Family Fun

Hello! It feels like ages since I last sat down to write a blog post! As the title suggests, we have been busy having lots of 'family fun'...

First, on Saturday, our town's actual "family fun day". I wrote about this last year too, it is an afternoon of craft, cake and fun that is funded by one of the local churches. Izzy looks forward to it each year - she loves it!

This year Izzy managed to do every single craft activity they had going...

Aquariam paper plate

Self-portrait

Biscuit decorating (not surprisingly, her favourite from last year!)

Paper fan

plus there were also a couple of origami projects - a frog and a heart - that escaped the camera. As if that wasn't enough, she was also sent home with the kit to make her own braided bracelet, as she ran out of time to do it there!

The moment she happily realised how to do it herself! It was quite a clever template involving counting 3 threads along, tucking under, repeated many many times!!

Toby was happy that there was lots of food - lots and lots of cake...

Ice cream (that my friend bought for her child who then decided he didn't want it - this was the one thing you had to pay for and I'm clearly a mean Mummy!!)...

Bacon rolls...Liam ended up eating 2.5/3 of these so he was very glad he hadn't been cheeky and got one "for" me too!!

And he also decorated a biscuit too - as you can see he was very eagar to eat it!!

Finally, before we went home we visited the balloon man. A dog for Toby...

and a 3-balloon flower for Izzy...

Izzy also got a little flower painted on her arm. Another example of my "mean-ness" is that, when there were so many other things to do and she'd just had her face painted a week or two before, I didn't let her stand in the really long queue for (admittedly free) face painting. Luckily for Izzy, one of the ladies who was running it recognised Izzy from toddler group years back, and insisted she jump the queue for a quick paint. Slightly embarrassing but very sweet, and Izzy's arm went perfectly with the flowers we passed on the way home...

Such a great day again this year! We were really lucky with the weather too - the rain held off until about an hour after the event finished, phew!

Sunday was more fun with family (and more sunshine!) at Liam's Auntie's house - she held a BBQ to celebrate one of Liam's cousin's birthdays. Weirdly, when I was looking back at last year's post above, this same weekend last year was also the family fun day on the Saturday and then Ben's birthday BBQ on the Sunday! Anyway, the thing Izzy was most looking forward to was the trampoline, so she made a beeline for it as soon as we arrived...

Izzy soon convinced Liam's other cousin, Mat, to join in - he is always so great with the children :)

Toby surprised us by absolutely hating the trampoline, but luckily he was kept entertained and fascinated by the little pond...

So Liam and I had time to eat, win! Liam had the usual meaty BBQ food, whilst I stuck to the salads - two plates of salad (potato, coleslaw, waldorf and rice...I somehow skipped the green, whoops!), plus a cheese roll with the first plate...

and then birthday cake and many unpictured chocolate fingers, ha, Liam's Auntie kept refilling my glass of Pimms so by this time I was super snacky!

Final bit of "family fun" (I promise!) has been this evening, as my baby sister is currently at her end of GCSEs prom! We went round to Mum's house for a few photos before heading down to the seafront where the entire year group met up to check out each other's outfits/have a huge official group photo taken. After Livs went off to the prom, Liam joined us after work and the four of us plus my Mum, Dad and other sister went to a local cafe for hot chocolates and cheesy chips, yum! I'd had enough of taking photos by that stage though - I snapped so many of Livs and her friends on the seafront, plus quite a few group photos at the house. I haven't had time to sort through them yet, and I'm going to leave most of that to Livs anyway, so I will just share a few photos - one of the prom girl in her lovely custom-made dress...

one of the 3 sisters...

and an actual nice photo of me and the children, with us all looking at the camera and smiling, yey - this never happens!! ;)

Right, that is us all caught up on the family photos I think. I have obviously also been doing lots of eating this week and, for me, a fair bit of exercise but I will leave all that for another post as this one is already super long!

Did your school have a prom when you were younger? My school didn't have a prom at 16, but when I went to a boarding school for my A-levels we had 3 balls a year. I tended to just buy my dresses from high street shops (and then *gasp* wear them to more than one ball!) - I was never much into fashion, whereas Livvy knew exactly what she wanted her dress to look like and luckily the local dressmaker was able to make it happen. Hopefully she'll be off having a fantastic time as I write this :)

65th Birthday BBQ

As requested, I made him lots of brownies and rocky road!

Happy Birthday Colin!

And my Grandma made him a coffee cake :)

We celebrated the special birthday a day early with a BBQ yesterday.

This was the best photo I got of Colin, ha, he does not like the camera!!

Pimms...

Family...

and delicious food...

...equals a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Have you had any BBQs yet this year? Favourite meat-free things to cook? This was actually our 2nd BBQ this weekend - we went to one on Friday evening as well! On Friday, my friend had only decided on a BBQ a couple of hours before, so I just took a box of veggie burgers with me. Yesterday though, Mum made stuffed peppers which were really tasty. I also just love all the salads too - the beetroot, feta and walnut one Mum made yesterday was amazing! :)

Sunny Weekend

Today is miserable. The weather is grey and rainy. The forecast predicts sunshine for the next 4 days, and then rain again on Saturday. Sigh. And I've eaten way too much food already and it's only 4 o'clock as I start writing this. So I'm going to ignore today and look back at the weekend instead, which was much better!

Saturday got off to a great start with the arrival of my iHerb order!

PB&Co White Chocolate Wonderful and Cinnamon Raisin Swirl, plus a bottle of coconut extract. I also got a random freebie...

has anyone had this before? It seems to be some kind of coffee with mushrooms...I'm a bit dubious to try it to be honest!

I did however get straight on to the very important job of peanut butter testing! First up, White Chocolate Wonderful...

This was super smooth, and super sweet. It reminded me of the fluffernutter sandwiches I used to have as a child! Delicious, but only for those with a sweet tooth!

Next, Cinnamon Raisin Swirl...

This was quite gritty, as if it had brown sugar in it (it doesn't). I've developed a bit of a love-hate relationship with this one...I'm not entirely convinced I love it (it also has a bit of a claggy/sticking to the roof of your mouth texture from the cinnamon) but I keep going back to it - I basically love the taste, and the raisins in it, but am not overly enamoured with the texture of the peanut butter. Shame.

My iHerb order arrived just as I was about to have breakfast. But after numerous spoonfuls of peanut butter (and a latte flavoured with coconut extract) I was rather full! So I had breakfast closer to lunch time instead... Cocoa-banana "porridge" made with quinoa flakes, sweetened with agave nectar and topped with White Chocolate Wonderful...

This was...interesting. I was quite surprised when cooking the quinoa flakes that they opened/spiraled out in the same way that quinoa does. But having said that, I quite liked the texture, and loved the fact they had so much volume - less flakes than I usually use oats produced much more in the bowl...this should have been like a lovely breakfast pudding. The problem was the taste - despite the cocoa, banana, agave and sweet peanut butter, the quinoa flakes still had an overpowering savoury taste that I just couldn't get past. I finished the bowl, but it wasn't particularly pleasant. So any savoury recipes that feature quinoa flakes?? I'd imagine the texture is too liquidy to use in place of regular cooked quinoa, so not really sure what to do with the rest of the bag!

Saturday afternoon, we went to a family fun day out which is sponsored and run by one of the local churches - aside from the alcohol and ice cream van (neither of which we needed) everything was completely free!! The sun came out from behind the morning's clouds so a great afternoon was had! There were so many things for the children to do - three different bouncy castles...

bracelet making...

biscuit decorating...

balloon animals...

face painting...

as well as colouring, free cakes, soft drinks and bacon rolls (Liam was happy as he got to eat mine!) and organised races/tug of war etc. There is also a little play park right next to the field, so baby had a go on the swings before we went home...

Such fun. By the time we got home it was almost the children's bedtime, so quick dinners were in order. I had brown rice pasta with sweetcorn, creme de st agur and chunks of goats' cheese...

Not the most attractive photo, or indeed meal, but it was rich and flavourful, just what I fancied.

Sunday got off to another good start with a yummy breakfast. Gluten-free sweet bread rolls (from my Goodness Direct order), one with PB&Co White Chocolate Wonderful, and one with Cinnamon Raisin Swirl...

with some frozen grapes on the side - the sunshine was out already!

For lunch, the others had leftover tuna sweetcorn pasta so I could have whatever I wanted...that'd be a whole jug of cold smoothie then!

200g frozen berries, 150g frozen pineapple, 250ml milk and some coconut extract... you bet I drank this straight from the jug, with a straw of course to be civilised!! :-p

I then made the most of the sunshine in the garden while the children napped. It was so hot out, bliss! I made sure to wear a strapless top to avoid any more silly strap lines before the wedding day, sensible, see! :) I had some more frozen grapes to cool me down...

I find I eat so much better when the weather is warmer - I naturally want to eat lots more fruit & veggies!

By the way, does anyone into gardening want to identify this tree for me? I'm guessing some kind of plum...

presuming it is a plum tree or something similar, will they be ok to eat? I remember last summer we ignored the tree and eventually the fruit went all sticky and attracted loads of flies...annoying as well as wasteful!

Anyway, back to the food! After a while in the sun I came inside to cool off, and eat of course. More peanut butter...

and mushrooms with houmous...

Once Liam got home from work, we went to a BBQ at his Auntie's house. No photos of my food (they thought I was weird enough not eating meat!) but I ate lots of salad with a few vegetable kebabs they'd made, and some basil tofu I'd brought with me. Plus several plastic cups of Pimms! Liam's Aunt has a huge garden, which the children loved, especially as it included a trampoline!

There was also birthday cake for Liam's cousin, baby was getting a bit tired by this time but still managed to eat cake!

Phew, another good day and another late bedtime - we didn't get home until gone 8pm when the children are normally in bed by 7pm! All good fun though, nice to make the most of the sunshine :)

And with that, I will finish this post. As I've mentioned, today hasn't been so good weather or food-wise. I'm off to circuits in an hour or so though so hopefully that will help to get me back on the healthy track! How have all your weekends been? Favourite thing you've done? From a selfish point of view, mine was probably the time in the sun by myself when the children were sleeping, bliss! Both afternoon outings were good too though, the children had so much fun which is great to see.