Two Days in Mersea

This week has seen Frank and I spending two days on Mersea Island.

Cloudy beach days are my favourite as I just wilt in the sun and burn fairly easily.

Tuesday was, as you can see, wonderfully cloudy. The island is well known for its seafood, oysters in particular, hence the shells glittering in the sand.

This didn't stop us from making a sandcastle and decorating it with shells and one of the many feathers Frank seems to be finding these days.
My friend Clare has a beach hut here and we met her and an old friend of hers along with his daughter (who are now based in Oregon) for lunch and beach fun.
For anyone not from the UK these huts are fairly typical English seaside beach huts.
All different, rather ramshackle and in some towns hugely expensive.


There is Frank with his new friend Eloise up on the deck.

And then yesterday saw us visiting a friend of mine from my Knit & Natter group and her dog. She lives just up the road from a great Pick Your Own farm, which Frank and I hit with a vengeance after our tea and muffins with Teresa.

Here comes the Master Picker!

Who does this when asked to "Smile, Frank!"

He looks like he's about to sneeze.

And here is the Master Quality Controller in action.

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Two lovely, lovely Summer days (aside from the hypo and consequent rebound that saw him at 25.1 and me in tears that such a great day can be almost stolen by THAT BASTARD DIABETES - ahem, excuse me - however, I rally these days rather well and dealt with it quickly)

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So, as I write Frank is spending his last ever day at pre-school (more about this in another post).

The house is filled with the smell of strawberry jam (we picked £12 of strawberries! Blimey!)
and I am contemplating my sewing machine, which seems to be calling me, much in the same way as ice-cream does from the freezer.

It's saying:: "Jules, you don't want to clear out the summerhouse, you want to sew something pretty...you'll NEVER have the time again 'cos Frank will ALWAYS be around and he can never let you get on with anything without being on your lap or shoving toys in your face/up your nose/down your top/in your ear ... forget the housework...come to me...you know you want to...
I can make you happy .. trust me ..."

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But I am strong.

Get thee behind me sewing machine!

Where have you been learning to speak like Ben & Jerry??

OK, I'm off to the summerhouse.

Might just pop via the freezer though ...

Sunday lunch and a breakthrough!

We had a lovely hang around at home, dig the garden, bake cakes, hang out washing, build Lego and do some watercolour painting kind of day.

Just lovely.

Friends came by in the afternoon for cake (date slices, yum! warm from the oven, double yum!) and Frank learnt to shell peas.

We had an amazing chunk of Stilton with our lunch and I treated us all to some organic grapes to go with it all (and nearly had to sell a kidney to afford them!).

One of our many dinosaurs joined us at the table.

My boy loves eating peas, raw, that he has shelled himself. He has been really into this recently and will eat loads of them. I encourage this as he avoids green things other than peas and celery at the moment.

Then after this stonking lunch we had a hypo of 3.1 a couple of hours later.
But in an amazing breakthrough Frank actually told us.
He said "My tummy feels funny, I think you need to test me".
Major cuddles and Brownie points for that one.
I was so proud of him.
Some juice and a date slice and he was good to go.

And so are we, battling each low and dealing with each high and trying to be good parents.
Trying to make our boy proud to be diabetic and to stand among so many amazing children and their families.

Yoga Mat Bag

I had planned to make a wall hanging.

I decided to make a yoga mat bag.

I have only been going to yoga for three weeks but am really enjoying it.

My yoga mat is one that Mr Muffinmoon bought when he did a class a couple of years ago. It is bubble gum pink, as was the bag it came in.

I fancied something less strident.

Enter this.

The material was an off-cut from the Knit and Stitch Show last September at Alexandra Palace in London and I am really happy to have found a good fate for it!

The handle is an old jeans belt of mine from some jeans that fell apart.

It feels good to be sewing again...
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Have a good weekend.
I'll be back next week.

Yes, this is England!

Today saw us in Frinton on the East coast of East Anglia.

A lovely place.

The sea was calm and we had a fantastic day paddling, building sandcastles and running around.

When England gets weather like this, it is sublime.

Frank had a great time and was textilfrei (German euphemism for stark naked!) for most of the time so I don't have many pictures of him that I can share.

Except this cute T-Rex one.

Anne and I are in our third decade of friendship. We have seen each other through a lot.
She has always tanned better than me!

(Guess who the D-Mum is? Look at the size of the bag I carry!!)

I am looking forward to more days like these (maybe minus the startling pre-lunch reading of 2.7 that had me bewildered as Frank had just eaten a cake and had a biscuit too; what is with that?!)

So good for body and soul these days outside as nature sings her Summer songs.

Days of Plenty

Guess what we did today? Guess who had a full basket and who only had around a dozen raspberries in his basket, after an hour of picking, but a decidedly sticky, smeary face?
Guess how many seconds it took for all these raspberries to start to turn to mush and be fit only for jam?

Guess who is spending this humid, sticky evening boiling and preserving?


Guess who didn't even notice the sharps bin in this shot until it was uploaded?

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Today made me smile.
I have been reading these books and this blog and am channelling them all with my home made jammin' whilst listening to this.

What is making you smile today?

A Good Day

You know it's been a good day for a little guy when this is what you find at the end of the day whilst watering the garden.

We have been digging up some of the lawn to extend the patio and put a pergola up and the pile of earth has become Frank's favourite spot.

He digs and hides treasure.

He stands up there at the top of it and looks off into the distance as I imagine our ancestors did many moons ago.

All his clothes have to go in the wash at the end of a day like this.

He leaves a tide mark around the bath.

The best kind of day.

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Thank you for all your good wishes for Frank's birthday last week.

It was such a special time.

Four : The Party!

Frank's party went swimmingly today.

We decorated the garden with bunting and a pirate flag. We also got out all Frank's garden toys and his rocking horse for all the children to play with.

We had pass the parcel, with healthy prizes. Such as Panda liquorice and dried fruit swirls.

We all took turns cuddling the babies that came along, all of whom were most well-behaved and hugely chubby and cuddly.

Sev wore vintage as only she can, and looked stunning.
I put up the tent that I made from the old dining room curtains and the children used it as a reading tent to escape the madness of full-on party mode and to get out of the heat.

Beautiful Kaija was there.

And the chocolate beetroot cake received its coating of chocolate ganache (melt around 4 tablespoons double cream with 100g of dark chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, beat until smooth and pour onto cake. Top this with berries galore. Apply to face!)

The children loved it!

Frank took the "apply to face" bit rather seriously.

We also enjoyed jam doughnut muffins and Sev's courgette, lime and raspberry sponge with mascarpone cream.

Frank was so excited by this special day that once I got him to bed at nine and rushed downstairs to catch the end of the World Cup he came padding down and watched it with us, feeling so grown up now he's four.

Thank you for all your good wishes for his birthday.

He had the best time.