mummy blogger

A tale of two weekends

~ Making Stitches ~ 12 Comments

  
We’ve had quite a busy time of it lately. I thought that the transition from half to full school days would bring with it an element of routine. I was half right – it’s been routinely chaotic. Over the long summer holiday I forgot about the after school activities which go hand in hand will full days restarting. It’s been a merry-go-round of football training, cubs, piano lessons, football matches, scouts and school choir. Swimming lessons haven’t even started yet! I’ve been rushing around, chasing my tail to keep up with all of our commitments. 

For most of the past two weeks we have had visitors over from the UK (my husband’s parents) which has been a blessing, as they’ve been around to help and I didn’t have to drag all the children out with me to all the activities. It’s a real shame that our boys miss out on regular family time with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousin. It is of course an unfortunate consequence of us upping sticks and moving to a different country. We have to make the most of the short time we do get to have together, so they were very much immersed in our busy and at times chaotic family life (I think they were glad to go home for a rest though!). It was a much needed chance for us to catch up on all the news from back home and also meant we had the perfect excuse to head over the border at the weekend and broaden our horizons a bit. 

Unfortunately a football training session and pre-season friendly match cut short the amount of time we could spend away from Gibraltar, so last Saturday we took a short walk across the border to our nearest neighbour La Linea. We had a short mooch around the market (which sells gorgeous olives and has the most amazing fresh fish stalls) and stopped for a lunch of bocadillos in Café Modelo. I’m afraid I forgot to take any pictures of La Linea to show you where we went, I’ll do that next time!
  
I can only offer you a view of Gibraltar from the Spanish side of the frontier for now….

A late afternoon pre-season friendly meant that we couldn’t stray too far on Sunday so we headed west to the picturesque town of Tarifa. Being mainland Europe’s most southerly point and what seems like the windiest place in the world it’s a haven for tourists and fans of wind dependent sports like kite-surfing. The outer town which comprises of concrete apartment blocks belies the fact that further into town is an exquisite gem of Moorish architecture. We approached it via the Puerta de Jerez, the old town’s traditional entrance.

 

 The old town is captivating – I always enjoy visiting and wandering it’s old cobbled streets.

 

Some are very narrow indeed!  
 
It pays to look upwards too, to appreciate the beautiful old architecture.

   
 
We stumbled across a very inviting bakery and bought a few goodies to sustain us on our walk around town – the croissants and cinnamon buns were delicious!
 

The town was decked out with what looked like Christmas lights but they were actually up for the festival of the Virgin of Light (Virgen de la Luz) which had taken place the day before. Apparently just 24 hours earlier the streets had been thronged with thousands of on-lookers. Instead we were greeted with tranquil almost empty streets. 

 
Close to the church of St Matthew (in the photo above) I stumbled across this gorgeous shop Babachic Beads. It was right up my street!
  

  

As you can see it was a riot of colour and the stock was comprised of artisan crafts brought in from abroad and produced by the proprietors.
  

  

I treated myself to this lovely necklace made with hand painted beads, made on the premises.

  

Our time in Tarifa was limited as a football match awaited, so we wandered just a little bit longer.

   

I loved the colour of the bougainvillea here against the white of the church and the blue of the sky. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the car and make our way back to Gibraltar.

 
We arrived in plenty of time for kick-off. There can’t be many football pitches in the world so close to an international airport!

  

This weekend, by comparison, was a far quieter affair. The boys still had two birthday parties to attend and another pre-season friendly football match but Mr Postcard decided I needed a rest, so he did the lion’s share of the ferrying children about. I found myself alone with our youngest for a couple of hours yesterday (a rare weekend occurrence) so we decided to use a gift left with us by his grandparents last week: ninja bread men pastry cutters!

   

We had fun rolling out the dough and cutting them out! 

  

They were then very artfully decorated by my little helper.

  

They tasted really good – there aren’t many left!

   

Had the ants which were bothering us a week or so ago still been resident, they would have had a field day with all that icing sugar and sprinkles (see this post for more on that). Thankfully a friend recommended a man who came and rather successfully sorted out our problem.

Today has been an equally relaxing day, although I did head out for a bit of a walk. It was my first attempt at ‘exercise’ since my little fall a couple of weeks ago (see here for more). I’m pleased to say that apart from a slightly achey ankle it went well.  Europa Road was eerily quiet because this huge crane had caused it to be closed:

 
Unfortunately, the people who closed the road didn’t offer motorists any kind of diversion signs which caused some confusion. This massive truck-cum-campervan found itself stuck when it took a detour down a road far too narrow to accommodate it. There was much shouting and honking of horns as it was forced to reverse back up a hill and round a bend while avoiding the many cars parked in the vacinity.

  
So, there you have it, we’ve reached the end of another week and we’re in October already – how did that happen?! In a bid to be more organised and to make the midweek after school activities/ mealtimes/ homework/ mummy meltdown  slightly easier I have cooked and frozen several meals for the week ahead. If it works by easing the carnage of early evenings in our house, I’ll let you know! Have a good week and thank you for stopping by. Please feel free to leave any comments, it’s great to hear from you. I’ll leave you with a picture of my September highlights.

  
  
  

Reading; the gift that keeps on giving! An appreciation of teachers.

~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

  


I have been very fortunate and spent a wonderful morning immersed in books. It began with listening to children read at school, then continued with some time tidying the school library. It culminated with me finishing my current book, just in time for my book club meeting tonight. As the minutes ticked by I came to realise just how lucky I am…

When teachers begin the long road to reading, with letter sounds and phonics, then blending the sounds to make words, they give such power to those whom they teach. Without the ability to read, not only would life be so much more dull (as it offers a means to escape your current situation), but it’s also instrumental in laying the foundations of our modern society. Where would we be if our doctors, politicians, engineers, scientists and lawyers (to name just a few crucial professions), had never been taught to read? 

Perhaps I’m stating the blindingly obvious here but how much do we take the ability to read for granted? How powerful a tool it is to our social and mental wellbeing. So, thank you Mrs Foreman, Mr Dixon and all my other teachers who not only taught me to read and write, but also ignited my passion for reading. Without their help I wouldn’t have gone to university, had the career I did or been able to share books with my own children. In appreciation for teachers everywhere, thank you for your persistence, patience and for helping to set our imaginations free!

Creepers, grass blocks & diamond swords : a Minecraft themed party

~ Making Stitches ~ 2 Comments

  
In our house we have some Minecraft addicts. For the uninitiated, Minecraft is a computer game which involves creating virtual ‘worlds’ and constructing buildings using various materials to create villages, towns and even cities. I’ve heard it compared to virtual Lego (I prefer real Lego personally, but perhaps I’m just old fashioned). Anyway, a certain young man in our house had a birthday recently and there was only one party theme it could possibly be – you guessed it; Minecraft.

In the weeks running up to the party, I trawled the Internet looking for ideas to make this work. To be completely honest, I don’t enjoy hosting kids’ parties. I find them really stressful and worry that the birthday boy and guests won’t enjoy themselves. My only way to cope with them is to keep the numbers involved relatively small and try to be super organised in the run up to the main event.

Normally I make up shop bought plastic party bags with sweeties and plastic ‘tat’ bought from supermarkets and discount stores. This time I decided to be different; gone were the over-priced, flimsy plastic bags, replaced with small brown paper bags left over from my last craft fair stall. Inside them were the obligatory lollipops and jelly sweets but I made themed key rings for each child using little plastic beads.

  

I used a combination of Hama beads and Ikea’s own range to create symbols and characters associated with Minecraft; Steve, Creepers, diamond swords and the You Tubers ‘Stampy’ and ‘iBallistic Squid’ (don’t ask – they take up residence in our lounge most weekends). I got my inspiration for these from Pinterest. If you search for Minecraft party ideas, dozens of fab pictures come up with everything from invitations to piñatas. I cannot take any artistic credit for these creations! With some mail order key ring loops and jump rings I turned the plastic characters pictured at the start of this post into school bag charms. 

  
I have no idea how long they will last as they are fused together with an iron and may not stand up to too much rough handling, but they did go down rather well with the party goers.

I also wanted to make something handmade for the birthday boy on the Minecraft theme as a gift from me. Fortunately as pretty much everything in the game is designed in squares, it made crochet an ideal medium to make something for his bedroom. I also, rather fortunately, had a perfectly square cushion pad sitting unloved at the back of my crafty hidey hole. And so a cushion idea was born.

I decided on a creeper for one side, but didn’t have the time or patience to exactly recreate the multi faceted face with multiple shades of green, so I opted to crochet using two yarns at the same time:

 
 I decided to have a TNT block as the reverse side of the cushion:

 
Despite choosing two very obvious Minecraft images as the front and back of the cushion and crocheting openly in front of the recipient of the gift, he never twigged about what I was making. When he asked, I just said I was ‘experimenting’ which is exactly what I was doing as I made it up as I went along! And so the double-sided cushion was made and completed in good time for the big day – I’m very pleased to say he was thrilled with it and it has pride of place on his bed now.

  
Then came the cake. I was starting at a disadvantage here as a very good friend of mine hosted a Minecraft party last year and she’d asked an extremely talented mutual friend to make the birthday cake for her. It was stunning – covered in different colored Minecraft squares of homemade (yes homemade) fondant icing. Sitting on top of this marvel were Minecraft characters, also made of homemade icing. It was a work of art, and tasted out of this world. So, as I said, I was starting at a disadvantage… The cake that I made was never going to match up to the one we all enjoyed last year, so I tried to manage my son’s expectations early on!

  
Fortunately for me our local supermarket had just had a new addition to it’s bakery aisle- ready coloured fondant icing. Trying to colour fondant icing in a warm apartment with no air conditioning is no joke – there have been some traumatic cake decorating moments in my kitchen since we moved to Gibraltar- believe me! I bought a few packs of emerald green icing so we were off to a flying start (one less thing to panic about). I decided on a simple ‘grass block’ design, but in order to make a cube shaped cake, I needed to sandwich together 4 layers of sponge, little did I know that would be my downfall…

   
I edged the cake in chocolate buttercream (soil) and set about making the template for my grass.

 
I rolled out the icing on a clean work top dusted with icing sugar. This was to be my second mistake; after cutting out my grass shape, I discovered the icing was stuck to the work top – nooooo!!!! Cue heightened blood pressure and mild panic. So I had to start again, this time rolling out onto baking parchment. 

  
The parchment worked a treat – thank goodness! When I transferred the icing onto the cake it wasn’t too neat on the corners so I decided to jazz it up a bit on the top to draw the eye away from the wonky corners – time to make some little squares.

  
At this point I had no idea how to adequately glue the little squares onto the cake so I improvised with some thickly mixed paste using icing sugar and water – it worked!

  
That was pretty much all I could do at home ahead of the party. I bought a couple of plastic Minecraft toys to sit on top (no icing sculptures for me!) covering the cake was tricky enough. The cake was made, the party bags filled, all we had to do now was turn up at the venue and let the guests arrive. We had opted for a sports bar set up with booths to play video games – perfect for a boy who’s obsessed with them.

Unfortunately things didn’t quite go according to plan on the journey to the party. Between our front door and the party venue, the top of the cake slid off the bottom layers TWICE!!! Can you imagine that I didn’t handle that very well after spending hours creating it the day before?! On arrival at the venue and with the aid of a couple of fish slices from the bar’s chef the cake was rebuilt. I was fine after a few deep breaths and a very strong coffee! It didn’t quite end up as I’d envisioned it and I can’t show you a photo of the side view as I didn’t take one out of shame for its appearance but here’s the final cake photo, in situ, bedecked in toys and candles.

 
What a day! Thank goodness they only come around once a year! 

As I tucked the birthday boy into bed, I asked him what the best bit about his birthday was. He made my day with his reply; ‘My cake Mummy, I loved it!’ The stress was worth it just to hear that.

NOTE TO SELF: Next year keep the cake to just 2 layers!