Late Homework Excuses....

The dog distracted me.... (we don't have a dog)

The weather has been, surprisingly, too lovely to sit inside and type... (semi-true)

My computer broke (by broken I mean I haven't switched it on)

I have been super busy working on my dissertation (Okay, even I laughed out loud at that one!)

I have been just too darn lazy!

 

So, since school is over and long, dull days trapped in a library are ahead of me, it feels like the right time to say sorry for being a pathetic blogger and to  jump right back in!


Looking through the pictures on my camera I've realised how much has happened since I went on my little four month break that I could have shared here. So you lucky people get to have four months of posts in one go! Ready? Set, GO!


March


My birthday month! The Friday before The Big Day (it is always TBD in my mind anyway) my best friends joined me for an evening of cocktails, thank you girlies!

Yes, these are regular and appropriate cocktail sizes.

 

The next night Morgan and I had the pleasure of partying at Stella and Chris' wedding reception!!! As it was the night before my birthday that gave me heavy drinking rights and therefore a LOT of stupid photo booth photos.

Yes I was very drunk, but I'm pretty sure that for about half of these photos it was technically my birthday so I can be excused this once right?

 

 

 

April

 

 



April started well for me. For the first time in living memory I won a game of Monopoly. This might seem like a big deal, definitely not blog-worthy, yet for me it was one of my greatest moments of triumph!

 

Thing progressed well in the real world too. We (I) decided to swap bedrooms as although the front room is smaller, I liked the light better in there. We also bought a wardrobe and curtains and with the help of Mum and Bro our new bedroom looked like this...

 

 

Eye-spy with my little eye, new curtains!

 

New(ish) wardrobe, hurrah for hanging clothes!

 

 



Contrary to popular belief, I also spent a fair amount of time here...

 

Which is still pretty for a library, but still dreadfully dull. Roll on August 23rd...!

 

 

Lucky I have such an amazing boyfriend who knew exactly what would cheer me up... tickets to the Harry Potter Studios Tour!!!!

 

 

Newest Hogwarts student, at the Griffindor table of course!

 

Thank you Morgan!

 

And best of all, I actually managed to persuade my brother to dress up at St George and come into school on St George's day as our topic this term was Knights and Castles.

 

 

Doesn't he look dashing!

 

 As fun as that was, it was even funnier the next day once the children had drawn pictures of 'St George'!

 

 

They look just like him!

My favourite picture!

 

Thank you David. Next term it's all about space if you don't mind dressing up as The Man on The Moon...?

 

May

 

May Madness- I finally started to tackle the garden! As big and beautiful as it is, there were a lot of weeds! Mr Moggs got onto the mowing and I chose the smallest place to start. Well, it is a start...

Before/After/Morgan-at-work/The Rest of The Garden

 

 Even better that a freshly mown garden was a trip to Brighton to see.... McFly!!!

 

Followed of course by chip on Brighton Beach!

 

                             

 

And to finish May Madness was the celebration of my most mad friend Sam on the day of her birth!

 

The lovely GGs!

                           

Do you need any more proof?

                               

 Happy Birthday Snoony!

 

 June

 

Things quietened down in June. The most exciting thing to happen this month (according to my phone as my memory is useless!) is that my apple tree grew an apple!

 

 

Who saw that one coming?!?!"

 

 

And that was June....   *tumbleweeds*

 

July

 

Now I know everyone thinks the end of term, and the end of the school year in particular, is a doddle and teacher just let children play but I am here to declare it otherwise! End of terms are always the busiest times of the year and to make it more relaxed stressful the children are also feeling tired, grumpy and ratty and find new ways to push teacher's buttons after a wonderful year together. Maybe it's to help with the separation? Either way, July is normally pants.

 

However, it was thanks to the brilliant Miss Blackwell that July was no longer the month of pants, it was the month of luuuuurve as at the very last minute she got me a ticket to see.. Michael Bublé!!!

 

Yes ladies, I can confirm I have been in the presence of the man who can make every girl swoon, and he was just as amazing as you would hope him to be, even from our seats at the O2 which were approximately 2.3 miles away. But hey, I was in the same room as him!

 

 

And that pretty much wraps up my past 5 months! Stay tuned for more adventures in Brighton, Housewarming take 2 (outdoor version) and a mystery holiday!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Happy Easter Everyone

House with Benefits

Incredibly it has already been 3 months since we moved into our new home. Plans to decorate are still just a few moodboards and the occasional 'oooh' when browsing magazines and online, but we are both still enjoying having a home of our own. These 3 months have passed by so quickly and yet it still feels new and exciting. I think one of the reasons is because as we get to know the house and the area we live in we keep finding new discoveries. For example:

* Our neighbours are amazing! Not only did they invite us over to meet the neighbours on the street within weeks of moving in, they came to our housewarming and certainly held their own!

* The takeaways at the bottom of the road are delicious! It's going to be a real struggle to not cave in every weekend.

 

 



* Now that we are heading into spring our garden is surprising us with new plants and flowers, who knows what else will appear over the next few months??



* There is a very good Next and TK Max store just a few minutes drive away which means if I have a funny few minutes and actually fancy shopping, I can go without the hassle of driving all the way into town and paying a fortune for parking.

But my favourite discovery so far is... The Bambi Woods!

 

I don't think that is their official name but all you need to know is that they a big and beautiful and they too have lots of surprises.



Emma running up the hill to get to the...

 

...rope swing!

  

 

In fact, the swing discovery has only made me love them even more. Look how happy it has made Morgan too!

So here's to many more discoveries in the next 3 months.








P.S. This is why I love my sister...

Our New Home

Here are our before pictures of our new home. I'm sure the after pictures will be  arrive in about five years time...

Our first picnic in the house

 

come on inside

 

 

the living room

 

dining room

 

kitchen

 

going upstairs

 

 

our bedroom 

 

front bedroom

 

and now..

 

 

The 'box' room

 

and now...

less boxy!

 

our garden!

 

Hope you enjoyed the tour, come back soon(ish) and see how we get on transforming it from 1960 to 2013!

 

What happened to Linsey...

Hello dear blogger friends! Apologies for the long absence, it was never intended but life got a little busy (as you shall soon hear) and I did disappear for a little while. However, I am back with lots of updates and no plans to go AWOL in the near future!

So, I need you all to come back in time with me to September 2012. Life was tootling by quite nicely when something super exciting and wonderful happened; Morgan and I found our perfect home and our offer was accepted!



Hurrah! We cheered a lot, I bounced around A LOT, and we spent the next few months keeping our fingers crossed that it would all go through and stalking our house ( if it is possible to stalk a stationary building) on a weekly basis. By November we were pushing through the final details and I excitedly started packing up my belongings (hence no home computer, therefore, no blog) thinking we would be in our house by the end of the month.

But of course things don't always pan out the way you would expect them to, so after a few delays we finally completed on the 14th December, incidentally my sister Emma's birthday. Hurrah some more! That evening we picked up the keys and rushed excitedly over to the house, with my mum, dad and brother following behind us. After minor difficulties (no lights, front door that we couldn't open) we were in, and in my case bouncing around each room.

 

 

 

 

On 27th December we arrived back from a Christmas in Wales to move into our new home!

So dear friends, that is my excuse for going AWOL for the past couple of months but I am back! Prepare for a lot of boring house talk and all that 2013 is bringing our way xx

Pizza Cake

I'm going to start by telling you I cannot take credit for this. It was all my sister's idea. One of those ideas that seem so obvious yet so great that you immediately feel jealous and want to be a part of it and claim it as your own, which I am sorely tempted to do here. However I would be lying to you if I did that so I'm confessing now. It was all Emma's idea.

But the box was my idea!

It was my brothers birthday. David is very tall, ginger yet tanned and uber cool. I don't know how he does it. He also eats a lot, as in a LOT! There was a phase where I would come home from work to find that despite having eaten an entire pizza already he was joining us for dinner. This happened everyday for months. A pizza for a snack, and he stays in shape too? Errrrr, how? Anyway...

This is where Emma's brilliant idea came into play. She decided to bake him a birthday cake, except this would be no ordinary cake, it would be a cake shaped like a pizza. Genius!

Here is the story of our pizza cake adventure:

Step 1) Bake a vanilla sponge cake. Feel proud of the golden crust colour and exclaim "It looks just like a real pizza!" Leave to cool on wire rack.

 

Step 2) Use the entire baking cupbards resources to make tomato coloured butter icing. Include copious amounts of blue and green food dye when it looks too pink. Convince yourself it looks darker now and stir a few billion times.

Step 3) Slice and dice licorice to create pepperoni, olive, and green pepper toppings. Get frustrated as the 'pepperoni' sticks to the chopping board and casually wash out the white stuff in the black licroice in a bowl of water, despite the water gradually turning black. Tell the green peppers well done for not being a pain.

Step 4) Use the cheese grater to grate the frozen bar of white chocolate to create the cheese. Grate more than you need and sneakily eat a little as it tastes like yummy chocolate but it's far too small to count as actual calories. Sprinkle cheese on top.

Step5)  Fast becoming a catch line exclaim "It looks just like a real pizza!"  Add other toppings and smile at your perfect creation.

Step 6) Decide to stick your perfect pizza under the grill to 'melt the chocolate a little to look like real cheese' and watch carefully to make sure you don't over do it. Cry as you realise that although the frozen chocolate hasn't melted, your butter icing has and it has DESTROYED THE PERFECT CAKE! Feeling devastated, laugh insanely as your sister goes into panic mode and tries not to cry.

Step 7) Scrape, scrape, scrape the cake! Can we save it? Nooooooooo! The sponge is now ruined. Panic.

Repeat steps 1-5 and create the perfect cake, not with quite the same enthusiasm, and vow never to put a perfect cake under the evil, cake-destroying grill again.

Step 8) Place the second perfect pizza cake in an authentic Dominoes pizza box and say "It really does look like a real pizza!" Congratulate yourself on a job well done and plot how to suprise Brother.

Ah well, we got there in the end. Thank you for reading!

What would you use for toppings on a pizza cake?