St Andrews Day off school

The boys had today off due to the strikes, so we made a bit of a big deal of St Andrew's Day. We looked up who he was on the internet, drew pictures, made Saltires and then made shortbread and dropped it round to all our neighbours to celebrate.

A boy's eye view a.k.a. funny thing they say

I made a jar which I keep next to some notelets and a pen so that I remember all the funny and cute little things the boys say. When they say them I write who said what and when on a notelet and fold it up and pop it in the jar. I will read them all at the end of the year and put them into their yearbook photobooks that I do on photobox in a quotes page. A good way to remember them and their development.

A sausage-ish plait

We made this sausage plait pie by mixing together the meat from 6 sausages, a small packet of turkey mince and a mini haggis (for 1) together. We seasoned the meat and wrapped in readymade shortcrust pastry, Gave it an egg wash and sprinkled on some sesame seeds, and baked in the oven.
It was delicious as dinner and really nice cold with some pickle the following day. And not too (?) unhealthy as it was about 50% turkey mince but tasted very sausagey with all the spices and flavours from the haggis and sausages.

Fuzzy Felt Face Cushion

Hello Jacob, if you are reading this then you have received your "well done on becoming a Big Brother" present and are wondering what on earth it is!
Well, it's a fuzzy felt face cushion. In the pocket at the back you will find lots of different coloured shapes. All you do is take them out and place them on the front of the cushion and go wild making all sorts of crazy funny faces! Bet you can't pull a funnier face than your cushion can make!
We hope you don't mind but we had a play before we wrapped it up so we could show you the faces we made  to give you some ideas. We would love to see what funny faces you can make. I bet your baby brother would love to see them to, though don't get the little bits of felt too close to him!

 

 

If you lose any bits then Mummy can easily make some more- you just cut them out of odd bits of felt.
The cushion was made by cutting out 3 rounds of white felt (one folded in half) sewn nearly fully around, pushed inside out through the gap, stuffed with cushion filling and the hole sewn up. Not sure if it is washable to be honest. I think it probably is as most crafting felt is acrylic rather than woolen now.
We hope you enjoy your wee pressie...

Pizza Flavour Popcorn

We have got into a tradition of letting the boys stay up late on a Saturday night to watch Strictly Come Dancing and when they do they are allowed some popcorn. We usually use the microwave popcorn bags in either butter or sweet flavours, but this week we had run out and so I found a quite ancient (though still usable) bag of popping corn and we did it ourselves.
The boys were amazed and in awe when they watched the corn pinging and transforming in the hot oil, it was much more fun than putting it in the microwave and we will be doing it this way every week from now on. It is also about 10% of the price and just as clean and easy really.
The other major benefit is we can use our imagination and try all sorts of different flavourings. Some of us don't like sweet popcorn (another benefit is having control over how much sugar goes on the sweet bowl) and I didn't have any butter. I didn't want to use salt so instead I sprinkled over some dried oregano and it smelt so pizza-ry that I rolled with the idea and added some grated parmesan and then some tomato puree diluted in a small amount of olive oil, and some black pepper.
And it was great! A revolution in popcorn flavourings has begun! I would say stay tuned for more ideas next week but we all liked this flavour so much it may be a bit longer before we can stray from it to try something new.

More Hand & Foot Paintings - with a Xmas/Autumn theme

Unfortunately another good friend of ours has become poorly, so, remembering how much happiness our summer hand/foot paintings brought to another poorly friend we were inspired to have another session on the dust sheet creating some more seasonally appropriate hand and foot creatures. We sent them off this morning, we hope they bring a smile to our friend's face at a difficult time. We hope very much she gets better soon. We are thinking of her.

Foot reindeer

Foot penguin

Hand  fir wreath

Hand reindeer

Hand Santa

Foot snowman

Hand monkey - not the most successful!

Hand elephant

Hand hedgehog

Hand turkeys/chickens

Blueberry Baked Cheesecake

Recipe

8 crushed digestive biscuits and 50g melted butter combined, pressed into base of 20cm tin and baked at 180*c for 5 mins. Remove and cool in tin for a bit while you get...

600g light Philadelphia, 142ml half fat creme fraiche, 2 large eggs plus 1 yolk, 175g caster sugar, seeds from 1 vanilla pod, 2 tbsp flour; beat together in a mixer until combined. Then add fruit - we added  about 250g frozen blueberries (I didn't bother to defrost them), pour on base and put back in oven for 40 mins, or slightly browned but centre still wobbly. Remove and cool in tin. Ideally refridgerate before serving.

Model Dinosaur

Part of Ollie's homework this we ek was to make a model dinosaur. I saved a load of boxes out of the recycling and he used them all along with some bubble wrap to make this T-Rex model. Even though we used PVA in the paint it still didn't stick very well to the bubble wrap but it stayed well enough to get it to school. I have to admit I am very pleased this is staying at school rather than at home. It's huge!

Our prize winning Dad

We love you Daddy and we are very proud of you and your award.....

Bonfire Bread

Oh my God - THIS is GOOOOD

We made this for our first ever Skype dinner party with my sister and brother in-law at the weekend. The dinner party was a raging success and this was the most delicious thing ever!

It is a recipe I found on the internet - Good food - I think, but adapted to the ingredients I had available

200g wholemeal flour

200g plain white bread flour

1 tsp bicarb

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

25g butter melted

300ml milk

175g cheddar cheese

2/3 of a small packet of pumpkin seeds, toasted in a dry pan

2 peppers burnt on the gas flame and peeled

1 small tub olives

Sift dry ingredients and pour the liquid into a well in the middle and combine to a soft dough. Add all the extras (but put some cheese and seeds to one side to top the rolls before baking). It was quite a wet dough which I was worried about but went for it anyway.

I formed into 6 rounds about 2 fingers thick on a silicon sheet.

I baked for 30mins in a 170*c preheated oven. Cooled on a wired rack, but ate while still warm with a delicious sausage, lentil, pumpkin & porcini casserole.

I will definitely make this bread again. It's lovely and easy with no proving or waiting and so scrummy with all those delicious things in it.