Busy day with Dom :)

We had busy day today - Dom and me :) He has midterm break and I decided that even with his cold is no point to keep him whole week at home.

I took him for little trip to Newcastle. He loves buses.

We make little shopping first - Dom choose nice T-shirts for himself :) and then we go to Discovery Museum.

Nice ship :)

Roman times

Oh bus!

I'm not sure I like horses...

Where is this rabbit???

I'm regulating the river :)

What a gun!!!

I think we check every single exposition in museum :) Dom was coming back to some pieces few times eg. regulating river :)

Then we went to nice bakery in Chinatown for snack - so many buns to choose from, plus all these tasty drinks :) Yummy!!!

Happy face :)

Then we went to Hancock Museum to see Dom's faves - dinosaurs!!!

Hey fishy, fishy :)

What a strange chap!!!

Hello friend :)

Bit of reading :)

Hi!!! Nice helmet!

This is my new friend.

By the way home we make a break in Whitley Bay for some slides on playground area, then have short walk on Promenade and we ate some fish and chips before heading back home.

We had beautiful, sunny bit chilly day and we back home happy and still full of energy - specially Dom :)

Winter or Spring?

Winter on North East of England is a strange Lady. Can look different even on two ends of the same town... Hmmm...

First Dom's winter was nice and white - at least partially :)

In our garden in January 2013 - Dom was 8 months old :)

Month earlier winter looks like that:

View from our front window :)

Christmas Eve 2013 - looked like Spring :)

2014 also looked for us more like Spring then Winter, to be honest I don't even remember if we had a bit of snow then :)

Current Winter - hmmm....

Few weeks ago we, Dom and me, had fun chasing big snowflakes around the garden. Was brill to see my boy smiling and laughing so much that he almost had tears in his eyes :)

Then was rather Springy :) We saw first snowdrops blooming in mid of January, last week I saw first purple crocuses in one of the gardens we passing during the way to school, also buds of our crocuses, hyacinths and daffodils start to show up in the garden. Even first leaves showed up on the bushes.

Today Dom could watch hailstones and small snowflakes falling down until sun show up and all melt down :) I heard on other side of town people woke up yesterday with snow in their gardens. So how to not call 'strange' our Lady Winter?

Not only Readers' DT for Quick Cards Mag :)

I really like to be a part of Readers Designing Team for Quick Cards Made Easy mag :) It is a great opportunity to be printed :)

I've made cards for DT twice already and wasn't printed, but I don't mind cause they are printing my cards in other sections of their mag pretty often :)
Plus I received my chance to be printed as a part of DT again - just need to print out all these lovely papers and start to planning what, how, etc :)

Here's my first card I made as a part of Readers DT

Here's card I sent to them last time  ( one from  four I made )

From the same paper selection I made another one which I plan to sent to my Mum for her birthday :)

Was real pleasure to play with papers from this selection - so delicate colours and patterns.

This week I also had a chance to finish birthday cards for twins and Valentine card for my partner - I hope they will like their cards ;)

 

for Jessica

 

for Jasmine

And for my Valentine  (and total dog lover )

Below pic of 3-strand multicolour seed beads necklace I made also this week - looks like I was crafty :)

I love baking!!!

I'm honest :) I really love baking :) Even if it finish with disaster :)

About 2 weeks ago I tried bread recipe from The Hairy Bikers' Big Book of Baking - Monica's Sunday Bread.

Fact - I made rolls from half of given in the book ingredients, they were success!

I decided to make them again today, also cause we didn't bought a bread. This time I made some pics and again made rolls not a breads - different shape today plus poppy seeds on top :)

After shaping :)

With poppy seeds :)

Cooling down :)

Chinese dragons and new cake :)

Yesterday Dom was celebrating Chinese New Year at nursery. They had really busy day there :) He back home stuffed with nice food and with paper dragon he made himself :)

We made another one at home, cause we didn't want the first one be lonely :)

They are scary, aren't they ;)

When Dom was away I was checking low-fat cake recipe I found in one of the cooking books I have :) It is called Spiced Apple Cake.

It wasn't me if I don't play with recipe a bit :) You need 8 inches/20 cm deep cake tin - I don't have one like this so used squarish one :)

Ingredients you need:

225 g self-raising wholemeal flour ( I used normal wholemeal flour)

1 tsp baking powder ( I used 2 tsp)

2 tsp ground cinnamon

175 g chopped dates ( in my version: mix of dates and apricots)

75 g light muscovado sugar ( I used demerara sugar)

1 tbsp pear and apple spread ( brumble jam in my version)

120 ml apple juice

2 eggs

6 tbsp sunflower oil

2 eating apples, cored and grated

1 tbsp chopped walnuts ( hazelnuts in my version)

Just mix all together, put in prepared tin and place in preheated to 180 C oven for about 1 hour ( timing from book) or until a skewer inserted into the centre of cake comes out clean. 

My cake spent in oven just 35 minutes, but my baking tin was bigger :)

I splashed it with mixture of milk and icing sugar :)

Cake tastes really nice, is naturally sweet thanks to fruits.

Bit more crafting and shark

As I suspected, 5 inches bracelet is too big for birthday girls ( I checked their wrists by myself), so yesterday I made 2 new, sized: 4 3/4 inches :) Should be ok now :)

For Jessica

For Jasmine

I also found a bit of time to make new earrings - was playing with mother of pearl

and glass pearls :)

I think they look good on copper components :)

Dom also was in artistic mood yesterday, moved his chair to kitchen, wanted to move his table there too, but it was to heavy for him, so I helped him a bit and then I gave him paper and paints as he wanted :)

He loves sharks :) The bigger the better - with big teeth the best :) Now I know why my boy cannot sleep properly ;) too many films about sharks and dinosaurs - and no cartoons, but proper documentaries. Surprising choice for almost 4 years old boy.

Crafting time

Birthdays, Valentines.. Total madness :)

Finally started to make bracelets for birthday girls for end of February, just need to check properly their wrists sizes, cause I know only one thing - bit bigger then my boy's wrist. Hmmmm, his wrist is just before 4 3/4, so theirs can be exactly 4 3/4 or 5 inches.

I made one bracelet already - loose-fitting 5 inches :)

For football crazy girl

Dom prefers it as necklace :)

Here's 'pendant' for second bracelet/necklace

Both birthday cards will have this little 'man' on them :)

I'm thinking about making one of them in yellow and blue and the other one in orange and green :) Hope girls will like them :)

I was also thinking a lot about Valentine's card for my partner and still cannot decide which image put on it... Here two possibilities:

Like both stamps... so hard choice to make :)