Today has been a day of baking!!

I have made cupcakes and biscuits.

The biscuits took me 3 attempts to get them to work (I couldnt get the mixture to form into a dough by following the recipe exactly, so I merged a couple of shortbread recipes together and on the third attempt got what I was after!). Today was the first day I used my penguin cutter that I got in my stocking for christmas and below are the results:



The biscuits are very yummy and I have 36 of them left! They had to be cooked in a couple of batches because I dont have enough baking trays or a big enough oven to cook them all in one go.

The cupcakes are a packet mix. They are strawberry and white chocolate cupcakes from morrisons. I was a little disappointed when I realised they only made 6 in a box, I clearly don't pay enough attention when looking at the boxes in the supermarket. I have to wait until tomorrow to try these as I am taking them to my brothers house as he has invited me for tea. Below are the cupcakes:



They look extremely yummy and I am trying to be very good at not having one now!! Here is all of my creations together:



My kitchen looked like a flour and icing sugar bomb had hit it after I had finished!! Its a good job kitchen surfaces are easy to wipe down really.

busy busy busy

Since my last blog I have been busy busy busy!

In March I will be running my very first scout camp/sleepover thing! Whilst I have now been on 2 or 3 camps/sleepovers with the scouts and the beavers this will be the first one that I am in charge of!!

There is alot of planning and organising involved, coming up with fun and new activities that will keep a group of fourteen 10-13yr olds happy and occupied for a weekend. Then the cubs will also be joining us for the second night, so on the sunday I have to plan activities for twenty three 7-13yr olds!! Now that is a large age gap to try and plan for. Especially when I am trying to plan activities that they haven't really done before so it doesn't feel repetitive. They will be staying over in a scout hut which will be their first time as they are usually on a campsite in tents.

I think I am there with all of my activities now. I just need to send out the letters, get money in and get organised. I have a couple of other leaders who will be my 'catering team' for the weekend and so I need to speak to them regarding menus for the weekend.

I am excited about it but there is alot of work involved in the planning of a scout weekend away. I don't think I ever really gave full credit to those who have run the other camps as you don't see all the things like sending NAN forms and filling in home contact forms and all things like that.

Rest In Peace Skittles

On wednesday I got the news that Skittles had died in her sleep :o( My mum had been going to my house every day to check things were ok while I wasn't there. On tuesday Skittles was fine but when my mum went round wednesday morning she had passed on.

It feels very weird being at home at the minute and not looking at her cage

Blogging from my dsi xl

Not sure if this is exciting or just plain sad that i'm blogging from my nintendo DSi XL.

I got the XL on tuesday or wednesday of last week after saving up for it. i would trade in old wii or ds games I had completed and wouldn't play anymore and saving up the money on a game giftcard. Well I finally had enough pennies saved for one this week when I also added in some christmas money!

Since then I have been feeling pretty poorly with a flu virus (albeit more mildly than if I hadn't had the flu vaccine). On advice from my CF team I was started on tamiflu and ciprofloxacillin on friday. The virus seemed to hit from nowhere on friday morning but it was probably running at a low grade all week and peaked over the weekend. on saturday I didn't even want to read my book (very unusual!) or open any of the post i've been waiting for.

Starting to feel better today although from the state of my chest its not gone completely and can only keep my fingers crossed that the cipro is strong enough and ivs wont be needed!!! also this has been a good reminder as to why the flu vaccine is so important and why i'm glad I have it every year.

New Years Eve

Me with my oldest friend (known each other 13years) with her hubby and Trike the dinosaur!
With the rest of who I saw New year in with (bar the person taking the photo).

I saw the new year in with one of my oldest friends from school and her family! We had a quiet night in round her parents house. We watched a couple of films: 'Disturbia' and 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' and all saw the new year in with a cup of tea in hand!!

A fun night was had by all with some good laughs and some delicious food at the start of the evening.

Christmas time

Below is a very very very very small selection of some photos from my christmas.
All of the presents that I was lucky enough to receive this year:

Waiting (not so patiently) to open my presents christmas day morning (I think I am rocking the reindeer antlers!):

My stocking presents:

One of my favouritest stocking presents is right in the bottom hand corner, you can't really tell in this picture but its a penguin shaped cookie cutter!!! I can't wait to make some penguin shaped biscuits :o) My second favourite is right at the top of the picture on the left- a wooden nose. The picture below will show you what it is the nose is used for:
That's right- its (well what I think anyway) a very funky glasses holder. It now sits on my bedside table so that when I go to sleep in an evening my glasses can rest safely on my nose. Instead of just on their table where I very frightening regularity normally send them flying onto the carpet when I try to find them to put them on in a morning. You think I would be better at finding my glasses after wearing them for 16years, but nope!! Glasses haven't gone on the floor once since getting the nose, which hasn't even been a week yet but still better than before!!

I had a good christmas, I spent the weekend at my parents house and spent the time with my family. It was a good day and everyone enjoyed themselves and were pleased with what Santa brought them. Being able to spend christmas with young ones makes it even more magical!

allsorts

Its been abit of a busy few weeks!

I spent about a week snowed in and not really able to go far as couldnt get my car safely on or off the drive.

I'm trying to remember what else I have been upto!!!

With the scouts we did some christmas crafts and one of these was decorating the stockings. I then kept hold of the stockings ("so they could dry") and returned them to the kids at their christmas party full of some little presents. They all got a pencil, two chocolates (A santa and a snowman about the size of a small choc coin) and a small bag of haribo. Which nicely filled up the stocking. I thought it would be a good idea to wrap them all!! Well there were 25 stockings to do. That wrapping took me over 4hours to do in total. For future reference tiny little chocolates are very awkward to wrap up!!!!

On the 12th December I went to a carol service with the scouts. 3 out of our group turned upto the service which was abit of a poor showing but I enjoyed the service. Some good carols were sung that all of the kids knew and weren't too random (I've noticed that sometimes services aimed primarily at kids have some real random carols/hymns in that they are never going to know so dont sing).

It's also been a very busy time with scout post. I ended up in charge of a very large area and between me and my very helpful dad it took us 8hours over this weekend and last weekend to deliver about 1600 christmas cards that weren't sent through the scout post scheme!! This helps raise money for the groups which is a good thing but it was cold and boring and it makes you sick of the sight of christmas cards (if mine hadnt been written before I started delivering scout post nobody would of been getting one!).

On thursday I finally made it to clinic (my previous appointment got cancelled because of the snow). It went well, was a relatively quick appointment for my clinic-just under 2hours. Whilst my lung function isn't the best its been this year it also isnt the worse and so I didn't need IVs or oral antibiotics and we will see what it is like in January!!


I am all organised and sorted for christmas. All my presents are brought and wrapped and have been handed out to the correct people. I have just one present left in my house that is for my friend who is visiting this week when it will be given to them then. Scouts has now finished for christmas so I have about 3weeks off from meetings and gangshow rehearsals (yay!). Things are going to be very busy in January and February with gangshow so looking forward to this break.

I think thats about me upto date, even if this blog post is very higgeldy piggeldy.