Saturday 16 February 2013

What about Damian??

I don't know whether you'll notice, but Damian doesn't guest star that often on my blog, he is your typical pre-teen boy and will not join in with anything he deems to be girly and seeing as myself and Erin are the biggest girly girl's going, most things we do can be deemed as girly in his eyes.

With that in mind, I thought I'd give him his very own spot right here on this blog to let people see what he gets up to and what he prefers to do.

His favourite toy at the moment is The Trash Pack Series.

Meet the Trashies


 He has approx 181 Trashies, some are doubles (which he DOES NOT want to swap ever), some of them are quite cute while others are a bit gross, but he loves them.




They also come with Trash Lorries and Road Sweepers.



At our local Tesco, we noticed they have brought our a new vehicle for Series 3, which went straight onto his Birthday list. He really enjoys these and plays with them all the time, so I really don't mind buying them for him. He went through a stage with Lego, I bought him tons of the stuff and it now resides in a box on the shelf, I can't remember the last time he played with it.





Easy Make Treats

Since following my more frugal lifestyle, I've stopped buying cakes and biscuits and pretty much anything we might like as a treat on a Saturday afternoon with a cup of tea to see us through until Dinner Time.

Now it's 3pm on said Saturday afternoon and I'm starting to feel a bit peckish, so I pulled up 2 of my most trusty recipes for quick and easy make treats and enlisting Erin to help, we set upon making:

Chocolate Cornflake Cakes


I dont need to put the recipe here, you just melt the chocolate and add in Cornflakes until the chocolate is used up.

Erin and I added sprinkles to our cakes before we put them in the fridge, but Damian preferred no sprinkles (must be a boy thing)


Then we made some Simple Jammy Biscuits.

Again so quick and easy to make and absoloutely delicious. I used this recipe
 http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1752/simple-jammy-biscuits





200g Self raising flour
100g Caster Sugar
100g Butter (I use Stork)
1 lightly beaten egg
Jam (I use seedless raspberry)


  1. Heat oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5. Rub the flour, sugar and butter together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Alternatively, you can do this in the food processor. Add enough egg to bring the mixture together to form a stiff dough.
  2. Flour your hands and shape the dough into a tube, about 5cm in diameter. Cut into 2cm-thick slices and place on a large baking sheet. Space them out as the mixture will spread when baking.
  3. Make a small indentation in the middle of each slice with the end of a wooden spoon, and drop a tsp of jam in the centre. Bake for 10-15 mins until slightly risen and just golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Per biscuit

170 kcalories, protein 2.0g, carbohydrate 25.0g, fat 8.0 g, saturated fat 5.0g, fibre 0.5g, sugar 13.0g, salt 0.3 g 


All that was left was to make a cup of tea and enjoy our Easy Make Treats

 

My 2 Favourite Freebie Websites

I'm a sucker for a freebie, I really am, there's nothing like that feeling of a package landing on your mat with a product or sample of something that you paid nothing for.

Although there are tons of Freebie websites out there, I've found the following 2 my favourite and will visit them each morning to pick up some great freebies.

Magic Freebies
Freebie Site UK

I'm waiting for some freebies to arrive then I can start reviewing them.

Have a look and enjoy.

Friday 15 February 2013

Half Term Week Round-up

This week has been half term and boy have we had a lot to celebrate.

Sunday was Chinese New Year - The year of the Snake.

As is tradition in China, I ordered some red envelopes and gave the children one each, filled with money (2 pound each, an odd number would have been considered bad luck along with the number 8, Chinese believe the number 4 is lucky)



To celebrate, Erin and I learnt to say Hello in Chinese Ni-Hao (Nee-How). We also learnt about how children live in China using our new book.





We made some Lanterns out of some patterned paper which we coloured in.


Erin tried her hand at writing the Chinese symbols used instead of numbers. She also wrote Snake in Chinese.









Lastly, she drew the Chinese flag and wrote a little something about the day.







Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday and of course we celebrated with homemade pancakes for breakfast. Damian and I ate our plain while of course, Erin had to be different, so she decorated hers with strawberry sauce and sprinkles. We all agreed that homemade pancakes for breakfast was definitely something we had to do more often. I wont share any pictures on how messy my kitchen got when making the pancakes.






Yesterday was St Valentine's Day. I helped Erin make some cards for each of her Grandparents and her Auntie Katie, although I forgot to take a picture of them before we handed them out. We also made some Lovebugs.





Erin made 2 Lovebugs for her best friend Lucy and her baby sister Phoebe who are coming to visit today. I made some Lovebugs and cards for my 2 biggest loves...My children.





I pinched the idea for the Lovebugs from this wonderful site and tweaked it to make them ours.
www.spoonful.com/crafts/love-ly-ladybugs


Today will be spent with our friends. Erin and Lucy have been friends since they were at nursery and while they now go to different schools, we always make it a rule to keep in touch.

So that pretty much wraps up our half term week. Tomorrow we will go shopping for packed lunch food for going back to school and Sunday will be spent with my dad and stepmum like we do every Sunday.

Snow Fun Insta-dump

Seeing as all signs of snow have now passed and everything is green once more, I thought this would be a better time than any to have an Insta-dump of all our fun in the snow.













Although we loved the snow when it first came and we sure had a lot of fun playing in it, we were so glad when the rain came and it melted overnight.

Now bring on the Spring xx