Halloween Preparation - Crealy and Pumpkin Carving

On Saturday we went to Crealy to take part in some Halloween fun…

There were lots of pumpkins to choose from (one free per child)…

Trick or treating (aka taking a lolly out of a witch’s hand!)…

And spooky games of which Izzy won one (each time the music stopped they had to “be” either a zombie, a ghost or a pumpkin. Izzy was a zombie every single time but the man never chose zombies to be out!!)

However, despite all the Halloween fun, the thing the children enjoyed most was something that is there year round…the animal barn…in particular the goats!

We also went on a few rides. Izzy and I went on the pirate ship (which was freezing!!) while Toby went on the carousel, and then Toby loved it so much that they went on the carousel again together…

This was the first time that Toby really “got” Crealy and was able to appreciate most of it. When he got off the carousel he was too busy excitedly chattering to me about it to pose for this photo…!!

After being forced to go through the shop (I was so annoyed when they got rid of the exit that avoided the shop, although the children are used to us saying no to buying things most times now, it was me that wanted to buy Halloween decorations!!)

we went home and Toby napped while Izzy and Liam got to work on the pumpkins…

Izzy was a bit grossed out by the pumpkin innards…and then got a bit hyper when she overcame her fear and got stuck in!

For pumpkin #1, Liam stuck with a relatively simple face design…

For pumpkin #2, Izzy had lost enthusiasm so gone off to play elsewhere, so Liam got a bit more creative with some ghosts!

Pumpkins…done! Toby thought they were very cool when he woke up!!

Do you celebrate Halloween? Any plans for tomorrow? We’re not doing much tomorrow. Izzy is going to a kids club all day which involves doing a show for the parents at the end of the day. They are encouraged to bring Halloween costumes if they have them so I’m hoping that Izzy’s witch outfit from last year still fits! Then in the evening I’ve bought a new DVD for us to watch while hoping the doorbell rings – we don’t go out trick or treating ourselves but Izzy absolutely loves giving out sweets to other children – she got so excited last year but we’re slightly more out the way in this house so I’m hoping we still get some callers! We will do a bit more Halloween stuff at the weekend though – I’m planning a Halloween “party” on Saturday for my family, but will show photos & ramble on more about that after its happened!

Let's play catch-up...

Some weeks I don't blog much because I haven't got a lot to say - either because we haven't done much or because I've got brain block. This hasn't been one of those weeks. I've had lots of things I wanted to talk about, but no time to sit down and write! So this post is likely to be a random assortment of lots of unrelated things...best get going then eh! ;)

Our fridge currently looks like this...

It broke 10 days ago and a repairman came out yesterday, declared it broken and said we'll have to wait until the end of next week for a new one to be delivered. Waaaah!! Thankfully, when I rang to say it was broken, we were offered the option of taking out insurance on it. Seemed expensive for a repair (I would've cancelled it after yesterday's visit if the repair had been easy, and just had to pay the repair, parts and call-out charge instead) but it is much cheaper than the cost of a new fridge, phew! I am getting super fed up of living out of a cool box though. Luckily we have a 2nd mini freezer so we haven't lost too much food but I miss fresh vegetables, the milk actually being ice cold rather than slightly below room temp etc. We've all been sharing semi-skimmed milk since the fridge broke (rather than our usual multi-milk household!) but Toby wasn't too impressed when I tried to give him Kara coconut milk in his bottle earlier because I hadn't had a chance to buy more cows' milk for the cool box! Oh well, there could be worse things, it's made me realise how lucky we are to have access to a fridge usually.

Rant over, let's move on to the food I have been managing to eat! Chocolate anyone?

So cute! My Grandparents gave these to the children - one of the ladies at their church had knitted them for all the children at church on Easter Sunday, and as they had some leftover they gave two to my Grandparents for Izzy and Toby. Toby doesn't actually like creme eggs because of the mess factor, so Liam and I shared one of them...

Haha, I think we know where Toby gets some of his, "oddities", from. Liam refuses to share food with anyone so I had to, messily, cut the creme egg in half...next time I think I'll just eat it all myself!! ;)

Moving slightly away from chocolate, but still on sweet foods (my sweet tooth is still in full swing from Easter!), I made these pancakes for breakfast yesterday, but with orange instead of lime this time as I still have loads of oranges left from recent baking. Delicious, but why can't I make my pancakes look pretty??!!

I do prefer the lime to provide a bit more contrast to the raspberries and coconut, but orange was still tasty - I'm loving all things orange at the moment anyway! Due to lack of fridge, I used frozen raspberries in these this time. It worked ok, but next time I would let the raspberries sit out at room temperature for a bit first as the pancake batter hadn't really got hot enough to cook around the fruit. I still ate them all, of course, and I'm still here...between these and the super gooey brownies on Sunday, I seem to have been eating a lot of not-fully-cooked eggs lately! :-/

On Tuesday we made our "at least once every school holiday" trip to Crealy. We normally have packed lunch but this time we decided to treat ourselves to a meal at the all you can eat Italian buffet. This was plate number 1...

Plate number 2 was pretty identical, except coleslaw and sweetcorn from the salad bar instead of the 2nd piece of veggie pizza.

We also went to a new "Buddy Bear" show at Crealy which Izzy loved...

...especially as all the children got a share of the chocolate coin "treasure" at the end!

This post is getting super long so I think I will save talking about today until another time. Which means that the only thing left to talk about is my trip to Sainsbury's on Wednesday! Not a big deal to most probably, but I can't remember the last time I went to a Sainsbury's! One opened near us sometime within the last year or so (?) but we hadn't been to it until this week. Due to the lack of fridge, we couldn't buy that much, but as well as the essentials I did pick up a few Sainsbury's-only items...

Chocolate orange spread (which tastes just like Terry's choc orange), choc chip peanut butter, Sainsbury's magazine (my favourite supermarket mag) and Sabra garlic & red pepper houmous...which I immediately put to good use with a sweet potato and some goats cheese for lunch...

This is so good! A lot more savoury and strong-flavoured than other types of houmous, so you'd have to be careful what you paired it with, but it went perfectly with this sweet potato meal. The first thing I'm planning to do when we get our new fridge/freezer is go to Sainsbury's to buy some frozen cherries - love them!

Oh, I almost forgot! One more thing before I go... Last night I went to a new exercise class called "Beach Body Boot Camp"! I was a bit nervous about what it would be like, but I actually really enjoyed it! It was really hard work - after the warm up (jumping jacks, leg kicks etc etc etc!) I was already exhausted and it only got worse!! But good fun at the same time - we did cardio in the form of one 4 minute block on spinning bikes plus 2 blocks of 1 minute skipping, 1 minute step and repeat whilst the other 2 groups were doing spinning. In between these cardio blocks we also did weight exercises using barbells (loved this part!) and some ab exercises, stretches etc. I definitely felt like I'd had a proper workout afterwards...which is a good thing really! I went with my sister Sarah and we've already booked for next week, yey, an exercise I actually enjoy! :)

Right, blog post over. Liam is on his way home and I need to make the house look relatively tidy to start the weekend! Having Izzy at home is lovely, but she and Toby seem to make so much more mess than Toby does on his own!!

Have a lovely weekend everyone! Any nice plans? I am off to Exeter Food Festival with my Mum for the 3rd year running (this was my post from last year if you want to see what it's like), I'm so excited to go again, love it! It's also really nice to have a day out with just my Mum. We did try to take Toby the first year but it was near impossible to get around all the stalls with a pushchair!

It's A Crealy Day...

Today's half term destination was Crealy. We have annual membership so we tend to go most school holidays - the children love it and, so long as we take a packed lunch and avoid the gift shop, it's a "free" day out.

I was in a bit of a rush to get ready this morning so I felt like I didn't have time to make porridge etc for breakfast. What I did eat probably took just as long to prepare anyway, but it was delicious so I'm glad I came up with it! A "banana split" with cinnamon peanut flour sauce, dried cherries and chocolate chips:

The peanut flour sauce worked really well as I could make it a slightly thinner consistency to spread easily (well, completely fill the gap between the banana halves really - I made lots!). I always find that peanut butter clumps if I try to spread it on cut banana. This was definitely dessert-for-breakfast...eaten with a spoon, this made my sweet tooth very happy! :)

Mum dropped Izzy back from her sleepover and we set off. Toby was a bit tired and grumpy, and Izzy hadn't gone to bed until 10.30pm at Mum's house (!) so we only stayed for a few hours - they are both having afternoon naps as I write this - but we had fun while we were there!

Free moving horse ride...

Balancing fun...

Ignore how washed out I look please!!!

And many other things that went unphotographed because the camera battery died we were too busy having fun!!

After a bit of outdoor play we went inside to the more Toby-friendly soft play areas and to have lunch. I had my new favourite wrap/sandwich filling - Philadelphia, thinly sliced basil tofu and cucumber. Plus pineapple juice, a clementine and a Nakd bar.

Random eating shots...

We must have got to the indoor part just early enough to get a table. By the time we'd finished eating there were adults standing around waiting to grab a table as soon as someone started packing up!

We went back outside after lunch anyway, but didn't last much longer. Liam took Izzy on a couple of the bigger rides while I took Toby for a walk to look at some animals, and then we called it a day and headed home. I like that we have membership so we don't feel that we have to stay the whole day to get our money's worth - if we'd done that today that would've lead to very tired grumpy children and stressed out parents!! ;-)

This post feels short as I haven't eaten as much food yet - I think I'll have an afternoon snack in a minute and then I'll have a late dinner when I get home from the gym. I'm posting now though as I'm sure I'll be too exhausted later...I'll let you know how Body Pump went tomorrow...wish me luck!! :-D

Do you eat many sandwiches? What are your favourite fillings? When I first stopped eating meat, I got into a bit of a rut with my sandwiches - always cheddar and cucumber, egg mayonnaise, or brie & grapes if I was feeling adventurous! I've been starting to enjoy sandwiches/bagels/wraps/pittas again recently though - grated carrot and houmous, basil tofu with cream cheese and cucumber, roasted veg and houmous... - they might take a bit longer to prepare, but the taste is definitely worth it. And I'll always love a fried egg, cheese & ketchup sandwich if I'm at home to make it...delish! :-)

Halloween Fun at Crealy

Yesterday we made it to Crealy! I'm so glad we changed our plans on Thursday - yesterday's blue sky made a great change from grey:

We got there just in time for the fancy dress competition, which Izzy didn't win - maybe we should have gone on rainy Thursday when it was no doubt quieter - less competition!! ;-D I think all the children in fancy dress got (or were meant to get) a small prize upon entering the park anyway. The girl who let us through didn't give us anything - no prize, no raffle ticket to play trick or treat, no leaflet to tell us times etc - but luckily Izzy didn't realise she was missing out on a prize so all was ok. We picked up an information leaflet from the help desk...

and went to play Trick or Treat. Luckily all the staff running it let Izzy play even without a ticket - I would not have wanted to have had to deal with a sweet-deprived child (!!) As it was, 3 'stations' giving out sweets...

equals one very happy Izzy! :)

After trick or treating, we had lunch, went to the 'spooky games' (Izzy liked the dancing game, but decided not to put her hands in the snotty slime!!), and then went to play in Little Land. These houses are the perfect size for Toby!

Although maybe not so much for Liam...!

As there was so many Halloween things to do at Crealy yesterday, we didn't go on any of the rides that we normally go on. We did, however, still find time for a bit of soft play...

and a visit to the animals...

Izzy adored this baby goat - she spent ages stroking it until the bigger goats started getting closer and scared her off!!

One of the main aims of yesterday's Crealy trip was to pick up a pumpkin. We decided to carve it at home as it needed a good wash first, plus Toby was getting a bit past it. So once we got home, Izzy and Liam got to work...

Izzy did a great job of saving me the seeds, so I'm going to try roasting them later on. Here's hoping I don't burn them after all her work - you can tell she enjoyed it really (!!)

And the finished (very heavy!) pumpkin? A bat on one side...

and a spooky face on the other...

Well done Izzy and Liam! :)

Izzy loves going to Crealy - we have year memberships so, when we don't get tempted by the all you can eat Italian buffet remember to take packed lunches, it doesn't work out too expensive. We did have to bribe Izzy with some sweets from the shop yesterday so that she didn't get too upset about not carving the pumpkin there though!!

Today we are off into Exeter to try to find me an outfit for Liam's graduation - any suggestions?? I'm thinking maybe a winter dress to go with the knee high (flat) black boots I already own? I am so clueless when it comes to fashion, but I'm hoping if I wear the boots in then people in the shops will be able to help me out!! We also need to buy Toby some new shoes - he kept falling over yesterday so I'm guessing his feet have finally grown.

What are you all up to this weekend? Any nice plans?