Cheesy scones

Doing lots of housework yesterday seems to have put me in domestic goodness mode as I feel to compelled to do lots of baking today. When I woke this morning, I decided I would bake another batch of Christmas Biscuits, make a plum crumble and whip up a batch of cheese scones on top of cooking the usual family roast. My enthusiasm started to wane once I got dressed, so I thought I might just try the cheese scones and see how we go. As the scone recipes doesn't use any eggs, I thought it

Tidy all the things!

Today, M has taken L to Granny and Grandad's to do some work in the garden. This has given me a free day to do some "spring" cleaning in readiness for Christmas. I hate housework, but I do love sitting back and viewing the tidiness. Couple that with a cup of tea and bourbon and I'm in heaven!

My plan is to tackle the kitchen and lounge and these are the two most used rooms in our home. I'm a person who loves a list. In fact I love lists so much that if I have forgotten to write something on a list and have already completed what it was I wanted to write, I will go back and write it on the list only to cross it off seconds later! So here is my list of things to do:

Lounge
Clear out cupboards and shelves
Tidy DVD draw
Sort out behind the sofas
Dust all surfaces and ornaments
Organise Lu's toy's and play pen
Hoover carpet, curtains and sofas
Tie back the annoying bits of string hanging from the top of the curtains

Kitchen
Washing up
Clean and sort cutlery draw
Clean and sort crockery and glasses cupboard
Organise food cupboard
Clean fridge
Organise freezer to make more space
Organise bowls and pans cupboards
Think (that's right only think!) about cleaning the fridge
Clean microwave (bowl of water with a slice of lemon, whack in microwave on full power for about 3 minutes, leave to "steam" for 2 minutes, then wipe round with a clean cloth...one clean and fresh microwave!)
Wipe down cupboards
Clean floor
Clean window sill
Put washing machine on a cleaning cycle (put on hottest wash possible with a load of bicarbonate soda in the draw...one clean and fresh washing machine)

Anyway, there is no point blogging about it, I might as well put my Bryan Adams CD on (always been my favourite for cleaning to, ever since I was a teenager and had to tidy my room) get on and do it.

The Button Pinafore Dress Tutorial

Brrrrr! Winter is definitely on it's way, so I thought I'd better start making some warmer clothes for L. I've had 1/2 meter of pretty pink and white polka dot sitting in my fabric hoard for a few months and didn't know what to do with it. What better item is there for a little girls winter wardrobe than a pinafore dress. Dress it with tights and a polo neck on cold days or on it's own as the weather turns warmer. The dress got it's name from the fact I used the button hole setting on my sewing machine for the first time and I'm pretty chuffed with myself!

Cobblers to your cookie cutters

Ok, I may be slightly obsessed with my bargain cookie cutters. I like to get my money's worth out of things but I may be going too far now!

Last week I decided that L might like to try some plums so I bought a MASSIVE punnet from the shop. She loves grapes, eats nectarines whole so I kind of thought that plums would be a good idea. Anyhow, she didn't like them. In fact, every time I chopped one up for her,

Wonderful tactile play idea

I just absolutely had to share with you this wonderful idea from Anna at Imagination Tree. Anna has some absolutely brilliant suggestions to keep your little one's amused while developing things like language and social skills. Her Snakes in Jelly has really inspired me try it out. I'm sure L will love it. And I know for a fact that if she doesn't enjoy it that I will probably have a great day and hey, who doesn't like jelly!

Freckle Veggie Patch

This week our parish council has given us our very own allotment! We are very excited. Unfortunately our house does not have a garden, but now we are a 5 minute walk away from our very own veggie patch. There has already been talk of growing beans, potatoes and peas. But there is a lot of work to do between now and spring when the planting can begin.

Making use of my new cookie cutters

Following my recent post about my Christmas biscuits and bargain cookie cutters, I thought it might be nice to use the cutters to make some or L's food look a bit more interesting. She is usually a very good eater (a little too good, like me!) but recently she has been a little monkey. So in a Lemsip induced dream, I decided that mini puff pastry pizza's cut into shapes would be a great idea! They went down

Christmas biscuit practice

So all the talk about Christmas and homemade Christmas snacks made me hungry for my Christmas biscuits so I just HAD to whip up a test batch. I found a family of gingerbread people biscuit cutters in Sainsburys for the bargain price of £1.75 and although the mixture comes out quite wet the shapes turned out better than I expected. I then dipped them in some

Pinterest!

Just joined Pinterest! It's an amazing place where the pinboard of ideas that you keep in your brain appears magically on the screen in front of you. Ok, so i've only been a pinterest-er for about 5 minutes but I am officially in love. You can view my pinboards here.

Think Pinterest is going to take over my life for a while!

<a href="http://pinterest.com/frecklestitch/"><img src="http://passets-cdn.pinterest.com/images/follow-on-pinterest-button.png" width="156" height="26" alt="Follow Me on Pinterest" /></a>

Oh THAT dress!

Last week, Grandma R and I went to Buckingham Palace to see the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress and what a dress it was! It was beautiful. The detailing on the lace was extraordinary and it was all sewn on by hand. Apparently the seamstresses changed their needles every 3 hours to make sure they stayed sharp and didn't have any grease on them. I wish I just had just a quarter the patience that the seamstresses did to do hand stitching.

New Christmas Wreath

As part of my preparation for Christmas I've been thinking about the massive list I need to write of things that need to be done at home in readiness for the Christmas period. Christmas is a very special time of year for our family but even more so this year as it's L's first proper Christmas and we have two special guests coming for Christmas lunch; Grandma & Grandad R (B's parents). It will be the first time that we have had guests for Christmas lunch and I has a lot of hard work ahead of her as she tries to come close to Grandma R's wonderful Christmas roasts!

There will be more blogging about Christmas dinner as time draws near, but in terms of preparing the house I need to start at the very beginning; the front door and the Christmas Wreath.

RIP Mr Jobs

Today is a sad day in our home as we mourn the passing of Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple. He truely did make a huge impact on the way the world uses it's technology. In many of the news articles I read about him today he was described as a visionary, and I cannot think of a more fitting word to describe this amazing man.


We are big fans of everything Apple; iPhones, iPods, Mac's, Apple TV and I'm sure it won't be long until we have a iPad. If Apple made a washing machine, we would buy it and it would probably the best washing machine the world has ever seen. I hope that the untimely death of Mr Jobs will not put a stop to the innovation coming from Apple as I'm sure there are great things still to come...fingers crossed for the iWasher.

B's Chocolate Factory

Today I want to share with you my favourite recipe of Christamas Chocolates by master chocolatier Marc Demarquette which I found on the UKTV Food website. This recipe is by far the easiest and nicest recipe I found. The taste little Christmas and your home will smell simply beautiful.

One batch (depending on how you cut them) can make loads of chocies! I must have made about 10 batches of these a couple of years ago, at least one batch ended up being "tested" for quality!

You won't find many people who don't love chocolate, especially at Christmas time. I simply cut the chocolate in squares, wrapped them in some cellophane and put them in a small wedding favours box. It was simply and effective, but you could really go to town and decorate the chocs with nuts, candid peel, mazipan, sprinkles, more chocolate! You could even write little Christmas messages on them.

Christmas Chocolates - http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/597280

Mmm biscuits...

This week I have been thinking about homemade Christmas presents and what I have made in the past. My most favourite thing to make was some Christmas chocolate truffles and some Christmas Spice Biscuits. They went down a storm. It took a little trial and error to find the perfect biscuits but the best recipe I found was from the So Feminine website. They are nice and chewy and just the right combination of Christmassy spices. I topped mine with melted dark chocolate (the perfect partner to gingery spices) and sprinkles.

Why not whip up a few batches? They could make the perfect gift for older relatives, especially when presented in a nice glass jar with a big red gingham bow on top. 

Perfect Christmas Biscuits - http://cooking.sofeminine.co.uk/w/recipe/r804/christmas-biscuits.html

84 day's to go...

Phew, sure is hot here for October. But with just 84 days to go until Christmas arrives I need to be thinking about Christmas shopping and crafting, not BBQ's and ice creams!

As this is only L's second Christmas we are still trying to work out what Christmas should be like for the Freckle family. Both M and myself have traditions from our own families, but would also like to make our mark as a family by creating our own traditions.

Cat bed cushion tutorial - easy peasy

Well this is my first tutorial. I started it ages ago and have only got round to finishing it. Better late than never I suppose. As this is my first tutorial, I would love some feed back from anyone who gives it a go. Feel free to send me a photo of you work too!