proudly presenting...

Haunt for the Xbox Kinect, made by my husband & his colleagues.

It's a fun, family friendly haunted house game (definitely not scary) suitable for age 7+.

You use your whole body and you arm acts as a torch/ flashlight to illuminate the house as you walk around it.

Click on above picture to see full image.

You duck out of the ghosts way, and can then strike it or dazzle it with the torch to get rid of it!

Really please that Microsoft has put it on their market place, do check it out, really is a fun game!

Very proud of husband and Zoe Mode.

new(ish) beginnings

I'm hoping everyone has had a good start to the new year. Our Christmas and New Year celebrations were brilliant, we spend Christmas with family and had friends over for New Year's celebrations.

I did a lot of cooking and baking (as we had good friends stay over 4/5 days) and I used my new Veg Everyday book with great success. Definitely a new favourite! For dessert for NYE I made a pavlova topped with cream and passion fruit from my Nigella Lawson's "How to Eat" book. It always gets a big thumbs up from people who eat it. Another thing that worked well were the mince pies I made using Rachel Allen's recipe (just 1 jar left to use up this month!). Note to self, halve recipe as I don't need 5/6 jars of mincemeat! I made another huge batch of them this week and both my husband and I took them into our respective workplaces, and they were eaten pretty quickly!

Yesterday to help usher in spring I bought 2 pots of narcissi bulbs and some tulips from our lovely local florist, Miss Mole's Flower Emporium. I thought they all looked gorgeous lit up last night in these two gorgeous tea light holders that my sister bought for me.

My new(ish) beginning is that I started an Open University degree course in English Literature back in October. It's hard work, and a lot of reading and essay writing. This is my way of an apology for few and far between blog posts since the autumn.

If you want to see some more of me(!) on the web, I've recently opened a pinterest page as a one stop shop to link to all ideas/ recipes/ likes/ inspiration to ideas on the web. It's a great free resource.

Take care for now. xox

merry xmas

Today I had a little pre Xmas tea party for my youngest son, with 2 of his nursery school friends. We made the Gingerbread house yesterday (all 4 of us had a hand in it!). I used the recipe and instructions from Rachel Allen's Bake book. We also made fairy cakes, gingerbread biscuits and homemade mincepies (1st time I've ever done that). Everyone loved it, so far we've eaten half of the roof!

Tudor Day Costume

Sewn from a pattern in the Easy Costumes for Children book. Came
together very easily.

Somewhere over the rainbow...

movember

You might have seen a lot of moustaches appearing all over the place. Some looking not quite right. Well if they disappear next week, it's because it's Movember. It's a fun way for men to raise money for men's health charities (and easier than training for a 10k run!) My husband's giving it his best shot, find him here.

If you can't grow one, you can always buy this moustache eraser from the Tate Gallery shop for £2.50

Or get this cut out and keep moustache from freemoustache.com! There's a couple of designs to choose from.

Happy growing!

falling light

The clocks have gone back and in the 20 minutes since I turned the PC on it's now dark. I caught the last of the day's light to take the photos below. With the cold winter weather coming my mind has turned to warm and snug things to wear. When I came across this book, Northern Lights by Lucinda Guy. I had to buy it as I had fallen in love with the Hulda Pullover and the Twined Socks.

The book takes inspiration from northern European countries Scandinavia, Iceland and the Shetland Isles.

The Hulda Pullover is in the Icelandic section of the book, so I found this shop, and bought my yarn from it.

My yarn came in a dizzying selection of colours, but I followed the exact shades from the book, as that is what makes it, I think.

The reds that go just around the base of the jumper, which lift it.

I love these oh so subtle changes from off white up to black in the yarn selection. This is what makes the stripes so lovely in this jumper with the gradual gradation of colour.

Now have I actually got any time to make it? Not really!