Monday 28 February 2011

Big Cook, Little Cook


One of my favorite pastimes is cooking and baking and since the kids were born I have tried to include them as much as possible.  Sean in particular is a really fussy eater but I find that if he gets involved in making his food he is much more likely to eat it.  I decided to make some aprons and thought first along the lines of using oilcloth because it is so durable and easy to clean.  One of the big drawbacks on using oilcloth for aprons is it is just not very comfortable to wear.  When you sit or bend down the apron doesn't quite move with you especially when you are just a couple of feet high.  I also think if you enjoy cooking your apron should look like it has been used and loved so I decided to stick to good old reliable 100% cotton.  As usual my first attempt was in pink - because I have so much of it in my stash.  I wanted to make the straps adjustable but without using Velcro so I was constantly asking Sean to try on so that I could get the measurements right.  Of course being a typical boy he was horrified that I was making him wear a pink apron.  We entered into a bout of negotiations and it was decided that he would continue to help with the 'pink thing' if I could make him a soldier apron.  Deal done and delivered:


Once I had mastered the bigger apron I tried out a miniature one for Kirsty to match her red and white play kitchen.


The fun part was to then christen the new aprons.  What better way than to get the kids to make the chocolate brownies for todays' Monday Mood Food.



Monday 14 February 2011

Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day

Don’t we all just love this special day?  Well probably not if we are completely honest with ourselves.  I can remember back to my early school days when the thought of not getting any cards was so horrifying that I used to send one to myself – just in case.  More often than not I was glad that I had.  Now that we are a bit older, married for what seems like forever and two small children running around – celebrating Valentines Day seems like a distant memory.  As with the tooth fairy saga, I decided to look up the origins of Valentines Day so that I could explain it to Sean (4yrs old).  To be honest it was all a bit boring and I doubt it would have held his attention much.  The only relevant piece of information that I could find was this –

Valentine's Day started in the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia.
The lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. However, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man would draw a girl's name from the jar and would then be partners for the duration of the festival with the girl whom he chose. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry.

Although Sean is only four he has decided on the young lady that he would like to marry.  When I explained to him that it was customary to ask the father for his daughters’ hand in marriage his first response was “well why not the Mum as well?”  It was a fair question and the next time we saw the parents he did indeed ask both the mother and father if you could marry their daughter.  They very kindly said yes not really knowing just what a determined little boy he is.  Watch this space over the next 20 years!!  My role as mother to this very determined little boy is of course to save him from having his heart broken.  How to do this – well make the future wife a little valentine gift and have it delivered to the door from a ‘secret admirer’.  What little girl wouldn’t love that?



My Valentine gift to my family was to make some shortbread heart biscuits – can’t get more romantic than that (see Monday Mood Food).


Lastly, a little something for my hubby xoxoxo

I laugh, I love, I hope, I try, I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry.
And I know you do the same things too,
So we're really not that different,
me and you.

Saturday 12 February 2011

Tooth Fairy Cushion Part 3

In response to the comment below on the pirate cushion - here is the football version. Now I really need to move on from the tooth fairy cushions!!!

Thursday 3 February 2011

Tooth Fairy Cushion part 2

I have now finished the boys version of the tooth fairy cushion and Sean seems happy with it – probably because it has a sword on it. I happened to overhear a conversation he was having with his little sister which went along the lines of “now open wide Kirsty and let’s see if we can take out one of your teeth for Mums’ cushion”. I poked my head round the corner armed with the camera and there he was with his building gloves on (for hygiene reasons obviously) and his toy shifting spanner and poor Kirsty, mouth open wide, patiently waiting for her tooth to be extracted.
I think I need to move on swiftly to another, safer project.
By the way – the £5 note is not what the Tooth Fairy will be leaving in place of a tooth. With two accountants as parents and one of them Scottish at that I think my children will be getting to know a much meaner Tooth Fairy than the one who left the £5 note above.