Getting ready

Well it’s the 4th of December! Don’t roll your eyes thinking I am stating the obvious will you!

I haven’t updated my blog site for so long people are beginning to think I have fallen off the face of the Earth. So here I am with a summery update for everyone, especially those who asked.

Anyway, there was a series of mini catastrophes happening such as the car breaking down while I was travelling at speed (we were ok), and the roof leaking in, and the car breaking down again, and needing repairs done at our other house and, and, and …oh there is a list.

My eldest child has been working incredibly hard lately, he has finished all his GCSE maths work and is finally ready to do his exam. That exam itself pretty much organised though forms still have to go in but the school who have accepted him are dealing with that. Mag’s first GCSE paper is in February so he has two months to revise and get everything up to scratch, if you take away time at Christmas it really isn’t that long. We have started the practise papers with him, he got an A this week, it was a low A but its still and A and shows that there is room for improvement. He is confident that come February he will be getting an A*, and of course I am really proud of him. The following academic year he will do his sciences exams and contemplate doing the advanced maths exam but we will see how it’s all going in a couple of months as there is no real rush for all this. Anyone who knows Mag will understand why he is doing these exams, he is a bright boy who has always excelled at everything he has done.

I am trying to get organised for Christmas (who isn’t?), and I am going to officially give myself a week off from cooking apart from the main event. We don’t have Christmas dinner on Christmas day usually, it’s just too much as I like to spend time with the kids and not slave over the proverbial hot stove. So I have spent several days cooking, baking, freezing, then cooking some more, vacuum sealing and freezing some more. I now have two weeks worth of prepared food in the freezers, everything from sausage rolls ready to go in the oven to lasagna that just needs finishing off and I am not going to let anyone near it till Christmas week. It feels good, and I have to say I do feel slightly smug about that fact too. Then I decided to get all of the presents done, which they are almost. The cards have yet to be written; I have written a few envelopes and will slip the cards in later. Now back to that week off ……… if only the laundry fairy could come in and do that for me then I would be all sorted.

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.