Tagged: Easter

April 24, 2017

Cornwall x

We’ve blown away the winter cobwebs with a week with family in beautiful Cornwall.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Each day the sky was kingfisher blue, though it was a matter of how hot your blood was whether you braved the cold of the spring sea..

The surf gang preparing to face the waves. Note Grandpa Jack behind in three coats, hat..and eventually gloves!

And in!

Cousin love.

This was the natural rock pool close to where we were staying on Treyarnon Bay, large enough to swim in…

(There was this framed postcard of the very spot at the cottage. Shows it even better.)

Watergate Bay and meeting with friends.

The perfect natural slate plate for the perfect hot dog: Barbie on Constantine Bay.

And then a cheeky seagull actually stole a hot sausage off the barbie!

Impromptu wine chiller.

Bruce heading to the surf.

Sophie-bond-girl-extraordinaire following suit.

Charlie and Lexie.

Finding sea diamonds.

At a diamond place.

Laters, Kate x

April 11, 2016

Easter x

(Bella Spring cleaning her room)

So how was Easter?? Not that it’s quite over here yet…kids go back to school tomorrow..but it’s been – needed to be – a quiet, simple time for us just gently shuffling to the waltz of life with two steps forward…three steps back.

But it’s been a hurrah for moral depravity – early on we lost all the electrical sockets upstairs due to a fault with our tumble dryer which took a while to track down…which meant no washer, no dryer..no phone..no alarm clocks..no computer. Such a shame. I personally saw it as proof of the after life and a neon message from above to say opt out: If you were a decorator, you’d have all day to paint. If you were a cleaner, you’d be left to remove 6 months of builder’s dust. If you were a nanny, that would be your job. If you were a writer, at least you’d have a job title. To do all four at once is quite frankly disgraceful and flashy…give up now. So I gave up blogging..

Progress after the builders has been made – the hall is now painted, the cellar is nearly done, but the house is still in great upheaval, mainly because rooms can’t be sorted until various cupboards are painted (which is a god forsaken task and takes time) and carpets are down (due end of April) at which point the spare room can be unpacked.

But actual Easter was delicious: 32 members of the family together at my brother and sister-in-laws for the long weekend. Pretty special. We have three big traditions: Decorating hard boiled eggs for the ‘best dressed egg’ competition.

Charlotte with her trophy! An egg hunt in the garden…

Followed by an egg race using newspaper thwackers to hit said eggs around a cunningly designed course, avoiding the moving obstacle of hungry dogs. Old, blind, Molly wasn’t such a issue…but Olly ran away with Charlie’s egg..there were tears..

All the cousins together..

The period also coincided with The Husband working ridiculous hours (back at 2..up at 6). For most people (read me) this would eventually result in a weeping, gelatinous heap in a far corner. He goes the other way – the insert for the cutlery drawer? sorted. A new recycling bin? found and ordered. Someone to pick up the backlog of washing and ironing after socket disaster? I let out an unprovoked shriek when they appeared at the door. The missing knob to the le cruset dish? We now have a new one. I’m thinking pace and recharge whilst he’s spinning faster and faster, I’m just Hoping I’ll be in a fit state to catch him when he falls…

And then I went to write this post..and discovered he had updated the whole computer ‘to make it run faster’..so much so it didn’t even recognise the printer..it took me twenty minutes to download the new software to get them speaking again. I went to add photos…and realised, before I could I would need to download my entire photo library again….The truth is I actually wrote this post last week…

Two steps forward…three steps back…

Laters, Kate x

April 4, 2015

Happy Easter!

As a child, Volker Kraft saw a beautiful paschal tree in his home town…and he wanted one.

In 1965 his dream came true – his own tree with 300 odd eggs on it. Since then it has grown every year..

2015 will be the last year of the Saalfeld Easter tree..and the total is now 10,000 decorated eggs. One man’s madness, one man’s passion..one man’s joy. I doff my flamboyant Easter bonnet to you sir…

Laters, Kate x

January 12, 2015

Dog Days x

Dog days…or perhaps the title should be: Cycle of Fat..the story of a mother’s waistline?..

Y’see every term starts with good intentions…healthy eating, increase of exercise and determination. And every time it all slips then slides away…why??

1. Because the start of every term requires unblocking the dam of jobs that have been stored up throughout the holidays..to the term time..when of course you’ll have time..hoho

2. It takes a while to crack the routine again: Early mornings, new after school clubs, hockey sticks, gum guards, out-grown shoes, lost PE kits.. but you do and it gets there..so you take the plunge and add in the exercise..adapt to the new routine and wait in hope for the endorphins to kick in (exercise equals endorphins equals happy mum equals not shooting the kids..or so they say) it takes it’s time – no pain, no gain..but you get there.

3. You take pride in the transforming you. Almost back to pre-second baby weight. Yay!

4. Then disaster strikes: School holidays..back to cooking through the day, no walking to and from school, cupboards now over-flowing with kids ‘stuff’ and temptation, meals out, no time to go to pilates or a run – no babysitters, everything is slower now you’re working as a pack, and generally there’s a festival of sorts: Christmas, Easter, Summer Holiday which means much ~~much~~ more alcohol and calories are ~~tripled~~ doubled..

5. So in the time it takes for the holiday to end…you’re back to where you started..

I was talking about this, trying to pin the butterfly down with a friend who’s a personal trainer: She’s got all the stuff in her house to do 15 mins a day to keep the dogs at bay (we’re talking fat cells..)..but she can’t make that mental/physical jump either. On these child-centric weeks it’s incredibly hard to focus the mind and do exercise ‘properly’ so the brain says, why bother, we just want to enjoy this time? We decided it made a difference when you could do activities with your kids, like tennis..but that means waiting till they’re of an age when it becomes worth while. Mine are a bit young and without the stamina, and you really don’t want to book a court just to adjudicate a fight. But we agreed that the problem is, if you don’t even try, the middle-age waist-line just builds up..and so does your age..I can confirm, the older you get, the harder it is to shift..

The truth is, heart on sleeve and tits on a platter: Exercise at this stage of life isn’t for improvement and a parade of rude health, it’s just to standstill..otherwise when the time comes to finally be able to play a genuine game of tennis with the kids…I’ll be the one oozing gently on my mobility scooter..

Food for thought..

Laters, Kate x

April 19, 2014

Happy Easter!! xxx

And what better way to celebrate Easter than with the coolest eggs ever?

These are by the celebrity Tattoo artist Scott Campbell who’s inked such illuminaries as Marc Jacobs, Helena Christensen and Penelope Cruz.

Louisiana born Scott abandoned a career as a biochemist to follow his calling (you can just imagine what his parents thought..)

I love that he doesn’t consider skin his only artistic canvas – the street aesthetic of the Tattoo style works so brilliantly against the fragility of the ostrich egg. The snakes and spiders feel like their about to hatch out and all the time there’s an on-going relationship between life and death.