royal visit

the queen and prince phillip were coming to newhaven to visit bickerstaffs fisheries (who supply the top restaurants)...she was doing a tour of sussex highlighting successful local enterprise....she came by helicopter, landed at the local park and got in her bentley to drive to the west quay

ellie all dressed up to go see queenie

ready to wave her flag

the rnli boat attended

that dot in the sky is the royal helicopter approaching!

her comes the cavalcade!

much excitement!

here she is! and there's phillip too!

popping in to buy some scallops

i had a good nose inside her car...she has a travel bag with babywipes and sweeties and a blanket to keep her legs warm (bless)

got her scallops, time to meet some subjects

"come on phillip"

wading through the crowd

flowers from a fan

lots of flowers from little people

more flowers...

what do you reckon they do with all the flowers? saves getting any for floral arrangements at the palace i suppose...

off she goes, waving that famous hand

thanks for coming!

halloween baking

ghost meringues

pumpkin pie

(made 2 of these as jay wants one of his own because no-one in his family like it so he never gets to eat it)

lottie's pumpkin carving

lottie carved her pumpkin this year with no help from me whatsoever (only because i didn't want to get off the sofa because i was watching homeland)...she got to use the enormous bread knife, scraped out all the crud herself, cleared up after herself and very cleverly decided that if she did a face on both sides, the shadow of the other side would appear on the wall behind (cool eh?!)

jack skellington

puking pumpkin

(how delightful)

halloween craft tuesday week 5!

this week we made halloween crackers

the beautifully strange ellie with hers

a close up

the just plain strange lottie with hers

a close up

take 2 tp roll tubes and cut one in half...place the whole one at the end of a piece of crepe paper with the two halves at each end of the whole one (leaving a 2cm gap)...staple onto the crepe paper (crepe paper is notorious for not liking cellotape, pva glue etc)...insert a sweetie, joke and a trick in the whole tube (we got them to write a trick for someone else so no-one knows what they are getting!)...put some uhu glue on the tubes and start to roll up, gluing the edge when you are finished rolling...at the gap between the whole tube and the half tubes, tie some gift ribbon and curl with scissors...decorate with stickers, fake bugs and halloween confetti

pink skeleton!

ellie dressed up for her day at the charity shop before halloween

dress 35p tights £1 wig £3 (jacket, shoes and bag - model's own)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YR4CseY9pk

i love this man so much

candy corn

lottie found a video on youtube (strawburry17) to make your own candy corn....after inspecting the ingredients there was no way they were going to taste like proper candy corn but worth a try nonetheless

put 2 cups mini marshmallows in a bowl and pour over 1 tablespoon water...zap in microwave for 1 min, then add 2 cups icing sugar until it forms a dough...divide dough into 3 equal parts, leave 1 part uncoloured...dye the other 2 parts yellow and orange by kneading food colour into the doughs...roll each colour into a 50cm length and 'glue' together with water...cut diagonally across the length to make triangles and there you have candy corn that tastes like marshmallows and sugar (duh)