F is for...

F is for...

Festivities, fruity, filled, faith.

Lowen's baptism.

A beautiful day for our little girl, and the most fabulous cake I ever did make!

#alphabetphoto

Exploring

For a little girl who cracked the walking thing at 9 months old, until recently Effy's not been a walker. You might remember our battle of wills resulting in a stand off (actually, she was planking face down in a puddle) over walking to the park when I was quite heavily pregnant. But something has clicked in that head in the last month - perhaps her new found "grown up sister" status - and she loves walking. In fact, when we got home from walking Hamish last night, she refused to come in the front door insisting that we go back out with him... Lucky pooch.

So, now we can enjoy being on foot and with the better weather, we've been out exploring and discovered two new places to add to our favourites list.

The first is Forestry Commission Fineshade Woods, between Corby and Stamford - we've been several times in recent weeks, alone and with friends. There's a multitude of reasons why this place is worth a visit - or several. To say it's a new discovery is a lie - we had been once when we first moved back here but had forgotten about it.

The forest has multiple walks of different lengths and some are more accessible on others. But there's one that is completely buggy/wheelchair etc friendly, and it's not too long, so small legs can do it (and it's not too far for a piggy back if you get tired). It's also dog friendly, and well behaved dogs needn't be on a lead. There's also paths for cyclists and you can hire cycle equipment on site. 

There's also a play area with plenty of things to do for the younger kids. Effy absolutely adores the little hut and likes to have imaginary dinner parties in there with her friends! And right next to the play area is a lovely cafe, with delicious paninis and cake, that's reasonably priced and worth going back to. There's a number of little shops on the complex. So you can definitely make a day out of it, or a shorter visit if you wish. 

The only downside is having to pay for parking - £3 for the day, which isn't astronomical but arguably there are other places to walk and play for free. That said, if it's somewhere you want to visit regularly, we we do, the Forestry Commission do Discovery Passes for each forest, that make parking free, so we've invested (it applies to both our cars too) for the year - we only have to go 9 times for it to pay for itself and that's definitely doable.

Yesterday we popped down to explore the Gruffalo Trail, part of the 15th anniversary of the Gruffalo celebrations. Lots to do for children of all ages, we were a smidge disappointed that there was no Gruffalo at the end, and that he doesn't arrive until June... Worth noting if you had planned to visit your local forest for a similar event, as I didn't think the literature available was very clear! 

Our second find is Stanwick Lakes, not far from Wellingborough. We've been meaning to go for years, but it's a bit out of our way. However when we had friends staying recently, we took the multiple geochaching opportunities at the lakes as a challenge and went to see what was there.

In a nutshell, it's beautiful there. Calm and serene, with lots of nature to see, particularly waterfowl. It's big enough for you to walk for a while without seeing anyone, but not too far back to the car! There's also an amazing adventure play area, although we didn't get to explore as it started hailing and I had forgotten the rain cover... But it's definitely on the list of places to return to! The cake in the cafe was really quite exquisite too... A word of warning, geocachers; lots of caches were not there, or not what they were listed as. It's definitely worth reading recent logs before looking! 

It's easy to get stuck in a rut of heading to the places you know all the time, and sometimes I forget there's more to explore. However, both Fineshade and Stanwick have so much to do, I don't feel like we ever experience the same stuff on our visits... And I can't see any of us getting bored of either in a hurry!

Cake

My plans to bake this week did not come to fruition. So instead, I found this. It's totally me (except the bit about being a boy. I am not a boy.)

What a great piece of cake inspired prose. 

Chocolate Cake - Michael Rosen

I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.

Sometimes we used to have it for tea
and Mum used to say,
'If there's any left over
you can have it to take to school
tomorrow to have at playtime.'
And the next day I would take it to school
wrapped up in tin foil
open it up at playtime
and sit in the corner of the playground
eating it,
you know how the icing on top
is all shiny and it cracks as you
bite into it,
and there's that other kind of icing in
the middle
and it sticks to your hands and you
can lick your fingers
and lick your lips
oh it's lovely.
yeah.

Anyway,
once we had this chocolate cake for tea
and later I went to bed
but while I was in bed
I found myself waking up
licking my lips
and smiling.
I woke up proper.
'The chocolate cake.'
It was the first thing
I thought of.

I could almost see it
so I thought,
what if I go downstairs
and have a little nibble, yeah?

It was all dark
everyone was in bed
so it must have been really late
but I got out of bed,
crept out of the door

there's always a creaky floorboard, isn't there?

Past Mum and Dad's room,
careful not to tread on bits of broken toys
or bits of Lego
you know what it's like treading on Lego
with your bare feet,

yowwww
shhhhhhh

downstairs
into the kitchen
open the cupboard
and there it is
all shining.

So I take it out of the cupboard
put it on the table
and I see that
there's a few crumbs lying about on the plate,
so I lick my finger and run my finger all over the crumbs
scooping them up
and put them into my mouth.

oooooooommmmmmmmm

nice.
Then
I look again
and on one side where it's been cut,
it's all crumbly.

So I take a knife
I think I'll just tidy that up a bit,
cut off the crumbly bits
scoop them all up
and into the mouth

oooooommm mmmm
nice.

Look at the cake again.

That looks a bit funny now,
one side doesn't match the other
I'll just even it up a bit, eh?

Take the knife
and slice.
This time the knife makes a little cracky noise
as it goes through that hard icing on top.

A whole slice this time,

into the mouth.

Oh the icing on top
and the icing in the middle
ohhhhhh oooo mmmmmm.

But now
I can't stop myself
Knife -
1 just take any old slice at it
and I've got this great big chunk
and I'm cramming it in
what a greedy pig
but it's so nice,

and there's another
and another and I'm squealing and I'm smacking my lips
and I'm stuffing myself with it
and
before I know
I've eaten the lot.
The whole lot.

I look at the plate.
It's all gone.

Oh no
they're bound to notice, aren't they,
a whole chocolate cake doesn't just disappear
does it?

What shall I do?

I know. I'll wash the plate up,
and the knife

and put them away and maybe no one
will notice, eh?

So I do that
and creep creep creep
back to bed
into bed
doze off
licking my lips
with a lovely feeling in my belly.
Mmmmrnmmmmm.

In the morning I get up,
downstairs,
have breakfast,
Mum's saying,
'Have you got your dinner money?'
and I say,
'Yes.'
'And don't forget to take some chocolate cake with you.'
I stopped breathing.

'What's the matter,' she says,
'you normally jump at chocolate cake?'

I'm still not breathing,
and she's looking at me very closely now.

She's looking at me just below my mouth.
'What's that?' she says.
'What's what?' I say.

'What's that there?'
'Where?'
'There,' she says, pointing at my chin.
'I don't know,' I say.
'It looks like chocolate,' she says.
'It's not chocolate is it?'
No answer.
'Is it?'
'I don't know.'
She goes to the cupboard
looks in, up, top, middle, bottom,
turns back to me.
'It's gone.
It's gone.
You haven't eaten it, have you?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't know. You don't know if you've eaten a whole
chocolate cake or not?
When? When did you eat it?'

So I told her,

and she said
well what could she say?
'That's the last time I give you any cake to take
to school.
Now go. Get out
no wait
not before you've washed your dirty sticky face.'
I went upstairs
looked in the mirror
and there it was,
just below my mouth,
a chocolate smudge.
The give-away.
Maybe she'll forget about it by next week.

Silent Sunday