Quickest Pizza In The World

Honestly I'm not lying - it's 25 minutes from you entering your kitchen to the pizza entering your mouth.

You need:
4 parts plain flour
1 part butter
a splash of milk

Heat oven to 200°C. Mix flour with butter - I usually grate the butter straight from the fridge into the bowl. Add a splash of butter and mix with a spoon until you have a little dough ball. Make small handsize rounds and place on a greased baking tray. Add topping of your choice. Put in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Remove, cool, eat.

Normally I would have been more creative in regards to the topping but today it was all about speed, so the one on the left is red pepper pesto and grated cheese and the one on the right is green pesto and tomato slices. What more could a little boy want on a Friday evening? (Well actually a lot more but for the time being he is quite happy with this.)

N.B For these two I used 100g of flour and 25g of butter.

Slaving Away

I'm busy finishing all those shoes and a whole load of crayon rolls I'm working on, here are a few finished ones - I'll let the photos do the talking.

What's That You Say?

Luca's vocabulary is coming on leaps and bounds but he does tend to repeat words .... A LOT. So here are, in descending order, his favourites (he has said some of these in his sleep, but I won't count those):

10) Bubbles ... after he was given a bubble machine last week, about 25 times a day
9) Mama Dada Guca ... in various combinations. Often it is just Maaaaamaaaaa
8) Up .... so he can press the button on the coffee machine, operate the toaster, open the door, lock the door, look inside the microwave, look out the window, open the fridge, look inside the fridge, you get the point
7) Bread .... after he has said 'up' enough times and is now sitting on the kitchen top next to the toaster
6) More .... after he has been popping slices of toast endless times in the toaster
5) Cookie ... after he gets bored of bread
4) Horsie .... for no particular reason
3) Milk ... this becomes a favourite by late afternoon
2) Noddy .... always in combination with the latter, in Luca's world one always comes with the other

and at

no 1) Oh no ... About twice every minute, which on a basis that he is awake for 12 hours, makes this 1440 times per day.

Oh no! Oh yes.

Rich Pickings

It's already Saturday and I haven't blogged at all this week - it's been such a busy week with orders coming in and family visiting that I've hardly had time for anything else. Except today when the weather was lovely and it actually felt like summer again. Our fruit trees were mostly bare last year but it looks as if it's going to be a whole different story this year ... in fact I think I'll need to think about storage for all those apples soon. If you're in the area, stop by and I'll send you on your way with a kilo of apples and pears. I will spend tomorrow browsing my books looking for appropriate recipes.

Remember I mentioned those personalised T-Shirts? Well they seem to be flying of the shelves, I think I'll choose a few more fabrics this week for them to have more varierty. Here are a few that have gone out this week:


I've also had to source for a new fabric for a third crayon roll that would go with the two star fabrics so these three will be going in the post on Monday:


I haven't done my usual Etsy trawl this week but I have ordered a hoodie for Luca from this lovely lady at kitschycoo, she makes fabulous children clothing and has a sale on at the moment so go and have a look whilst I retire to the sofa with that bowl of plums.

The Pink Room Is No More

Wow, what a busy week-end it has been! And it involved a lot of paint. The little man and I made our way to Homebase on Saturday morning and for a while it looked like the room was going to be painted in 'White Apple'. But for the simple fact that the colour had run out, the room is now painted in 'White Apricot' and it's lovely. The final touches were applied this morning and I think I might actually move my little sweatshop in there because I like the room so much now.

So whilst the man of the house was busy painting upstairs, I decided to tackle a different project in the kitchen - for weeks I had planned to paint the blackboard in the kitchen with magnetic paint and it was finally done yesterday. And with all this painting going on around him, Luca decided to get in on the action and paint my hands. At least that was easy to wash off, it could have been far worse, given that painting is one of his favourite pass-times a the moment.

Obviously we couldn't get through the week-end without the few odd tears so here is Luca discovering a hole in his sock for the very first time:

Checking that the sock monster hadn't bitten his toe off:



and all was well in the end.

And whilst you're reading this I am working on some new designs for lovely personalised T-Shirts so hopefully I can show them off here tomorrow. Now that's what I call a reason to come back!

The Comfort of Hot Buttered Toast

Is there anything more comforting than hot buttered toast? I am not sure. Yesterday the little man and I had a few moments in the morning that ended with him spending a bit of time in his 'reflection corner' and once he had calmed down he came back into the kitchen and we shared a few slices of hot buttered toast.


Now we're off to the DIY store to chose paint - the family committee decided last night that 'the pink room' in our house will now longer be pink but painted in a different colour. I'm thinking of a pale green maybe? So whilst we're away have a look at this house ... what do you think - mad or genius?

Heat Wave Predicted For This Summer!

Heat wave? What heat wave!? It seems like winter out there! It's mid-week, the little man decided that nap after lunch was a no-no so to pass the time a little quicker, we went to our favourite cafe for a little it-should-be-summer-but-it's-awful-outside treat.

Just to make it clear - he did NOT get a treat for not sleeping at lunch time .... His bed recently changed from a cotbed to a junior bed and whilst it all started well (in fact he loved it), it's going downhill at the moment with him going pretty mad whenever we tell him it's time to sleep and he refuses to lie down. I'm not sure who was more traumatised tonight, him or me, but in the end he went to sleep and I went to get a glass of wine so it was win-win ... well for me. If anyone knows how to get through this phase a little quicker - I'm open to suggestions.