Category : Cooking
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Food and Birthdays
Today is ..... 
Edited: I forgot to mention when I wrote this post that another piece of good news recently was that Rosie passed her Level 9 Proficiency award at her trampolining class *smiles*. She's doing fabulously well!
Today was really quite nice and sunny after yesterday's wall to wall rain. I mean it rained. All. Day.
After Tim got back from work we went off to Castlepoint and got some book vouchers, birthday cards and a helium balloon for Luke (Tim's mum's adopted son) as it was his 10th birthday. We kind of thought book vouchers might be a bit dull for a 10 year old but apparently it's what he wanted. The helium balloon was a silly thing that I had a spontaneous urge to buy *laughs*. As we were getting into the car, I handed it to Rosie and said "don't let it ......."
Go.
She let it go. Luckily I made a grab for it and shoved it into the car and slammed the door before it had chance to escape again.
After we got home Tim made shepherds pie for dinner. We've had ALL homemade dinners this week which is pretty damn good. Actually, we mostly have homemade dinners but sometimes we just have some ready made thing but this week we've had:
- 2 slow cooker dinners (chicken in white wine and chilli). The slow cooker is "my" thing. I love my slow cooker!
- Shepherds pie.
- Tim's utterly divine pasta bake.
Don't know what we're having tomorrow - ready meal probably ha! ha! I DO know what we're having on Tuesday though .... chinese takeaway! Duck with pancakes! Ooooo! yummy. This will, of course, be my birfday dinner :) I'm very excited about my upcoming day! The day before, Tim is taking me shopping without the kids to get some new clothes (this is with money from his mum) AND he's taking me to Lush to get lovely smellies (I SO love Lush). On Tuesday I'll get my new camera!! Not only that, but James is getting me a super-dooper new graphics card for the pute as the one we had went bottom-up and I can't play the Sims at the moment coz we've had to put our old crappy one back in :(
I'm a very excited bunny!
Friday, June 27, 2008
Hatching ladybird!
The first of the ladybird larvae that Rosie put in her bug box the other day, has hatched! It was bright yellow with no spots when it first emerged and then, after a couple of hours it turned red and has several spots - amazing! Here is a picture Rosie took when it first emerged and had it's inner wings out at the back to dry. It's a bit blurry but you can just make it out.
Today was horrible weather wise and the kids only spent a short time outside before it rained so we decided to plant some cress. We picked up a cress growing kit from Tesco yesterday so I left Rosie and April to it (we love cress and it's quick to grow so hopefully we'll see results in a few days) Here are the kids sprinkling the seeds:
Will take another pic when they've grown a bit (the cress that is, not the kids!)
Tim and I cooked my absolute favourite dinner tonight - tomato and mozerella pasta bake (obviously served with a nice glass of red wine!) Whilst cooking, Tim started munching on bits of cheese topped with a bit of onion and which he then force fed to me (despite the fact that he knows I can't stand cheese and onion together!). Yuuuuk! He said he would take cheese and onion sandwiches to work every day if he could .... I said, great Tim, they'd love you - why not go the whole hog and have some scampi crisps too!!! *laughs*
Dinner is nearly ready, so I'm going to relax. See ya!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Gloomy old Eeyore!
Groan! It's so grey and heavy and close outside that I feel like my skull is being crushed *looks sad* - just wish it would get on and rain lots to clear the air!
God did I feel ill this morning after the revolting Macdonalds last night! I woke up feeling utterly bloated and sick and headachey, didn't want breakfast but forced a little down anyway (thinking it might help some) and then tackled some housework to take my mind off it. While I was doing that, Rosie read some history books and April got out the Cuisenaire rods (see below!) She built stairs for 1-10 and worked out all by herself that if she put a 1 rod and a 2 rod together they were the same as a 3 rod. Then she did a 1 rod and a 3 rod and got a 4 rod, and so on - clever girl! *smiles*
As the morning wore on I felt so bad that in the end I even phoned Tim at work with a sort of "tell me you're not going to be too late home today?!" plea. Then, I cooked lunch for the kids but I only had some Shredded Wheat.
After lunch, Rosie and April built a shop in the hallway which was a little inconvenient as it involved me clambering over it every time I needed to go in the bathroom! They were having a lot of fun though so I let them get on with it :) Tim got home (thankfully not too late!), at which point I dozed on the sofa (still feeling icky and a bit sad).
Anyway, now the kids have gone to bed and Tim and I have been making leek and potato soup for dinner - something nice and simple to say "sorry" to my poor, battered digestive system! :) After dinner I intend to get an early night but I expect Tim will stay up to all hours - he won't be doing anything on his website though (which he sometimes does) - it seems to have gone AWOL! Heehee!
Monday, June 02, 2008
Bread, bath, birds and .... er.. computer
Firstly, news on the computer (our proper one as opposed to my brothers that we've been borrowing). It's semi-fixed. James came over on Satuday and fitted the new motherboard and processor which are working spot on BUT (and here is where I start getting mad) for some reason it kept loading as far as the BIOS and then stopping. Uh? So, giving up on saving our data we decided to dig out our recovery disc and just start afresh. No go. Then, James noticed a very small message across the top of the screen "This disc will ONLY work in an Acer system!!" (and yes, it did have 2 exclamation marks after it!) The new motherboard we had installed wasn't an Acer part.
So, basically, Acer have set up their computers so that if you have a major fault and need to replace bits you can only use Acer parts (presumably taking it to one of their repairers and being charged a fortune) OR you cannot reinstall your operating system (ie Windows). What a bloody con! It means the Windows XP that came on the computer when we brought it new (ie the Windows XP that we PAID for) is now, essentially, unusable.
James did a quick search online and found that many people were extremely annoyed about this when they too had problems with their computers. Utter bastards (Acer that is, not the annoyed people).
We now (since we are REFUSING to give Acer the satisfaction of going to them), have ordered a new Windows XP disc (very generously paid for by James again!) so that we can reinstall our operating system. Then, hopefully, it will be all systems go.
Anyway, in the meantime, I'm still on James' computer :)
Right, other stuff. This morning was frantic! I had to get up really early and make bread because, last night, Tim decided he was going to make soup for lunch and wanted homemade bread to go with it. This had to be done and cooked by 10.30 so that I could then put a jacket potato in the oven for Rosie. In between all this I had to bath April because she has nursery this afternoon, feed cats, check email, make Tim tea and a few other sundry things. It was rather mad and rushed.
I did, however, have one very touching moment. I looked out the kitchen window and there, on the fence, was a robin with his (almost certainly) newly fledged little boy :) Awwww! The dear littlie thing stlll had a few fluffy down feathers on him and was stretching it's wings and shaking it's tail. Dad was clearly taking him for his first flying lesson! Cute :)
PS - Forgot to say that, as from Thursday, I shall be using THIS as our main homeschool curriculum with Rosie. More about that later!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The post in which we meet the new neighbours ....
Well, we've now got another computer on temporary loan until we get ours fixed. My lovely brother very kindly leant us a spare one of his after seeing our distress at the slowness of our old one! This has meant Tim doing all the blog sorting out AGAIN - poor man!
So, what's been happening? Firstly we have new neighbours. The house next door has been empty a while and now they have sort of moved in. I say sort of because I think they are doing the place up first as they have been there every day chucking out old stuff, smashing up doors and ripping up carpets. Oooo! I guess they are new neighbours and not crazy vandals?!! Heehee! Anyway, on their first day here, they chucked a load of old junk out into the drive and, eventually, disappeared in the evening. That night (or rather the early hours of the following morning!) Tim and I were woken by a loud, intermittant beeping noise. I said that it sounded like our smoke alarm batteries were running out (as this is what it does) so Tim went to look. Nope, not that. Still the deafening beeping went on. We went all round the house before we realised it was coming from outside so I went out and peered over the fence and worked out that the noise was coming from the pile of rubbish left by our new neighbours. We didn't see what we could do about it so we went back to bed but sleep was impossible.
In the end, in a fit of absolute rage, I flung on my clothes, stormed out and round next door. I located the smoke alarm (yes, I was right about that!) with the low battery, ripped the thing to bits and dumped it on their doorstep. Finally we could sleep. Was I half crazed? You bet I was - one thing I cannot stand is having my sleep disturbed by unidentifiable noises!
Funny thing was, when they came back the next day I didn't hear them say anything about why the hell there was a dismantled smoke alarm on their doorstep!
Ok, other things. Tim and I have decided to take April out of nursery at the end of the summer term. I'm going to use the intervening time to plan her home ed for the Autumn (she'll still be preschool but I want to get into a good routine with her). There is no way big school is going to work for her, we know that in our heart of hearts. At her last session of nursery, she spent the WHOLE morning asking to go outside, she wasn't interested in being indoors with all the stuff, she just wanted to be out. Since then, at home, she's been outside pretty much all the time - that pretty much made our minds up. I've got to prepare myself for the long haul *laughs*.
So that's that - now C, you've just got to decide about yours ;) heehee!
Right, I'm off now to relax - got a lovely chicken in wine thing cooking in the oven (only good, free, corn fed chicken of course!) and a very chilled glass of wine to go with it - LOVELY!
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