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.