Bread Maker :) (by sarah)

I discovered a while back that soya was making the bleeding worse so we tired to get bread without it in - this ment no ready sliced bread etc... and checking with bakeries etc... but then it turned out that some of them didn't really know what was going into their bread and we were told they didn't contain soya and then when my Dad went he was told they did!

So we were making bread by hand except that my hands can't really take the neading, fortunately a friend stepped in with some no nead bread recipes which are great but I still missed classic bread.

Then my cousins decided they did not want their bread maker anymore and said we could have it! This was in the summer - it took us until Christmas to actually go and pick it up!

But we have been enjoying it 🙂

Chores (by sarah)

Yes I know the picture is over exposed the camera is broken! But I think you can still make out Jean sweeping the front 'garden' bit of the house. Oh my how she wailed about this because to get the broom she had to take her wellies off rather than just stomp through the house in them and there were bricks where she wanted to brush and what do you mean I've got to put it all in the bin bag I thought I just had to make a pile. The neighbours probably thought we were being really mean but she was getting book money for it and had asked to do jobs that would help and then tried to choose the jobs!

Plus in the end she was happily trying to tame street cats and making a game of it and talking excitedly about how she moved a slug etc... In the end she enjoyed but the first bit was hell.

Jean and Piggies and Cat (by sarah)

This photo is from a few years ago at the old house - the Christmas after we got the ginea pigs - as you can see they were well loved and we miss them greatly - I think we were so busy at the time that we never really got around to blogging and stuff about them. I may add some back blogs in but just wanted to share this pic with you all.

Along with this one of the run being protected from the sunshine - Jean is sitting under the big umbrella if you look carefully.

Sleepy People with Cats (by sarah)

I found these two pictures of cats and sleeping people from when we lived at The Bakery 🙂

The End of the Festive Season (by sarah)

Today we had our last Christmas visitor, Barbara, so I put out the minced pies and cut up Christmas Cake and we apologised as we seem to have lost her tea towel with Mary's print on it that we were going to give her - so we gave her same homemade jam instead.

She gave Mary some lovely Hello Kitty wellies which is brilliant as it was starting to be a squeeze to get her into the ones she has and the previous bigger set she lost one of whilst we were out shopping one day. Jean got an art casse which she was excited about and Al got cheese which is always a hit with him. I got a pot of tulips which shall be going outside the front door.

Jean also tidied the front garden, litter picking the litter that blows in and sweeping up the leaves - mainly as she is whipping through her worst witch books and wants to earn money to buy the missing ones.

There would be photos of today but unfortunately Jean was taking photos yesterday and dropped it and today it has gone completely screwy 🙁 It was on it's way out anyway which is why I had saved up money to get a good one but I spent it on the TV so that we could use the X-Box, I do not regret this but I do now find myself with out a camera - right at the point where I am trying to launch myself back into things seriously - sigh.

On the other hand I do have a rather serious back log of photos to sort out anyway so maybe this will give me time to do that?

After Al's aunt left we started taking down all the decorations to general chagrin of the kids - Mary was walking about saying 'Oh! No!' whilst Jean was whining that the room was starting to look so bare which we felt too. Somehow Christmas went so fast this year.

It has been a fun one though.

Of course tomorrow I have one of my best friends from school visiting in a sort of post-Christmas/pre-birthday type of way which is going to be ace!

And last night I forgot to go to the pub with one of my local friends which I feel really bad about - It wasn't a good day medically for me but still...

Anyway the good thing about the decorations coming down is that I am in the mood for Spring Cleaning to be honest. We started today with putting hooks up to hang various house type things up, such as sun catchers and wall art butterflies and the broom and duster and carrier bag suasage.

Today also marks the constructed language Lojban's 25th Birthday - this is the language that Alaric has been learning for the past few years and that he has been teaching to Mary. So we have begun work on a little language comic type thing - we came up with the idea ages ago but haven't had the time to act upon it!

Apart from that we made bread in the bread maker and made our own sauce for the chickpea hodge podge we had for dinner - January is already a month of highs and lows but net effect seems to be positive at the moment.