Thursday Things

Otherwise known as “some random things that have been collecting on Lucy’s camera”…

1. You remember the hat Izzy made on Saturday? Well, not many of the children from her school entered she won a prize! I need to work on my enthusiasm I think, ha, when the teacher gave it to me at Tuesday school pick-up I think she was expecting more than my “Greeeeat…what is it?!!” I was very glad I’d brought the car though – it was hard enough getting plant + Toby back to the car as it was…one poor Mother was walking home and her child had won a tree about three times the size of our blackcurrant bush!!

Izzy is very pleased with it though and has been watering it morning and night. If anyone has any tips for blackcurrant bushes (that’s what the teacher said it was anyway) please pass them on. I’m planning on transferring it, somehow, into a large pot at the weekend…but I don’t really have a clue about gardening!!

2. I know this seems to be a “popular” thing in blog-land at the moment, but I have been loving fresh figs lately. I perhaps need to work on my presentation skills (!) but this salad was delicious. Salad, smoked cheese and figs that I grilled for a few minutes with a tiny bit of brown sugar…

3. I had some fun post this morning! I joined BzzAgent several years ago and still get invited to join “campaigns” sometimes. This latest one was an invitation to eat chocolate – how could I say no?!

As you can see, they sent me full size bars of both the Golden Biscuit Crunch…

and the toffee popcorn chocolate…

I opened the biscuit one with my Grandma this morning, and then Liam and I have been working our way through both bars this evening. They are both super tasty but, for me, the popcorn one is the most addictive, sweet & salty and full of popcorn – I can’t stop eating it, oops!! Liam likes the biscuit one best though, the only thing we agree on is that we’d both happily eat either of them! The letter BzzAgent sent me says that they are on offer in Tesco 2 for £3, after that they’ll be about £2.50 per bar I think.

4. Izzy also got some post this morning. We never normally send away for “free” things, but my Dad bought the children a box of Coco Pops when he last visited, and Izzy really wanted one of the bowls that was offered on the back. It did require purchasing another two boxes of cereal but, unlike a lot of these offers, you didn’t need to pay for postage or anything, so we ordered online a few weeks ago…and her tip and sip bowl arrived today!

Haha, as you can see she was very excited…cereal as every snack from now on then!!

5. The final thing that I have been sent recently was a loaf of Burgen bread. They didn’t tell me they were going to be sending me this, so it was another lovely surprise waiting on my doorstep one day last week. They have a new design for their packaging for Breast Cancer Awareness month in October…

The bread is still as delicious as ever! I had some made into French toast, served with my current favourite toppings – strawberries, maple syrup and Philadelphia mixed with icing sugar and vanilla extract – my at-home version of the delicious mascarpone French toast topping we had in London, as we always have Philadelphia in the fridge.

6. I have a new cake to add to our family favourites rotation, alongside lemon drizzle cake and chocolate brownies…gingerbread loaf (without the icing or the stem ginger) I’d promised my Grandma a cake as her birthday present, and she requested that I try to make gingerbread…

We all loved the result – so much so that my Mum has already put in an “order” to make her one to share with her colleagues in a couple of weeks’ time!

What are your favourite everyday cake recipes? No fancy icing required please! I was chatting to Mum today about what cakes she wanted me to make, and we eventually settled on the above gingerbread as well as my usual lemon drizzle cake, but I’d love some new ideas too. I make slightly more labour intensive cupcakes/birthday cakes for special occasions, but the cakes I make most regularly seem to have no icing or just a drizzle…a cake needs to be quick and easy if I’m going to make it time and time again!

Thursday Things

Hello! Only one more day to go until the weekend! :) This week actually feels really short to me as Izzy didn't go back to school until Tuesday, and it's going even faster as I have so many things to get sorted now that she is back!

I feel like I have lots of little things which are currently taking up too much space in my brain (!), so a random bullet point style post today, and then I'll be back with my second post about Exeter Food Festival tomorrow.

1. I found out yesterday that Body Pump is coming to my local gym! So exciting. I went once at a gym about half an hour away, but the classes are only in the evenings so not that convenient to get to by the time Liam gets home from work. It will be great to be able to start it up again. What with Boot Camp on Thursdays, one day a week gym/swim while Toby is in creche, and soon Body Pump, I'll almost have a "proper" workout schedule on my hands!

2. I discovered today that one of my friends & I have even more in common. I already knew that we have children the same age - she has boys the year above and below Izzy, and then she has a girl the same age as Toby - they adore each other, so cute! I also knew that we both loved going to Costa for coffee and cake, having picnics on the beach with the children etc etc. But what I didn't know until today was that she's interested in some of the "weird" blog type foods too! We were walking to town together and she started talking about how she'd made sundried tomatoes yesterday using a low oven temp, and how she wanted to make Gwyneth Paltrow's brownies using spelt flour and brown rice syrup. She also uses the Planet Organic website. It was so nice to discuss all the different ingredients with someone in the "real world"! We went to the health food shop where she got spelt flour, brown rice syrup and agave nectar, and I picked up some nutritional yeast flakes (which I needed) and some vegetarian jelly crystals to try:

And then we went to Costa for lattes and raspberry white chocolate muffins. Win win.

3. I seem to be drinking more and more tea recently. Particularly this one:

The good news is that, unlike regular tea, I enjoy drinking this without sugar. It stops me feeling guilty about drinking half a box of it in the last few days! It feels like lots of bloggers have been discussing their love of tea recently. When I read Maria's post the other day I had to stop myself immediately jumping on iHerb to order all the more unusual teas! I'm telling myself that drinking lots of tea is better than the same amount of coffee (which seems to give me a tummy ache if I drink more than 1 or 2 cups a day), so please don't tell me otherwise, okay? ;)

4. Liam was feeling envious of all the children's Easter eggs, so when I saw that Thornton's had some reduced a couple of days ago I decided to buy him one.

We didn't exactly need any more chocolate, but it made him happy! :)

5. Making packed lunches without a fridge is not easy. Leftover Easter chocolate, juice cartons and pots of dry cereal have been my friends...

...but I will definitely be glad when our new fridge arrives tomorrow. I can't wait to go shopping to fill it back up!

6. Most exciting (to me) news last... we're moving house in 6 weeks! I have already mentioned it in the comments section of one or two other blogs, but I didn't want to write it on here until we'd let our landlord know. I'm so excited! Our new house is actually owned by my Mum (she kept hold of it when she moved in with Colin in January) so whilst we will still be renting, it will hopefully be a much more long-term home so I'm looking forward to making it more "us". Feel free to send any home decor links my way! I loved Laura's post on cheap home style - I'll definitely be using the shoe rack trick as whilst our new kitchen is bigger, it has less storage space. I can't wait to move in, but we have lots of packing and sorting to do in the old house first which is a bit daunting...I don't know where to start!

Right, that is me done I think. I've written most of this post one handed as I have a tired Toby cuddling in my lap! I'm off to Beach Body Boot Camp this evening with my sister so about an hour ago I had a bowl of banana porridge topped with loads of maple cinnamon peanut flour sauce and a couple of pieces of Easter chocolate:

All swirled together this tasted amazing! Hopefully it will keep me going until I can eat dinner about 8.30pm.

Have you moved house many times before? Any tips?? I've moved house quite a bit over the years. We lived in the same house until I was 10 but then moved around every few years when I was younger. This new house will be the 5th flat/house I've lived in since having Izzy. One tip I did pick up a few years ago was to stack plates on their sides in the boxes. My sister helped me pack up my flat in Winchester and we'd wrapped all the plates in newspaper and put them in the box in piles as you would do in the cupboard. The removal guy took one look at them and said that if one smashed they all would, which does make sense of course. Oops. The last couple of moves we've just hired a van and done the move ourselves with the help of mine and Liam's families (luckily Liam has a strong brother so he & Liam do most of the furniture moving!) which is what we'll be doing again this time...need to get organised!