Summer Holidays Week #1

I can't believe that the first week of the summer holidays is already over! We have had a busy week, but it's all been good fun! :) Lots of days have been spent out of the house without a camera - luckily I have a few iPhone photos - via Instagram - to share!

Monday:

On Monday, Izzy and I went to the beach...

We had lunch at my Mum's beach hut (egg mayo salad pot) but on the way back I had to stop at a new shop I'd spotted on the way down to the beach...our town now has a frozen yoghurt bar!!!

I had Berry Alert - fro yo with strawberries, blueberries & strawberry sauce...

Delicious! :) I think my fruity one worked really well with the frozen yoghurt. Izzy had a chocolatey one - with maltesers, crumbled flake, marshmallows and chocolate sauce, but I thought it tasted a bit strange in contrast to the tangy yoghurt. She still liked it though! :)

Tuesday:

Most of Tuesday was shown in my What I Ate Wednesday post. I didn't actually do that much that day - it was mainly a housework/gardening day for Liam and I...

but Izzy had a great day - going to the play park and lunch with my Mum, and then going birthday outfit shopping with my little sister - she was out the house 11am-5pm!! My sister texted me various photos of Izzy trying on outfits, but this was the one they decided on in the end!

Wednesday:

On Wednesday, we'd planned to have a relaxing day with not too many plans. But at 9am I got a text from my friend, and by 9.30am we were on our way out of the house! My friend and I took the kids on the bus to a local garden place with play areas. The children had great fun...

Thursday:

We waited until Liam finished work on Thursday, before heading down town for frozen yoghurt. I had the same berry option I'd had on Monday...

but supplemented it with Lizi's chocolate granola and honey rice puffins!

The others had the chocolatey version, of course!

We then headed to the local park which has recently had a big re-vamp. This was our first visit since the new stuff had been put in (although Izzy had been twice on Tuesday, with my Mum and with my little sister). There is now a zip-wire...

Some kind of spinny thing...

And a rock-climbing wall...

Very cool! :)

Friday:

Most of Friday day-time was spent decorating butterfly birthday cakes, but in the evening Liam and I got to go on a rare night out! We first headed to a vegetarian/vegan food van to get my dinner...

where I bought a pitta filled with lots of different salad, falafel, tahini and houmous...

before heading to the pub to meet my sister and her boyfriend for the evening. My Dad was there at the start as well, before going back to ours to take over from my Grandma on the babysitting front, and bought us all our first round of drinks as well as hog roast for everyone else - thanks Dad!

Despite appearances, my drink is actually a Pimms and Lemonade, and Liam's in the background is a pear cider! We spent the evening with my sister and her boyfriend listening to live music and chatting to each other and the various people that popped by - busy busy! It was a really good night :)

On the way home, Liam and I couldn't resist the pancake van! Liam had a pancake with Nutella and marshmallows...

and I chose one with banana, sliced almonds and brandy toffee sauce...

Clearly it was delicious - a great end to the evening!!

Saturday:

I have already blogged about - it mainly consisted of Izzy's 5th birthday party!

Sunday:

Today we have had lots of visitors to see the birthday girl!!

We started with a fun breakfast though - Izzy requested a smoothie, but in reality her favourite part is the toppings, so I set them out in little bowls for her to put on herself. Lizi's chocolate granola, fresh cherries and desiccated coconut...

With Cocoa-Raspberry "Pudding" Smoothies as our base, Izzy started topping...

She was loving the coconut - "just one more handful"...

but did eventually move on to the other toppings - at the end she said her smoothie was better than mine as hers was more "snowy"!!

Luckily, unlike the second breakfast in this post, this breakfast got the thumbs up...

and Toby wanted to get in on the smoothie action too (I did offer him some of mine, but seemingly that wasn't good enough!!)

Haha, funny photo!! She did actually happily give him a few mouthfuls, but he can be a bit pushy (!!)

After breakfast, the visitors began - this morning my sister and her boyfriend came round, as well as my Grandma. This afternoon, my Grandma & Grandpa popped in. They all wanted to see Izzy and give her pressies! They also came for cake too - this morning we had the whole 2nd cake untouched, but luckily it has gradually been eaten...

More has been eaten since this photo - we now just have the body and the left-hand side left for tomorrow. Phew! Maybe we wont be stuck eating cake all week!!

Right, that is me done for the night! I've also spent hours writing a very photo-heavy post that I will publish tomorrow morning for Izzy's birthday - it's been fun looking back at all her baby photos!!

What has been the best thing you've done this week? I've had so much fun, I don't think I can even pick just one day! The beach on Monday and the night out on Friday were probably the most relaxing times, and of course the arrival of fro-yo to our town is always a good thing!

Also, in case you missed my request at the end of yesterday's post - any offers of guest posts would be appreciated - please email me at porridgeandparsnips@live.co.uk Thanks! :)

Missed Week - Catch Up Photos

Evening everyone! Bit of a late one from me as I've been helping Liam fill in a job application - the joys of technology meant he filled it in last night, managed to lose all the information, filled it in again this evening and is still having trouble submitting it!! Aaargh!! So I'm taking a break to blog and look back at yummy pictures instead! :) With the exception of yummy dessert recipes (Double Chai Cupcakes and Chai Cheesecake Bites incase you missed them!), this morning's post about yesterday was the first post I'd published since Monday! It's been a bit of a hectic week!

I'm not going to bore you with everything I've eaten, but here are some highlights...

First up, breakfasts. I wasn't doing too well with breakfasts at the start of the week, but on Friday I pledged on my Weight Journey page to eat breakfast every morning. This has been made easier by the start of the summer holidays - no school run to do makes for a much more relaxed morning routine! :)

Friday morning - a pineapple, melon and banana smoothie topped with Eat Natural muesli:

This was great, really refreshing. More muesli was of course added part way through!

Yesterday's breakfast you've already seen, and this morning was two lemon & raisin scotch pancakes, topped with nectarines, strawberries and much more peanut flour sauce than is shown in this photo!

I accidentally added too much milk to the peanut flour sauce, so then added more peanut flour to compensate...and ended up with way more sauce than I needed, which was still too runny for my liking! Still tasty though :)

Next, main meals. I don't really distinguish between lunches and dinners, although from the looks of the photos, lunches have mainly been of the poached eggs on toast variety, so I'll spare you the repetitive photos!

Tuesday dinner - Choosing Raw's Ginger-Lime Edamame Sweet Potato Burgers, served with grilled asparagus and guacamole...

This was amazing!! Easily the best thing I've eaten all week! Really easy to make too, and a good way to use up some of the quinoa flakes I have sitting in my cupboard! We'll definitely be making these again soon :)

Friday dinner - egg fried rice with curried cauliflower and frozen peas...

Quick to make, tasty, and a good way to use up some veggies. Just what we needed this week! :)

Sunday lunch - a messy but delicious quesadilla containing apple slices, a whole mozzarella ball (shredded) and grated cheddar...

Mmm, melted cheese goes so well with fruit!!

Sunday dinner - none of us had any energy so it was a cereal night! Honey rice Puffins with milk, peanut flour, strawberries and coconut butter for me...

I rarely have cereal for breakfast...much better as an evening meal/snack! Yum.

Now, desserts/snacks/drinks...

I have been drinking a lot of coffee this week! In our new coffee machine :-D I've been making a pot of coffee each morning, drinking a couple of mugs hot, and then enjoying the rest as iced coffee later on in the day...

So good, especially with lots of drops of vanilla stevia in it...I'm loving that stuff!!

Tuesday dessert - as if the edamame sweet potato burgers weren't great enough, we had a rare dessert that night too! Daughter helped me to make it - bread and butter pudding made with chocolate chips and grated orange zest (One of Liam's many dislikes is dried fruit in desserts, gah!)...

Not quite sure why it puffed up so much in the oven!! I couldn't get a pretty picture of this on the plate, but it was delicious. Comforting memories of childhood!!

I've eaten quite a few of these Waitrose snack bars - the seed one is my favourite I think...

I've also eaten lots of nectarines, melon, grapes etc this week - I've been on a bit of a fruit kick this week! And of course plenty of the chai cupcakes and chai cheesecake bites - I ate the entire batch of chai cheesecake bites (with the exception of one 'brownie' that was eaten Saturday morning) on Friday! So delicious!!

Final group of photos - no catch-up post of mine would be complete without a few family photos...!

Daughter's Teddy Bear Picnic packed lunch box on Wednesday - goat's cheese & grape sandwiches, satsuma, yoghurt, cheese string, Waitrose squashed fruit bar and a carton of apple juice - a few more treaty things than usual as it was her last packed lunch of term!

Plus a teddy of course! She chose the one she received in hospital. In the end, it rained so they ate their lunch in the school hall instead of the field. She still had fun though!

Oh what an easy life a toddler must lead...

He set the chairs up like that for himself one morning, it did make me chuckle when I came in the room!

And finally, daughter pleading to take her dolly to the fete on Saturday...

She didn't win. We're mean parents. Either that or we've had way too much experience of carrying her toys around while she runs off to play! She soon forgot about it anyway and had a great time at the fete! :)

And that is me up to date. It feels so much better knowing I don't have loads of photos that are going to be missed forever (!!!) I especially recommend those edamame sweet potato burgers - delicious!

How do you go about catching up if you haven't blogged for a few days? Do you just forget about the meals/photos/stories, or try to post them at a later date? I hate not posting certain things, as I then feel I have to keep track of what I have and haven't posted so as not to refer back to something and have you guys not know what I'm talking about!! I hope you didn't find this post too long-winded though.

Anyway, time to hit publish. I had a mini-drama this evening as earlier today my dressing fell of my neck and the stitches were getting really irritated by my hair without a dressing on. So I tried to put a dressing on without really being able to see what I was doing...bad idea...it hurt more than usual afterwards and when Liam got home from work he informed me I'd stuck the sticky bit to the stitches!! Eeek!! I was too scared to let him pull it off straight away as it was one of the stickier dressings (the hospital gave me no spare dressings so I've been having to use the random ones leftover from daughter's stay in hospital) but a quick 'forbidden' soak in the bath made it easier for him to pull off. My skin had been really irritated by the stickiness though so I've let it breathe dressing-free for a couple of hours. So the point of this extremely rambly paragraph? It's now time to ask Liam to put a new dressing on & then head to bed. Night all!!