Hello Again!

I do apologise for giving up on my blogging; something that I'm regretting now so a quick catch up is in order I think... the last post was in May and we were busily redesigning our garden; well I can say that this has been finished and I'm completely over the moon with it.

 We have a pond with the sound of running water near the window so we can hear it whether we are inside or out; gravel paths making crunch, crunch as you walk along which I love; four veggie patches which currently are being done in the square foot method; the outdoor animals, guinea pigs and rabbits have their own area which is safely fenced off from Chip (our Labrador, who think all animals have been put on earth solely to play with her). So all in all I feel truly blessed because my hubby has worked hard to get everything 'just so'.

I'd take some piccies but we are in the middle of a thunder and lightening storm at the moment so they will just have to wait ;o)

I'm only home educating one of my children now as my son has finished his official home education and now works here .  My daughter is currently studying animals (no surprise there), and starts her gcse English course in September whilst working part time at a local restaurant so we are busy, busy, busy :)

More catch-up another day, I have cooking to do :o)

new family member lol

A few weeks ago, hubby took time off work and we set about moving the pond from the left-hand side of the garden to the right-hand side. At the time I thought the same thing that you're probably thinking right now... what a waste of time and effort, not to mention the money... but it is sooo much better now. There is more room as you step out of the door, the fish are not in full sun and the patio area seems sooo much bigger AND I get another veggie plot, although kids want it to be for herbs since it is so near the kitchen; so all in all it was well worth all the digging around in the mud ;o)

Here's a little something that we found during the transition... he's been put in the new pond but we haven't seen him since but I'm not overly worried as I had no idea that he was living in the old one!

The boys having a well earned rest.

The plastic covering waiting to be filled and then cut to size.

I haven't got any pics of the completed pond yet but I'll get some as soon as the rain stops :o)

Horse Riding Fun

Our home ed group recently went horseriding at a local riding school. It was great fun and the staff were very friendly. We all had a great time despite the heavens opening up at one point. The horses took it all in their stride. At the end we were all given vouchers for money off future lessons; now we just have to fit it into our busy schedules ;o)

Catch up Time

Just noticed that I haven't posted during April at all; this was mainly due to lots going on so I had very little time to be on the computer or to take any photos.

My youngest has been diligently working towards taking her ICT exam which is coming up next month (yikes!). My son has been making lots of money, well a little bit of money, doing programming and my eldest has been gearing up towards moving out.

As a family, we've been getting the caravan ready for outings (we are a little behind this year for lots of reasons, too many to go into), redesigning the garden on paper and then putting it all into practice over hubby's holidays from work and finally we've got a new puppy, well she's 9 months old but still a handful when she's full of beans in a morning.
We decided that we didn't want to be a dog free family when sadly Molly had to return to the RSPCA for further training to sort out her demons. Hopefully she will live with a trainer fulltime or with a family with lots of experience of dealing with a nervous dog.

Lots of photos to come but as usual just haven't got the time right now to do them :o)

Barrel Roof Science :o)

This is an experiment from Super Charged Science. It's in the Forces section and apparently a Barrel Roof can hold up to 400 times it's own weight!
We printed off the template and my youngest followed the video and did all the mountain and valley folds and we ended up with a tunnel shaped piece of paper, it certainly didn't look strong enough to hold anything let alone 400 times it's own weight but we carried on.

We then had to balance two pencils on the top so that the paper had something to balance on.

We then stopped and put a place mat underneath the tunnel to stop any sliding on the work surface and the pencils back on top and then another place mat on top of that. We were amazed that it could hold so much.

Then we started to place the paper on top. Unfortunatly we didn't get to 400 sheets, I think we made it to 60 and then the whole thing collapsed in a heap. Even so we were still impressed that our little tunnel had done so well.

If you go to the first photo you'll notice that not all 'legs' were touching the work surface, I think this was the problem. It was such a simple experiment to do and we had fun; it was a great one for us to start with because my daughter has done lots of origami before so didn't feel out of her depth with it.

Cooking Days

Above is how my chicken arrives in my kitchen, as a huge pack for £19.99. It usually contains anywhere between 16 and 20 chicken fillets depending on their weight. Out of this I make a variety of dishes to freeze and spread out throughout the month. Out of this box I made chicken curry, chicken escaloppes x 3meals, chicken glazed with honey and mustard and chicken cordon bleu plus the chicken pieces for lunches all of which can be found in the Fix Freeze Feast Cook Book. Chicken pieces dredged in eggs and then flour and oven baked for half an hour or so until cooked, then throw in freezer so that I have something handy for a quick and easy lunch; delicious in a buttie with lettuce and mayo. Below are the sauces ready for the freezer, the dark ones are BBQ, yellow one is curry sauce, then red sauce used for lasagne, pasta, or spanish rice, or basically any recipe calling for a red sauce. These all get thrown into the freezer ready to be used when needed; if I'm organised I will get them out the night before but usually I'm making a mad dash across the garden to get it out the freezer last minute. If this does happen (and it does alot) I just whizz it in the microwave for a few minutes and ta da! A slightly blurred photo of uncooked chicken pieces, dredged in flour, eggs and then bread crumbs and frozen, ready to bag up and put in freezer until needed. I like to have plenty of these on hand as everyone enjoys them and they are so quick to do. After I'd cleared away we had delicious bacon butties for lunch, yummy! We also bought a huge packet of bacon, 4 gammon steaks, 4 turkey steaks, 4 beef steaks, and two lots of sticky ribs all of which were on offer so the freezer is well and truly stocked up for this month.

More I.T. work or is it ???

Above my youngest has edited photos of most of her animals for the front of her latest lapbook and below we have a dilema over where we should file this piece of work because it is obviously I.T., but then again is it Religious Education being about St. David or is it English, or maybe we should do three copies and put one in each folder? ;o)