Jubilee Cake-Off

This is for all you cake fans out there.  Yesterday the village ran a cake-off to raise funds for the jubilee street party.  I had totally forgotten about it until I was reminded on Friday night so ours was a bit of a rush.

Here is our entry.

I was amazed at how many people entered.  Each entry was £2.00 with categories for ladies, men and children.  The judging was a little weird but it was fun and I am pleased we decided to enter.  We didn’t win anything but hey its the taking part that counts.

Trip to a real ZOO!!

Yesterday I took Mimi to Wingham Wildlife Park.  We last visited when Mimi was about 6 months old and I thought it was a bit ropey but since then the park has changed hands and has improved hugely.  They have peacocks and chickens which run wild around the park.  A lot of the enclosures have been designed so that you can walk through them and touch the animals.  They have got everything from penguins and flamingos to tigers, lions and snakes.  I felt that for a one off it was a bit pricey; for me and Mimi it would have been£20.00 (children 2-12 are £9.00!) so I decided to shell out for a years pass which was £58.00 that way I can pop in and out as and when we feel like it.  A few of our friends have passes and outside of school holidays its will make for a good coffee stop.  However if it has been raining I have now learnt that wellie boots are a good bet as it was seriously muddy in places.

One crazy baby ready for the zoo -
Luckily she decided to leave her crash helmet and glasses in the car!

Penguins at feeding time.

Mimi pretending to be a penguin.

The very cute prairie dogs which kept popping up
from their tunnels. 

Ever since going Mimi keeps telling everyone she went to a REAL Zoo!  She was funny when she walked past the lions - she said they were too scary and covered her eyes with Mr Doggie and proceeded to ask where the snakes were!!

  

Our day that was

I'm not sure what it is about being at home all the time but I seem to get far less done that I did when I was working.  Especially when the weather has been so grim.

However we shouldn't moan.  We really need the rain and all this water has given my strawberry plants a growth spurt and in the brief moments of sunshine the garden is looking good. 

Today I have 

Removed countless socks which have become trapped in the washing machine door.  In what must be the most annoying washing machine ever.  

Refereed between Mimi and Maddie (my mums & dads dog) and removed countless items from being eaten.  

We had Mimi's little friend M over to play for the morning.  But Mimi was seriously grumpy and she took herself off to bed!

I did some baking with Mimi and made a chicken and mushroom pie for dinner.

Played paper aeroplanes in the garden with Daddy and Mimi

Lastly my strange baby has fallen in love with a stuffed door stop in the shape of a dog which has been named "Brother Doggy" (I think she is trying to tell us something!).  Brother Doggy gets taken to bed and pushed around in her buggy and is quite loved.  This afternoon disaster struck and his head fell off!!!!!!

Too much Chocolate!

The Easter bunny and his Chocolate Easter Eggs have a lot to answer for.........  My beautiful perfect baby okay so maybe I am being a bit delusional has grown horns and turned into the Devil before my eyes.  I have lost count the number of times she has been on the naughty mat for not sharing, snatching things from her cousin and hitting my parents dog.  We have also been subjected to serious toddler melt downs with screaming which alternated between a youdle and a wail.  She has been quite horrid.

All that said we have had a good weekend catching up with friends and family and this year I got my act together and we made our own Easter presents.  I picked up some egg moulds a couple of weeks back in poundland.

My Weight Watchers Diet has gone out of the window this weekend!!!  I am not looking forward to my weigh in on Saturday!!!

Happy Days

I love it when the sun is shining.  It just up lifts everything and gives me a spring to my step. We have had a great day in the sun coffee and picnics it feels like summer.  Shame it doesn't look like its going to last much longer!

Check out Mimi's new rings!

Beautiful flowering Camellia in the sun.

ABC Series B is for BOAT

Yesterday having checked the weather forecast we decided to do a day trip to France on a Boat and go to the sandy Beaches of Le Touquet.  When we woke up at 5.30am we could hardly see 100 yards it was such thick fog and everything was covered in frost however by the time we arrived in Dover the fog had cleared leaving us with a beautifully calm and sunny crossing.

P&O have currently got a special offer on their day trips.  I think we paid something like £23 for our crossing which included a box of wine and a 2 for 1 on either a cooked breakfast or fish and chips.  I should have taken a photo of my breakfast as it was amazing but I got side tracked and forgot.

We also took a look around the duty free where I brought some Dior Mascara and an Opi Nail varnish.

Once we arrived in Calais we drove along the coast road to Le Touquet where we stopped for coffee before heading down to the beach for a picnic. 

We had beautiful weather, it was lovely and warm with hardly anyone on the beach.  We stopped for a couple of hours before heading home via Citi Europe.

Where has the sun gone?!?!  Suddenly it is feeling quite chilly again!  We went for a walk along the seafront this morning with A, H & little R and it was bitterly cold with a biting wind.  We headed for their B&B/Hotel and had coffee.   A day for staying stopping indoors I think!!

Mimi waiting for her coffee!!!

Mimi has a mild dose of conjunctivitis we have been giving her drops and it seems a lot better today.  Poor little thing had to miss N's birthday party yesterday afternoon as I was worried about her passing it on to everyone else.
She was well enough to go out and meet with our friends which was good.  I am really hoping that we haven't given our germs to everyone.

Weight Watchers went much better this week.  I have lost a pound and a half..... YAY I finally got my "Silver 7" and my 5%.  So since Christmas I have now lost just over half a stone which I am really pleased with.  Still got about a stone to go but hey maybe we will see the bikini this summer after all!

This afternoon it is Pa's Birthday so we decided to make him a birthday cake.  We settled on a heart shaped cake.  Silly Mummy overfilled the tin and the cake including tin has merged itself into the shape of a shelf!!!  Not too sure what has happened to my baking skills lately everything seems to be a disaster.  I have definitely made better looking cakes - however it tasted okay.  I t need to work on my presentation!!!  We even managed to rope Daddy into helping.

                                                                  

Great weekend line up......

Great weekend line up.........

Last night we went to dinner at our friends E & A.  E cooked the most amazing pork curry.  I would never have thought of using pork in a curry.  I will definitely have to get the recipe it was truly amazing.  We took Mimi with us and she was such a good girl.  She played with S & M and then when they went to bed she slept beautifully on E & A's sofa until we left.  She made it all look so easy.  If only this was always the case!!!!
She was quite funny when she was playing with S & M last night.  M had a Buzz Lightyear and Mimi was in awe playing with it.  S was most disappointed because as a girl Mimi should have been playing with Barbie and not Buzz!!  Funny how the stereo types creep in from an early age.

Buzz V's Barbie

Today we have got some friends coming to see us who we haven't seen since we got married 6 years ago and Mimi has got a birthday party for her little friend N from play-school.

Mimi has finally stop requesting to be a scary tiger.  Yesterday morning before play-school (despite having a bath the night before) I had to really scrub her face as she had started to take on a yellow tinge and looked like she had jaundice.

Wow what a Scary Tiger

Yesterday we had our first trip to play-school since September without any tears.  Mimi is very strange I think it is an anxiety issue as being separated from us as we have to leave her screaming however we pick her up 3 hours later and she is like a different child telling us great it was.  Anyway I have resorted to bribery...............I told her what a brave girl she was and that if we didn't have any tears then she could have Slinky the dog from Toy Story, there was a request for Buzz however there was about a £45.00 price difference so we settled on Slinky.

Some of poor Slinky's rings are already a little bent but Mimi is quite happy.

Poor little thing has woken up this morning with what looks like an eye infection.  Wonder what are chances are of being seen by a doctor this morning?!?

A beautiful day.

What a fab day.  Can we believe that 3 weeks ago we were all shivering under -6.
I have been attempting to tidy the house most of the day, I even managed to get Mimi roped in to some polishing!!  Needless to say I haven't got very far!  Instead we spent some time in the garden blowing some long lost bubbles which we found in my tidy up, face painting, playing shops however you wouldn't want to pay Mimi's prices.  A cup of tea was hundreds of pounds! Mimi did come up with a very cute version of a cappuccino using my cotton wool face pads.

Mimi is wearing her new jumper from Next.  We have a big problem with
her refusing to wear a jumper/cardigan.  This one stayed on nearly all day.

I think Mimi must be growing at the moment as she seems to sleep quite a bit.  This afternoon I managed to get her down for an afternoon nap.  Wow what to do with my spare time?!?  I persuaded Mike to keep an ear out for her (I thought I'd best make this point in-case people thought I had left my baby home-alone) and decided to pop to Sainsbury's on my bike to pick up a few bits for tea.  On my way out I saw a single magpie..........  Half way into town I remembered I had forgotten the bike lock!  I ended up at the little hardware shop which seems to sell everything - I didn't fancy risking getting my bike nicked in town.  In a way I probably spent less than if I'd got to Sainsburys.

When Mimi woke up we decided to make some Weight Watchers Rock Cakes from my new cook book - (We adapted them slightly as we didn't have any cherries) They were surprisingly tasty however the recipe said that the quantities would make 30 - all I can say is that they would have been big enough for The Borrowers.  I managed to get 17, so instead of them being 2 pro points mine probably ended up nearer 4!!  They tasted fairly good (if double the points) and went perfectly with a cup of tea.  Mimi had fun playing with my brother who is off to Trinidad on Friday for a few months.

Last week I entered a survey with Mumsnet about the new film We Brought A Zoo which is opens on the 16th March.  Mike and I have been lucky enough to be selected as part of the Mumsnet panel to attend a preview in London next Friday evening.  I am so excited so watch this space for my review.  

Happy Days

I have finally got round to making and writing my Thank You cards for all my lovely presents I received when I left work. I was just so lucky and everybody was so generous.  It all still feels a bit surreal.  I know I have left but I hadn't finished some of the GCSE marking so I have been in for a few mornings to complete it.  I am hoping to have completed it by the end of next week.

Viners Cake Stand; Cath Kidson Patch Book;

We have taken advantage of the lovely weather this weekend and have been out and about.  Alongside other children Mimi always looks quite eccentric with her sunglasses and her crazy clothes.  She is fairly tall for her age and she can speak really well so I get a bit hacked off when people look at her and expect her to behave like a 4 year old at the end of the day she is still only two and isn't three until May.  

 We also spent some time painting cards for Aunty A & F, Grandma & Pa.  There was an attempt to blow the paint with a straw but I have a feeling that she might have sucked instead!  YUM!!!  When we did eventually get the hang of it I think we ended up with more spit than paint blowing but never mind.  As for the glitter somehow we ended up with some mixed in with our cheese last night!!  I keep finding the stuff everywhere.!!!

A day at the Zoo

We thought that we would take advantage of the gorgeous weather and spend the afternoon at the Zoo.    

We went straight from music with my friend M and her two children.  I think a good time was had by all - what is even better is that because I used my Howletts passport I spent a total of 95p on an ice lolly!  Talk about good value for money!  The girls played beautifully together and were really cute.  I haven't really seen Mimi playing like that before although I am sure she does at playschool.
I can not believe how fab the weather has been today.  We had a picnic and it felt like T-shirt weather, the sun at this time of year is good for the girls, it is such a valuable source of vitamin D.  We had home-made jelly jam things (jam tarts) and cheese hearts which we made last night.  
I am on an economy drive (now that I have given up work I have to look willing!) so having gone to Sainsburys to buy packed lunch treats I decided that it was considerably cheaper and far more fun to make our own hence the home-made jam tarts, cheese straws and bread rolls.
My Howletts Passport runs out soon but I will definitely be renewing it.
    

Happy Days

Damm, whilst I am sitting here wondering what we have been upto all day I have remembered the bread I left to rise about 3 hours ago!!!  Just gone to check on it..........I think its a gonna!

We haven't really been very far today, however we have been fairly busy.  When I was looking for my box of seeds at the weekend I came across a bag of Allium's and Hyacinth's that I think Mike might have been given earlier in the year.  Anyway they had started to grow and despite the bags saying plant in the Autum I decided we would pop them in and see what happens, otherwise they will stay there - forgotten indefinitely.  So we spent a few hours in the garden and what a beautiful few hours it was - the sun was shining and in the shelter it was really warm.  We also made some more birdcake - Mimi loves making these especially the bit where she packs it into an old yogurt pot.  We attempted bread which needs no further comment!

Then traditionally as today is Shrove Tuesday / Pancake Day we had Pancakes for dessert.  Mimi had "Pancake Pillows" - These are rolled up pancakes with raspberry sauce.  She ate so much I was a bit worried she might pop!  Mimi took it all very seriously and made Mike flip the pancakes just like Daddy Pig, luckily ours didn't get stuck on the ceiling!

Mimi has played non-stop with the new play-doh (the old stuff had all dried up so I replaced it at the weekend) and is slowly driving me a bit bonkers.  I keep finding it everywhere including in my shoes and wrapped around the dolls house chimney.  I was sitting down earlier when a spoonful was thrust towards my mouth.  It is a nightmare to collect all the little bits up and I am thinking of hiding it for a few days.  Or is that really mean?!?!

Lazy Days

We have had a bit of a lazy weekend.


Coffee at Cafe Nero at the Ashford Designer Outlet. I brought the muffin to share but we didn't really get much of a look-in!  

Lunch with Mikes Brother and family.  My sister in-law and Mimi's cousin took her out into the garden to collect freshly picked sprouts for lunch.  I had never realised how easy it is to grow them.  I think I will add them to our short-list of vegetables to grow this summer.

Mimi & Mr Doggy had fun playing on their beautiful rocking horse.

Whilst Daddy and the boys had fun playing with his boat in the garden.  They are so lucky.  They have a stunning garden with river and mill-pond.......Perfect for model boats!

A perfect day.  What more could you ask for, great company, great food on a beautiful if cold winters day.