Halloween is here

Today Halloween arrived at our house

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Happy Birthday Harry!

This weekend Harry turned three! And we celebrated all weekend. 

Harry in his favourite t-shirt which we turned in to the inspiration for his birthday tea decorations, more on that later.

We started his day at home with present opening and Harry's favourite pancakes with extra maple syrup.
All Harry has been asking for over the last few weeks is a bike with pedals, well he has actually just been asking for pedals as I think he thought that we just add pedals to his little balance bike. So you could imagine his excitment when he came downstairs to find a brand new blue 'big boys' bike. We even let him ride it a little bit in the house before breakfast.

After breafast we packed up all his new toys and his bike into the car and drove over to my parents house. Here he was greeted with two very excited Grandparents, three Uncles, Auntie Rachael, an equally excited Eddie dog and more presents. We spent most of the morning outside teaching Harry to ride his bike - all very funny as he seems to be able to get about quite fast by just bringing his right leg up and down and not making a full circle with the pedals, I am sure it will come together  in time.

We decorated the dining room using Harry's favourite yellow car t-shirt as inspration, lots of yellow and white balloons, with each place setting having a matchbox yellow or silver car on thier napkin and of course a tradional victoria sandwich cake (made by Mum) decorated with white and yellow icing. Harry was very happy with the setting and even happier with the food, which was lasagna, salad and olive bread followed by cake and ice-cream.

At the end of the day when was going to bed he asked if he could keep his car t-shirt on to sleep in!

The next day we spent the day together just the four of us and at a much calmer pace. We woke up to a beautiful, sunny autumn morning so we took the boys to Winkworth Arboretum, which is absolutely beautiful this time of year. The morning was spent walking about, feeding the ducks, collecting sticks and leaves with a stop off for tea and cake.

 The boys where both really tired so after afternoon naps we went to Pizza Express for pizza's and yummy chocolate cake, which finished off a wonderful weekend perfectly.

Happy Birthday my gorgeous Harry, we love you!!

xxx

Autumn Walk

This afternoon I took the boys (and my camera) for a walk around our neighbourhood to look at the beautiful autumn.

Just because

Usually I make us a tea cake or a banana cake or muffins of some kind but today I felt like making something special just because it felt like that kind of a day. So I baked this Chocolate Cherry Cake and topped it with dark chocolate.

Cake in the autumn sunshine

I first tried this cake when Luke and I lived in Australia and we were visiting some wonderful Italian friends of ours at their parent’s house. This family home was a great place to visit as it seemed no matter what time of day we visited them we were always fed the most delicious food, pizza, cured meats, cakes or yummy little sweet biscuits. This particular cake was baked by our friends Nonna (Grandmother) who lived in the house too. Every time I make it I always think of that lovely, welcoming family.

This is the recipe:

1 jar or tin of morello cherries
200g butter
200g sugar
4 eggs
125g plain flour
100g chopped dark chocolate
125g almond meal or ground almonds
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Drain the juice out of the cherries and tear them in to pieces.
Cream together butter and sugar then add eggs.
Fold in flour, baking powder, almond, cinnamon, chocolate and finally add cherries.
Pour mixture into a greased and floured baking tin and place in a moderate oven for approx 1 hour.
(Check centre before removing from oven)
When cooled cover in melted dark chocolate.

Enjoy x

Salt dough Dinosaurs

We continued our dinosaur theme today and made salt dough dinosaurs using these cookie cutters. As Harry wanted to decorate them this afternoon I baked them in the oven wrapped in silver foil.

Before baking I used a tooth pick to make a little hole in some of the dinosaurs so we could use them as gift decorations.

Dinosaur Painting

Today’s activity was creating a hand print stegosaurus dinosaur.

I sketched the outline of the dinosaur’s body (using a picture from one of our books as a reference) then Harry painted his body and together we printed his hand along the back to make plates.

Harry loved his picture and was very excited to show Daddy when he got home from work.

Dinosaurs

All weekend Harry has been telling us about the exploding volcano in dinosaur land he has been making at nursery last week and he was very exciting about it. When I went to collect him from nursery today he was really proud to show me this amazing dinoland he had made, I was very impressed.

Dino-land complete with volcano and cress forest.

Now dinosaurs seem to have become a bit of a ‘thing’ for Harry, which makes a nice change as normally all he is interested in is cars and trains.

I am thinking as Harry has been asking to do some ‘making’ for a while now and I have not had much time to do crafts in the last few weeks, we will do some dinosaur type crafts/activities over the next week or so.
Maybe I should call it Dino-week!