Christmas present in Chester

This weekend the family visited Chester. John treated me as a Christmas present. It is a place I have always wanted to go and I wasn't disappointed.

The Christmas lights and trees were still up, which made the streets look beautiful. Our hotel was opposite the Roman amphitheatre so we had a great view of it and the river from the window. James loved clambering about on the stones (takes after his Dad) and was fascinated by the thought of lions being there.

We all enjoyed the early morning walk along the river and crossing the suspension bridge. People had placed locks with their and their sweethearts names engraved on them on the bridge. Quite sweet really. The walk ended with a big fat fry up at the Cafe on the Wall.

The Rows (Tutor style shops which had two levels) were lovely. It was pleasent looking round the Rows, climbing the different levels, peering in shops that sold gorgeous things that I could never afford.

We also had time to visit Deva Roman Museum.  Deva was the Roman name for Chester. It was OK, I think it could have been better. James liked it, as there was a hands on area upstairs. I enjoyed looking at the different finds from archeological digs in the area. There was a part of a dig in the cellar, but you couldn't see much.

We also visited the cathedral.  I was impressed that there was no charge, but a donation, unlike many cathedrals we visit. There was a a display of beautifully lit Christmas trees around the quad. The cathedral was stunning inside. We were luck enough to visit while the choir was practising. I could have quite happily sat listening to them all day.

Chester also has the most complete city wall in the UK. We were constantly up and down on it, using it as a way to walk round the city. It was handy as when James was beginning to get fed up of walking he woukd quite happily walk on the wall.

I would love to go back again. Maybe without the children, not that they were a pain, on the contrary,  they were very well behaved, but it would be nice to go and have a romantic break there. To treat ourselves in the champagne and chocolate cafe and have a beautiful meal that didn't come with a colouring book. Maybe when they are older.

Cake Flops. I mean pops.

As stated in the previous post, that amongst all my Christmas goodies was a cake pop kit. So I decided to channel my inner Jane Asher and have a pop at making some. Armed with my pretty pink silicon pop mould, Victoria sponge batter and a rather poor instruction book, I dreamt I would be turning up at my sister's party tomorrow with arm fulls of delicately iced treats.

This is what I aimed to achieve.

I started off well.

However, due to an inbalance of cake mixture my pops had a flat bottom. I thought I would be able to disguise it with the decoration.

The finished result.

Not quite what I was aiming for. These were the best, the rest refused the stay on the sticks and slid down them rather pathetically. Penny and John enjoyed eating the dregs. I'm too ashamed to take them to Cols tomorrow (hangs head in shames).

Totally Spoilt

This Christmas I have been complete spoilt by my family and friends. It just goes to show how well they all know me. These are a few of the goodies I got this year.

A fabulous handbag which will go completely with my rockabilly dresses and will make a change from carting round a changing bag.

A very posh handbag, so posh it comes in its own bag. So posh, I dare not use it. So posh, I'm thinking about hanging it on the wall to stare at it and occasionally stroke it.

A wine making kit and 2 bottles of Stags Breathe whisky, my favourite. So 2014 is looking very merry already.

A weekend in Chester. It is a place I have always wanted to visit, as it is steeped in history.

A mass of cake decorating, cake pop goodies and bread making things. These will keep me very busy. Hopefully everyone will benefit from this gift.

Some gorgeous clothes. My New Year Resolution is to make more effort with my appearance, so these will help, as will the make up and smellies I received.

A external hard drive. I'm on a mission to sort all my photos out and keep them in one place in some organised order.

There are lots of other bits and bobs. I'm very grateful to everyone. I'm hoping the presents we got people are just as well received as mine.

2013

Obviously the most amazing thing to happen this year was the birth of Penny, who now at 8 months has flourished into a content, happy, smiley baby who adores her brother. 

James has also transformed this year, from a baby to a thoughtful, caring boy. Who is happy, lively and has a cheeky sense of humor and crafty smile. He is polite and freely gives hugs and kisses to all. He too has come on leaps and bounds. I was initially worried how the new baby would affect him. I shouldn't have, he is a very attentive older brother, who makes sure Penny is included and safe.

Also, thanks to my maternity leave, this year we have had the freedom to go away on holiday. Our week in Yarmouth was brilliant (the weather helped) as was the trip to London to see the dinosaurs and caravaning with Grandad. 

So looking back at this year, I'm thanking my blessings for my little family and the time with have spent together. 

Christmas 2013

We have had a lovely Christmas.

James, at 2 years old, had a lot more understanding this year. We put out the mince pie, carrot and sherry for Father Christmas. After watching Snowman and snowdog, we had a chocolate off the Christmas tree and had a look out the window to see if we could see Father Christmas.  

Christmas morning,  James had completely forgot about Father Christmas. He didn't see his stocking at the end of the bed. John had to go and check if he had been. James liked to explore each present before he opened the next. He walked into the living room, he didn't notice the giant stash of presents right I  front of the door. Ohhhh. It wasn't long before he had helped Penny open her Little Tikes activity house and have a good play in it. Up went the fire engine tent. He was so excited to find he had a roly digger. 

The morning soon whizzed by, leaving the toys was a little too much for James, but there were the only tears of the day and soon past with the excitement of seeing Grandad and telling him about his digger. 

Christmas dinner was lovely. James was well behaved. He is normally went we go out, but this was 3 courses, so a long time for him to sit. Penny fell asleep during pudding, not before getting cuddles from all the staff. 

Everyone came back to ours for the family presents. I think we were all pleased and spoilt rotten.

Right. I'm calling it Christmas.

Right, rubbish telly on, sherry poured and breathe.
Today I have mainly be running around doing a food shop, trying not to turn into one of those fantic woman who shop like the world is coming to an end and has a trolleys full of tea bags.
Today was a mission, we had a plan with the aim of doing all the last mintues shopping done, in, out without have a meltdown eithervthe kids or us. I dropped John and James in Lincoln in find a toy and a few prezzies and Penny and I headed to Morrisons. Success, only took us 1.5 hours. Note to self, write the shopping list in order of the store set out next time.
So, we celebrated by opening the Christmas nibbles for tea and watched the Goonies.

Upholstery part 3

Right the chair is finished just in time for Christmas. Hooray.  After carefully sewing the panels together the cover sliped over the top of the chair. Much to my disappointment it didn't fit right on the arms. However, with a bit of brute force and a heavy duty staple gun, it finally surrended. I'm very pleased with the results. I've kept the pattern just in case it needs covering again. I'm looking for another chair now to go with it.

Bedroom under the stairs.

The other week we visited Warners studio Harry Potter Tour, which was amazing. As a result James has decided he would like his bedroom under the stairs. This is him moving in with a sleeping bag and Sleepy. The hoover now has its own bedroom.

Procrastinating and cake.

Procrastinating - The art of putting what you should be doing by doing something pointless, irrelevant and eating cake. I am an expert and for the last week I have cleaned the cupboards, sorted Penny's old clothes, bleached the shower and eaten lots of cake. Why? Because I'm avoiding ringing up the supply agency and signing back with them.
My maternity leave is due to finish at the end of this month. The thought of going back at the moment fills me with dread, the early mornings, the not knowing if I'm working or not, the irregular money and most importantly missing the children. I know I'm lucky compared with some who have to work fill time and put their children in child care. However, needs must and tomorrow I really need to ring the agency or clean the cooker.

Dusting down the decorations.

It is that time of year again where I find myself crawling into the cupboard under the stairs, groping about in darkness to find the Christmas decorations, tree, slightly damp wrapping paper and a box of crackers which I hope still have some bang in them.
I have to say I'm not one to go over the top with the decorations. We tend to have a nice classy tree and a few choice ornaments and candles. I have a feeling that once my children start school and bring home the cotton ball snowman, doily snowflakes and carrier bag wreaths, my classy will turn tacky and I will turn into my mum. My mum would let me and my sisters decorate the tree (when I say decorate, I mean throw as much stuff at the tree before my two sisters got a chance and arguing) then whilst we were in bed redecorate the whole thing herself.
I have started a tradition in our house. Ever year my children get to choose a new decoration for the tree. The idea is that when they grow up and have a home of their own, they can take their decoration with them. Last year James chose a huge wood star, which our tree struggled to hold, but he was only 1 and at tbe time he was obsessed with cats and stars

Baby led weaning update.

In an earlier post I explained how we are combining baby led weaning and the spoonfed mush. As we started weaning Penny at 4 months, by giving her baby rice, which she hated unless there was jam in it, and apple puree. Our range of food mush now includes pear, pineapple and apple, plum and apple, damson and apple, carrot and swede, sweet potato, and broccoli and carrot. These have all been super smooth purees.
Now she is a little old we have started in introduce finger foods and less blended food. The blended food we now give her is exactly the same as the food we eat. The makes meals times a lot simpler for us all. So far she has had lasagne,  spag bol, any veg we had, soup, banana and beans.
We had offer her a range of finger food with she can taste and play with. This allows me to eat my food while it is warm rather than feeding her first. So far she has tried toast, spag bol, chips, breadsticks, cheese, yorkshire pudding, biscuits, rusks, carrot, cucumber,  pepper, noodles, broccoli, cauliflower and banana. After she has finished throwing it around she has her puree. I don't think she eats much apart from the cheese, some goes in but comes out again. It is just getting her use to different textures and flavours. We did the same weaning method with James and he eats really well.

Todays effort.

I'm pleased with the decoration. The fondant icing is a bit ropey, I was in a hurry to get it done.

Trick or Treat

This is my pumpkin, James chose the design. He help hollow out the pumpkin as well. 

This is Johns, it took him so long to do that James, Penny and I got bored. It is good though.

Today we made Halloween biscuits and tonight we let James stay up a little longer to see the trick and treaters (we decided not to take him because he is too young still). After a few people had been and he shyly gave out sweets,  he soon got into the swing of things. He kept putting on his pumpkin mask he won, running from the back door to knock on the front shouting trick or treat. He would go to bed because he as insistent more children were coming. We had to convince him they had all gone to bed.

Upholstery. Part 2

As a novice to upholstery, I am just going to wing it with this chair. I have managed so far redo the cushion cover with success.  I thought the zip would be a challenge,  but thanks to You Tube it was pretty straight forward. So on to the next step.
As with most things, it is the preparation which takes the most time. Yesterday, with James' help, I striped the chair and made patterns ready to sew.

First, I labelled each part of the chair with maker pen. This hopefully with make it easier when making the pattern.





Next, I unscrewed the legs and took out the staples which held the black cover the

fabric tight.

Then took the staples out of fabric inside the seat part. This release the fabric cover, which just slipped off.

Using a seam unpicker thing. I seperated each panel of the cover. I seperated at the seam. I have to remember to leave seam allowance when cutting the pattern.

I pinned each panel onto the new fabric. I did the reverse side of the new fabric and the reverse side of the old panels.

Leaving a seam allowance of 1cm I cut out each panel. My scissor are naff so they look a bit hacked.

Tomorrows job Is the sew the panels together.

I've started, but will I finish?

A few months ago I found an old tub chair lucking on a facebook selling page. Since we have a lack of furniture and are going to be inundated at Christmas, I grabbed the chair with both hands. It had definitely seen better days, so I had the crazy notion to upholster it.
Since then it has been languishing in the corner of our living room, rather looking sorry for itself, even with a throw draped over it.
Until now. As a novice seamstress the task seemed rather daunting.  I have started and finished the cushion, even including a zip. It was too different either. It just took careful cutting along the seams to make a pattern. Remembering to add seam allowance when cutting the new fabric and double checking everything before I started sewing. I'm rather pleased with it. As a result the chair is look considerable happier. Now for the rest.

Silent Sunday

Penny. 6 things I miss about you already.

The 9 months of worrying and waiting for you to arrive seemed to take forever. Now you are 6 months old and it whizzed by so quickly. You have already grown and changed so much that I could write pages on it. However, I have limited myself to 6 things that I miss about you.

1. The way you used to hold your ear to help you fall asleep.
2. The way you curled up in a ball around my hand, while I was winding up.
3. I miss having you in the Moses basket in our room, so I could just look at you.
4. I miss your tiny baby cry, now you just yell.
5. I miss you tucking your leg up, curling up and sleeping on my chest.
6. I miss the hair you had when you was first born.
   

Chocolate Heaven.

Once again the lovely people at BzzAgent have sent me a load of goodies in the post. This morning I received some Tesco Finest Chocolate to review. Though I'm tempted to indulge and gorge myself in a chocolatey, gooey mess. I have resisted, saving the chocolate for a dinner party later in the week. So I can  share and get other people thoughts and opinion on the product. The chocolates are now safety tucked away, thrown up on the highest shelf, which I can't reach and therefore hopefully won't be tempted.

Cheap Tart

While James was nursery, I used the time (after facebook) to make my beetroot and goats cheese tart. It is so cheap (£1.60) and easy to make.

Ingredient:
Shortcrust Pastry.
175g plain flour. (20p)
90g butter. (30p)
3 tbsp cold water.

Cooked beetroot (30p)
Goats cheese (can use brie or any soft cheese) (60p)
2 Onions (20p)
1 tbsp Sugar.

As you know, I'm not a fan of faffing about so I whizzed my pastry up in the mixer (shock horror) but it came out fine for us.
Chill pastry in fridge while you check facebook and have a coffee and biscuit. Roll out pastry and in my case spill flour everywhere. Put pastry in a flan dish. Blind bake for 20min covered then 10min uncovered.

In frying pan cook 2 onions until soft then add sugar keep stiring until they are brown. These go on top of the pastry case. Followed by sliced beetroot then crumbled goats cheese. I only used half a pack of cheese but stick what you like in.
Bake for 20mins.
Serve with chips or salad. It is also very nice cold the next day if it lasts that long.

Secondhand verse New.

Now, I have always been one for picking up a bargain and have no qualms about secondhand toys, books, clothes or presents. However, during a discussion at Mother and Toddler group I got the distinct impression I was being looked down on for having this approach.
Don't get me wrong, there are certain things that I would never have secondhand. Shoes for instance, but this is because I have a weird foot phobia, probably stemming from working in a shoe shop during Summer and dealing with sweaty feet, but I diverse.
My children are 5 months and 2 years old. Penny the youngest is growing so fast that she does not get any wear from any clothes I buy her. We saved all James' clothes from when he was that age, so she often goes out in blue and dungarees. I have just got her a clothes bundle from Ebay with some beautiful dresses in it for £4. Bargain. James, he spent most of the Summer digging in the garden, therefore is covered in dirt. Secondhand clothes for him are to run round and play in and I don't have to worry about getting his nice stuff (not that you dont get nice secondedhand clothes) dirty.
As Christmas is starting to approach, I find myself looking on line, in charity Shops, boot sales and garage sales for secondhand presents for them. At their age they won't know, or care, that what they get isn't new, it will be new to them. I have also heard of swap shops happening,where parents get together and exchange toys, clothes and baby paraphernalia. Excellent idea, I just need to find one near me. I'm hoping to find a James a used digital camera for Christmas. He likes to use mine and Johns and I don't really rate buying a toddler one. James is also Bob the Builder mad at the moment. I put a message on a local selling page on Facebook asking if anyone had any and I was inundated with replies.
Even today, I managed to get a Vtech Driving wheel for £2.50. It was in excellent condition and new it would cost £14. This is being popped away ready for Christmas for Penny.
I am not ashamed that I buy my children (and me) used items, it means that there is a little more money to go round of other things, like little holidays, days out or if the boiler breaks.