A Creature!

While the painter has been next door (which is a holiday home and not occupied all year round) Rebe and Benny have been visiting him for hours at a time. Rebe to chat and Benny to play in the canoe in their garden. He finally finished (much to the kids' distress) on Friday and since then we've had a hard time persuading Benny not to go next door to play in the boat. In fact Andy caught him trying to climb over the wall to get there, which is an 8 foot drop onto a rose bush :-0 So we improvised and made Benny his own boat out of the old baby bath and one of Andy's oars. He was happy enough with that (thank goodness!). He looks just like a little captain with his hat on.



Yesterday we did some baking. I'd asked my friend Amy for a recipe I remember she had for Cheesy Footballs (Warning: these are very delicious and it is likely you may eat them all up by accident and they are NOT light in fat).

Cheesy Footballs

2 oz butter/ marg

3.5 oz wholemeal flour

2oz cheddar cheese (though I think parmesan would be delish)

pinch of mustard (optional)

1 egg yolk

2-3 tsps milk (if required)

Rub butter and flour into bread crumbs, stir in rest of the ingredients to form a firm dough.


Allow younger brother to wear you pajamas while you do this.

Retrieve rest of cheese from younger brother and put away in fridge properly.

Put dough into fridge to chill for 30 mins or so.

When chilled roll into balls (about walnut sized).

Bake in preheated oven a greesed baking tray on 200c for about 20 mins until golden brown.

Allow to cool and eat (preferable not all at once)

Cheesy footballs.

We also made mini apple cakes. I had lots of half eaten apples, so we chopped them up and cooked them a little with nutmeg and cinnamon and added them to a sponge recipe and they also are lovely. We're going to have some with some custard tonight.


And so to the creature...while we were having our morning coffee Rebe came running in shouting 'I found a creature!' and what a creature it is...

An enormous and very hairy catterpillar. It ran across our yard and look much more like some kind of mammal than a catterpillar.

This is a very accurate diagram of how fast it ran.

So, Rebe caught it and made it a home in a big bucket with a lid.

Here is a diagram of how to make it a home (note the very important holes in the top of the lid).

We looked it up online and it turns out its a Garden Tiger Moth catterpillar. How cool is that to have a garden tiger!!

Just to trick her daddy though she labelled it as a hedgehog!

I think all this excitement did me in a bit and I spent the rest of the day exhausted. I think the change in weather probably had something to dow ith it too. As usual though I fell asleep for an hour in the afternoon and it then took me more than 3 hours to get to sleep last night grrr. So I am spending this morning doing not very much in a bid to have some energy for the rest of the day.

Hope you all are haveing a lovely weekend x