A round up of February

February has been a nice month for us, lots of business success for me and hard work. I was very structured and disciplined and it really paid off. I worked pretty much every Saturday morning doing stalls which was good and Martha got to spend time with Dad. Martha and I also went to lots of weekday kiddie groups and had a lovely time with everyone.
We celebrated Valentine's which was really nice and quite fun. Martha made her first craft item at playgroup - a hanging card heart but she wasn't too keen to hand it over to Daddy so we hung it in her room!
This month we had a few friends for dinner - Uncle B & Auntie F and Hazel who came to Sunday lunch (and brought amazing jam and hyacinths and wine - lovely treats), friends Sue and Daz came for curry & a catch up just this weekend and a couple (Lou and Dave) came with their boys too for us to get to know them a little better. Also old friends Andy and Caroline came - we hadn't seen them for years so that was a big catch up time...definitely need to do that again soon.
I caught up with some scrapbooking and Mike got some log chopping done and we sorted out a few things in the house. The month has flown by and now it's March 1st already.


A nice time at soft play with friends. Martha was only keen to dress up when she saw the Thomas outfit.

Still loving a hat - Martha steals her Dad's hat as soon as he is home from work.

We nipped into the Monday coffee morning at church to sample a pink cake - yum!

I can reach the veg basket!

Mike and I had dinner together on Valentine's night - steak and mash and minted veg followed by melt in the middle chocolate puds (all courtesy of Waitrose!) It was lovely not to cook - just fling it all in the oven. And a bottle of prosecco ensured I was asleep by 9pm, how romantic!!

My first attempt at Red Velvet cupcakes for Valentine's Day - red sponge and cream cheese frosting, pretty good!

We loved The Blue Train music at our Musical ABC class. It is all played by recorders. On the last day of term every child joined in with the music while bubbles were blown all around to imitate the steam from the train - pretty special for little ones!

A new find - Martha loves her sticker books and they keep her amused for ages. It's good when I am doing a few work things at the dining table. Having a business that allows me to be home for Martha is great but it does mean that I do need to do some daytime stuff from time to time. I do feel really fortunate that I can be flexible though - REALLY fortunate!

A choo choo train in the park and the doggy hat that Martha loves with long black ears! We met some new friends and talked to lots of dogs out for walks. Fun times!

Scones

I'm feeling a little late to the game here but I have gotten much better at scones lately. Lots of recipes state buttermilk but I've been making mine with yogurt - either plain / O% / flavoured - and the scones are so much lighter.

Recently I made them with blueberries and raspberries and the yogurt and they were really good like a cross between a cake and a scone.

This is roughly the recipe although I don't actually weigh it out....

8oz flour

2 oz butter/marg

2oz caster sugar

1 egg

a glugg of skimmed milk

2/3 tblsp yogurt

berries (optional)

Bake at 160 for 10/12 minutes (depending on your oven). Serve warm with butter.

"onny"

One of Martha's absolute favourite things are tangerines - she calls them "onny" (orange)

At the weekend she went into the kitchen and managed to reach a bag of them and escaped to the stairs (with a hat on - she loves to wear a hat!) trying to get into them. She then handed the bag to my dad and waited with her little hands clasped to have one peeled for her.

Growing

Our girl is growing and has started little sentences. This weekend she very helpfully transferred a load of card/paper recycling into the general bin saying each time "going in a bin" I only transferred it back after she had gone to bed as she was having such a nice time!

Martha and the dollies have a banana snack.

The beautiful bulbs that our neighbour brought for us when she came to dinner...they seem to grow every morning.

Round up of January

Never before has a month seemed to fly by so fast!! It's been a fab start to the year...we seem to be gettting on top of a few things - paperwork (some, not all) plus my business is going great guns and I feel more organised with storage for that too.

And amazingly my food shopping seems to be really working out - lots of freezer food and my beloved Abel & Cole organic order have been so great this month. I've planned a weeks' worth of menus and pretty much stuck to it. Just got into a great routine with it all. I think I have saved quite a bit too which is good as things are a tad tight due to a non-paying tenant (not easy to pay for someone else to live in your house for 3 months!)

I am managing to not spend and not even visit the charity shops (well...only one day of rummaging!) although I am being tempted by Emma Bridgewater again and new shiny pottery - even the brochure is such a treat to read. Maybe in March I will think about a teeny spend in her online shop.

Twice I've made sticky pudding with dates that I got in my weekly box. I'm not keen on eating dates but they do make an amazing pudding. The recipe is much easier than it looks and the results are good.

Also we celebrated Burns' night at church - wonderful haggis and I got to say the Selkirk Grace which is lovely.

We had a friend to dinner last night, one of our neighbours and she brought me a huge bowl of fabulous hyacinths - they are not in bloom yet but their heather-coloured papery skins look amazing just as they are.

All in all a good start to 2011 and now onto February!

What Happened to Last Week?!

Birthday Girl!

Already January is flying by.

We went to our niece's 5th birthday party yesterday which was fun. Martha had a fab time with playing pass the parcel and looking at all the toys and eating cake. All the family were there so it was good to catch up.

We got home and put Martha to bed and then we were so tired that we were in bed at 9pm too - such a rock and roll night!

MK's Great Grandpa

I love that Martha has a great-grandpa. We went to see him when we were on our way to Mike's parents in Yorkshire and it was great to see him looking so well. Martha loved all his tigers and made "raaahhh" noises all the way home and said "mamps nice" lots of times. She hasn't seen him for over 6 months so it was so good to make this trip again.