Flowerpot Festival

We went to Giggleswick near Settle for our holidays and during July and August they have a Flowerpot Festival…

 

There are three trails available from the Tourist Information Centre – we had two of them but didn’t manage to follow them easily (possibly because we didn’t start at the beginning but from our holiday house!) but it didn’t really matter too much as there were flowerpot creations everywhere!

So if you are in the area or travelling nearby for your holiday why not check the Settle flowerpot festival out?

 

Word of the Week: Holiday

This week we’ve been on our holidays… full reports to follow when I get around to the blog posts!

International Food Week – Update

Last time I did a menu I promised an international theme so how did it go?

We had:

Mexican

Spanish

Japanese

Then it all went a bit off plan because of holidays… think we did manage pasta on the Thursday and we were on course for a Fish and Chip tea until we got stuck in traffic on the way to Giggleswick for our holiday and we stopped for McDonalds instead!

Word of the Week: Olympics

Need I say more? From the very start with the Opening Ceremony last Friday when Biggest Littlesheep insisted I woke him up at 11.30pm so he could watch it to today it’s been Olympics, Olympics and more Olympics filling the day. It doesn’t really matter what the sport is they will watch it (especially when it delays bedtime!).

 

Lego

We love Lego in our house so when we saw that the was a Brick Wonders exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery we went along for a look.

Some of our favourite models…

The airport scene was massive and the boys claimed that this was proof we don’t have enough Lego city and we need more…

and Littlest Littlesheep was really impressed by the huge model of the International Space Station.

And they all stood enthralled watching the Brick Wonders animations – this was the favourite of Little Miss as she loved all the Lego animals…

 

Then we did the trail round the other galleries finding the ‘escaped’ Lego models…

which was a great way to get the children to look in the other galleries that they wouldn’t have looked in otherwise.

And we saw the big Lego mosaic of Lady Godiva

So if you have Lego fans and live anywhere near Coventry it’s worth a visit (and the museum is free entry so a budget afternoon out too!).

International Food Week

I promised an International Food Week during the holidays following the fond memories of when we did this a few years ago.

Tapas (Spain), Fajitas (Mexico), Pizza (Italy), Curry, Rice, Naan and Poppadom (India) and Fish & Chips (UK!)

So here is our plan:

Monday: Tacos, Nachos and Rice (Mexican)

Tuesday: Paella (Spain)

Wednesday: Sushi (Japan)

Thursday: Lasagne / Calzone (Italy)

Friday: Fish & Chips! (UK)

 

Word of the Week: Experiences

This week has been a week full of experiences.

I went with the eldest two Littlesheeps to see The BFG.

We saw Behemoth from Robot Wars.

This was at the Dunstable Downs Kite Festival where we also saw lots of different kites being flown and kite acrobatic displays, several para-gliders and watched the gliders being towed up and landing.

   

Then came the biggest experiences of the week for the middle two Littlesheeps.

 

Middle Littlesheep had his sailing course – he’d done some sailing with Cubs and with Grandpa (who is a sailing instructor) last summer and decided then that he wanted to do it this year so Grandpa duly took him to the lake for a week for the RYA Level 1 & 2 course which he successfully completed. Apparently he did spend the week sailing but the only photo I was sent was him in the water practicing capsizing!

Littlest Littlesheep’s long awaited two afternoons snowboarding course… This was an interesting holiday activity to arrive at and came about because I was trying to suggest things he could try – as his brothers had tennis and sailing to do… climbing, trampolining, cycling, archaeology… the list was getting more and more random until I said snowboarding and he was hooked on the idea! I think he found it harder than he imagined but seemed to enjoy himself and definitely wants to go again so for a child who doesn’t often get enthused about any ‘extra-curricular’ activities it was obviously a hit.

We saw lots of rainbows driving home from a tennis tournament along the M6 – it was almost like we were chasing the rainbow all the way home.

We also did new trainers and school shoes for three of the four… that was a fairly painless experience as for once I didn’t leave it to the last minute so there was plenty of choice and no queue!

It’s going to be a week to remember of the holidays and potentially a tough one to beat!

What’s your Word of the Week?

The BFG

Like many families one activity on our Summer To Do list was a trip to the cinema to see the BFG.

First of all a top tip to get cheap tickets- cinema going is an expensive business…

and as is usual for our cinema trips I made them their own bags of pick-a-mix / popcorn to take with us to save a few more pennies too!

So the film…

In my opinion it’s a great adaptation of the book  – it’s quite scary at times even when you know the story but there are some funny moments too. I think I was most impressed with the computer editing that would have had be done to account for the size differences of Sophie and the BFG given that most of the story is between them!

I think the boys enjoyed it although the critique in the car on the way home was all about all the times the plot differs from the book – will have to watch the old cartoon film to see which one they feel is a better representation of the story!

Word of the Week: Adventures

This week has been week one of the school holidays and we’ve been planning our adventures – the list from the boys isn’t particularly adventurous but it is fun to have time without the bind of school timetables and activities. This week was a bit odd as we still had ballet (Miss Littlesheep), tennis squads (Biggest Littlesheep) and swimming lesson (Littlest Littlesheep) so with that time table and Biggest taking part in two tennis tournaments there wasn’t much week for adventuring.

This was also the week we pretended to own a dog – my mum did a London-Paris cycle ride (very proud of her on her adventures) and when my dad went out to join her for a mini-break in Paris we looked after their dog so we had lots of dog outings.

We bought a fire pit, had a fire and made smores…

We caught some Pokemon (and some like this little beastie got away)…

The middle two signed up for the summer library reading challenge (and Little Miss got a card for the mini challenge).

and we had a day out at Worcester Country Park (the phone ran out of battery from Pokemon-hunting so no photos of the park) but it was a great day out meeting up with NCT volunteers from Worcestershire to campaign to save their children’s centres before milkshakes and toasted teacakes in the cafe, a play in the park and a walk in the woods.

Meal Planning: The Children’s Edition

So the children planned the summer holidays and said they wanted to do cooking – I got the impression when I started talking to them about what they were going to cook us for dinner it was more about cooking cakes but we did get a few recipe books out of the library and there are a few main meals from ‘We Can Cook: Kids in the Kitchen‘ that I hope to try out over the holidays.

• Spicy Sausage Tortilla
• Presto Pesto Pasta
• Sticky Chicken
• Honey Mustard Chicken
• Turkey Patties
• Ham and Mozzarella Calzone
• Quick and Easy Risotto
• Mini Toads-in-the-Hole
• Thai Pork Patties
• Cheesy Burgers

Watch this space for the outcomes (and tweaks we will undoubtedly make when I forget some of the ingredients!