On my kitchen wishlist

When my lovely friend Leanne first posted her kitchen wishlist and challenged me to do the same, my immediate thought was "but I haven't got anything on my wishlist"!

Chocolate and cherry brownies

Tenderstem and Cambazola tarts (easiest tart ever!)

I really enjoy cooking and don't tend to be intimidated by anything.  If there's a recipe that catches my eye then I'll give it a go.  Cooking, especially baking, is a lot like chemistry; if you add the right ingredients in the correct proportions and carry out the proper processes, you'll end up with the intended result.  Most of the time anyway!!

Mars Bar brownies - I have Leanne to thank for this one too!

But as I thought about it, I realised there are a few bits and pieces that I'd love to cook but I've never really made time for.

These profiteroles from the Good Food Magazine look really yummy.  My mum makes a mean chocolate profiterole so it would take something special for me to deviate from that tried and true combination!

A couple of friends were talking about baking bread on instagram the other day and the finished loaves make me want to start making my own bread again!  We have a breadmaker and at one point I hit on a combination of ingredients and programme that made an almost perfect loaf.  But two kids later, we're out of the habit and I'd love to try an oven-baked loaf, prepared in the breadmaker.  I'm happy to let a machine do the hard work of kneading and rising!!

I bought a bundt tin earlier this year, intending to make some of the delicious-looking ring cakes in the original Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook but so far I've been scared off by the huge quantities of eggs and butter in the recipes.  Maybe the blueberry cake would be perfect for a bake to take to work, Andy's not a fan of blueberries.

And then I have a stack of recipe books with dozens of recipes I'd like to try!  There aren't enough meals in the day!

On a paper-related note

Life is still crazy round here, so I thought I'd just pop in with a few crafty things I've been up to lately.  I made all these pages in September, before I went back to work.  Oh how I miss my free time!!

A simple page to use up some leftover OA Cherry Hill papers.  We call Anna all sorts of things, including Annabella and it reminded me of the rhyme 'Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater'.  She can find a small scrap of paper on the floor in the middle of a room in a matter of seconds!  (Though actually, in this shot she's going for Isaac's cup, it's hiding behind the banner.  A nice example of using a generic photo to illustrate a bigger story.) 

Each year, on Facebook, you can use your status updates to customise a square print.  I used this to do a 2010 summary page last year and did the same again with 2011.  It wasn't as representative of the year's events, partly because I've moved away from Facebook as my main social networking platform, so I added a short list of highlights next to the photo.

My brother and his wife on their wedding day.  They rode in a golf buggy to take their posed photos.  Cue some amusing shots!

Isaac and Andy riding the escalators in the shopping centre near my parents' house.  I used to work in Waterstone's here and came shopping with my friends when I was a teenager.  I think this was Isaac's first time walking on an escalator (we usually have a buggy and take the lifts).

Using some new stash in the week it arrived!  Just a bit of documenting our everyday routine before it changed again.  I like having the little details of our lives captured like this.  Again, I used a couple of generic photos, love that one of Isaac having a tantrum!

Finishing up the pages for Isaac's 2nd birthday - this one is his birthday lunch with our Mummy & Baby group.

I love this shot of Isaac on the morning of his birthday.  The journalling tells about our routine that morning.  It faces the page below, so the photos of him and Anna opening gifts sort of go with it.

The other half of this page is about the star decorations I put up in our kitchen.  There's not much here, I wanted to get these pages finished and get the stories written down.  I like how simple it looks though.

Photos of Isaac playing with his birthday presents and a list of the gifts he received.  All supplies are Echo Park Little Boy (I think).

And last, but not least, an everyday page about the simplest meal I make, that the kids just adore.  And a cute pic of Anna covered in tomato sauce!  Supplies are Echo Park Summertime and it's based on a starting point by the inspirational Shimelle.

On silent sunday

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

On the 10th of October

I was at work looking after other people's babies!  My first night shifts since I went back at the end of September.  I didn't register the date until the clock turned and I had to start writing the 11th on all my notes entries, despite the fact that I worked the night of the 9th as well.

She's walking everywhere, with confidence and speed.  She falls over a lot and runs into things.  But she's happy.

She goes to a childminder 3 days a week, with Isaac and their two children.  Their little boy is two months younger and just on the move.  He loves her and like to cuddle and squidge her.  She is not impressed but is only just learning to run away!

She's still in 6-9 month clothes but we've just moved up to 9-12 vests and sleepsuits.  She sleeps in Isaac's old grobags with my (unfinished) granny squares baby blanket draped around her.  She sleeps through almost every night, with occasional feeds around 4am after which she falls back to sleep for a few hours.

She still eats everything in sight - Laura (our childminder) tells me she'll wolf down everyone else's leftovers at dinner time.  She's started to pull sandwiches to pieces before eating them, one of Isaac's more irritating habits as a baby.  She throws her food on the floor when she's had enough or wants something different.

She still breastfeeds morning and evening though she'll happily take milk from a beaker if I'm not there.  She finishes her bedtime feed then we have a cuddle before bed.  She puts her finger in my mouth and turns her head away to the side, grinning like a loon.  After a couple of repeats, she puts her head in close to mine to press a bit of her face into my mouth or nose.  She giggles and I laugh at her.  She loves eskimo kisses.

She's shy and coy, turning her head into me when we meet new people.  She prefers me to her daddy and (so he tells me) cranes her head around him to look for me if he gets her up in the morning.

She loves to play with balloons, especially chewing the ends and biting them.  She hasn't popped one, yet!  She shrieks when Isaac sings.  She finds him entertaining and irritating in equal measure but isn't often upset when he sits on her (by accident).  He picks her up under her arms and 'carries' her around the house, her little legs waving frantically as she tries to wriggle away.  She giggles when he plays hide and seek with her.  She's discovered 'peepo' and loves to pull a blanket over her head.