Trick or treat...

The only child I managed to get a photo of this year. It was a very hectic, confused evening.

2011 Pumpkins

This is mine - witch with clouds.

This is Sarah's - some kind of demon or sprite I think.

Sarah's friend, Katharine, went for the traditional look.

Alex's cyclops pumpkin. Love this one!

This one doesn't show as well, but it's brilliant - Olivia's "creepy" pumpkin with bats.

Birthday outing

Olivia & Nina - queuing outside the London Dungeon. For ages. (Though I did most of the queuing and they went off and explored the local shops and landmarks. I had a book.)

But it was fun.

Gourmet Burger. Yum.

Wandering along the South Bank, including a bit of poking around on the "beach", as the tide was out.

Heading home as the sun started to set.

Bread

Alex and I made some bread today - by hand, not in the bread machine. It's a wholemeal bread with seeds in it. Smells great (we are having it for dinner with some minestrone soup which I need to go make instead of carrying on doing computer stuff) - feels nice and light, so hopefully it will taste great as well.

Here's the dought - you can see some seeds -

and here it is after the final proving. All the seeds on top pretty much fell off in the baking, though. I think it probably needs an egg-wash to glue them on!

Flower cupcakes

"By the way, Mum, it's our class cake sale tomorrow..."

Birthday party madness

I took Sarah and 6 friends swimming (or rather, I dropped them off) this afternoon. The above was a brief interval between the swimming and us going out to eat (being joined by two more friends who couldn't come to the swimming part) at Gourmet Burger Kitchen... Nice to see they are so mature!

Lamb Meatballs with rosemary tomato sauce

As several people asked for the recipe...

2 tsp olive oil

1 pk 12 ready-made lamb meatballs (approx 450g) [nb, I made my own meatballs with lamb mince and some breadcrumbs and an egg]

4 onions, finely sliced

4 garlic cloves, finely sliced

1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary leaves, plus extra to sprinkle

2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes

pasta, to serve

1. Heat 1 tsp oil in a large frying pan. Add the meatballs and cook, turning often, until browned. Remove from the pan.

2. Tip the onions inot the pan with the remaining oil and a pinch of salt and cook until very soft, 10-15 minutes. Add the garlic and rosemary and cook for 2 min more.

3. Add the tomatoes and return meatballs to the pan. Simmer for 10 minutes until the sauce has thickened and the meatballs are cooked through. Season and serve with the pasta, sprinkle with rosemary.

Dead simple and very yummy - would no doubt work with beef meatballs as well (or even minced turkey or a vegetarian option like felafel).

Arty kids

Two fairly recent creations from the girls - Olivia's art homework, above, was to take some photos of the area where you live, then choose one of them to draw. Her drawing is great, but I like her presentation as well.

And this is a watercolour Sarah did back at the end of the summer holidays - she actually started with the tree trunk and branches and filled the rest in around it...

Park Life

Kite flying spotted on the way home from school today.

A week or so ago - seagull convention!

Sleeping Beauties

They'll probably kill me for this later, but I couldn't resist. I guess a full week of school and a busy Saturday was a bit more than either of them could handle - it wasn't very late, either - only about 10.30...

Alexosaurus

Small boy with new shirt

Chocolate Reject Biscuits...

There was only supposed to be one batch of biscuits - the Snickerdoodles below - but Sarah was baking with Alex and got distracted by something else and forgot to put the eggs in until the end, so the dough was very stiff and wouldn't really work for Snickerdoodles. So we baked it anyway, and dipped them in chocolate - they taste ok, just are a bit heavy in texture. Sarah has officially christened them "Chocolate Reject Biscuits".

But of course we remade the dough - more carefully the second time - and ended up with Snickerdoodles as well...

Third and last first day of school

Not a great photo, but I had a hard enough time getting her to stand still for this one, without either sticking out her tongue or having her entire fringe cover her face... Oh well, at least she's happy because she got the teachers she wanted for art, Spanish, history and science.

First day of school, part 2

Olivia is off to her first day of secondary school in about 10 minutes - at least it's not chucking down rain, like yesterday - especially as she is going to have to walk, whatever the weather!

First day of school, part 1

Not a great photo, with the light in the wrong place, but it was chucking rain, so I wasn't going to make him stand outside. Tomorrow, Olivia will start secondary school - but it's a Year 7 only day, which means that Sarah doesn't start until Thursday, so we have lots of first days this year...

Scenes from Kew

A few snaps (views rather than flowers) from Kew today - it was so bright and sunny (for a change) that most of the shots with actual people in them show them squinting in the bright light, so I'm leaving those out!

In the rock garden - I remember when they first built this, it was nice but quite spartan - it's really come into its own now...

A selection of Mexican Day of the Dead artwork, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory (the desert section of it, anyway).

Treetop walkway, from below - we did go up as well, but the height shows better from the ground.

Inside the Temperate House. I love these giant ferns.

Morden Summer Fete

We spent an hour or two at a local fete today - just a small one, with car boot sale, local stalls, a few rides and games, a little live music - and some vintage cars to admire...

And of course, the pre-requistite ferrets to take for a walk. We left before the ferret races began. Shame, really!

Black Cap

Headed out to the South Downs this afternoon, to meet a friend, for a little climb up Black Cap...

...followed by a lovely meal at the Half Moon, Ditchling. Gotta love the South Downs.

Spiced Apple & Sultana Cake

Less Spiced Apple & Sultana Cake...

I am down to 5 small apples and 7 pears from the Big Bag of Fruit. I missed photographing the Pear Tarte Tatin we had yesterday - it was gone before I thought of it...

Roman Villa

Finished at last.

Don't seem to have a photo of Alex, who did much of the work. Though we all pitched in at the end to finish off the figures and trees...