Summertime & the Living is Easy

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This week we wore sun cream!  Three cheers for sunshine :)  The weekend and right up until Wednesday was just glorious, after that normal service resumed.  But hey, it has given me real hope that some warmth and summer sun are going to start appearing more frequently.

Once again we have been practically living outside.  From the moment they got dressed in the morning until I had to force them in at bath time, the girls have been outside.  Because they are still little it does mean that I have to stay outside with them (oh how I hate not being able to do housework – ha!).

Our cabbages, cauliflower and Broccoli are now all strong enough to be planted out, so we finished that job off and hopefully that is all our veggies well on their way.  The lettuce is growing nicely and I think we’ll be able to eat the first batch in a couple of weeks.

Miss Blooms

Once we got that out of the way, it was down to serious play time.  The trampoline has been bounced on continuously, they have pushed each other up and down the slide, built sandcastles and played in their water table.

Disaster struck for daddy when his ride on lawn mower broke down and despite the best efforts of our youngest girl to repair it – mainly by dropping sockets and screwdrivers into the engine!  It has had to go to the repair shop, so daddy had to cut the grass with the regular petrol mower we keep for the orchard.  It nearly killed him!

Trampoline, Bouncing

Our eldest girl is gaining confidence with her bike riding and her baby sister has taken a liking to big sisters scooter – there was fighting.  The most fun of all though was the Elefun game.  If you’ve never seen it, it is a plastic elephant shaped thing that sits flat on the ground, you fill it up with fabric type butterflies and switch it on, the fan inside then shoots the butterflies up the wind sock type trunk and into the air.  The aim of the game is to catch the butterflies in your net.  They played with this for hours, shrieking with delight every time one of them netted a butterfly.    She then decided to become Hairy McLary from Donaldsons Dairy and insisted on carrying a Frisbee around in her mouth whilst crawling on all fours and trying to bark – the imagination of toddler – eh!

Elefun, Butterflies, game

They then ate ice lollies and collapsed on the grass to watch the passing aeroplanes.

slides, lolly pops, frisbee

 

I am linking this post as usual to the wonderful CountryKids, hosted by the hardest working farmers wife I’ve ever met Fiona from Coombe Mill.  She’s also a BiBs finalist and can be voted for up until the 12th here :)

 

  Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

I am also linking this post to the lovely PinkOddy blog for her #MotivationalMonday #mwactive Blog hop.  

The Perfect Personals Advert

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Ok, so it’s Thursday and you know what that means………………………..yep, time for another round of silly behaviour, a laugh, a giggle, a titter or maybe just a groan.

I may just have scraped the bottom of the barrel with this one, but go on you know you want to read it.  In fact I’m pretty sure you’ll read it TWICE!

 

personal advert, wanted, personals

A Tale of Two Steam Mops

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I blogged recently about my bad experience with what I consider a very over priced, over rated and under achieving steam mop.  I was mightily peeved to follow the advice of loads of reviews, spend £140 and end up with one of the worst household items I’ve ever purchased.

Thankfully, I did get my money back and still hankering after a steam mop, I went in search of another.  I ended up with the Shark S3455 Pro Slim Steam Mop.  At £99.99, it was cheaper than my first dalliance into the world of steamy obliteration.

So what’s the story with this mop.  As the name suggests it is slim, reasonably lightweight and has a 7 metre power cord.  The actual cleaning head is rectangular and very substantial.  It is a double sided head, unlike some of the steam mops out there.  What that means is that when your mop head gets dirty, you can just flip it round and use the other side – no need to change the pad.  It also came with two pads, so you always have a spare when washing the other one.  Being slim and neat it is easy to store and the handle loop is substantial enough to be able to hang it up.

The Shark has 2.0 bar maximum pressure and you can select low or high steam, depending on how dirty the floor is.  To be honest, I suspect that I will use the high setting most of the time.

The first mop that I bought didn’t create that much steam and was a huge anti climax, it also made the floors lethally wet and slippery.  The shark on the other hand produces really impressive amounts of steam and the floor is virtually dry underneath.  I didn’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes for the floor to be completely dry.

Although technically the Shark is for hard floor use, I did use it on a carpet, because it leaves so little water behind.  It worked, it removed some ground in Play-doh that I have been scrubbing at for days.  A few minutes with the Shark and the Play-doh loosened and softened enough to just brush off.  The builders had managed to spill a little cement type glue on one of my tiled floors, that I have never been able to get off.  The Shark held onto it on high steam for about 5 minutes managed to remove it.  I have honestly tried for the best part of a year to get this off, I have used all manner of products on it with no luck.  So I am totally impressed that the Shark did it.  We have tiled floors, laminate, real wooden floors, carpet and vinyl in our house and I have used the Shark on all of them.  It is fast efficient and beats lugging a mop and bucket around, while trying to keep our youngest girl from tipping it over.

It is very easy to push and very quiet.  I have been using it almost continuously since I got it and it has truly made cleaning my floors a breeze.  It no longer seems like a huge chore.  I used it on the foam floor tiles in the girls playroom and was really impressed by the way it brought them up and by how dry it left them.  They are big square tiles that usually take hours to dry when I clean them with a regular mop and bucket and that meant locking the girls out of their playroom.  Using the Shark they were able to just carry on as soon as I was pushed back out the door!  The cleaning of the playroom floor probably impressed me the most.Steam Mop, Shark, Cleaning

So what are the negatives of the Shark, as I said in my previous post, I have yet to find any product that I think is 100% perfect.  Most things have at the very least a tiny niggle, that I would change.   The Shark Pro Slim is no exception.

Firstly, it doesn’t stand up on it’s own.  I realise that with the flip over head this would be a difficult feature to incorporate, however, it is a bit of a pain when mopping and needing to refill the water, that I have to prop it up against something.  Again being the slim version the water tank isn’t that big and I had to keep refilling it about every 10 minutes.

You don’t get any additional gadgety tools with this version, it is just the mop.  I think at £100 there should be at least a little grout cleaner.  The next version up does have a section that can be removed for hand held cleaning, but it is significantly more expensive. 

Although I like the length of the power cord, it is a wrap up cord and I find those a bit of a pain.  I would have loved it to have a retractable cord.

Those are all the negatives that I have encountered at present.  They are negatives that wouldn’t put me off buying this product and I am glad that I did buy it.  The cleaning performance outweighs any of my negative wobbles :)

So if you are wanting a steam mop and have read lots of online reviews, but are still feeling a bit in the dark.  I would recommend that you give the Shark a go.  It is an impressive cleaning tool:)

 

 

 

 

*I have not been compensated in any way for writing this post.   I have not asked Shark to send me one.  I am not an employee, close personal friend or mistress of the CEO of the Shark brand. I have not been held to ransom, blackmailed or bribed.   I bought the Shark Pro Slim Steam Mop using my very own husbands folding bank notes.  I merely decided to share my experience with you.**

The Whacky World of Words

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Despite the fact that for most of my adult life I wanted to have children, finally becoming a mother is by far the steepest learning curve I’ve ever been on.

Everything from understanding what different cries meant as a newborn, to changing, bathing, feeding and getting used to sleep deprivation, were nothing like any of the “wonderful parent” books said.

Just when you become a confident parent to your tiny baby.  They start to sit up, roll over, eat real food and then all hell breaks loose.  They stand up and start walking.  You spend your days hauling them out of places they shouldn’t be, barricading sections of the house to try to keep them out.  You move all your valuables, breakables and the dangerous items (some of which you will never find again).  They climb, they throw stuff around, they scribble on things, they eat your shoes – or worse, they pour stuff into your shoes and they booby-trap the floor with the most painful toys your bare foot has ever tread on.

Then they start talking and that’s were the fun really begins.  Everything that you say will be repeated.  When I say repeated, I of course mean repeated in toddler language, therefore even totally innocent words can make it seem as though you spend your day teaching them how to swear.

My word blacklist grows on a weekly basis. So far we have:

Fork, truck, clock, tick, ship, slight, bannister (gets called a baaster), pick, hours and the latest word to join the blacklist……..Funky.  Yes, without thinking of the consequences, I used the word funky.  My daughter was very proudly showing me the colourful Lego tower she’d just constructed and I unwittingly said “oh that’s very funky”  she looks at me and says “What does fuky mean!”

I instantly tried to deflect her attention and completely lied and said “I said, funny, the tower is funny.”  She’s not that daft though, she kept saying to me “but, mummy you said fuky.  What does fuky mean?”  I then changed tactic and said very clearly and slowly “I said funky, fun key.”  ”Fun key, which just means, interesting or a bit different.”  She accepted that explanation and then decided she like the word.  The only problem with that is, despite my slow deliberate pronunciation.  She still says fuky.  I have ignored it, not mentioned the word again, hoped she would just forget.

Wishful thinking on my part.  For the past few days, absolutely everything in her world has become fuky.  Her dinner is fuky, her clothes are fuky, her toys are fuky, the weather is fuky, even her baby sister is fuky.  So I’m guessing that the word funky is going to be around for a while.  It will be told to everyone – including granny.  It may even be said during her trial day at nursery school.  I am destined to be branded as that woman with the swearing child!  My explanations of what the word actually is, may be met with scepticism and raised eyebrows, especially if she decides to mention the clock on the same day!

swear words, toddlers

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No Bake Banana Cheesecake & Butterscotch Sauce

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Time for a tasty dessert.  I openly admit to not being a fabulous baker.  I have friends that can create all manner of delicious masterpieces, mine tend to be not at all like the picture in the book.  However, I never stop trying and through time they have gotten better, my savoury baking is definitely much better than my sweet stuff, so I always love a good dessert that requires no baking.

This cheesecake is delicious and takes very little time or effort to produce and you can alter the choice of fruit if you are not a banana fan!

Ingredients

200g/8oz Digestive biscuits – I actually use 6oz digestives and 2oz Ginger Snaps, because I like the hint of ginger that they give.

85g/3oz Unsalted Butter

400g/14oz Full fat cream cheese, at room temperature

340g/12oz Mascarpone, at room temperature

200g/7oz Icing sugar, sifted

1tsp Vanilla extract

3-4 Large bananas

Butterscotch Sauce

125g butter, 175g brown sugar, 150ml double cream.  Put the ingredients in a pan over a low heat, stir until everything is blended and melted.  Remove from the heat, stir well and leave to cool.

Method For Cheesecake

Put the biscuits in a freezer bag, squeeze out the air and then crush them up with a rolling pin until they are fine crumbs.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the biscuit crumbs until they are well blended and moist.  Press the buttery biscuit crumbs into an 8 inch loose base or springform cake tin.  Chill in the fridge.

Slice or mash 1-2 bananas and spread over the cooled crumbs.  I like mine sliced, but it takes a little longer to cover the crumbs with the slices.  Return to the fridge

Put the cream cheese and marscapone into a bowl and blend together with an electric hand mixer, blend until they are light and fluffy.  

Add the sifted icing sugar a little at a time, keep using the mixer.  Add the vanilla and mix again until the mixture if fluffy.

Spread the mixture evenly over the bananas and biscuit base.  Return to the fridge until you are ready to serve.  I recommend at least 3 hours, to ensure it is firm enough.

When you are ready to serve slice the remaining bananas and place them around the top of the cheesecake.  You can of course use any other fruit you like, just amend the recipe as necessary.

Drizzle over some Butterscotch sauce and you’re done :)

Banana cheesecake, butterscotch sauce