In The Pink

When I was planning my schedule of April days I decided I would give myself a little time off over the Easter weekend.

Thursday was another easy brooch day to mark the date in 1886 when John Pemberton brewed the first batch of the drink which would become known the world over as Coca Cola.

Having taken Friday off it was then onto some heavy construction work on Saturday.
Pink wafer biscuits and icing sugar were pressed into action to help us build our own version of the Eiffel Tower. This was to celebrate the date when after more than 2 years of building work Paris' famous landmark was complete.

Easter Sunday I took myself off for a walk over the bridge to St Mary's church.
As I mentioned a post or two ago I have been researching my family tree.
I decided to start with my dad's family and the earliest relatives I can find are George and Sarah both of whom were born in the late 1790's. 
They had a son George, who in turn had a son named Henry.
Henry had a son name Albert and his son William was my grandad.
I found out that Sarah was buried on 01/04/1838 and so I decided to go and leave some flowers for her. The church which stands today is not the one she would have known as that one fell into disrepair.
It would seem so many of my relatives lived and worked in this area of the city and so by leaving the flowers I wasn't only remembering Sarah but all those whose lives I am slowly uncovering.

If you read yesterday's post about the chocolate mousse then you'll know that we had my family over on Monday for food and games.
With G's help I was able to recreate the Pinterest plastic umbrella and pom pom idea as a little April showers display above the buffet lunch I had set out.
I was really pleased with the way it turned out.

Good Clean Fun?

We've had a lovely long Easter weekend which ended with having my family over for food and games.
As you can see by the state of my sister T the last game we played involved chocolate mousse.
This game is for two people and both have to wear blindfolds.
Standing facing each other, but at arms length away, one feeds the other as much chocolate mousse as possible within 1 minute.
I guarantee watching this game will have you in stitches.
My mum was paired up with my sister C and repeatedly fed her mousse into her left armpit!
I don't think there could possibly be a better way to mark Chocolate Mousse day.

Easter

                         What a lovely Easter weekend we've just had.
Starting back on Good Friday me, G and S took ourselves off into town. For ages now we've been wanting to go and have a round of mini golf on the course in one of the parks and Friday proved to be the day we finally got to do it. We were the first group to arrive and had it all to ourselves for the first ten minutes. This gave us a good head start on the people who followed and meant we could just take our time and enjoy each hole and not feel like we were holding anyone up.

S managed to get a hole in one on her very first go but unfortunately things didn't carry on in the same vein for her!

We all had a really good laugh and it was lovely to spend time together.

A Festival of Colour was advertised as being held at the shopping centre so we wandered on over.

Loved what they had done to the steps.

The colour was continued in people dressed as exotic flowers

and the traditional fairground attractions of the helter skelter

and these gallopers.

A couple of weeks back G and I watched High Society. I love everything about this movie but G had never seen it before. I'm please to say he liked very much.

After watching it I commented that I have never seen The Philadelphia Society, the movie on which this musical version is based.

A few days later a copy arrived in the post, G had been online and ordered a copy and we watched this Friday evening.

I'm glad to have seen it (Cary Grant is in it!) but we both agreed High Society will always be our favourite.

We've now passed it on to G's mum to watch.

G had to work on Saturday and as S was busy with a friend I went to Winchester with him. We went a couple of hours before he needed to start work so we could pop along to the Angie Lewin exhibition at the Discovery Centre.

G was in and out within 5 minutes, he said it didn't so anything for him so he went into the library to see if he could find a book he was after.

I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't doubt I would. I love her work.
It wasn't until I was nearly leaving that I realised what I had chosen to wear that day by pure co-incidence, wasn't a million miles away from what I had been looking at.

We had time afterwards to sit by the Cathedral and have a drink and a bite to eat before G had to go on into work.

I then had an hour until my train and spent most it it in a shop called Molly's Den. There are several of these locally. Each one a treasure trove of collectables, antiques and all manner of goodies.
I came home with a new handmade brooch

and some of my money which my mum gave me at Christmas was spent on this cute mini desk calendar. 

Easter Sunday was a strange day. G had to work the late shift again and T and S were both at home all day. That hasn't happened in a while. I busied myself with household chores and in between those S helped me to prepare some games, presents and nests for our family day on Monday.
I cheated and bought the meringue nests to which we added a good dollop of melted chocolate and some mini eggs.

We had invited some of G's and my family over to us for lunch today which is when most those meringue nests were eaten.
Everyone was given a chocolate rabbit. Each rabbit sported a tag handmade by S which read 'You're Some Bunny Special'.

Plus there were some games. We had a round of bunny bingo, an Easter bunny left and right game, a guess what's in the golden egg competition and then we rounded it all off with a messy 'make your partner look like a spring lamb' game.
This involved one person in the team wearing a shower cap which was then covered in shaving foam. As shown here by T.

The shower capped team members lined up on one side and the other team members stood in a line opposite. They were given a bag of cotton wool balls which they had to throw at the shaving foam. They had one minute to get as many balls to stick as possible. As shown here by my sister C, my sister's partner A and by G. 

It was incredibly messy, incredibly sticky and incredibly funny. The winning team managed 34.
S was G's partner and she only managed 6!
I would thoroughly recommend this game, but make sure you have plenty of towels handy for the clean-up afterwards and a black sack for throwing everything away in. 

Easter Decorating

Although I could quite easily have cat napped on Monday after my dental appointment I decided to do something which I knew would cheer me up.

First off I hung up my new Easter wreath. I made this a couple of weeks ago.

Last year I made a bunny wreath for the front door.

This year I fancied something different.

I bought a metre of dress netting which was cut into strips which were then wrapped around a polystrene wreath.

A bag of 99p mini glitter eggs were then stuck onto pins and pushed into the wreath.

Then it was onto changing the mantelpiece in the dining room.

Bunnies, candles,

chicks and eggs will now be on display until the end of April. Let's hope there's some chocolate as well before too long.

We have a new addition in the front room.

T bought me this Easter Egg Hunt sign.

He said he saw it and thought 'mum likes things like that' and decided he would buy it for me as a surprise gift.

Such a thoughtful thing to do and very much appreciated.

Edible Easter Flowers

This is how S and I spent half an hour on Easter Sunday.

Digestive biscuits, icing and a bag of M&Ms were transformed into colourful, pretty flowers.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to one and all.

As you can see the dresser has been given it's Easter makeover.

I've had a busy week. 

 I had to attend a two day training course, learning how to navigate my way around the computer system I'll be using in my new job, which I'll be going to for the first time this coming Tuesday.

S had to go to the breakfast club at school for these two days and thankfully she absolutely loved it.

She particularly enjoyed Wednesday because not only was there the pre-school early morning club but in the afternoon there was a treat of being able to watch a movie as a reward for good work over the term.

T finished on Wednesday and has been spending some extra time volunteering at the charity shop. Yesterday I picked him up after he finished and although I don't normally like listening to music in the car he played the Spice Girls and we sang along to it, very loudly and probably very out of tune!

Yesterday was a glorious day and I spent over 3 hours of it out in the back garden tidying up and cutting back and trying to restore some sort of order out there. Our garden really is a a big old mess, where is the Ground Force team when you need them?
G arrived home mid afternoon. He'd had a night away in Bristol with his mate K as they'd gone to see the Von Hertzen Brothers.
Last night our friends R and S popped round for a catch up. 
It was gone midnight before we got to bed and so the last thing I wanted this morning was to be woken up early.
Melvin the cat had other ideas as selfishly he wanted his breakfast and so around 6.30 he woken me up by gently batting my face with his paw. 
This evening G and I have a date at the opera. I'm just hoping I'll be able to stay awake for the whole performance!

Bunny Wreath

I do like a quick and easy craft project.
I was looking on my Easter Pinterest board for something which I could make for decorating our front door.
I bought a styrofoam wreath from a local craft shop, glued on a pair of bunny ears and then wrapped round 2 fluffy scarfs both of which were purchased from a branch of Poundland.
The original idea came from mrs b's hive and a step by step guide for making hers can be found by clicking on the link. 

Our Easter and S Day

 Today is the day 7 years ago we travelled home together from Norfolk and became a family of 4.
It's known as S Day (T Day is in August) and each year we try and mark the occasion for each child. Due to both G and I having to work today and S going to spend time with a friend we celebrated S Day over the Easter break. It started with a trip to the cinema to see Home, a new animated movie which she really wanted to see. Good family fun movie.
At home in the afternoon we set about prettifying the dining room for Easter, S decorated branches of forsythia with eggs

whilst I hung up our bunny mugs on the dresser.

We had invited my mum and sister over for a roast in the afternoon and to follow I made a hot cross bun treacle tart. I cheated and used ready made pastry but it was very simple to make and the recipe is here if you fancy giving it a go. The perfect accompaniment for a cup of tea I guarantee it.

Saturday was a mooching around the house kind of day and then Sunday we were all off to Salisbury for a family celebration. G's brother will be 60 tomorrow and so we all gathered together for lunch at G's mum's house for a birthday lunch. 
G and I had complied a little quiz about events, people, sport and film from 1955 and after lunch the family divided themselves into two teams and played against each other. I'm happy to report the birthday boy was on the winning team.

Yesterday we popped along to the car boot sale for an hour.
G came home with a couple of singles and an LP and my best buy was this Royal Albert milk and sugar bowl. There was also a smaller sugar bowl, for the coffee set I'm presuming, and for the 3 items I paid £2.00. I checked on-line yesterday and this shape and design are from the 1950's. It's been washed and packed away until December!
Our day was topped off with a Chinese takeaway, another part of our slightly early S Day celebrations.

Another Pinterest inspired spring craft was completed at the weekend.
I have made a wreath for the front door using a ball of lime green fun fur yarn. It looks like lush spring grass. I am really pleased with the way it has turned out. Instructions are here if you want to give it a whirl.

I couldn't end this post without including a photo of S, after all it is her day, but as she has already gone out and I won't see her now until I come home from work this evening I will have to use a photo of her from January.

We are incredibly lucky to have such a beautiful, kind, funny and generous little girl as our daughter.

Pairs

I hope everyone had a good Easter and if you were lucky enough to have had time off then routines being re-established this week wasn't too much of a shock.

As normal I am playing catchup and this post is a brief selection from our second week of the school hols.

Sunday morning we took ourselves off to the car boot and it was the first huge one of the season. 

Two of my best buys cost £1.00 a piece.

The ice cream motif is on the front of a knitted top from Miss Selfridge. I would somehow like to chop this about and use it on the front of a cushion.

The Mousie Mousie game is brand new still in it's the cellophane wrapper and will be given to a little boy for his 5th birthday later in the year. This game has given our family hours of fun over the years and I hope it does the same to our friends.

We did have some lovely warm and sunny days over the Easter holiday which this pairing show. The first from an afternoon in our back garden and the second from a 4 hour trip to the park with S and her friend L on the Wednesday full of the best kind of fun.

The original plans for Thursday fell through and both children were getting a bit crotchety so I printed off the Easter scavenger hunt clues from the Nature Detectives site and said we were going out. I can't say it was a complete success as there was a fair bit of moaning but it got us outside for a walk.
As we approached the park we saw this post on the right showing the letters N and Y. 'Wouldn't it be funny if the other two sides had T and O on,' I said. And they did. T assured me he hadn't been out with the paint. He was secretly a bit pleased, although he wasn't going to show it!

We had to find something green and I vetoed grass and trees as too boring (you can imagine how that was received!) but thought bowling green was a good example as it wasn't quite so obvious. Despite the warm and dry weather the bits we had walk through which were muddy were really muddy.

On Good Friday I escaped for a couple of hours and went to visit a friend. It was her birthday the following day and so I had to deliver her present. I made up a set of practical but pretty items for her. A heart shaped bucket, CK washing up cloths, a beehived washing up brush, a tea towel which said 'Save Water, Drink Champagne' and a book with a bit of a vintage feel to it on Household and Organisational tips. On the bucket handle I attached a tag with said 'Pretty things should be used even for the boring jobs!'

S and I made some daffodils with the help of a pattern from Martha Stewart, which were given out to aunts, uncles and grannies. The flowers were cut from card and then a yellow cake case stuck to the centre and filled with mini eggs. A chocolate ladybird was sellotaped to one of the petals and we were really pleased with the end result.

We had our Easter egg hunt on bank holiday Monday as we spent the Sunday in Salisbury with G's family. We invited my mum and my sisters over in the afternoon for coffee and cake cake and the children then got down to the serious business of solving the clues. They soon worked each one out and dashed (or in T's case gently ambled) around the house and garden. The clue which got the biggest laugh was the last one and the one of which G was most proud.....
Mars Bar, Twix, Crunchie, Snickers
Look where mum keeps her knickers.
Childish humour goes down very well in our house. Hope it gave you a giggle too.