Highlights and Lowlights in the quest to become a Domestic Goddess...

Ben and I helped to organise a church Halloween party the other week. It went well and we ended up bringing home some of the surplus stuff, including four uncarved pumpkins. They were VERY LARGE so I set myself the goal to try out as many pumpkin recipes I could, until we couldn't eat anymore! We had pumpkin soup on Monday, pumpkin risotto on Tuesday, and I don't usually do a lot of baking, so I was pleased to find a pumpkin and chocolate chip muffin recipe to try out for Wednesday. They looked a bit 'Sainsburys Basics' (I imagined them with the tagline "all shapes and sizes, still yummy")

By the end of the week I was getting a bit more inventive and finally broke free of pumpkin, hooray! I had been wanting to make some kind of steamed pudding for a while, so Ben suggested an amazing plum, prune and orange zest Christmassy one. I was excited! I followed all the instructions and made a special aluminium foil covering with a pleat and a string handle ready for steaming. Here it is...

 Then I steamed it for two hours:

But it came out looking uncooked!!! 

So I thought I'd try to finish it off in the microwave. Sadly it sort of exploded around the plate that was on top if it, and looked like this:

I decided that it had to be cooked after all of that (despite its still gooey and slightly special appearance...) so we ate it.

It tasted pretty good, especially with custard, and none of us were ill so that proves to me it must have been done. As Ben often reminds me, "Presentation is not really your forte!" meaning that things taste good but look pretty bad, but all in all, my steamed pudding was a bit of a domestic failure.

But look at this! I put up this stairgate with my own fair hand. Hurrah, a domestic success!

Crazy boy

Oliver keeps showing us sneaky previews of his crazy character and what's to come in the future!

He opened this program, and got to the "Help" section...

My small receptionist!

Getting every last bit from his catch-all bib...!

Ben= My Own Personal Handy Man!

At the weekend our washing machine suddenly started spewing out a lot of water out of the drawer and the bottom and any other cranny it could find. We mopped it up with towels and tried to get the water to drain out by putting it on a rinse and spin again, but it only spewed out more. Cue Ben, the notoriously logical and manly problem solver, who immediately put on his thinking cap talking about a blockage somewhere in the machine, etc... Last night he got out his tool box (I have a husband with a tool box, cool!) and started pulling bits of the machine apart, until he found the thing that was blocking the machine. Or rather, things:

1. Two eaten up washable breast pads (I was wondering why I can only find two of the 12 that I own. Perhaps they have all died a similar death)
2. One earring (not mine, must belong to the landlord)
3. 1x £1 coin
4. 1x 5p
5. One fairly large ball... Ben then informed me that this was part of the machine, so he'd better put that one back
6. One bit of plastic that said 'Abercrombie and Fitch' on it (again, must belong to the landlord- we are not that cool!)
7. One hairband.

How, HOW, did all those things manage to get stuck in the machine?!! It's a miracle the poor machine was washing anything at all.

Hooray for a wonderful husband!! :)

Pentreaths in "Abbydeen"!

Last week was halfterm so we had my Mum and Dad and three of my brothers come to stay! We had a super time sealwatching, sand dune climbing, Planet Earth series watching, Pizza eating, Halloween party going, Mountain climbing and freezing cold picnicing.

I only brought my camera on a couple of the days, but here are the boys at the beach esplanade in Aberdeen:

One day we met up with a church friend from Ipswich who is a seasoned mountain climber and was staying in Cairngorm National Park (the HUGE National Park in Scotland) He took us on an outrageously rugged and beautiful hike up to a waterfall and by crags and corries and sheep and just the most spectacular scenery ever. The photos don't do any of it justice, but they do prove that we went!

Oliver: on Dada, Ducks and Raspberries

Apparently he looks like me, but with Ben's "serious expressions." Ha! :)

Teaching little children!

Hello!

It would seem that I have ended up in the "family business" after all- teaching. Last month I was asked to be a Primary teacher at church. Primary is the name we give to children's 'Sunday School'. I usually have a group of five children aged 6-8 and I teach them for about 35 minutes each Sunday morning. They come out with the funniest comments. I was trying to explain the word "sober" (as another word for serious, not to do with drinking!) and a clever little girl, Julia, put her hand up and asked, "Err, do you mean sofa??" Another funny moment was when the children were aked what they thought "poor in heart" could mean (to be pure and humble, not literally lacking in money) and there were ideas from "Ooh, I think that means they're dying!" to "That's what you get when you eat too much"! It's a laugh a minute.

Oliver has a sad but new trait... he gets very angry when sees that we have food that is different from his. He squeals and screams until I realise that he just wants a bit of my toast (instead of his cereal), and once I give him a bit he is blissfully happy and gobbles it down.This morning I came up with the cunning plan to make a barrier with the milk carton and a box of cereal so he couldn't see the toast I was eating (he had banana). It worked! :)

Oliver also gets frustrated if we don't feed him quickly enough. If there is as much as a second gap between Ben feeding him a spoonful of yoghurt, him swallowing it and the next spoonful he grunts and flails his arms wildly!! Agh, I can't believe our 10-month old has a temper already!!

Apart from that, he continues to delight and amaze us, although I'm convinced he will NEVER say anything apart from "Dada". We repeat "Mama", "Duck" and "Dog" to him alllll the time, but he just smiles in acknowledgement, and launches back into how much he just lurrrrves Dada! But it is lovely hearing him croon himself to sleep telling the world about his Dada, and then wakes doing just the same thing! What a silly sausage.

BP

I am officially a BP fan. Of course, I'm not the one working there, but from my unique wife-y perspective, the working hours are GREAT. Ben works 8am- 5pm 9 days in every two weeks... because he gets every other Friday off! Very nice. In fact, I've always said that BP feels a bit like 'The Firm' (John Grisham) cos they treat you so well, surely something has to be wrong?!! I love that film.

I digress... It turns out we really do get a discount on petrol! That made us laugh.

Another thing was that on Friday Ben amazingly got us tickets to the last BP Dinner Dance- basically a free, BP party! There were over 300 people there, sat a big round tables, so it was a pretty grand affair. It was outrageously glitzy- in a big hotel, with arty food, and LOTS of cutlery and glasses, and a really amazing, but slightly crazy live band. Shiny lights and everything!

After three scrummy courses and lots of wine (or water for us! - apparently they'd have to charge me for orange juice... even when I reminded the waitress that it was probably cheaper than wine, but no luck...) we boogied on down, and Ben cracked out all his crazy moves. He is GOOD! I always feel completely rubbish dancing next to him, but I feel cool to be with him!

Here we are-

Ben was quite sad to leave around 11pm since the dancing was in full force, but we had left Oliver with a new babysitter, and he's getting into the habit of waking for his first feed before midnight!! What made everything totally wonderful was our babysitter, Christine, was having the best time ever watching the first two Star Wars films, and Oliver had just started to stir as we got back around 11.30pm! Superb. Christine was brilliant and we got on well too! Ahh, it's also a major relief of motherhood when your baby behaves exactly like you told someone they will, and didn't scare her away!

Hurrah, I love BP. Ben has also had his first paycheck now, so that helps! :)