Sea Themed Party! (by sarah)

As always we are having a party for Jean's birthday.

Due to various reasons I'm not going to put the detials of when and where on here but most of peeps who we actually know have other ways of contacting us - if not leave a comment and we'll email you back.

Anyway - it's sea themed fancy dress though adults don't have to dress up!

I have a selection of kids crafts including volcanos, telescopes, parrots, fish, pirate hats and treasure making!

Hope to see peeps 🙂

Barbara’s 75th Birthday (by sarah)

Barbara has turned 75! three quarters of a centry so we baked her cake and made some sandwitches and told her to invite some people to dinner.

The cake was chocolate cake with lots of topping as she had said she likes lots of topping! I also put chocolate chips and things on it 🙂 It was obviously a 75 - Barbara confessed she was scared I'd made a watering can or something tacky like that :/

The cake went down well even if Barbara had phoned Mary in a panic and got her to bring a cake round as I had planned to make the cake Sunday morning so it would be nice and fresh and as there was no obvious finished cake Sunday morning Barbara was panicking she'd have nothing to feed her guests.

(we were at a Wedding the night before in London!)

Barbara's friend Hanna brought a balloon round for Jean which was an instant hit!

And then it was presant time!

The Dutera is a pretty plant but came with a warning that it has poisonous bits so to watch Jean.

It seemed to go very well.

Tea With George (by sarah)

Last weekend Barbara went to a Mill with her friend George and then came back to have tea and cake in the garden. George is like 90 yrs old and done all sorts of amazing stuff. He is also a techy - yes he and Alaric have whole conversations that I can bearly follow.

Anyway we had been out and Jean gotten a little dart board thing with velcro darts etc... which she took round to each of us in turn and made us throw the darts and balls at the board.

Barbara had bought a guide book of the place they had been but had left it behind so we listened to their tales of what the place was like.

A Belated Fathers Day (by sarah)

Becuase Jean had her friend around yesturday we organised to have Father's Day today as a suprise for Al (only slightly blown to bits by me obviously baking and Jean asking Daddy was she still going to decorate cakes with me!).

So we made a cake - its suposed to be a rocket but didn't quiet come out as planned - I think either I'm going nuts or the cooker is calibrated wrong - I insinerated my dinner the other night and even though I tribble checked the times for things managed to burn the cake and then forget to leave it too cool before turning it out onto the cooling racks :/

I also failed to make enough icing and made a hash of putting it on the cake anyway. Jean chose the colours so yes there is a lot of pink for a fathers day rocket and yes those are little pink hearts!

But we had fun making it 🙂

Jean also gave Daddy his card and presant she had made at pre-school.

Unfortunatly Al is in trouble with Barbara for not mowing the lawn this evening :/ And I mucked up her watering system which she told me to use earlier this evening.

But I think Alaric liked his cake - there are a lot of little fairy cakes Jean decorated too!

How I made the cake will hopefully soon appear on Salaric Cooking though I think it probably belongs on Cake Wreck to be honest!

Cheltenham Science Festival 09 (by sarah)

Last year I missed the Science Festival which was a shame as aparently there was a scientific poetry event which would have been right up my street - they didn't appear to be doing that this year (probably due to entry by a graphic gay poet who enjoyed the topic of taboo and writes to shock! It was actually him who told me about the science festival and I am very embarrassed not to recall his name when he has been at several poetry event with me and I think chips in the pub may have occured at some point).

We got into cheltenham and parked close to one of the most bueatiful cars ever - a Ford Mustang!

We then discovered that Aliens had taken over the Town Hall again - these inflatable waving around tubes really excites Jean and we had trouble getting her into the hall past them!

It turned out that we were just in time to catch a circus skills workshop - under 8's had to be accompanied! She loved this and was indignent everytime we wanted to look at something else! She went back three times I think! She wouldn't go on the stilts initially and then I realised that she had bought me over a purple plate to spin and given Daddy all the blue things she could find so I found a pink pair of stilts for her which she loved!

Eventually I remembered how to spin a plate though I couldn't get the diablo to do much nor the devil stick! I realised the last time I had done circus skills properlly I was actually pregnant with Jean! Though very early on 🙂

We bumped into on of our cubs - Holly who was getting wobbly on the monocycle!

Inside there was a large hall full of fun interactive stuff like drum machines and steroscopic viewing of landscapes and many other things! A nice man with piercing spoke to me lots as Jean played with beads and various glasses that cuased optical illusions or made you see as bugs do! Though I think I might have offended him by asking if Gloucester Uni did Science as I'd heard it was only Softy science (then spotted the Gloucester Uni t-shirt!).

For some reason you weren't allowed to take photos in there - I took a sneaky one anyway!

We got icecreams and Jean was very concerned, 'They don't have purple ones I'm afraid mummy, no icecream for mummy! I'm having pink icecream mummy, you pink too?' She didn't quiet get why I wanted green icecream when my favourite colours purple and the concern was quiet touching!

Between goes on the circus skills we found UCL chemists doing some fun things with test tubes, washing powder and zeolite! And hydrophobic sand. Jean wanted to do the test tube stuff but there were too many people there and so we did the sand instead - she didn't want it in her hands but wanted to watch my do the experiment so out went my cupped hands for some sand and then water was added to each hand. One lot of sand was hydrophobic - which as I mentioned it I had to explain what it ment - ie water hating, to the group of kids and perants. Basically one lot of sand mixed with the water and one lot the water just ran off of!

They told me at the end that the sand is basically coated in Scotch guard!

Then to cap the day off we found an ecological arts cornor just beyound the Environment Agency Cafe where the artist and scientist Dr Lizzie Burns was getting people to paint on a large white column with a clay/water mix. It had to be something enviroment/ecology based so Jean painted her tadpoles and I added the pond and then she added her ducks and then the apple tree and then the nesting blue tits and would have carried on forever I think. The Lady running the event was a biologist and makes really cool [molecular earringsand other jewellery}(http://www.molecular-designs.com/), and said she even embroiders ties and things which is so cool! Of course that does mean that another one of mine and Ella's bright ideas has been done whilst we were thinking about it!

There was a guy called Matt with her who was explaining to the children about seeds and trees and how they grow up into trees and stuff - Jean having already grown her own plants from seeds looked at him like he was being a bit silly but then he asked her if she wanted to make seeds out of clay to go in the collection - she earally agreed and chose brown instead of white clay! She was very sad to leave so we had to explain thats why its not a good idea to spend all your time doing one event! ie circus skills!

We got soaked in the rain on the way back to the van and were starving so went on a hunt for chips which resulted in Jean's first ever photography!