SUNDAY SUMMARY, Birthday, desks and sleep

Okay, I HAD planned on doing a "snap Shot" Sunday  but it turned out to be more of a photographic summery of my week .....

Here goes

Monday night the children asked for a sleep over. When we went to check on them this is what we found.


I spent most of Tuesday (between swimming lessons, and running the kids to summer scheme, and childminding) trying to tidy the house.
I have to say my husband has the most annoying habit in the world, his newspapers. He buys the Sunday Times every week but never gets it all read. I don't know if you know the Sunday Times but there are 60 supplements with it, and now he has started buying yet another newspaper. If he doesn't get one read he keeps it, and each week this rolls on till he has stacks. I am not allowed to touch the papers, if I were to throw them out he would come looking for a certain article or something. What annoys me most is the fact he stores them next to the bed, oh and the newspaper print stains our white painted floor. Thing is most of the stuff in the Sunday paper we have already read or heard about during the week on the NEWS funnily enough.

No photos from Wednesday, much to my regret! We had early morning swimming lessons then on to our home education day. It was a tiring day, but very successful so well worth it.

Thursday, after swimming, summer schemes, and child minding, Hollie and I set about making some jewellery. This is the bracelet we made which we have since given to a friend.

Okay, so the desks are not really from Friday but I will share the photo anyway. We got them in Tesco's, reduced from £49 down to £12.25 which is a steal. They are MDF and just slot together in two minutes, the kids love them and they are ideal for their crafts and colouring. I am sure they will enjoy doing their skool at them too.

Saturday was my birthday, 21 again! We had Moet & Chandon champagne mixed with orange juice for breakfast otherwise known as bucks fizz! I didn't do anything else for the day, just sat around and rested after another hectic week.

NOT ME MONDAY

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

--------------

It was not me who decided to test out how hot the vanity lights were above the bathroom sink. We don't usually leave the main bathroom light on overnight for the children, it didn't blow so I didn't need to check if it was ok to leave the vanity lights on.

This is not my very sore burnt finger .... and I definitely did not use the F-WORD!


It is not me who plugged in my toothbrush charger because my toothbrush was out of charge. I didn't forget to put the toothbrush in the charger and discover that when I needed to clean my teeth.

It was not me who stayed up really late the other night when my husband was away on business. I wasn't making the most out of every minute I actually had the TV remote to myself.

It was not my five year old child who decided to try do a toy maze above his head to see if he could do it without looking. It was not the same child who spent two afternoons in the hospital with various staff trying to retrieve the balbearing that came out of the maze and fell into his ear. No way would my Seb ever do anything like that.

It was not me who was almost strangled by her washing line. It was not a serious incident, nope, being chocked was really ok. It was not the new £70 washing line recently purchase from Argos. I am not going to complain that it did not collapse without warning.

It is not me who is asking for a new laptop for her birthday this week. I don't want one with a 17 inch screen, and I certainly don't want one with a huge hard drive for all my graphics and photos. It is not me who is living in hope, though I do suspect I will be disappointed and might have to go ask Santa instead.

It was definitely not me who borrowed the next door neighbours bun tins. I wasn't being lazy trying to do our buns in half the number of batches for my daughter's birthday tea. It wasn't me who had the neighbours kitchen door key whilst looking after their kids, it was not me who took the bun tin, honest! It was not their children who would reap the rewards of fast baked buns.
I did not ask my 12 year old son to return the tin on my behalf, he did not knock on the door seeing the car sitting in their drive. I do not think they were in the shower or somewhere like that, and my son definitely did not put the tin back in its rightful place in the kitchen and leave the house again without their knowledge. I did not tell my son off for that, nope, I would never do that after all going into peoples houses without their knowing is not wrong.

THE TALL SHIPS (in the distance)

The boys went into our village to watch the tall ships go past yesterday. Our village held a special event with stalls, a band and other things going on. People came from far and wide, the place was packed!

Due to wind conditions the tall ships did indeed pass by but they were not on their planned route, this meant they were too far away to get a good view.

VISIT TO THE ECOS CENTRE IN PHOTOS

Last Sunday we went to the Ecos Centre in Ballymena. It is set in lovely grounds, has a duck pond but best of all its free. It is worth a visit though I am not entirely sure I would make a special trip there unless the weather was fantastic.



Attack of the ladybirds!

PLUM JAM RECIPE

We are making plum jam today.

Well you know its about time I saw the fruits of my fruit! My plum tree has hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of plums on it. Some of the plums are ripe, some not, some past their best.

RECIPEyou need 2kg plums (fruit weight) or 4lbs (mix of ripe and almost ripe is good for pectin)
1 litre of cold water or 32 fl oz
125 ml of lemon juice or 1/2 cup
1.5 kg of caster sugar (warmed in oven speeds up process) or 3lb

Assuming you already know how to make jam and sterilise the jars!

You will need about 6 jars for this recipe if they are large ones or eight small. I always sterilise loads to be on the safe side.

Chop the plums up, and of course discard the stones. My fingers have turned yellow by the way so wear gloves if this worries you. The chopping up took ages so make sure you go for a pee first and do all your other stuff as you are going to be busy for a while.

Place the plums and the water in a nice big heavy pan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 50 minutes or until the fruit is soft. This is not an opportunity to go to the local for a pint or anything, just make yourself a cup of coffee and wait ... you probably need it after chopping up the plums.

Add the lemon juice and sugar now, stir them over a low heat for five minutes.

Bring to the boil now for 20 minutes (check for next stage from 15 mins onwards) , keep stirring or better still ask someone else to stir for you as your hands will still be sore from the chopping up.

Remove the scum from the surface and test your jam, it is ready when it falls from a wooden spoon in sheets. Don't do the taste test at this stage otherwise you will burn your mouth!

Test for the setting by placing the jam on a cold plate in the freezer for 30 seconds, if its ready the jam will wrinkle if you push it with your finger. Lick your finger!

Remove any scum from jam and transfer into jars. Put lids tightly on the jars and invert for two minutes, this creates a nice sterile environment in the led and helps create a good seal. You can store this jam for up to 12 months so long as you keep it in your cupboard.

The jars ideally need to cool over night and initially the jam looks runny, don't worry about this it will be set by the time you have your toast made the following morning.


I am also making breadmaker jam - recipe to follow!

WHAT A BALLS UP

WAAAAAA 7:10 this morning my alarm clock went off! Oh no sorry, it wasn't my alarm clock it was Ellis and he was extremely upset.

I got up to investigate, Seb was telling me he had a ball in his ear. A little silver ball from a stupid plastic party bag maze game, how on earth? I asked him if he put the ball there and he swore to me he didn't and it had just rolled in. I couldn't see how that could happen, but duly had a look in his ear in the light. I was unable to see anything, so I reassured him and went back to bed for another hour.

I quizzed him more when I got up, he was adamant that he didn't deliberately put the silver ball in his ear. He demonstrated how he put his head over to one side on his pillow so the ball would roll out. He explained that he was trying to do the maze without looking at it, he wanted to get the ball into the centre, the back came off the game and the ball just rolled into his ear.

At lunch time conversation came back round to this metal ball. I remembered the doctors torch Mag had got from when he was in hospital in January ..... hmm. Well I shone it in his ear and for a very brief moment I 'thought' I saw something and then it was gone. I tried again to see the ball but no luck.

This bugged me, I searched Seb's bed and his room for this little ball, worryingly I couldn't find it anywhere. In the end I made the decision to take him to our minor injuries unit (its sort of like an A&E but for less urgent cases). Still sceptical I got the nurse to have a look in Seb's ear .... well lo and behold there it was! The nurse even let me have a good look in too which was so cool.

A tiny steel balbearing was nestled under seb's grommet (vent) and it wasn't going anywhere. They tried lubricant in there, plus used a rather noisy suction machine too. All of these efforts just made Seb's ear more sore and distressed him further. Further examination revealed that the balbearing had not even budged a millimetre.

So they are arranging for him to see the ENT consultant in the next couple days, I have to ring on Monday morning to find out when. Seb actually has an appointment at the end of August scheduled to get his grommets checked, but they say he cant wait that long as his ear would get infected. So its looking he might need an anaesthetic to get this ball out, I would suspect his grommet will come out too but who knows! I will update on Monday when we get word on what is to happen.

Oh this is not the first time Seb has had a foreign body - here's another time PEGGED.

Another time involved sweetcorn in his nostril which he sniffed up, I had to use a booger sucker to retrieve it.

BIRTHDAY GIRL

Just a few photos of our day. We had our four children, the two children I am looking after plus another. The boy's weren't having their photos taken (rolling eyes) but never mind here's the girls.

My two extras!