Gone walking

I took a walk with scruffy gentle dog the other day and for once I had the sense to take the camera with me and look at what I found....

Wonderful, wonderful, white pom poms of dandelions. All dotted far and wide over our local field.

They were looking absolutely gorgeous and fragile with their feathery heads. For what is considered a weed it is an impressive flower. I am trully blessed to have such a magical place to walk our four legged friend. Just look at this 'secret garden' door that borders the field. It makes me want to push it gingerly open and creep through.Even scruffy gentle dog didn't seem to recognise the field as the same one he walks round daily.

On the health front our dear little girl did well and all the chicken pox spots have gone. We only have two stubborn scabs on in her hair. So thank you for all the good wishes.

She has moved on from chicken pox. Yeah that is so last fortnight we now have a cold and could be teething (she was up at 3am and didn't go back to sleep until 7am!!!!). Ahhh the life of a toddler ...fast moving and never the same day twice.

Spots unfortunately not the polka dot kind

My little one has Chicken Pox. She's 17 months old. Too, too young. Although it seems the general consensus from others is that its better to have them young. She has them on her head, around her mouth, in her ears, up her nostrils, under her armpits and between her fingers. Basically anywhere you would prefer them not to be she has them. Her legs and her arms are pretty free of the yucky pussy spots. She is being so good and isn't scratching them too much but oh they are miserable looking.

We are therefore house bound so we are doing lots of colouring, drawing, sticking and reading. I haven't seen anyone other than my husband for the last few days. However he came home early today and I took the opportunity to escape from the confines of these 4 walls and take scruffy dog for a walk and my camera.

Cow parsnips have never looked so beautiful.

The bliss of motherhood

She wakes from her afternoon nap. I sweep her from her cot and nussle into her neck. She is warm, sleepy and smells sweet and musty. We snuggle. I savour the drousy moment.

Later we are both laughing as I am tickling her. She is in my arms and we turn to look in a mirror on the wall. We laugh together at our reflection. She then puts her head onto my shoulder and sighs a contented sigh. I wish time would stand still.

For the love of cake continued...

We demolished the Birthday cake. As always it took a lot less time than it took to make.





It was pretty yummy. The beauty of this fruit cake recipe is that it doesn't have to be made months in advance to mature. Here's the recipe if you fancy making it yourself:

350g plain flour
250g butter
350g soft brown sugar
40g whitefat
5 eggs
350g currants
350g sultanas
75g ground almonds
110g cherries
110g candied peel
Small tablespoon treacle
Brandy
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ cinnamon

Rub in the fats to the flour and sugar. Add the fruits, spices, bicarb, treacle, almonds, eggs and brandy. Mix well.

Prepare a tin carefully with one or two layers of greaseproof paper inside the tin and brown paper or folded layers of tin foil ted round the outside and standing higher than the cake-tin top. Spoon in the mixture. Cover the top of the cake with a piece of tin foil for the first 3 half hours of cooking. Bake slowly at 140 degrees celcius for four and half hours, or until ready - the cake should look firm, and when a knife is inserted it should come out clean.

The Wonder of Wales

My family, Mum, Dad and brother have recently spent a week in Wales celebrating my Dad's 65th. The 6 of us stayed in a really comfortable cottage called Mayberry Cottage set high on the hillside in with views of the Black Mountain's over looking a village called Crickhowell. The views from the cottage were stunning and seemed to change every minute.

Breakfast is always somewhat of a feast when we all get together. Mum brought 5 different types of her own homemade marmalade!!!!

It meant that there was enough so we could spread it thickly onto fresh, soft white loaf from the local(ish) bakery.

Why does food always taste so much better on holiday?

For the love of cake

Over the last couple of days I have been working on my Dad's 65 birthday cake. I always like the decorated cakes I make for family and friends to really relate to the person it is for. My Dad loves cars and has a particular love of VW Beetle cars so it seemed an obvious choice to have him and my mum driving off into retirement in an open top classic beetle car.

He also loves his newspaper so I have made a Telegraph newspaper out of rice paper and used an edible pen for the printing. He is an electrician so I added a real of electrical wire around the base of the cake.

Its probably taken me about 10 hours to decorate. Which I have generally done in the evenings when our little girl had gone to bed.

I'm pretty pleased with the result. I just hope he likes it too.