Day 749

Day 749...

We have reached the middle of the week and it has been another day of two halves.

My morning was spent in work and although my deputy was off work ill we still managed to get quite a bit of work done between us. The power of a Google drive and WhatsApp!!

This afternoon was spent back at home and it was pretty non-stop. I have a lot of companies to contact regarding my dad's passing and so this afternoon I picked a few to see how far I could get. I managed to contact four companies through a mixture of online chats and actual telephone calls and all seem to have gone relatively smoothly, although I was juggling multiple screens at one point! Still more to do but I'll aim to just get a few done each day I think.

I then had some laundry to get caught up on as we are away at the weekend and so wanted to make sure everything was up straight. Next it was time to bake; not something I do very often at all these days as being a low carb family cakes are a bit of a rarity. But as part of our fundraising week at pre-school we have decided to sell cakes and as stock was running low I got out the baking tins and made three dozen cakes all suitably Easter themed!

Just hope they taste okay!!

The afternoon has been a very multi-tasking few hours and I am now looking forward to a cup of tea, feet up and this weeks episode of Moon Knight!

See you tomorrow.
xx

Baking and Present Giving

Day 280...

Today was the first day this Christmas break that we didn't have any critical plans that we had to be up and about for so we had our first 'lie-in' of the holidays. Which after a rubbish nights sleep was much appreciated by me.

So after a steady start to the day we formed a plan; we had presents to drop off at friends, my dad to see, baking to be done and more paint spraying for R2D2.

We decided to brave the grey and rainy day and take a walk out to distribute presents and see my dad. It was at this point that Simon decided to surprise me with his latest, and secret, purchase...a Christmas jumper! Now to put this into context I have a number of jumpers and t-shirts all of a festive vibe that I will wear throughout December but this is something that I have never known Simon to take part in. Simon has always tolerated my love of Christmas and puts up with the ever expanding number of ornaments, decorations and lights each year...which also seem to go up earlier and earlier each year. He has always found Christmas to be stressful for lots of reasons but this year is the most relaxed he has ever felt and he decided to surprise me with his jumper as he knew how much it would mean to me to see him joining in the fun. It is, of course, a Star Wars themed jumper which is as it should be for him and was rather appropriate today as I was wearing my Darth Vader Gingerbread Man t-shirt.

Braving the rain we were able to walk to my dads to make sure he is doing okay and arrange for him to be with us on Christmas Day. We then stopped by a friends house to drop off a present and have a chat - how I miss my friends and just being able to pop by, chat, enjoy a drink, give them a hug and just enjoy their company.

Back home and Molly was all organised ready for an afternoon of baking. We (well I say we but Molly did most of the hard work I simply helped and washed the pots!) made a coffee caramel cake ready for Ethan's birthday tomorrow...

...some Christmas cupcakes (like mini Christmas cakes)...

...and most importantly the waffle batter ready for tomorrows breakfast of Mickey waffles. It has become a tradition over the years that on the kids birthdays and at Christmas we have Mickey shaped waffles for breakfast...with maple syrup...bacon...and of course ice-cream!

While Molly and I baked Simon was in the garage air-brushing more paint onto various parts of his R2D2 build. He is hoping to get all the painting done so that he can start some of the final assembling. This has been a long project that has been done in between work and prop and art commissions and has been a proper labour of love for Simon but it is getting closer and closer to completion.

So for a day when we didn't really have any set plans I think we had a pretty productive day. I am trying to avoid the news as much as possible at the moment. I am aware of more areas of the country going into Tier 4 as from Boxing Day and the possibility of more nationwide lockdowns in the new year but to be honest I am just very tired of it all now. I think for my own mental health I just need a few days without it being the only thing that we hear about. While doing jobs today I have felt fine but without the distraction of things to do I was very aware of how anxious and panicky I was feeling and I think I just need to try and avoid too much news and being overloaded with the same thing over and over again.

Please take care and look after yourselves.

xx

A Bit of Baking!

Now readers of my blog will know that well over a year ago I embarked on a new healthy eating lifestyle and therefore a post about baking may seem a little strange.

I have always enjoyed baking, when I got the chance, but nowadays my baking skills tend to be reserved for charity bake sales at my pre-school!

Most recent endeavours for pre-school cake sale

While I was making these I remembered an old recipe that me and my mum used to make when I was a child for an apple and oat cake; I searched high and low but just couldn't find it anywhere. I was convinced that I had a copy of the recipe somewhere but when I couldn't find it I decided that it must be at my parents house. Now as some of you will know my mum sadly passed away earlier this year so I couldn't ask her about it. Mum was great at 'throwing' ingredients together and making some fantastic bakes whereas I like to follow recipes, so even though I had a rough idea of what was in the recipe there was no way I'd attempt to make it without the recipe in front of me! So me and my dad had a good hunt through my mum's old recipe books but alas it was no where to be found.

I even searched the internet as I was convinced it was a recipe that we had gotten off a children's TV program called Blue Peter back in the late 1970's/early 1980's...but even the internet couldn't help me :(

Fast forward to last weekend and my thoughts turned towards a bit of Christmas baking! My mum always made the Christmas cakes and puddings for the whole family (and even friends some years!) and in the days before having children I followed the family tradition, and family recipe, and made my own cakes and puddings. But in the last few years I had relied on my mum providing me with a cake that I would then decorate....Disney style of course!

Mickey snowmen he he he!

So now the mantle has passed to me and it was time to go hunting for the family recipes. Now I like to think I'm quite an organised person and on my kitchen bookshelves I have all my Christmas cook books together and I had an inkling that the recipes would be inside one of these books. Sure enough inside a book from Marks & Spencer, bought a lot of years ago...

Dated 1990!!

...I found my recipes for Christmas cake and pudding...

Handwritten recipes, passed through our family.

But guess what else I found, hiding amongst the handwritten recipes? The apple and oat cake recipe I'd been looking for a few weeks earlier!

 A well used piece of paper with recipes 'typed' up on a proper typewriter...just shows how old this recipe is; I have distant memories of typing this as a young girl!

Well as I'd found it there seemed only one logical thing to do...get baking!

Ready to go in the oven

All done...and yummy too!

So with a week off work (our half term break!) I decided to use my time wisely and make my own Christmas cake and puddings following our family recipes leaving the house with a lovely smell of Christmas and me a feeling of accomplishment. I even ended the week with a spot more baking making rocky road muffins and cappuccino muffins ready for our Halloween party. And then Molly got in on the act by making cookies; chocolate marshmallow and snickerdoodles - yummy!!

I think that'll be all the baking for a while now....ok a few weeks as I have a Christmas Fair coming up for pre-school which might just require a few more cakes...