My Sunday Photo 17.4.16

I promise hand on heart that this photo hasn’t been edited or messed about with in any way. We’ve been on holiday in North Devon all week and this was taken on Westward Ho! beach. The tide was just going out and the spring sunshine was dancing on the wet sand and creating a beautiful sky-sand mirror. This photo was taken with my Nokia Lumia phone and I think it’s rather beautiful and a little like a watercolour painting.

The photo shows a silhouette of my husband as he approached an ancient shipwreck sticking out from the sand. We’d visited last year and had a good look at the wrecks and I was keen to see if they were still visible, which they are. You can read more about the history of the wrecks and see close up photos in this blog post from last year.

My Sunday Photo 10.4.16

A last minute break in what we think is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Smack bang on the North Devon and Cornwall border this is Welcombe Mouth, with gorse and heather covered cliffs, it’s own waterfall, jagged rocks and great surfing. What’s not to love?

It is cold though. So very cold. Brrrrr.

Disabled on holiday

My Sunday Photo 3.4.16

The last week has been such a busy one and I’ve been busy with my camera. Scrolling back over the couple of hundred photographs I’ve taken this week, this is the one which stands out the most to me. It’s not a great photograph, if it wasn’t just a quick snap in passing it could be better, but it is the one photo which stands out as especially beautiful.

Last Sunday I went to the Gin Festival at Victoria Baths in Manchester. This beautiful Edwardian building is being painstakingly restored. Throughout the building there are stained glass windows and this caught my eye. She’s a beautiful Angel I guess, I’m not sure who she really is or who she represents, but I’m quite in love with her.

Happy Sunday! Xx

My Sunday Photo 13.3.16

Ahoy there shipmates!

My Sunday Photo 13.3.16

This week we have mainly been obsessing about pirates and pirate ships, to the point where we now have a large cardboard pirate ship in the middle of our lounge. Every good pirate ship needs a Jolly Roger and this is what we made, it now flies proudly from the bow of our amazing cardboard vessel.

My Sunday Photo 6.3.16

My Sunday Photo 28.2.16

This Sunday may I present to you my Manchester Tart….

Manchester Tart

I’m doing a spot of recipe writing for something which I can tell you more about in April, and this is the happy and rather delicious result of one of those recipes.

My Grandma taught me how to cook, she was a school cook and a pastry chef, so this, the famous Manchester Tart was one of her favourite things to make. I followed her handwritten recipe in a rather battered handwritten book and this was the delicious outcome.

If you’ve never had Manchester Tart before, it is shortcrust pastry blind baked, smothered with a layer of raspberry jam, topped with creme patissiere and sprinkled with toasted dessicated coconut. Some recipes (some very wrong recipes IMHO) include a layer of sliced banana on top of the jam, and most use much more coconut than I did, but it’s all personal taste.

Regardless of whether you are pro or anti banana, this Manchester Tart was a fine tribute to my Grandma, and I like to think she’d be tucking into seconds right now if she were still with us.

My Sunday Photo 21.2.16

As half terms go we’ve had a nice quiet one, a few play dates, some trips to the park in between showers and plenty of snuggling under a blanket time. We wont win any awards for adventure, but it’s been the kind of restful week we’ve needed. On Saturday in an attempt to blow a few cobwebs away we headed off to Rode Hall near Congleton in Cheshire to enjoy their annual snowdrop walk.

The weather was not kind, but wrapped up against the elements we managed to enjoy two hours of outdoor fun and fresh air; and we were rewarded with a hearty lunch and a warm by the fire when we’d finished.

My favourite picture from our visit is of one of my favourite places at Rode Hall, the boathouse, a small wooden boathouse, covered in moss and clinging to the side of the lake. It fills me full of memories of Swallows and Amazons and more recently a visit to the Dylan Thomas Boathouse.

It’s as pretty as a picture, even on a grim day and fills my head full of adventure and mystery.

You can read about our visit to Rode Hall here.

My Sunday Photo 14.2.16

Ah-ha! I bet you were expecting something with hearts and flowers since it’s Valentine’s Day, sadly not. Yesterday we visited SEA LIFE Manchester and had a whale of a time (pun intended). You can read all about our aquatic adventures here, but for now I’ll leave you with this picture of the boy, tackling a tunnel and finding Nemo.

SEA LIFE Manchester

My Sunday Photo 7.2.16

muddy puddles

It’s been a wet and windy few days and we were dying to get out of the house and get some fresh air. On Saturday afternoon I’d had enough and bundled me and the boy up and headed off to our local and usually very popular park. We had it almost to ourselves which was great fun. We walked around splashing in all the big puddles and seeing how deep they were. He was wearing his beloved bright yellow RNLI wellies too.

By the time we got home we’d hadve an hour and a half of fresh air and exercise. I kicked my walking boots off as soon as I got in the door, he was struggling to pull his wellies off, but when he did I realised there was about half a pint of water in each welly. Too much splashing! Hot baths and hot chocolate all round, we’d enjoyed being the only people in the park for a change.

My Sunday Photo 31.1.16

Learning to read

Although I’ve already written a blog post about my boy starting to learn to read, when I looked back over the photos I’d taken this week, this is the one I liked the best. It marks such a milestone in his development and will forever be a nice memory for us all.

So this is our son with his first reading book from school, as proud as punch to be reading with his Daddy.