This past week

We've seen lots of friends, it's feast or famine around these parts!  Our home ed friends from the north joined us for our usual Thursday gathering.  The boys did their own thing and the girls decorated cup cakes which we shared for afternoon tea:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Saturday we had a visit from some long standing friends, they came for tea and left late on in the evening.  The kids had a blast charging around upstairs and the parents had relative peace and quiet downstairs!  We finally had chance to exchange Christmas gifts and they were gratefully appreciated on all sides.  Our God Daughter A, loved her gift and so teddy enjoyed a ride home in his very own papoose:

 

 

 

 

I made the carrier using the design from the "Growing Up Sew Liberated" book, there was one for A and one for Pip.

 

 

We are making concerted efforts to shop frugally and so thanks to Aldi our weekly shop came in at £65.00 not bad for a family of five.  I still have some gluten free flour to buy, but even with this added on our bill will still be less than £80.00.  I also tried out a yummy recipe that my friend had blogged about here:

 

 

 



Root Vegetable Bake.

 

 

I served ours with leafy greens and omited the parsnips and switched to swede instead.  A very simple yet tasty dish.

 

 

 

Benedict worked with Shein this morning.  Whilst I was looking for home ed web resources Sara very kindly took Pip for a walk and then the two of them made our favourite pizza.  After lunch Benedict read "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator" by Roald Dahl and Pip spent some time with the knitting fork:

 

 

 



 

 

 

It's been a quietly productive day snuggled around the wood stove as the weather outside has been very cold and grey.  Some parts of the UK have experienced snow, we've had sleet rain instead!