Sugar highs and lows.

On Saturday Dad and the kids went out for lunch as a special treat while Mum was away on a special shopping mission. More on that later. Ice cream and lollipops were enjoyed as part of it. Mum then returned and took the kids to singalong a Jungle Book at church. Both kids ate a bag of sweeties, a lollipop and ice cream.

Does what we feed our children have an effect on their behaviour and energy levels? You had better believe it! When we got home after the Jungle book our two were bouncing off the walls. A bike ride, I thought, would do the trick to burn off all that sugar. Nope, we then had two tired and hyper children which adds cranky to the mix too. Feeding them good nutritious food was also tried but full of sugar tummies are not hungry tummies. So when the little girl asked to go upstairs and do a craft project it seemed she had devised the perfect solution to the problem.

Well, not quite perfect. She was quiet for about ten minutes which was good, but when she arrived back downstairs she looked a little different. It turned out that her craft project had involved a restlye of her fringe (US translation, bangs!), a not at all attractive diagonal cut having been taken out right at the front. And with it being diagonal there is no real good fix available. Time will be required to return her pretty looks.

Lesson learned. Craft and sugar highs are a strict no.

I hate landfill sites!

What to do? I had a broken old TV, a broken CD player and a broken dolls push chair. They had to go to the landfill site. At least I was able to recycle a pile of cardboard and safely dispose of a couple of years worth of household batteries at the same time. I am slightly eased too that the electrical items will be recycled carefully and not just mushed and crushed with my household waste as would have happened if I had thrown them into the grey bin.



What to do? Clothes the kids have grown out of, a pile of toys they no longer need, some books we are done with? Well they are now bagged carefully and are waiting, outside the house carefully tucked under the eaves sheltered from the rain, on the first charity pick up that will take it all away and hopefully sell it to their profit.



What to do? An old bike and trike that the kids no longer need? They are not in the best of condition but someone would get a turn out of them. The landfill site is the easiest option but http://www.freecycle.co.uk/ is just the best. Been a while since I moved some of our stuff on this way that I will probably need to re-register. I kind of feel that everyone should be registered. Someone out there may need want you want to get rid of and they come and collect from you at your convenience. Win win!

So I can hate landfill sites and keep our house and garage a little more clutter free. Love it!!

You got to have traditions!

When I was little a few years ago, well truthfully a few decades, I went on walks with my grandparents thru Lade Braes in St Andrews. It seemed a very long walk to me of very short legs at four or five years old but it had a great park and most beautiful trees. We return when we can with our own kids and I love to look at them and think of the little me running around back then, with not a thought of what might lie ahead. It is not hard to remember back because they still have the same horse, roundabout and slide play equipment - built to last in those days.




It has become our tradition to make a trip in October and to go on a conker hunt. There are seven or eight tall graceful horse chestnuts. As we get close there is always that slight apprehension we will be too late and they will all be gone and then suddenly someone spots one and the hunt is on. Who will collect the most? Who will collect the biggest? Who will find one still encased in its shell?

We did not collect many this year but there are some beauties and the kids are big enough this year to want to learn to play conkers so we will need to make that bit of time to get the biggest laced up and then it is fight to the death, of the conker that is. I seem to remember one of my brothers claiming to have at least a 17-er!!

Traditions can get squeezed out- not enough time, too many important things to do.

Traditions, you got to have them and it is so worth keeping them!!

Strictly not vegetarian

I have read a few blogs recently where the writers are clearly passionate vegetarians and the words meat and poison feature frequently together in the same sentence. I am no vegetarian, the thought of no bacon does it every time. The closest I have got to it would be my six months in Tanzania and our visits to the meat market........ almost too fresh for me but I was always grateful to Cathy, who could carry the warm, still pulsing, meat back to our kitchen and cook up a storm, which was a welcome alternative to the veggie mush varieties we mostly ate.

A few months ago Mike had discovered a butcher he liked the look of near my brothers house in Lenzie. A most wonderful T-bone steak had been purchased but it is hardly local to us. This last week, and who knows why, I had got to remembering stories a friend of mine had been telling about camping trips with a bunch of his mates, entitled "hairy man weekends". They fished, camped, drank a few beers and generally hung out, free of....... well, the rest of the world I guess. Sounded like a great idea, not least for the fact that that one of them was a butcher so the BBQ was of the highest quality. Well, middle age and caravans appear to have struck and there have been no more stories of the hairy men but off we set yesterday to find the aforementioned butchers in Limekilns.

Oh my goodness!! I suggested Mike just went in and had a look because two kids in a small butchers? I am not sure why but two minutes later we were all in that little shop. Mike was taken in the back to have a look at his T-bone steak, still in situ and ready in two weeks. The two men in the store, passionate about their trade, taught us and entertained us for twenty minutes, all of us. They listened to the kids, answered all our questions and more. They sell local sourced, fresh produce. Their steak pies are famous and their sausages are the real deal. You know that cos they are all different shapes and sizes. Venison, guniea fowl, lamb chops to name but a few things on display. We talked about folks we knew in common, where their different meats come from, why when your fry their bacon you do not end up boiling it in the frying pan as it is not shot full of water. We left the store feeling like we had made a couple of friends, our T-bone steak ordered for two weeks time and a handful of venison and sweet chilli sausages given to us as a gift.

I think perhaps there is some truth in meat and poison featuring in the same sentences. Maybe poison is too strong a word but what exactly are we buying in our cheap and cheerful meat from many of our supermarkets. Pumped full of water and who knows what else? We plan from now on to be regular visitors to this butcher in Limekilns. We have decided to spend more on better quality. It will mean that we eat less meat for sure, but that will not be a bad thing and our farm shop will be open in a couple of weeks!! And with two guys who are keen to help point us in the right direction of what to buy and how to cook it we are in safe hands.

And the sausages ............... they were so good!

Changing things............

It is hard to decorate and blog. In fact it is hard to decorate and do very much apart from trash out the entire house and be really grateful to friends and family who invited us out to dinner/sanity in the middle of it.

I stripped wall paper for days............................. . Many days! The kids loved it for short blasts and actually were pretty helpful. I thought that would be the hard work. Wrong! Stripping wall paper was just the boring work. The hard work came after Mike had filled all the holes, scrapes, bumps with polyfilla and it all needed sanded back. I hate sanding. The worst part was the fact that our sander was broken. After a couple of hours of sanding by hand it was replaced, believe me!! It took me 33 minutes to get to the store, purchase and get home. Sanding became tolerable at that point. Covered in fine dust, gagging behind a face mask I heard my partner in design utter those words (with a smirk) ......."Maybe we should just have kept the wall paper!"

I would be lying if I said it had not crossed my mind but I hated that paper, it looked 100% rotten. Change takes work, and lots of work is not much fun. That is the bottom line for this project and many other changes in life. The good thing is that once you have started there is no going back. You can stop half way and be left in a pretty poor, scrappy place or you can push on.

Are we finished? No!! We have smooth, painted walls. A charming white colour. No actually just white. We now have to decide if this is an undercoat or if we are planning to do something funky with it. The gloss work needs done. The carpet needs changed.

Are we finished for now? You better believe it. We are on holiday. All four of us. We are away to play for a few days. The little people are very excited!! And so are we. We have a lot of dust that needs blown away.

(NB the Grape welding/lollipop is still in the fridge unlicked and unused!)