WEEKEND WORK.

Anyone who has worked in the health service and is my age+ will remember weekend work.
It was a kind of mini spring cleaning session and looking back it was probably a good thing because there just doesn't seem to be time for anything like that today.
It also served another purpose and that was to check that everything was working properly,so I think it was a good thing.
Well I think that a lot of nurses carry on that tradition but not all of them because I know a certain nurse who doesn't live a million miles from me who hasn't cleaned her house since 1976 BUT HEY, we are not all the same thank goodness.
Well my house has weekend work and Niamh loves it.
How to save time and energy ?
Let the 10 year old do the work because she loves doing it, it is still a game for her:)



















Beauty loves to cook and today we made pasta bake.
This is me trying to be frugal :)
Cheese-35p
Pasta -36p
Sauce x 2 - £2.00
So the meal cost me £2.71 to make and it will last for at least 2 more meals.






















The finished product :)



















Beauty LOVES baking :)





















She also loves to clean :)


















One thing that I have a problem with is the dust pan and brush and anybody who has recently visited my house wiill know this because they are always being asked to dust pan and brush something up that I have swept into a corner.......sorry girls :)
However, now I know that Beauty can help me.
































One of the problems with the sweeping is that Beauty gets very excited and is likely to be a bit over enthusiatic :)






















Beauty seems to go through stages of development and at the moment she seems to have made a huge step forward.
She just wants to learn all the time and this is constant and due to her ADHD which Prof. Fraser also diagnosed, she just wants to be DOING all the time.
Her learning seems to fall into 3 groups.
Personal care, educational learning and homemaking skills and these are totally her own choice.
I feel in a way that we are following a Montessorri type plan for her and she is leading the way and achieving at her own pace the skills she needs to learn.

Finding the energy to keep up with her enthusiam is the only difficulty :)

PANCAKE DAY

Beauty's Bunny display.













This is my 25th year of being a parent of a child in school and I can tell you now that contributing continuously can be very tiring.
Beauty's school is very small and there are usually 6 children in her class. I am the parent of one of only 2 children in the class that are taken to and from school by their parents so such contact means it can be difficult to escape contributing to everything.
For each celebration the children dress up and bring different types of food or something else that is relevant to the occasion.
Today is Shrove Tuesday so that means Pancakes BUT I really feel that I am getting tired of making and creating.
I am getting just a little old for this.
And personally I am feeling a little 'tattered' around the edges :)
Did I ever tell you about the St David's Day when I sent in a tin of Welsh Cakes?
I just did not have the energy to handmake them so I took them out of the packet and put some caster sugar on them and put them in a cake tin.
They only went and won a prize in the school competition.
It was a bit of a Helen Mirren moment in Calendar Girls when her M&S cake wins first prize in the WI competition.
Well nobody told me they were going to be bloody judging them.
Not that I won a prize or anything(thank goodness)!


















This year for Shrove Tuesday I am sending in pancakes still in their packets so there is no possibility of confusion.
Not that there is a pancake competition(phew!).

And Beauty and I spent all of half an hour making paper bunting.
Beauty was too busy singing and dancing and bouncing around to spend much time being creative.


















I spent many hours once sewing Easter bunting for Beauty's class but that went walkabout and hasn't been seen since so this was definitely more enjoyable for Beauty to make and less time intensive and definitely cheaper.

And so I have spent time and effort on something that Beauty and I can both enjoy.
Today we put together an Easter display on the piano.
We bought most of the things in 'What' and 'Dunelm' so you can tell they did not cost a lot.
























Beauty was thrilled when we did this and she showed it by being very flippy-flappy with her fingers.


















She also enjoyed rubbing noses with the bunny noses :)


















I especially love the vases.
They were the cheapest vases in 'What' yet I felt they were the most attractive.
Anybody who has shopped in 'What' knows exactly what I mean :)
So what comes after Shrove Tuesday and before Good Friday ?
I am sure the school has something planned :)

UPDATE

Look what I found today.
A photo of the bunting that I made for Beauty's school.
I am so glad I have a photo of it:)

GUS GUS THE MOUSE

Last night we had a visitor.
The smallest , fattest little mouse you ever saw.
Just like Gus from the film Cinderella.
And I had to rescue him because the cheeky little thing got stuck under the door between the living room and the dining room!



























And I know exactly where he came from.
I have crazy neighbours who haven't cleaned their house since 1976 when they first moved into their house.
They should be on a TV program called HOW DIRTY IS YOUR FILTHY STINKING HOVEL not 'How Clean Is Your House' with Kim and Aggie.

Well back to Gus Gus :)

Looking round for something to put him in I saw one of my storage tins that I use to store Niamh's hair slides and bobbles and quickly emptied it.
Then I carefully caught Gus by the tail and popped him into the tin and put the lid on.















I then took him quickly out of the house, down the garden path and plopped him in the road and warned him that if he came back then next time I wouldn't be quite so nice.
He scurried away.
Let's hope he does as he is told.






Anyway, I have decided that there are no more pets, they are meant to live in THE WILD.

























In the garden


















Not the house