Teacher Gifts

For Tom and Lily's end of year teacher gifts I thought I'd have a go at using edible wafers. I found this lovely set of 'thank the teacher' papers on eBay for not very much and was excited to give them a go.

I made my usual vanilla fairy cakes and iced them with glace icing. It turns out that you are better off using buttercream  with rice papers as they curl up slightly on wetter icings. Oh well, chalk that one down to experience! They turned out quite well, though not the vision of perfection I had in my head. By the time they were wrapped in their pretty cupcake wrappers and placed in their boxes, they looked pretty decent. It's all in the presentation!

Each teacher received a box of four fairy cakes, each with a different wafer design. 

 There were three boxes in all, one for Tom's teacher, one for Lily's and one for the headteacher.

I had to search before I found these lovely cake boxes. I knew I wanted something pretty, but I didn't want to spend a lot. I was thrilled when I found these, which came with matching cupcake wrappers.

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Dog Walking

Apologies for being somewhat absent lately. As I mentioned, my parents were visiting and we were having a fun and busy week together. Together with computer problems, I simply didn't get the time to blog. Our main computer is as dead as the proverbial doornail at the moment, so I am typing this on our old dinosaur of a laptop. It is slow, but at least it works!

We all loved having my parents and their dogs with us. During their stay, the highlight of the Podings' day was the dog walk. Now that Emma is older, sharing two dogs between three children is becoming more of a problem. Tom and Lily both keep telling their Nanny and Grandad that they need to get another dog so they can have one each! Somehow we seem to manage and everyone gets a turn. It was quite a thrill for Tom and Lily to be picked up from school with the dogs and be able to show them off to their friends. Surprisingly they are not hassling us to get them a dog of their own, though I suspect they would adopt Flash in a heartbeat!

This is the lane we walk up every day to take the children to school. We are lucky as our house is at the bottom of the lane and the school is at the top. We don't have far to walk, which will be convenient in September when I will have to make several trips along it a day when Emma starts playgroup as well.

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Emma is three!

I blinked and my baby turned three!

Happy Birthday to our Darling Emma.

You are a bright, loving, talkative, content little soul and your happy little personality makes us all smile. You are just so happy to be alive and everything is worthy of notice and wonderful to you. You bring so much sunshine to our family.

We love you Emma Bear!

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The Shelty has arrived

Flash, my parents' Shelty. 

My parents and their two dogs are visiting this week, so if you were wondering why the blog was a bit quiet it is because I am too busy enjoying their company to get on the computer much. Tom and Lily finish school on Friday and Emma turns three on Saturday, so we have a busy week ahead of us. I am unlikely to get much blogging done this week, but expect to be inundated with photos next week!
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A Quiet Sunday

Mark is away on an extended business trip at the moment, so it is just me and the Podlings for over a  fortnight. I don't drive, so we are making our own entertainment at home at the weekends until he returns. We had a lovely day today and I thought Mark might enjoy seeing what we got up to. I like to think he misses us as much as we miss him!

We started the day off  in the kitchen. The girls and I made rock cakes together whilst Tom amused himself elsewhere. After lunch, we took advantage of the dry day to take a pleasant walk in the sunshine. We didn't go far as I sprained my ankle last week (and bruised my other foot a few days later), so I'm still not up to anything strenuous. We took an amble through the fields behind the house and finished up with drinks and a snack in the park. We were out for about two hours in the end. They played in the park for a while and then we came home and played with plasticine until teatime. There was much bouncing on the trampoline and playing in the garden in between whiles and we finished the day off as all days should be finished off, by reading books together at bedtime. It was, in short, an absolutely lovely day where nothing special happened, but it happened to be special all the same.

“I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” 
- Anne, L.M Montgomery (One of my favourite quotes) 

The girls love helping out in the kitchen 

Now that Lily is six, I want to start trying to teach her some proper baking methods, rather than simply slapping everything together just for fun. Today she learnt the rubbing in method and I have to say she did brilliantly. In fact, other than weighing out the ingredients, I had minimal input in the process and she did really well just following my instructions. Emma did a really good job spooning the mixture onto the baking trays and beating the egg is her own particular delight. In a few years I shall be dispatching these two to the kitchen to whip up baked goods for the whole family!

Where was Tom while we were baking? In the conservatory on his DS of course! 

A walk in the sunshine, a somewhat rare commodity this summer. 

Brotherly love 

I love Tom's amusement at Lily's grumpy face in this picture. I feel it illustrates the challenges involved in getting decent pictures of all three children at once! 

In case you'd forgotten what it looks like, some blue sky, white clouds and sunshine. It is raining again this evening, but at least we had a lovely day. 

Never underestimate the fun that can be had with plasticine and a few pipe cleaners! 

 

Emma found it easier to manipulate the plasticine than I expected. Usually they get on better with play dough at this age.

.Tom making baby Wu-bats. I have to confess to being unclear what a Wu-bat is, but Tom informs me it is a type of Pokemon. He particularly wanted to make these and it was really for him that I bought the plasticine and pipe cleaners so he could do it. The girls had plenty of fun making spiders, snails and little girls (with some help from me...plasticine is fun for all ages after all!)

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Party Girl

Lily had been anticipating the birthday party of a school friend on Saturday, but with Mark away on business and me not being able to drive, we thought she wouldn't be able to attend. Thankfully, a kind neighbour stepped in and offered to take her to the party as her son, who is in Lily's class, was also going. Lily was very excited to have a chance to wear the pretty party dress she was given for her birthday and it gave her another chance to wear the bolero and shoes she wore as a bridesmaid last month. With her hair in a high bun, she really did look as pretty as a picture!

Many thanks to Louise for being so kind as to take Lily to the party and to Fiona for the lovely party dress. Lily was a very happy girl on Saturday morning thanks to you both.

Sports Day

A little late, but here are a few pictures from Tom and Lily's school sports day last week. I was rather unusually able to get really close this time, so Emma and I had a good view and I was able to get some nice pictures. Thankfully the race area was fenced off, otherwise I suspect I would have had pictures of all three Podlings running. Emma really wanted to get in there with Tom and Lily! In the end, she found a few friends her own age to play with and had fun exploring the field with them instead.

Tom and Lily both did really well and seemed to really be enjoying themselves. We were grateful the rain held off long enough that the children were able to have their fun afternoon. Their second sports day is next week, so it will be interesting to see if they are lucky enough to score two dry days. This has been the wettest spring and summer I can remember!

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