Month: June 2012

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Puff Pastry, Ham, Hot Dog, Cheese and Sweetcorn Pizza

The puff pizza – does it exist?  I have no idea actually and perhaps I should really go and look it up.   I keep it in reserve for days when the fridge is coming to the end of its content and needs a help along with some tinned goodies (shhhhh) to fill some empty bellies.

I always have a block or two of puff pastry in the freezer.  I never make it as it’s such a faff, but maybe one day I will and then get myself converted to fresh puff from then on, but for now, it’s always on hand.

Today is an almost at the end of the fridge day and the kids have played footie, cricket, done chores, and have not sat still in the lovely sun that we rarely get to see.

Puff Pizza

With no passata on hand, it’s just a hodgepodge of what was available in my fridge and cupboard today.

Ingredients

  • 500g block of puff pastry
  • 300g wafer thin ham
  • 500g grated cheese
  • small tin sweetcorn
  • tin of hotdogs
  • salt
  • pepper

Method

  1. Flour an oven dish, I used a very rectangle tray that we use for making oven chips.
  2. Roll out pastry to cover the bottom of the tray.
  3. Sprinkle all your toppings of choice onto the puff pastry.
  4. Cover with tin foil, shiny side down.
  5. Bake in oven at 200 for 25 minutes.
  6. Remove tin foil and bake for further 5 minutes.
  7. Serve with whatever is left in the fridge salad wise.

Your oven may run hotter or colder to make sure you keep an eye on how your puff pastry is progressing.

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Guest Post : Chloe from Cookie Jar Life takes my ticket at Britmums Live in London

Last weekend was the Brit Mums Live conference event for bloggers.  I couldn’t make it so I gave my ticket away for someone who wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise.   Chloe from Cookie Jar Life went instead of me, and I’m not sure how she dealt with having my badge to tootle along all day with her, so hopefully she remembered a nice thick marker pen to write over it.

Chloe has written a post of how she found the day, and I’m glad she had a nice time as it can be a little daunting entering a room of 500 people when you don’t know anyone.

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Saturday 23rd June I put my usual routine to one side as I set off to London at the crack of dawn for the event of the month #BritMumsLive.

To say I was a little nervous was an understatement. By the time I reached The Brewery I was already a bit shaky, this was to be my first ‘big’ blogging event.

Welcomed by lovely people I soon headed off into the hub to observe and see what was going down.

Wonderful people everywhere, feeling a bit taken back by it all I kept my space at first then @helloitsgemma and @northernmum1 turned up and I felt more settled.  Walking around the businesses tables there was so much to offer, and of course brilliant freebies as well.

The first session I attended was the ‘Blogging for the Greater Good’ which I found very informative, and I hope some amazing things come out of what the ladies said.  I learned that we can of course help many charities if we wished, but a message will be stronger if you focused on that one thing close to your heart.

Next I disappeared off to ‘Secret and Lies – bad behaviour online’ which to be honest opened my eyes up to how people truly react to trolls and abuse.  I having only experience being sent hurtful comments once, just went for the ‘ignore and delete’ method.

At lunch I was joined by the lovely @dorkymum who put up with me for the rest of the afternoon, and we had some fun having a look round the tables again in the hub and attacking the photo booth. We also found the fruity cocktails and cake!  I was in love 😉

The afternoon workshops of ‘sod the stats’ which I love it was an amazing group of ladies talking, and it was plain and simple to see why blogging should just be about what makes you happy.  Finally I went to ‘writing about your life for non-fiction and memoirs’ which to be honest wasn’t for me.  I did feel a little bored and realised that I wasn’t far enough ahead in my blogging ‘career’ to have any use of it.

The evening was by far the best part of my day, totally shocked by the fact I actually got speaking to Cherry Healey, put me in a great mood.

To listen to the blogger’s keynote speeches, well what can I say… I have never laughed and cried so much in the space of an hour or so.  There were some truly beautiful words read up on that stage. Overall I just loved meeting so many new faces, having the opportunity to experience it all.

I will definitely buy a ticket and return next year.

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Google Page Rank. Have you ever wondered where it means you are in the pecking order ?

To put it simply, we all know that Google Page Rank counts for some things, whether we want to admit it or not.  It’s google for heavens sake, and they are the law of he who must be obeyed for good search engine results.  It’s easy to check google page rank, but we need to know roughly where we are so that it actually means something.

An increase of page rank seems to factor as a multiplier, ie it is 10 times more difficult to get move up each step of the ladder from Page Rank 0 to Page Rank 10.  Rumour has it that there are now into the trillions of websites out there, so a little perspective when looking at the numbers helps make us feel a bit better about where we sit in the great Google empire.

We don’t know exactly how Google works it, but going by the guesstimate that it seems to work to, this is a simple way of explaining it.   The even harder thing is that we have no way of knowing at which end of the scale our sites are at.  I’m a 3, so I could be anywhere between ten million and a hundred million.  My next goal is just to slog along to get to that Page Rank of 4.

Google Page Rank 10 – THE top 10 websites in the world.

Google Page Rank 9 –  The top 100 websites.

Google Page Rank 8 –  The top 1000 websites.

Google Page Rank 7 –  The top 10,000 websites

Google Page Rank 6 –  The top 100,000 websites

Google Page Rank 5 –  The top 1,000,000

Google Page Rank 4 –  The top 10,000,000

Google Page Rank 3 –  The top 100,000,000

Google Page Rank 2 –  Low, going by the factor of 10 means within the top 1000,000,000

Google Page Rank 1 –  Low, multiplier added means within the top 10,000,000,000

Google Page Rank 0 –  Very new, or penalised for breaching google webmaster guidelines.

Find out what yours is with a google page rank checker.

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Guest Post: Redecorating your child’s bedroom on a budget.

This is a lovely featured guest post with some handy tips on redecorating a child’s bedroom.

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As parents we’d love to give our kids the best of everything, but unfortunately more too often our hearts say one thing and our purse strings another.

As our children grow older one thing that must also grow with them is the interior design of their bedroom, and for a lot of parents just the mere thoughts of this renovation can cause palpitations of the heart as they see the proverbial hole in their wallet grow crater-sized.  However, redecorating your child’s bedroom is something that can easily be done on a reasonable budget, and is also a good way to involve your child and help them learn about practical decision-making.

Take note of these practical tips for redecorating your child’s bedroom on a budget, and think about where your child might be able to get involved along the way.

  1. A Splash of Colour – Picking a new shade for the walls is one of the thriftiest ways of making a big overall change to the room. There’s no reason why you can’t choose a mix of different colours for the room, perhaps colour-coding different areas for different activities. A calming pastel blue for the bed area will help your child relax at the end of a busy day.
  1. Choosing a Theme – Being on a tight budget means wanting to avoid having to redecorate every single year, and so choosing broader bedroom themes – such as under the sea or a jungle adventure – is a better bet than choosing specific cartoon or television characters, which your child may well tire of as they grow older.
  1. Getting Practical – Redecorating your child’s room is a great way to clear out clutter and to create more space. Affordable and functional divan beds are a good option to save money on buying extra storage space, and specialist retailers such as Silentnight offer a wide selection of these bed types, as well as their Silentnight mattress range that will give your child the comfort and support they need for years to come.
  1. Stuffed Animals – Your child’s stuffed animals can actually be a handy resource for basic bedroom decoration. Why splash out on expensive ornaments and trinkets when you can just rearrange what is already there? If your little one is a teddy-bear obsessive, create a special corner of the room to house them all. This can really help your child to develop his or her imagination.

There’s no reason why redecorating your child’s bedroom should send you into a financial black hole. Treat it as the fun project it should be, and get a little creative. A handprint on the wall is just as effective as an expensive accessory when it comes to adding a little of your child’s personality to their personal space.

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Luxury Potato Salad with Scotty Brand Ayrshire New Potatoes

Our newest delivery from Scotty Brand arrived on Friday.  Lovely Scotty Brand Ayrshire new potatoes.  I resisted the temptation to throw a couple of bags on for the evening meal over the weekend, and plan to do something different with them over this week.

Packs of Ayrshire New Potatoes are run with a fabulous promotion to win family adventures in Scotland, and is inspired by Disney Pixar Brave.  You can find lots more on the Scotty Brand website, and promotional numbers from each pack of new potatoes to use on the website and see if you have won a prize. To do it, just peel back the sticker below and enter the code to see if you’ve won.

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I love potato salad, and so do the kids, but I buy it far more often than I should, as making fresh is much nicer.  With the lovely new potatoes, a bag did get boiled to make potato salad.

Luxury Potato Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 bag Scotty Brand new potatoes or approximately 750g.
  • sea salt.
  • 1 level teaspoon honey mustard.
  • 5 tablespoons of mayonnaise.
  • 4 tablespoons of double cream.
  • 2 teaspoons of chopped chives.

Method

  1. Wash potatoes and boil with a few pinches of sea salt for 10 – 15 minutes.
  2. Leave potatoes to cool before cutting into thick slices.
  3. Fold in mayonnaise and double cream.  You may need a little more or less mayonnaise, so add it a tablespoon at a time.
  4. Add the teaspoon of honey mustard and fold in gently until it is fully mixed.  Leave this out of you don’t like mustard.
  5. Serve with chives sprinkled on top for a decadent potato salad.

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Urgent Appeal – Getting 7 year old Olivia Downie Home to the UK from Mexico

 

Update 27/6/12 – Olivia has flown back to the UK from Mexico.

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Update: Over £140,000 has been raised so far and the plane is on it’s way to get her.  Hopefully she is released from hospital in Tijuana and can come home with her family.

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This is Olivia.  She is 7 years old and she has neuroblastoma, which is a form of cancer.  She lives in Aberdeenshire in Scotland, so it is my neck of the woods.

SHE NEEDS OUR HELP TO GET HOME – Her parents are only allowed to spend 45 minutes a day with her in Mexico.

Could you imagine being in the position of having a very sick child who is stuck in a foreign country after taking a turn for the worse?  It might never happen to us, but it has happened to Olivia and her family.

She is now so gravely ill that she cannot be flown home on a chartered flight, and needs specialist help to get back as she is dying.   Her family can’t afford to get her home again, and there is a just giving page set up to enable them to raise enough cash to take Olivia home.

As at 4pm tonight, the fund is sitting at £79,000 and it needs to get to £110,000 to get her home.

If you have a few pounds to spare, please visit her just giving page at Olivia Downie Appeal. 

You can donate by text.  Text OLIV95 and your amount £1 –  £10 to 70070.

Head on over to the Appeal page and leave what you can and pass it on using one of the two twitter hashtags on the go #getoliviahome #bringoliviahome

Olivia hasn’t got long, I am hoping everyone can get her home.

If you don’t have the money to donate to the appeal, please tweet, facebook, digg, stumbleupon, reddit and more.

Don’t comment here, go and visit the just giving page.  Olivia Downie Appeal. 

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Painting with Acrylics on a Dreary & Drab Afternoon

Forget that it’s summer now as the weather has been atrocious.  I had the kids with me last week when we went out and about to get some cheapie new curtains for the lounge I am decorating.  Ok, the curtains didn’t end up as cheap as I was hoping to get them, but they’re certainly a bargain compared to the old faded drapes they are replacing.

Popping in to the Staples at Berryden, which is pretty close by, we really just went for a browse.  We came out with a basket full of cheap goodies and new school bags for August.  The kids were most excited about their find of some cheap artists canvas boxes, and the prospect of painting with acrylics.

Fab tracing by littlest.

A whole afternoon was spent dabbing, dotting and drawing and my kids were engrossed until their canvas masterpieces were finished.

Middler wasn’t interested so I tried my best to get some sort of semblance of some kind of abstract flower.  Am completely ok with how amateur it is, but we all had a fabulous afternoon and are now eagerly awaiting some more blank canvases arriving from Amazon.

My “cough” masterpiece.

The kids bedrooms will be full of their own pictures soon.  We’re planning on possibly painting a larger canvas sheet with dots and dabs to match the new lounge when I eventually get it completely finished.  It’s a tempting blank canvas at the moment.

Littlest creation. He regrets adding the dark black line around his figure.
Eldest gave his dad this for fathers day, saying that it was a picture of his dad when he gets old.

I half wish I knew someone who was a street artist to do something fancy, but you can’t win them all can you.

 

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Carrot Cake with Scotty Brand Carrots

carrotcake4

This is a lush carrot cake and sooo easy to make.  I made this using the carrots we were so kindly given from Scotty Brand.

I used small loaf tins.

Yield – up to 6 small tins.

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Ingredients

  • 4 oz castor sugar
  • 4 oz demerara or brown sugar
  • 8 oz butter
  • 8 oz self-raising flour, or plan flour with baking powder
  • 4 medium sizes eggs
  • 200g grated carrots
  • 100g chopped nuts
  • 250g mascapone cheese
  • sachet gelatine
  • cinnamon
  • nutmeg
  • topping
Method
  1. Cream butter and sugar together.
  2. Add eggs and mix until the batter becomes smooth.
  3. Sieve in self-raising flour and add the carrots.
  4. Mix until all ingredients are fully bended together.
  5. Fold in a teaspoon of cinnamon, nutmeg and the chopped nuts.
  6. Spoon out into baking cases, tins or trays.
  7. Bake in oven at approximately 160 F for about 12 – 15 minutes.  Oven times may vary depending on if it is fan assisted, gas or standard electrical.
  8. For the filling, wait until the cake is cool.
  9. Melt the gelatine and mix it with the mascapone.
  10. Cover top of cakes with the mascapone.
  11. Leave for half an hour to begin to set.
  12. Add decoration, or sprinkle top of cake with ground cinnamon.

 

 

 

 

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Ellos – Kids Clothes Review

The Ellos PR offered me £50 to spend on clothes from their website.   The online store has a good range of clothes for men, women and for kids.  I really was spoiled for choice, but eventually narrowed it down to these lovely trousers and t-shirt, with a pair of bib and brace overalls for the kids.

I would have to say that the quality of the trousers and t-shirt were actually very good, and I noticed today that some of their summer clothes are on special offer for good prices.  It’s worth a little extra for clothes that last a little longer I think, but the prices on Ellos are actually fairly good.

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The garments did take a long time to arrive and to be fair, we’ve had them a month now, but we haven’t had much good weather to put them to the play test with.

Middler couldn’t wait to try on his T and Trousers though, and although they look like they are sold out on the website, there are other similar products that he would also have been very happy with.

We washed the clothes yesterday for the first time and for me, the washability is what makes a piece of clothing actually worth wearing, so I am very happy with the outcome.

Sadly, the bib and brace overalls come up very small.  They were intended for littlest who is not quite 10, and I ordered a size 146, which is an age 11.  He couldn’t get them up over his normal sized thighs.  Middler is fairly tall and skinny for his age at nearly 11, so they fitted around his legs, but he would really need a couple of sizes bigger to make the legs long enough to fit.  They are meant to be capri style and it looks as if we will have to roll them up to use as  dungaree shorts.

I left it too long to ask the PR to change the bib and braces.  They wouldn’t exchange them for me as we’d had them for more than 14 days, the same length of time that a shopper would have.  At £27 for thick and good quality denim, I think it’s quite a good deal and I’m tempted to buy a pair that is a couple of sizes bigger.

Quality: Very good.
Washability: Very good.
Room for Improvement:  I would have preferred to know up front that I would have had to return in a fortnight for an exchange.