An Award, A Thank You and a teeny bit of Magic.

No blog last week as we were away sunning ourselves in the gloriously....wet, windy and cold Fleetwood! But I hope you all had a lovely Easter and had lots of chocolate and treats! What are you going to do with them all? Apart from eat them I mean. We are going to enjoy eating all the middle bits - the sweets, the treats and the chocolate buttons and creme eggs - and then melt down the actual eggs themselves to bake with...what I haven't decided yet! Last year we made chocolate cornflake cakes and cakey truffles I recall. Probably more of the same here. I try not to let Caoimhe gorge herself on chocolate and sweets and I think the large collection of confectionery currently sitting in the kitchen is a bit overwhelming so we've decided to do something nice with it other than just eat it all until we are sick! Though I have probably got the only child in the country who hasn't eaten all her eggs yet!

The Thank You goes to Bath Bomb Creations whose giveaway I won a few weeks ago, and picked it up from the sorting office last week (why does the postman always call when you're out and never when you are in?!) I won some pretty earrings and some lovely bath bombs so thank you once again! I can definitely vouch for the loveliness of their products, having had them before so if you're after bath time treats then give them a visit. I have yet to use my new bombs, I am waiting for an opportune moment (doesn't come around very often with two littlies!) but I am looking forward to doing so!

Thank you as well to Gill at Christmas Pie Crafts who awarded me the versatile blogger award. I will post about it, later in the week. It is so nice to have people leave comments and recognise my blog, even though I do wonder what people find interesting about what I chunter about sometimes!

Crafting has been a bit slow this week, though I have been quite busy in the kitchen. We have decided ...well actually that would be my husband... that we should have homemade bread rather than shop bought stuff if we can. It tastes better and lasts longer and at least I know what's in it. It's also not hard to make at all and works out surprisingly cheap to make compared to buying shop bought bread. So bread has been made - not sourdough this time, but 'normal' white bread. To go with the bread we've had home made soup (sweetcorn and potato) and pasta with homemade tomato sauce (infinitely better than shop bought sauce) I have even got myself a bag of pasta grade flour and will have an attempt at making pasta too.....

I have also found another use for Herman. Instead of Herman cake this time I had a bit of a bimble around the net and found a recipe for sourdough pancakes using Herman starter. They were not an immediate success. The batter is a much different beast to the one I usually use and the pancakes are much softer and harder to manage. But perfect them I will! One lot of Herman starter makes enough pancakes for a hungry family, and they keep for weeks in the fridge apparently. Sounds like a great plan for when I'm back at work. (but no more will be said about the W word as it is only weeks away now and I am sad!)

The make I am sharing this week is a bit of a cheat, as I actually made them before Easter. They were for the children of a couple of friends of mine, so I didn't want to show them til I had posted them and I knew they had arrived. I made fairy doors for a little boy (who has been poorly with chickenpox so I hope you're better now Callum!) and two sisters, Amelie and Francesca. I hope they like them. I made them from artist's mounting board off cuts again. The one for the little boy was the most challenging as I didn't want it to be girly!

That's it for this week, just time to remind you that as it's Monday you should have a visit to see Wendy over on her blog for Handmade Monday. I'm off out now for one of the last remaining free Monday mornings I have before....well, you know!

Til next time!