Lisa it's your Birthday, Happy Birthday Lisa!

Pumelled and Pampered

Yesterday signaled the start of a week long celebration of my friends 40th Birthday. We'd all organised to go to the Elveden Centre Parc for a pamper day. And it was a terrific day out. I picked up one of the girls along the way and we arrived at the Aqua Sana at about 10.15 were we were informed by the friendly staff of what the day involved. I'd booked a quick facial and was quite happy to pad around the luxurious Spa experiencing all the delights it had to offer. So after a quick refreshing cup of coffee I wondered off for my lovely facial. Not only was I treated very nicely I was even chatting the the girl about part-time work as a reflexologist - I may consider this as the benefits they got as employees/contractors sounded really good - guest passes and discounts on the chalets.

After being scrubbed, cleansed and and refreshed I joined the girls upstairs for a brief chat and then I had a look around. It had every type of spa you could ever imagine and lots that I had never heard of like the Japanese Salt Steam Bath which was fantastic, really comfy tiled seats to sit in and a foot rest was just at the perfect height so you could relax without straining your knees. Next there was the Balinese Multi Steam Bath, Indian Blossom Steam room - which was much gentler on the skin but still a fantastic steam.

As I had a sinus infection I took full use of the Turkish Hamman steam room and its "cleansing" properties - great for stuffy noses with all that menthol. I think I tried every experience at least once and thoroughly enjoyed the freebie sample of a face mask and moisturiser at the end the session.

Lunch was included so we all ate a light salad lunch, mine had crayfish and a high energy salad, with which I drunk some elderflower juice. And at 3.30 we had the devils delight of chocolate cake and a hot chocolate - very yummy.

Absolute bargain of a day out, not only my first day at a spa but also a very relaxing one - I'll be checking online deals this week as I'd like to go again!

Chicks, bunnies and a twig

Biscuits, paint and chocolate

Emily returned from the Childminders this week bearing gifts of biscuits (I like this childminder)

(PS it's a rabbit)

Work of art in creation
:)

Bargain of the week 4 large boxes of Thorntons chocolates for £4
And I never want to see another chocolate again :) (until next week maybe)

Bee's Knees' or the Squirrels Nuts?

Mums Day

Happy Mothers Day to all my friends and my own Mother.
Today started well with 2 cups of tea in bed that also included some pressies such as a box of choccies, 1 large mothers day card and 2 hand made cards. Some cash and a day out in Cambridge. I picked up my free tiny hair straighteners which was a cool free gift from a newspaper and then we headed to the town centre for some shopping. First stop John Lewis where the dude bought me a new saucepan (I have been harping on about the lack of pans in my kitchen - especially small ones) I'm a happy girl now. Next we stopped at Polarn o.Pyret and bought Emily some new all-in one PJ's with squirrels on them! I got some new underwear at La Senza and was treated to a nice lunch.

Now we are back home about to eat some lovely organic pie from Abel and Cole.

Enjoy!

5 minute microwave chocolate cake and other odd things

Someone sent me a recipe for a 5 minute chocolate cake that you can make in a mug in a microwave. So up for the challenge I tried it out!

What the heck...

Caught - the Toe Nibbler!

(Actually she was telling me about what these little piggies get up to)

Phoebe made this cake and yummy in my tummy it was too!
Erm...

Shout for Joy
Oh, no, no no..

Phoebe wanted me to point out that no children were harmed in the filming of this production and all feet were clean (very clean)

Woo Hoo - Summer's here

officially because we broke out the decking furniture!

Crikey!

As soon as one pops out... And someone else is pregnant too. My ex-neighbour has just informed me she's now 14 weeks pregnant - well I'll be busy over the next few months as I now have a backorder or 7 blankets to make for one person, one for Wendy, one for Lisa and one for Jules! (just as well I bought the material in bulk ;) )

Birthday News!

Welldone to Wendy and Craig on the arrival of their baby girl (4 hours ago!) After a very quick and not very painful labour (less than 2 hours, and she drove herself to the hospital - amazing!). I will blog more once I had photos :)

Welcome Charlotte Riddell.

A week in pictures - and where the missing things go!

Loves stickers! Not sure my couch did though.

Taking cooking seriously.



Likes the messy stuff

Biker Babe

The Black Hole (Where you can find you missing tiger toys, magazines and handbags)



(oh - a telephone and a giraffe)

Is it Sunday already?

Another hectic week - finally got my TMA sent in on Thursday evening - not too sure about the answers but I had a chat with my tutor on Saturday and even he agrees that the TMA questions were a bit "wooly". Now I've got to catch up on 5 weeks worth of work for the Interaction Design course - it's been kinda put to one side since my company restructured themselves. I wasn't too sure whether to continue with it or not. I could be doing with out the extra pressure just now. Anyway - this week I made another baby blanket for a friend of mine and it turned out really well. Sorry I didn't take a photo of it but I have lots more of the material and as soon as i get round to making some more I'll let you all see.

Granny Do has been here and I'm sad that she's going back home today as I feel that I haven't had a chance to spend any time with her. I've even managed to sort out some stuff on her laptop and show her this new tool for reading bed-time story called Time for a Story. But importantly she has been spending lots of time with the kids and the Dude and I managed to get out for a lush meal on Friday night at the Brampton Mill and grab a film at the pictures. I can really recommend Gran Torino by Clint Eastwood - excellent moving and thought provoking film.



Today I'll be doing the usual housework and stuff - but just in time for Red Nose Day I did this!


*not only do I get an ace picture, no plastic was wasted and I still spent my £1!

Hot Pants

Today's blog is dedicated to all those hardworking, muli-tasking, ever-loving mums out there

Ka-pow! Tomorrow I wear the stars!

Our Weird World

Busy busy busy - sorry to be brief -too much to do at the moment! Just to give you a taster of this weekend :
Friday - pizza with Lucie and Lisa
Sat - dropped Emily off with Lisa, had 3 hour lecture, picked up Emily, went to friends house to look at broken pc, took pc back with me, did the weekly shop (Tesco is my hell at 5pm on Saturday!), put shopping away, fed girls, bathed Emily. Spent rest of evening not feeling too hot watching films.
Sun - woke up with sore throat and nose - not nice :( Cleaned whole house, did washing and drying, gardening, took girls to feed the swans at the park, stopped for a coffee and we wandered slowly back to Waitrose to pick up some cones for ice cream. Made a quick lunch and had ice cream. Planted some seeds, threw out rubbish and stuff into recycling bins. Started dinner,tried to help mum with using a webcam on msn - failed on that :(
Had dinner, bathed Emily, and now just putting her to bed.

Some photos of just pure strangeness !

more can be seen here http://s84.photobucket.com/albums/k3/chenderson99/Emily/misc/

Happy Birthday Jack!

Happy Birthday Jack who's 4 today!

Beautiful!

What a difference a week can make

The aerogarden - just a week after the last photo - my how it grows

The REAL reason

why I'm not loosing those last 5lbs of pegnancy weight gain - whoops

Spring is here!

Thank god today is almost over

I've had an exhausting day to say the least. I thought it would be fun to take the kids to the zoo and I decided to take them to Linton zoo - it looked ok on the website. My tale of woe beings on the M11. Ok I popped out to the docs in the morning for a quick chat about cholesterol testing. I got home and the 2 older kids were up and almost ready go - which is amazing, so I though great start we can actually leave on time for the zoo. So we set off, sat nav programmed and ready to do its job, and we started driving. Everything went fine, we got onto the M11 and just before our junction exit the traffic slowed down a lot. Thinking it was just busy we sat patiently as we crawled the last mile to the exit, and then I started to see police cones and though uh-oh an accident. Yep I was right - both southbound lanes closed. Ok not too bad at this point we were at our exit anyway and after getting off the M11 we still had a little way to go.

We arrived at the Zoo and instantly I could tell that this was not a big place. But hey ho we were there so i drove in, queued, paid (ok lied about Emily's age so I didn't pay £5 for her and glad I was about that too!), parked, toilet, got kids out and entered the Zoo. Ok it was a damp day so I was expecting some mud - that I can deal with. Some smelly cages/animals I can deal with. Park being really small is disappointing - that I can deal with. Some empty cages - ok not great I thought. Emily not really interested in the animals and more interested in the picnic hamper - ok funny. Emily starting to whine - not great. The Tapir's let us stroke them - I thought that was cool, and I was even delighted when the female Hornbill took great interest in us and even let me poke my finger through the cage and stroke her wing! Then I read the sign on the cage "Carnivore - likes to eat insects and worms" - I quickly removed my little finger from cage! But she was beautiful with lovely eyelashes.

We stopped for lunch at 12.30 , by which time both the older girls were almost turning blue with cold - being typical 12 year olds they had dressed for day out in the town shopping rather than a cold and damp day at the zoo. Seeing the 2 of them so cold I decided to end the trip to the zoo. And we headed back to Cambridge deciding to go to the cinema instead.

Arriving at the Firestation we stopped in to see the Dude at work and the chance to grab a quick cuppa to warm myself up. Then we had a quick look at the cinema's websites to check film times.

Decided the best times were at a cinema a little drive out of town, so off we set, drove to the leisure park, parked the car, got our ticket, walked to the cinema, got into the queue only to find out it was sold out - sigh. All back into the car, paid £1 for parking, drove back to the Firestation and we decided to go and get some cake in town.

Get's better (NOT)! Walked into town only to find shop after shop, bank after bank shut! I stopped at one bank and asked someone standing in the doorway what was going on - "power cut apparently!" he said. Wow how strange - we had one at work last week but only for 1 second. Ok this was not turning out to be a good day at all. I was going to let the 2 older girls wander around Cambridge on their own and possibly do a bit of shopping and I was beginning to feel that Karma was against me to have any sort of fun or half decent family day out. We walked on and luckily found a coffee shop in the town centre open, so at least we managed to get some cake. And luckily Lloyds bank was open so I was able to get some cash out and let the girls go and wander. Emily and I trundled through town randomly wondering around some shops when some stupid kid not looking where he was going just turned right and walked right into Emily's buggy almost toppling himself and Emily over. I managed to put my hand out to stop him from tumbling on Emily - and did he apologise? Nope he and his sister or friend just giggled and walked off quickly. They thought I hadn't clocked them as they tried to hide in a shop doorway - they were still giggling which I found really annoying but I just walked off and left them - I couldn't be fecking arsed by this point.

We trundled on around town a bit more and then headed to meet the girls back at Pizza Hut. I checked with them first that they had power and could take credit cards and thankfully they did. The girls arrived not long after and we sat together. I was starting to get edgy as my blood sugar was low and my fingers were blueish. We waited ages before I got the hump and asked them take our order - at that point the place had started to fill up and I thought nothing about it. Order taken,we got our drinks and I started to relax but then after 20 more minutes we still not had our startes and we noticed everyone else was already on their main course and they had arrived after us. So not one for sitting around I went up to the bar and asked for our food . The waitress turned to the cooks and asked if they had seen our order to which the cook only shrugged - ok NOW I'm pissed off! I asked for our food to be brought out quickly as we've been waiting too long

The garlic bread arrived and the waitress apologise, said they were busy - really I hadn't noticed! Pizza arrived but it was almost cold - of for f*cks sake. I'm starting to really loose the plot and I felt like bursting into tears and having a hissy fit saying what a rubbish day we were having. I gritted my teeth - ate pizza. And accepted their offer of a free desserts (only for the girls ! -mm why thanks , don't I get any compensation?)

But hey ho - off we go to get ice cream only to find the machine was broken - I mean what more could go wrong today??? eh come on! Give me a freaking break.

The waitress said she would bring over the bowls of ice cream, then changed her mind and said to send the girls up to her and she would give them the bowls so they could still help themselves to the toppings and sauce. "OK "I thought and I returned to the table and said to Phoebe over the throng of people to go and get the 3 (I said THREE) bowls of ice cream - when one of the other waitresses said "it's not free". I said "oh yes it is if your pizza is 30 minutes LATE" - can you tell I'm more than a little bit annoyed? I did also think of telling her I said 3 and not free - *hiss*

Ok - we got ice cream and the girls enjoyed it ! Emily loved the chocolate covered raisins and smarties. But she did have a mega feast of food by this time. Getting our jackets on I looked around to see if I could get my bill - but I quickly gave up when I spotted people at the main bar paying their bills. So I wondered up with Emily in the buggy and the other girls in tow. Finally being served I asked for my bill, paid and left.

Never , ever, ever am I going to Pizza Hut again