Roundup

 So in the last little while we've had:

  Sam waving back at Sir Chris Hoy on his lap of honour after winning gold.

 My sister Amy and I making pool noodle horses for the jousting at Hayley's (my niece) birthday party.

 "I call it Nude Descending a Staircase" Sam thinking he is Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes

 Ethan and Sam meeting Peppa Pig in Asda. Sam was completely amazed, Ethan was amazed and slightly scared!

 My boys cuddling :) of course 30 seconds from this they were wrestling like you wouldn't believe, but there we are.

 Sam and his amazing climbing abilities. I keep having to find new 'out of reach' spots! Here he's waving about a homemade wand (yes another one!) that I thought I'd tucked away on a blocked off windowsill. He climbed up a chair, then a table to get to it. This one was destined to be a surprise for another child, until I found out they already had one!

So once again I had a sad lonely wand sitting about my house! I was just waiting to see if anyone wanted it when today we went to Rich's parents for dinner and to celebrate Mel's birthday (sister in law). She'd asked for no present (what?!) so we'd just given her some money - you can't have nothing! Only then she mentioned that she'd seen the other wand on facebook and really liked it. So I snuck out and went home, did a quick age wash to finish it (luckily it dries almost instantly) and hastily wrapped it in brown paper and a ribbon. 

She actually squealed when she opened it, I love that part!

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Ollivander Update!

The magical post made it through the muggle system, Hooray! Seriously, sometimes I think it'd be more reliable to invest in (and then train of course) an owl.

Robyn was, I'm told, absolutely thrilled :) I love it, I got to make kids happy with just normal (ok, slightly on the geek side, but that just makes it better!) childhood things!

To be honest, the pictures speak for themselves without my waffling, so here goes...

 Look at that grin!

 Finding the wax seal

 

Is that not the happiest excited face you've ever seen?

After doing Robyn's wand and letter, I saw on facebook that another friend, Rachel, was doing a Harry Potter week in the summer holidays with her kids and they were making wands, so I offered to send them Ollivander letters too, congratulating them on their wandmaking.

 This is Izzy, who also happens to be friends with Robyn, so in her letter I mentioned that she shouldn't tell muggles, but that I'd already written to Robyn so it was ok to tell her ;)

And this is Alex (7), who apparently, along with his little brother Sam (5) was completely taken in by it all, love it! Rachel told me that Sam also quietly asked her if the wands would work when they were finished, bless him!

While pilfering (with permission!) these pictures from facebook, I've also seen that Robyn has instructed her mum to buy a frame for her letter! Makes me feel like I really did a great job!

Thanks to Rach and Mel for letting me share pictures of your gorgeous children x

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Being Garrick Ollivander

So, I have a bit of a thing about making stuff - I love to fiddle, make, draw, paint, sew, pretty much anything that keeps my hands busy. Not long ago I found Instructables and I love it! So many projects!

One of the first ones I spotted that I wanted to make was the Harry Potter wand tutorial. I am a Potter Geek, I had just finished the whole set again (I've lost count how many times, I just love them!), and I loved the idea that I could make it in under an hour, and with stuff I already had around the house - Those kinds of crafts are great, impromptu quickies. So, I got cracking a couple of weeks ago and...

Ta-da! The tutorial is really easy, and I think an older child would be more than able to manage it, Though it does use hot glue, so they'd probably need help with that. Basically it's a long thin cone of paper filled with the hot glue. The filling part was tricky trying to work the glue right down into the cone as it does cool quite fast - I held the outside of the wand against a hot iron to remelt some of the glue and forced it down with a spare glue stick from the packet, and still had a small air pocket in the middle!

The tutorial was for a generic wand, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I went online to find pictures of the wands from the movies. I wanted to make Neville's as I love the character, but it looked quite tricky, so I chose to try Hermione's first:

Which was really really easy. The pattern around it is just glue gun glue squirted round it And then I painted the whole thing with acrylic paint, and did a dark wash (watered down paint painted on then rubbed off so the crevices look darker) to age/distress it a bit, and basically stop it being one flat colour. It's slightly greeny brown, because that's what the pictures looked like!

Now here comes the fun part. A friend, Mel, tweeted that her daughter Robyn is Harry Potter obsessed, and was spending the day being Hermione (her favourite character) having plaited her wet hair the night before to make it curly. It made me smile as it was totally something I would have done on a whim as a child (Had HP been around then!) and I kept remembering it for a day or two. Then I remembered my Hermione wand sat on the top of the kitchen cupboard, not quite finished, looking a bit abandoned. So I offered it to Mel, and offered to do a letter from Mr Ollivander to go with it. Cue craft number 2, wizard's stationery in the Oven! All I did was print up a letter unique to Robyn, including how the wand she had was broken by her sister, and the properties that her wand has - Mel checked what wand had chosen Robyn on Pottermore and I matched it as well as I could (I had to change the length slightly as the wand was already finished and a bit long). Then I soaked the paper in very strong coffee. We don't drink coffee so it was good to get my moneys worth out of the sad little jar that I'd bought to have in the cupboard in case of builders and parents of the children's friends, but had never been opened!

I actually tried 3 different letters (again, perfectionist). The first I soaked and tore the edges slightly to age it, then tried to dry it on a baking tray. The raw edges baked to the foil and it ripped coming off. Rubbish. I tried a second torn edged one and dried it on the oven shelf like this:

 But it just didn't look right, and I tried again with the straight edged version you can see up there. The problem with putting it straight on the shelves is that the water evaporates unevenly, giving you stripes from the rack, which I really did not like at all. Gah! I actually re-soaked that one - I'd run out of copies as we've got no printer at the moment - and dried it on an upside down baking tray, and huzzah! It worked! But I still wasn't done, as it dried quite warped and wrinkled, and very brittle. I was actually too scared fold it into the (also coffee stained) envelope! I tried steam ironing it, so it was flatter and not quite so totally dried out to a crisp. It worked really well and left the paper just feeling like stiff paper (or parchment, which was what I was going for) rather than crunchy dried out leaves.

 Then I decided I wanted to put a wax seal on it. Much harder than I thought. It's incredibly easy to do, if you have a stamp for the seal, or something you can improvise to a stamp. I did not, but I couldn't not do it after I'd decided I wanted to! I spent maybe an hour melting wax and shoving stuff in it to try and find something like the design I had in my head, and had to keep simplifying it or changing it, but I'm happy with how it worked out. If I do it again I think I'll go rubber stamp shopping first to see if I can find anything I like, because I made this with 3 different implements (read household objects) and was a right faff. In the end I wanted it to look at least vaguely like a wand casting a round spell, as the circle would therefore also be an O. I think it turned out ok, I did the same seal on the back of the envelope as well.

 So, there you have it! I wrapped the wand in a piece of purple velvety fabric and made a cardboard box (not nearly pretty enough for a picture) to protect it in the post, then put both the box and the letter in a jiffy bag, which I made 2 more 'parchment' labels for, adding a HP twist to the address with the location of Robyn's bedroom, and a scrawl on the back saying "Owl injured in transit, use Muggle post" and now all there is to be done is take it to the post office.

I'm really excited to hear and hopefully see in pictures how Robyn reacts when it gets there, I really enjoyed doing it so hopefully she'll love it!

Things I have learnt:
Don't use your ironing board as a surface. I practised making the wax seal on it as our table space is limited, and I slipped and smeared crayon wax on it. I needed a new ironing board cover already so I'm not too cross, but now I really need a new one.

Don't use crayons for wax seals. They melt to a very thin liquid which doesn't led itself to stamping, as it cools hard quite slowly. Candle wax is better. Sealing wax is obviously best, but you'd have to buy it, as it isn't the kind of thing that is just lying about the house. And I'm cheap ;)

My next planned project:
Thor helmet for Ethan and Loki costume for Sam. It's for Halloween so likely won't be finished for a while and probably not started for a bit either!

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

The last wedding

 This is my 'little' sister Jess, and her new husband Jonny, They got married 2 weeks ago. I was lucky enough to be able to spend the week beforehand at my parents with all my sisters, which was lovely (95% of the time - siblings understand ;) ) We worked hard all week preparing the hall, and our dresses, and ourselves! There may have been some shopping too - absolutely essential wedding shopping of course. (Again, about 95%...ish..)

 Bridesmaids' shoes

Reception tables

These took an unbelievably long time for 22 tables! The hall was gorgeous, paper globe lanterns strung from the ceiling with also had a fabric canopy. Simple and gorgeous, though not exactly simple to put up!

This was halfway through, only half the chairs are out (now that was a monotonous job, almost on a par with ironing the tablecloths) and no cutlery, but you can see the lanterns!

All the girls together - Sheri, Me, Becky, Jess, Amy, Sam and Cathy. 

Each of us chose our dress patterns, and Amy and I even made our own (a whole other stress of it's own, if I'd been able to find a dressmaker with the time I'd have used one!) Cathy, Jess's absolutely lovely friend and Maid of Honor, originally had hers made by a friend, but it never showed up, so she took Sheri and Becky on the Thursday into town to buy one, which also then had to be altered, but they were blessed with finding one the exact colour of the other dresses and fabric we already had, and Sheri made it modest.

 

 Becky, Sheri and Me

The reception was great, the food was gorgeous and thankfully my boys behaved themselves most of the time. The speeches were good, except for when my Dad made us all get up at the front and talked about us in front of 200 people, like it wasn't bad enough having to walk down the aisle! He did give us all a present though ;)

 With Dad. He held in the tears for most of the day :)

It was a great day, filled with a LOT of laughter, including some inappropriately timed giggling. Which the bridesmaids may or may not have been involved in. It was perfect for Jess and Jonny though.

As you can guess, they were at least involved in all the giggling, and sometimes leading it! 

After the reception we travelled to London to see them be sealed in the Temple for time and all eternity. This means they will be together forever, not separated by death. It's a simple but sacred ceremony, and it was special to witness.

Jess was the last of us to get married, being the youngest. She's lovely, kind and caring, funny and loving. Just enough crazy in there too. She brings out the best in us. We're a little smidgen protective of her. We didn't feel it when Jonny came around. He is a really great guy. On his first date with Jess he met the half of the family who were in England at the time. He took it completely in his stride. He is also kind and lovely. His new nieces and nephews all adore him, because he's happy to play and talk with them. Two of them decided (independently) that they were going to marry Jonny. One of them was Ethan, who when we told him that Jessie might not be too pleased about it, said that she 'can marry Grandma and Grandpa'.

I can't imagine either of them with anyone else, and wish them all the happiness in the world x

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Father's Day

My boys LOVE Daddy. They run for the door when he gets home. I understand it completely, Daddy is fun. I want to run for the door myself. Some days I do. Daddy will let you run around and around the living room, even though it's almost bedtime. He lets you fall asleep downstairs.

Ethan, at age 1, already new that Daddy was the one to go to when he didn't want to go to sleep upstairs.

Or in his own bed very early in the morning. Mummy is the one who'll put you back. Once you're past the need for milk in the night, Daddy is the one to go to in the wee hours. Mummy will sort you out and get you to back to bed, Daddy will sometimes just lift the cover and let you climb in. This is clearly an innate parental response, I remember the same rules from my own childhood.

Daddy was the one to introduce Sam to Ethan. It went very well, about 30 seconds after this picture, Ethan gave Sam his Raffey, a very big deal. I believe at this point, I was flaked out on the couch having finally run out of adrenaline.

I'm seeing a theme here...

Now that Ethan is at pre-school, he gets to make pictures and things like this, which I think are just the cutest.

Daddy's head looks strangely skeletal, but has a close to accurate amount of hair ;) I also just noticed he seems to have his feet on backwards, but I love it.

Sam loves to climb all over him, at 18 months that's about as complex as his games get. Ethan, now 4, loves to sit with Daddy, play with Daddy, read to Daddy. He's grasped the fact that we can send pictures to Daddy at work, and this is a frequent request. I try very hard not to get frustrated, as he tends to ask while I'm doing the washing, or cooking dinner, or cleaning the toilet. Daddy doesn't want a picture of that. But I let him as much as possible. So I might be second place in their affections - I really don't mind that much, first place has gone to someone pretty amazing.

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

4 years ago.

It started  in the afternoon, a week overdue with me completely clueless as to what was going to happen. I was resting my enormous baby bump on a gym ball. Rich came home to me wondering if my waters had gone, and took me to the hospital to get checked over.

We got there and had a frankly hilarious conversation with the midwife who was quite insistent that I'd possibly just wet myself. Only before she'd come into the room, my waters had gone all over the floor on the other side of the bed. While telling me I'd probably just wet myself, she walked around the bed, and skidded in the enormous puddle. Bit of karmic justice there. She told me I was 'probably not in labour' and she'd send me home, except my blood pressure was up and with it being 8pm, Dr's were few and far between to check me over and I couldn't go.

Two hours later and we went over to the labour ward as I was progressing, hurrah! I got set up with the lovely gas and air, and later an epidural, and I got a little sleep.

Rich went off in search of food, and found a vending machine with one sandwich in it. Filled with carrot and hummus. He left it there.

I woke up just before 3, and after 40 minutes of really *fun* pushing, Ethan James Brown came hurtling into the world. 8lbs 11oz, 53cms long, and spreading out like he was relieved to be out. He looked pretty big to me, and he pretty much filled the fishbowl cot.

He was scrumptious, and he was ours.

I remember it like it was yesterday, but somehow he's already at nursery school. In September he'll start reception. He already has an 18 month old brother. He can write his name. He draws. He asks questions about his world. He has the most amazing imagination. He comes out with the funniest things. Yesterday he was telling me that when he was in my tummy, he decided he wanted to come out because he wanted a cuddle with his Daddy. A few days ago he said "The bees won't fly in my ears now because I smell like jelly beans."

It has been a demanding, crazy, tiring, awesome, infuriating, hilarious 4 years. I can't wait for more.

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Exercise

Found on Pinterest but unfortunately it just linked back to spam.

Today I walked/jogged 3 and a half miles :) I'm once again on the weight loss wagon, and I'm attempting to follow the couch to 5k plan in a vague sort of way. It's not that I particularly wish to be able to run 3 miles per se - I still see it as a chore rather than enjoy it - but I do want to be fitter and definitely thinner.

The basic of the plan is that you start with jogging short distances in between walking. I figured I could manage that, as I was already used to walking 3 miles in the morning. So, I started my walk, waited til I was sufficiently warmed up, and started to jog. Within 20 seconds I thought I was going to die, but I pushed through, the only reason being that I only had to jog for 60 seconds at a time.

What I hadn't thought about was that it was much harder to run than it is to walk... when you're pushing one of these.

About 30lbs of cute. Plus the not very light pushchair. 

BUT I did it. In fact 3.5 miles is the farthest I've gone during pre-school hours, and it took me slightly less time that 3 miles did walking. I'd say I nailed it!

And I don't regret it at all, even though my legs hurt and I was cold and it rained on me ever so slightly. I felt great, invigorated, ready to go! In fact I'm looking forward to doing it again. Well maybe that's going a bit far. But I'm not dreading it :)

Next Hurdle: *Shudder* getting up early specifically to go do exercise. It's a big hurdle, I love my bed, but it brings a reward, not having to push the pushchair. I'll let you know if I manage it. I'm slightly doubtful, as I woke up early enough to get up and go do it this morning, but I chose to rollover and go back to sleep.

That's just how I am, I love a nice warm bed, but the quest for the waist of yesteryear is strong in me, We shall see if I succeed or fail.

On another note of success and failure, I told my sister about this morning's run/walk, and there was talk of signing up for Race for Life. Wibble.

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

It's the little things...

... that can really pick me up. For example:

My boys flying down the slide together too fast for me to take a picture.

My biggest boy begging me to make him a roof so he can read outside.

A neighbour's cat straying into our garden and making the boys' day.

Finally being able to hang the washing out on the line again after Winter.

And Finally...

Every time I vacuum feeling like I'm using a helmet from a Star Wars Clone trooper! Although it does tend to make Rich wonder why I'm humming The Imperial March when he gets in ;)

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Cookies!

These cookies are the bomb. They also taste slightly like brownies and make A LOT. For example, yesterday I made 159, because Ethan asked to make star biscuits after school and the only star cutter that I could find was only 1 and a half inches across! It worked out alright, because I got to give lots away as well as have a tub at home.

As requested, here's the recipe...

3 cups Plain Flour
1/2 cup Cocoa
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking powder
1 cup Butter/Marg - you must use butter if you want to roll it out rather than just make blob cookies
1 3/4 cups Sugar
2 Eggs
2 tsp Vanilla
2 bags of chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 200°C

Mix the flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder.

In a separate bowl cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs and vanilla. Add to the dry ingredients and add the chocolate chips. Mix to a smooth dough.

If it's a hot day, refrigerate the dough for an hour before rolling out. otherwise, go to town! Roll out, cut out, place on baking trays covered in greaseproof paper. If you've got less time you can just roll it into balls and flatten with a fork.

Bake for 15ish minutes, depending on the size of them.

Eat with milk. Sigh contentedly. Get fat.

You're welcome ;)

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Weekends are the best!

My lovely parents visited us this weekend as they've just returned from New Zealand. It was awesome! The boys totally adore them, we went to the Light Railway again as my Mum loves steam trains, and then met up with my sister Amy and her kids to go geocaching. It was fun and we found two caches, with only moderate mud traipsing.

The only massive downer was that Rich had to be off schmoozing clients and missed out. He had Friday off in lieu so we managed to get shopping done and stuff but it's not the same. Plus the shopping made us late to pick up Ethan from nursery school. I had to ring the school receptionist to tell her we were on our way and then literally run (I do not run well. at all!) to his class from the car to get him. He was upset of course, but only by the fact that Daddy didn't get out of the car and come pick him up. Charmed!

Today we went to church where I got to actually listen to almost the whole 3 hours without child related interruptions. I also heard that my friend had her baby yesterday which is always lovely :) I'm excited for the impending cooing, I do love a squidge with a teeny one! Later we had a delicious dinner and put off the parents leaving as long as we could :( I hate that part, though we do at least know that we'll be seeing them again soon for Easter. Also sad - Jess didn't come with them. Then comes the depressing looking at houses near to them and realising how ridiculously expensive it is down there, though the gap is slowly lessening.

On a happier note, I looked at my bookmarks and discovered some semi forgotten blogs to look at, which always cheers me up a bit. And there's always pinterest!

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

The day in which I get completely spoiled

Yesterday I was treated to a day of spoiling, it was lovely!

I was woken up with two bunches of flowers.


Why two? well, Rich and Ethan were picking the flowers, and Ethan picked the bunch of yellow chrysanthemums. Rich tried to persuade him to pick the more colourful (and probably more expensive) bunch. Apparently, the conversation went like this.

Ethan: These ones Daddy, these are pretty.
Rich: Yes they are, but how about some with more colours in?
Ethan: No Daddy, these ones! Girls like yellow too!
Rich: You're right they do, but these ones have lots of different flowers in.
Ethan: Fine! I will just get them with mine own money!

Considering he's 3 and has no money to speak of, Rich decided to let it go and got both as the chrysanthemums were very cheap anyway.

I was brought downstairs and told to close my eyes, and they each brought their bouquets forward. It was so sweet, Ethan's little hopeful face that I would like his flowers broke out into a huge grin when I said they were lovely. He then took me into the kitchen to put them in water where I was shown....

Donuts! 12 Donuts, no less. Well, one less actually, as Ethan couldn't wait til they got home. The numbers quickly diminished, as we have 2 small boys who love donuts as much as life itself, something they have not inherited from me, oh no. Ahem.

I was then treated to a whole afternoon of shopping, and bought a very summery dress (that I forgot to photograph) for church today. I'd originally planned to wear it out for dinner that evening, but Rich told me the restaurant wasn't really a fancy place. He was right, I'd have felt silly, and this way I got to show it to people I know :)

My lovely in-laws babysat for us so we could go for dinner at Fazenda in Leeds.

Picture from here

This place is amazing. You sit down and order drinks, and the moment you're at the table they bring you a little basket of dough balls and what can only be described as mini pasties. Then you go to the salad bar. Oh, but it's so much more! Salad, potatoes, a fish dish, cured meats, veggies. Some sort of black bean stew that I avoided. Pork and Apple stew stuff. Two kinds of bread. A cheese. Rich told me that when he went with his work team, the cheese was the size of a barrel. It was a bit smaller last night but still, a huge cheese!
Basically, you could eat your whole meal right there, but then you'd miss the meats, and oh... the meats. 15 different types or cuts of meat. Pork, chicken, gammon, sausage, and of course, steak.

That green circle that looks like a beermat? Everyone has one, and the other side is red. If you turn it to green, the chefs come to your table and slice meat off a big sword like skewer, and you grab it as it comes off with your individual tongs. Turn it to red, and they stop. Great system, as you get to try a little bit of lots of stuff, totally removes the difficult "argh, what shall I have?!" moment!

Their signature meat is the cap of rump steak and it was so so amazing. The outside had a crispy texture, it was just mouth wateringly delicious.
The desserts all looked amazing, Rich had a trio of sorbets, apple, mango, and cactus and lime. Cactus and lime is very odd, it tastes almost spicy, but odd in a good way. I had a Marquise de Chocolate I think it was called, and it was so good. Chocolate biscuity base with a brownie/torte middle, with a layer of toffee and cream on the top. Heaven! The service was brilliant too, everyone was so happy and helpful.

Clearly, I would massively recommend it! My lovely husband has been working so hard that his boss gave him the money so we could go for dinner there as he'd planned it for a team bonus, but said that Rich deserved it even if the team didn't make the target. I am so blessed to have such a hard working husband, and not only that, but one who noticed I'd been a little down and so kindly decided to give me a lovely pick me up. I knew about the dinner, and that I was going to be able to buy something new (desperately needed, I miss my black skirt!), but the donuts and flowers, and lovely moment with my biggest boy were all lovely surprises. Thank you Rich x

Update: I ate the last donut. Less than 48 hours after they arrived in the house.

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

Books are the bomb

I love to read. Love love love. I will read almost anything, and going to book shops is bittersweet. I love having books of my own, but funds and space (or rather the lack thereof) dictate that I must not buy. I recently downloaded the Kindle app for my phone, and later when we got an iPad, there too, so I can check out free and cheap books on there.

I'll be honest, I don't love it. I much prefer a real book, pages, bookmarks, the ease of flipping back several chapters or even just a few pages. I'm sticking with it though. I am currently reading this:

Picture from Amazon

It's a little bit hard going, and I'm blaming a lot of that on the kindle app - on the iPad it's back lit which is probably a little harsh on my eyes when I subject them to hours of it. I'd do much better with a hard copy. However, I am still at the beginning, Jean Valjean has barely made his appearance, for goodness sake. I'm sure that now it will get better.

Not half an hour ago, Ethan presented me with this:
I have left the few Puddle Lane books we have out and reachable for him for a LONG time now, I try hard not to push books at him because I've got a feeling he has my rebellious streak and it might put him off, but now we've read it and he's gone for another. I love that boy. Especially watching him do this:


And now finally, finally, I am getting Rich back into books. He doesn't have a lot of spare time, but I have convinced him to give this a go...


He's a few chapters in and likes it, but has fallen behind again. So much so that on Friday morning while Ethan was in school, I started it, and overtook him. On Saturday night I finished it. I forgot how that book grabs you!

Although I think saying I convinced might be too soft a word. I think my exact words *might* have been "You have to read this before we go and see it at the cinema."

Where books are concerned, there really is no arguing with me, and he started it that night. I think I might cajole him into reading a bit more tonight. It's all part of my not-so-evil plan to make us a family of book lovers :)

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!

The Light Railway

On Saturday we were at a loss for what to do, having remarkably few errands to get done and visible sunshine, an amazing combination! We settled on the Light Railway, thinking that we've not been for ages and Ethan would be at least vaguely interested in the trains.


He was so excited, we were taken by surprise! He was charging about like a mad thing.


Ok, that picture doesn't show it, but he was really excited. He was being silly for the pictures and kept frowning and fake smiling!



We were given a leaflet with a picture hunt on it, and when the correct numbers were filled in you could collect a free badge. Ethan was beside himself, and bordering on slightly manic while finding the pictures. When we went to collect his badge he was hopping with glee! He took the badge into school today to show his teachers and (as predicted by myself) left it behind. I haven't mentioned it in case it is *whispers* lost.


Sam was not too impressed with the trains, and whilst we were moving mostly made this face:


Though we did also get a (very) few of these:


He was pretty happy with the toy trains in the cafe at the other end though. I had a scrumptious bowl of leek and potato soup and an AMAZING scone. It was possibly the best I've ever tasted. Even with only butter and jam rather than clotted cream.

The other thing about the Light Railway is that right next to it is a luxury caravan showhome site. It is my guilty pleasure. There are 5 static caravans to look through, fully furnished. I realise this is making me sound mega trashy, so let me elaborate. They are bigger than my house. Each one has 2 double bedrooms, the master bedrooms have en suite and walk in wardrobes. They have separate living, dining and kitchen rooms. They have nicer furniture than we do, with the exception of the beds. One of them even had a kitchen with an island in the middle. Each one is a Tardis. I love them not to live in (regardless of how good they look inside, on the outside, it's still a caravan.) but to try to figure out how exactly they have managed to fit what's inside, inside. I mean come on, one of them had a utility room!

Plus it kept us out of the wind until our train left, so win win!

Update: This blog has now moved to www.undomesticaited.wordpress.com - Hope to see you over there!