The Nursery staff really go to town for birthdays!

My children are very lucky. They have to put up with me taking photo's of everything, but in return they get so many new toys to try out that they really do have a great time. When it comes to birthdays though, what do we get them? Obviously they have their own preferences, and  our youngest family member (somewhat unsurprisingly) asked for LEGO for his birthday. To be more precise, he asked for 4 LEGO sets because it was going to be his "number 4 birthday".

Benny the Spaceman - his favourite LEGO character (from the LEGO Movie)

LEGO Monster Trucks and LEGO City

It wasn't hard to choose him some LEGO, in fact we were super lucky and managed to buy him 4 LEGO sets he'll love half price in the sales - bonus. (No-one ever tell him his birthday budget ended up being far lower than everyone else's, he'll never know...).

Being the youngest of 7 isn't always easy. The teenagers take up a lot of our energy and he's generally a quiet little chap, so time and effort were our main gifts to him.

I spent a day baking and then his Dad spent an evening creating and we came up with his cake...instructions for which are here!


And while he was very busy elsewhere, we got his birthday tea ready, decorating the table with all the fantastic Star Wars goodies Perfect Party UK sent us, and a little inflatable Yoda from the Star Wars magazine, and was all the effort worthwhile? I think so....

Yoda had to sit next to him, and is now in his room next to his bed!

And the cake?.........

It's a parenting win.....and I think I score even more points, especially with our teenagers, by not posting any photo's of anyone eating!

I'm a very lucky Mum this year. 3 of the children won't be at our house next weekend because they have commitments elsewhere, so they decided between them that it'd be a great idea to give me Mother's Day a week early. Fortunately for me, they didn't discuss this with my other half or the other children, and they weren't ready yet - so I'll get 2 Mother's Days! Yeeay!

For Mother's Day no.1 I got 2 boxes of Thorntons chocs and 2 gorgeous cards. I really wouldn't expect any more than that. Last year I did feel incredibly lucky, this year is promising to be even better....


It's really hard for me to switch off, there's always so much to do, so I decided the best way to do nothing was to ban myself from the kitchen....this worked really well until 3pm when I had to point out to my other half that actually no-one had been given any lunch, and the little boys were starving. My other half is blessed with a real inability to feel hunger! Fortunately once that had been pointed out, the teenagers all went off into the kitchen and mostly cooked some veggie burgers and chips. Things taste so much better when you didn't have to cook them yourself! 


Next weekend not only am I banning myself from the kitchen, I'm turning it up a notch. I got a surprise parcel today from the folks at Virtual Bathrooms, who very kindly sent me a selection of pampering products including a Bee Beautiful Petal Passion Bath Bomb - so I intend to lie in the bath for an hour amongst the rose petals and feel like a movie star. I'm going to look forward to that all week, it's been months (or years) since I had a bath. I feel spoilt already....

How To Catch A Star is a gorgeous book by Oliver Jeffers which has become a well-deserved classic, and it's 10th Anniversary is this year. To celebrate they've released a whole heap of goodies and we were lucky enough to be sent a selection to review.


It's a beautiful book with amazing illustrations that really are enchanting. The text and pictures excite everyone's imagination and you can immerse yourself into the book and imagine yourself as the main character.


How To Catch A Star treats children with respect and doesn't condescend. It can be hard going to sleep, even for small people. It feels as if you're talking about a secret thing, those moments where your mind wanders before you sleep, that's one of my favourite things about this book, and I know my 5 year old feels the same.





You can click this link to go The Playroom Blog who is hosting a full sized set of all of the printable activity sheets so that your children can enjoy them too.


I'm also delighted to be able to offer a copy of the special hardback 10th Anniversary edition of How To Catch A Star as a prize for one of my readers.


Entry is by rafflecopter below. The first question is mandatory and an answer should be left as a comment on this post. Extra entries are available by completing additional tasks. The competition will end at midnight on Friday 11th April, when the rafflecopter form will close. UK entries only please - full terms and conditions are at the bottom of the rafflecopter form.

The 10th Anniversary edition of How To Catch A Star will be released on 27th March with an RRP of £12.99 and is available from Amazon.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
Pyrex recently sent me their Classic Multipurpose Cooking Sheet to try. I've never used a glass baking tray before, so this was definitely a new one on me.




Made from the Pyrex standard tempered Borosilicate glass, the baking tray is also microwave and dishwasher safe and far stronger than standard glass. 32 x 26cm, the tray is ideal for baking tray bakes, pies, biscuits or cakes. It's also great for cooking pre-prepared foods such as samosas, spring rolls, sausages, oven chips or a multitude of other uses.

We all like sausage rolls, but I think often the ready-made meaty ones are really quite poor quality meat. It's incredibly easy to make your own using ready-made puff pastry such as Jus-Roll. You can buy sausagemeat or I sometimes buy nice sausage, remove the skin and use that to make good quality, flavoursome sausage rolls.


I decided to test my tray making sausage rolls for the veggies at my son's birthday party.  I use Sosmix or an equivalent dry mix, with a little extra soy sauce as I wanted to give them a bit of bite.

Roll out your pastry and place a line of sausagemeat along one edge. Roll the pastry from that edge until it nearly touches the rest of the pastry and then cut with a 1cm overlap. Wet the overlap with water to 'stick' it down. Repeat and cut them to the length you wish.  Brush them with a little egg, then bake at Gas Mark 6, 200C, 400F for around 20 minutes until they're golden-brown.

It's a lovely tray and my sausage rolls cooked really nicely and evenly. They hardly stuck at all, even though I didn't grease the sheet. I was pleased with how quickly the sheet cooled too,despite the weight of it.

Whatever I cook on it, the Pyrex Classic Multipurpose Cooking Sheet won't stain or taint foods, because it cleans completely, and it has a 10 year guarantee.



I really like that this cooking sheet is scratch-resistant, so I can use metal implements and don't need to worry about how I wash it. Like all Pyrex it's really easy to clean too, just leaving it for 2 minutes in water loosened all the flakes of pastry and they wiped straight off.

If I make a large tray bake or I want to prepare tea earlier in the ay then I can put the Cooking Sheet into the fridge, I can even freeze it if I want. It's a really handy piece of equipment, and far more attractive than a regular metal tray. Ideal for oven-to-table and when entertaining guests.

The Pyrex Classic Multipurpose Cooking Sheet costs around £12 and Pyrex products are available to buy at large supermarkets, Wilkinsons, Debenhams and a multitude of department and homeware stores, or online including Amazon.

It's been a while since I last did a review for Orchard Toys, but that doesn't mean we haven't been playing with them, and the Pirate Race Game is one we've been enjoying now for the last few weeks. Pirates and treasure are always popular with youngsters.


Designed for children aged 3+ this is a really simple race for the treasure which my boys both love. The rules are very simple and a game with 4 people takes around 15 minutes, so no-one loses attention.


The game is played on a large jigsaw board with 4 pieces. Like all Orchard Toys games and puzzles Pirate Race Game is designed and manufactured in the UK from thick, high quality 100% recycled board with bright and colourful illustrations. It's built to be played with and will last to be passed on when your child has finished with it.




My boys love playing games and this is no exception. My youngest is 4 on Friday and he's really got the hang of playing games and turn-taking now. Using dice and moving around the board is brilliant for counting skills, and the coloured spots are reinforcing colours for him. My 5 year old is colour-blind and only had difficulty discerning the purple, but once shown which colour was which he was fine.


I think the age range is right, children under 3 need reward throughout a game and although you get to put together your pirate jigsaw, sometimes you can make a few moves without picking up the right piece and this frustrates younger children. The game is for 2-4 players and we do find, especially at the beginning, that we're jostling for space, but the boys quite like this and put on pirate voices 'talking' to each other.

Earlier today I posted this photo on Google+ and it obviously brought out the nostalgia in a few people despite the incredibly well-worn nature of the books!

 
I was directed to Being Mrs C's Ladybird Tuesday. I've spotted her posts before, but it's been a long while and I'd forgotten about them.

Ladybird books are such a huge part of my childhood, they all seem so familiar and I'm not sure if I read them, borrowed them from the Library or just feel familiarity and contentment.

My books are so worn out because not only were these mainly second hand, but even my oldest child is now 20, and so they've spent at least the last 19 or so years being read by me. The 3rd Picture Book and Nursery rhymes were mine when I was small. I think a book that's been read to death has to be a good thing, surely?

I know we have several other Ladybird books, I had a look through another bookcase and found these, which I consider to be new, but the youngest among them is in fact 13 years old.


In amongst them was a gem though. Talkabout Holidays was a real pleasure to find because that is another one of mine (although the graffiti is the work of one of my children). It lived at my Grandparent's house when I was a girl, and I guess it must have been bought new because I would have been 6 when it was printed.


My holidays were mainly in a caravan in Skegness, it was an aspirational book for me, one day I'd be rich enough to go on an aeroplane and have a suitcase!


I always felt the puzzles at the back were too simple, and now I know they definitely were! And as many times as I've read this book, I always remember the little story to be funnier than it actually was!


Somewhere we have more, somewhere in our house is the book with the really quite scary science experiments that you can do in your own kitchen using batteries and other scary things.

The book I'd love to find though, the one I remember most from my childhood is Cinderella. It was my sister's book, and I was totally smitten with the blue dress that is worn to the ball. I was going to get married in that dress when I grew up....

It's a little out of season, but this month Parragon Books have sent me the Baking With Fruit cookbook to review, and the recipes are so lovely it's nice to have a reminder of Summer and Autumn while the Crocus and Daffodils are in bloom.






I've cooked two recipes from this book and I'm very impressed with both. I chose two recipes using berries, expensive at this time of year and a rare treat.

First I made the Berry Tartlets with Butter Crumble (page 22). This is a very simple recipe and the instructions were easy to follow. A sweetened shortcrust pastry containing fruit and topped with a delicious crumbly topping. I used blackberries, which worked brilliantly...


My second recipe from Baking With Fruit was the Meringue and Puff Pastry Slices With Berries (page 33). This was a more complicated recipe, but again the instructions are clear and simple and I really feel even someone who hasn't much experience of baking could recreate this dish with no problems. For the full recipe and instructions click this link.


Baking With fruit is published by Parragon Books in hardback. With over 40 recipes and 96 pages, it has a recommended retail price of £8.

I've reviewed other books from Parragon featuring desserts

Mama's Italian Family Cookbook
Classic Baking

Oxo Good Grips Kitchen Tools are a real bonus in the kitchen. I've reviewed a few now and continued to use them all the time because they really are so handy. Here I'm using equipment I've been sent to make Meringue And Puff Pastry Slices With Berries - a gorgeous Summery recipe.


The 3 Piece Berry Bowl & Colander Set is an incredibly useful bit of kit. As you'd expect it's a great size for rinsing and washing berries, grains and all manner of other ingredients.

The colander holes are smaller than rice and it has handles at either side which aren't uselessly flimsy - something that often annoys me with colanders. The bowl has a snap on lid which is great for keeping everything fresh and safe in the bowl if you are picking your own fruits.


The set stores in one neat unit and comes with a snap on lid for the bowl - this is great, especially for soft fruits, it makes picking, rinsing and storage incredibly easy.


The 1.7l bowl has a non-slip silicone base which is brilliant! If only all bowls had this, it's far better than putting a tea towel underneath to hold it still.

I'm using the 3 Piece Berry Bowl & Colander Set to assist me in making Meringue and Puff Pastry Slices with Berries from  the Cooking With Fruit recipe book from Parragon.

Meringue And Puff Pastry Slices With Berries

Ingredients

Approx 500g ready rolled puff pastry (if you are using shop bought e.g. Jus Roll then 2 sheets)
Plain flour, for dusting
1 egg yolk, beaten
30g flaked almonds
200ml whipping cream
125g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod
2 egg whites
125g blueberries
200g redcurrants
125g raspberries
icing sugar for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5. Line a 30cm x 40cm baking tray with baking paper.

Divide the pastry into 2 piles, using 3 layers of pastry in each (if you are using shop bought pastry cut each sheet into 3). Dust with flour and roll out to a thickness of 5mm. Lay the pastry on the prepared tray.


Brush the top of both slabs of pastry with the beaten egg yolk. Sprinkle the almonds over the top and bake on the bottom shelf of the oven for around 15 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.


Whip the cream with 25g of the sugar until it holds stiff peaks. Cover and chill in the fridge until required.








Halve the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds. Whisk the egg whites until they hold soft peaks, whisk in the remaining sugar a little at a time and add the vanilla seeds. Beat until the egg white is glossy and holds stiff peaks, then fold in the whipped cream.
 




I'm really impressed with the 3 Piece Berry Bowl & Colander set. It actually did make the job incredibly easy, mess free, and quick! It was much better storage for my prepared fruit than my usual efforts too, and I was able to leave the fruit in the colander with the lid on so that it could drain without drying out.

The Oxo Good Grips 3 Piece Berry Bowl & Colander Set is available from High Street stores everywhere.

Cooking With Fruit from Parragon Books has an RRP of £8 and I've reviewed it here.