Carrying on with Catching Up...

N is now 4. His birthday was in the middle of July and here follow a few pictures of the celebrations. My birthday has also now passed (even longer ago), but I haven't got round to photographing any of my presents or cake yet. Maybe I will, maybe I won't!

Sideways present pile.

The cake, unadorned.

Now decorated, I did the icing and the children carefully positioned the mini smarties.

My mouth is watering looking at it now. This was the cake for the birthday day,. For the party (held a day later) I made a single layer chocolate cake with chocolate butter icing (sorry, no photos, was too busy!). Had I to choose between them, I would pick the chocolate cake, still my favourite, mmm.

The birthday boy just before party chaos ensues. The day was dry right up until I finished getting out the garden toys and furniture when, guess what, it started to rain. So we had an indoor party. We've been lucky, it was the first time, we've always managed outside before.

Birthday cards on the shelves.

Continuing with gratuitous baking photos....

A friend made a delicious strawberry and custard pie one time we went round for a play date.

N & A make crispie cakes for the first time. Well, they did the stirring and some of the eating.

I mentioned in a recent post that I'd run out of one of the colours I needed for my big blanket. Each time the postie visited I was hoping he would be bringing me my wool order. However, it didn't come in time for our visit to my parents (when I get lots of crochet time in the evenings), so I took another Japanese crescent moon shawl I'd started on holiday in Norfolk (I only did 2 rows in Norfolk, it wasn't the right project to take along, too much thinking and counting involved).

The shawl has come on a lot more since these photos. My other wool has now arrived though and I'm preferring to play with the colour combinations of my blanket. Granny squares are also so much easier to manage when trying to catch some olympic action on the telly at the same time. Not that I've had much time for crochet and watching the olympics recently - we're hosting a big family do this weekend and I'm trying to get the house in order. I have even cleaned the oven, the microwave, the top of the fridge, behind the red cabinet in the living room(!), washed all the spare bed linen, made and frozen some of the food and dusted all the shelves in the living room (including my small collection of rowing trophies, I will do a little post on rowing soon, thank you for the interest when I showed off my medals). So much else to do, but there's little point in doing much of it till the day before as it always gets untidied and messed up the minute I turn my back. I've now got a little fed up of the cleaning, hence the little blog update break while the children watch Sean The Sheep and we hide from the sun at its strongest - it's a lovely day here today, time now to enjoy the rest of it...