Easter party and egg hunt.

My sister, Christiana and I decided to do a party for our nephews, Joshua, 7, Thomas, 3 and Edward, 9 months. I would do the food and she would do the egg hunt clues. 

It was a simple lunch of egg sandwiches which have to be enjoyed with salt and vinegar crisps- it's the law! Apart from we had the lovely salt and vinegar kettle chips and the children had Pom bear crisps! I made marble chocolate and vanilla easter cupcakes and a nice pot of tea for the adults to wash it down! 

My recipe for Easter marble cupcakes

Makes 24                                                      

Vanilla cupcake mixture	Chocolate cupcake mixture
125g Self raising flour.	100g Self raising flour
125g butter	125g butter
125g sugar	125g sugar
2 eggs	2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract	25g cocoa

To decorate : 

Mini Malteaster bunnies, Mini Eggs, Cadbury's Flake

Chocolate butter cream 

150g butter and 350g icing sugar and about a dessert spoon of cocoa. 

1. Line 2 muffin tins with cupcake cases 

2. Mix the vanilla mixture first in the electric mixer. Mix until light and smooth consistency, scrape the mixture into a bowl. 

3. Next put the chocolate cupcake ingredients into the mixer and mix to same consistency.

4. Then layer a tsp of vanilla mixture then a tsp of chocolate and so on into each cupcake case until they are all filled and both mixtures have been used up.

5. Using a cocktail stick gently swirl the two mixtures together in each case.

6. Bake in the oven at 200C for about 13 mins, take out and leave to cool on a wire rack

7. Now to decorate, mix the ingredients of the buttercream in a bowl with a hand held mixer, it is important not to over mix it as it will begin to separate. It needs to be just combined and quite firm. 

8. Holding the cupcake in your left hand, get a dollop of buttercream on your palate knife and smooth it over the top of the cupcake. Scrape any excess mixture off the knife, now lay the rounded tip of the knife just touching the buttercream and carefully scrape some away in a spiral motion.

9.Put a Malteaster bunny or a few Mini Eggs on top to decorate and sprinkle smashed up pieces of flake around it. 

10. Place on a lovely cupcake stand and enjoy! 

The Easter egg hunt went really well apart from a little blip at the start when Josh spotted one of the clues but he was very good and he didn't tell the others.

Christiana wrote some really good clues and I hid them, my favourites were; 

" What a handsome pooch but where is his name? 

Look underneath to continue this game"

So I craftily folded the clue and put it in between the buckle of Max's collar! 

And..

" Take one if your feeling sneezy or sad, 

Not as good as your sleeve but it makes Mum less mad!" 

Which is of course hiding in the tissue box! Genius! Lol!

Christiana hates this picture because it looks like she's trying to enhance her bosoms but it is a really good photo of Joshua aka Spider-Man and Thomas working together to find the next clue!

And here's one of Christiana covering her modesty with Edward.

The boys went home with bellies and buckets full of easter treats. I do it for myself as much as them I love having the family together and  I'm a big kid at heart. 

Thanks for reading,

Half term :)

What a busy week off I have had, almost as busy as a working week.

On Monday I looked after my nephew, Joshua for a while we made some valentines cupcakes, took Max for a walk and watched 'Ratatouille' then I had a lovely catch up with my sister and his mum Susanna.

On Tuesday It was pancake day so I had my mum around for tea I made a lovely minced beef pie then for afters we did pancakes, some with lemon and sugar and some with Nutella. I always enjoy pancakes and wonder why we don't have them all the time! Afterwards it was art class and this week we had instructions to draw out a picture ready to paint. We had to paint it using the 3 primary colours and mixing and blending the colours. It didn't turn at all like what I thought it would but I learned a lot about shades. I'm pleased with it technically but I'm not sure I like it, I don't know it something about the colours it's very dark and I'm not really a dark colours kind of girl but see what you think?

On Wednesday it's Matthews half day so we had planned to go out to the cinema and watch 'Les miserable' ( i still haven't watched it!) and out for a meal but it had been snowing since 6am and it was getting deep by the time Matthew got home from work, so we decided not to go out and we got a chippy tea instead and when we took Max out for his walk we went sledging again.

On Thursday I went for a walk with Max around Entwistle reservoir with Sandra and Kimberley from work and Kimberley's dog Finbar. It was dry and cold but because of all the snow melting on the hills the reservoir was very high and in some places it had flooded and we had to wade through luckily we all had our wellies on. We went up to have a drink and something to eat at 'the strawberry duck' last time we went there Max barked so much we had to sit outside to eat, but this time he was much better. We had a lovely time. It was also mine and Matthew's 11th valentines day together, I made Matthew a card and made him some heart shaped Nutella biscuits (his favourite) and he got me a card and some Guylian chocolates (my favourites)

On Friday I went with mum to Cafe create, a cafe that is set up in the hall of Claremont church in Bolton town centre it is open every Friday for people to get together and learn new crafts, meet new people and eat cake and drink tea! They have a gallery where they sell crafts that people have made. We sat crocheting hearts and teaching some of mums friends to crochet it was great I really enjoyed it. I took some of the felt keyrings that I had made to show them and they said they would like to sell some I just need to think of a name and put some business cards with them. I had such a good time I wish they did it on a weeknight or weekend because I'll only get to go at holidays otherwise.

Handmade Christmas

This year I wanted to really get into decorating the house for Christmas as well as using old favourites to decorate the tree I wanted to add more that I had made myself.
I started with the tree , most years I decide on a theme and stick to it duck egg blue features highly in my lounge so on previous years I have had red and gold with blue, but last year I was given some small vintage style baubles as a present from one of the children's parents at school. This gave me the inspiration for this years tree , they were small, one was gold, purple, red, orange and green made out of crackled glass. I wanted my tree to be colourful like these. So first step- lights I had coloured lights instead of the usual white. I keep some of my old baubles but added more different coloured ones luckily I was able to borrow some off my mother in law who bought new baubles near enough every year and had lots to choose from I also borrowed some quite retro looking lantern decorations which reminded me of some we had as a child I was told that these were older than me!
I also had some old favourites that I had picked up along the way. My glass stars/snowflakes I bought from Jo Downs glass in St Ives, the two handcrafted snowmen I bought from the Christmas markets in Manchester, the Father Christmas and angel I bought from Woolworth's for our first tree in our new house 9 years ago and a little Venetian glass angel given as a present off a friend from her holiday in Italy. I also added this year a handmade decoration to remind us of the year we got Max. A little felt Max the red nose reindeer decoration.
I like to look at a tree and remember the different stories that go with each one.

I also made some crochet snowflakes to hang in the windows, some small ones and big ones and next year I'll do more. Pinterest has been a massive inspiration for Christmas decoration ideas I pinched an idea for hanging candy canes with ribbon and a garland over the kitchen window, I also got an idea for making a driftwood tree that I stuck on to a canvas and put battery operated lights. The driftwood I collected on a beach in Anglesey when we went camping in May at the time my sister slated me for collecting it but even she had to admit it looked pretty good.
I also had a party and made bacon wrapped sausage rolls or pigs in duvets as I like to call them! I made my own mince pies and snowmen cakes.
It has all been time consuming and hard work at times but in the end it all looks good..I'm actually wishing I could decorate the house the whole year around because it gives me an excuse to be creative.

Food for free!

In August purchased a collins gem book called 'food for free'  a guide to foraging. I have always liked the idea of foraging for food but worry about poisoning myself I decided to start with something easy like berries, when we were younger I remember going picking winberries (also known as Bilberries ) from around Entwistle reservoir and enjoying it so much, they start to ripen from late July. So when we went for a walk late August we didn't expect to find many and there weren't very many around Entwistle but we managed to pick lots from Rivington pike. All in all we got about 500g and bright purple hands but it was good fun.

So what to make with them?? I froze half and made a cake from my hummingbird bakery book, Blueberry and sour cream loaf but substituting wimberries for the blueberries and very nice it was. I still have the other batch of wimberries in my freezer which I think I'll eventually make into a small wimberry pie because my mum is desperate for me to make it because it reminds her of her childhood.

Just after we had got Max obviously we were walking more and I kept seeing more and more blackberries ripening so we took a bag out one weekend when we took Max for a walk at the nearby Longsight park. We managed to pick 800g which I washed in salt water to kill any bugs that may have been in them then rinsed them through and froze them until last week when I was off for half term, I found this recipe on the BBC good food website http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/11750/angelas-flexible-jam-recipe it needed 1kg blackberries for the recipe so I added apples to make it up, this meant I had to cook the fruit for longer but it really does add to the flavour. I had made Jam before but this time I treated myself to a jam thermometer which I then went on to reading wrong and thinking that I had let it boil for too long because it went past 105 but I looked at Fahrenheit instead of Centigrade so I took it off the heat. Luckily it must have been at the correct temperature because it set really well. I called it 'Abigail and Mum's blackberry and apple jam.' because we picked the blackberries together and then we made the jam together too.

I made five jars of it all together and it tastes lovely on toast...

..or in donut muffins...yum!

I think we did well for our first attempts of foraging!

New name... new start!

After finding great difficulty writing about things that I have made for my 'Abigail makes' blog. I decided I wanted my blog to be less rigid in what I could put on, more like a diary than anything else. So 'What Abigail did' was born...
 In this blog I *hope* to write once a week at least about things that I like from crafting to baking to photography but also about my journey going through IVF for the second time after it failed last year.
 However in no way do I want it to become sad and depressing, more to help me get my head around it. I have started to come to terms with the fact that my life is not turning out the way I'd planned (and for a control freak that was quite hard!) but I am thankful for the things I do have.. a wonderful husband who loves me as much as I love him, a supportive family, good friends and a fantastic job. It has not been easy at times but I am now more determined than ever not to waste anymore of my life (as I have for the last 4 years) and try and make the most of it.