amazing electrical storm over
the water from the same beach we had been on earlier in the day.

Sent from my iPhone whilst away in the sun