Life, love and little things - April 2017

Yes, yes, I know. Nothing for weeks. I feel like I should apologise, and provide a fulsome and thorough explanation for my absence, but what does one say? Potty training? Toddlers? Decorating? Gardening? Coughs? Colds? Scratched eye? Does that cover it? Hopefully.

Anyway - the toddler is sleeping (for now, at least), a veg packed chilli is in the oven, a Vegan Peanut butter chocolate chip banana bread is cooling, my smoked mackerel salad is coming to room temperature and I have a litre of water. All of this points to sitting down and getting on with a blog post.

I've not done a 'Life, love and little things..' post for months, which is silly as they are far and away one of my favourite things to write. So here we are - April in photos:

The weather has meant we're far from BBQs and salads so I've been dong a fair bit of batch cooking, Chilli con carne (sometimes without the carne), Sweet potato and chickpea curry, Cottage or Shepherd's pie, Shepherdess pie have all featured. My veg packed chilli is one of Harry's favourites - he loves it in quesadillas, sprinkled with Violife.

I helped out at our Division's campsite (does anyone not know I'm a Brownie and Guide leader?) making tea and serving cake on our Bluebell days. I have to say they are the most beautiful I've ever seen them, carpeting the woods in a glorious wash of colour, their fragrance was amazing. Bluebells completely signify Spring to me and Bluebell woods are simply magical.

Harry and I have been doing a fair bit of baking lately - it's good for his counting and it's a great activity when my outdoorsy, full of energy toddler can't go outside for whatever reason. Like his mother he's a huge fan of glace cherries and marzipan so we've made our favourite dairy free Simnel cake twice since Easter.

I've got a new blanket on my crochet hook - it's going far slower than it should be so I need to really get on with it as it needs to be finished by July! The colour palette is a change for me, ice cream pastels from Attic 24's Cupcake blanket. Although I'm making a Granny stripe. I really want to make Lucy's Hydrangea blanket, but M has banned me from any more yarn buying until such time as I've finished all my ongoing works in progress!

As always, you can find these and many other snapshots of my days and weeks over on Instagram - why not hop on over and see what we're up to today?