{Sunday Roundup}

I can't believe it's time for another Sunday Roundup - the week has flown by!

I didn't have the best of starts to the week and work went by in a bit of a blur (I did run into work on Tuesday - get me!), but by Thurs I was feeling more positive and have enjoyed a couple of days with the kiddies. We had a gas engineer at the house on Thurs morning and the central heating is now operating properly (phew!) then that afternoon we were at a friend's house for a play date. Friday morning was spent getting organised for a house viewing (keeping my fingers crossed!) followed by a trip to the park (it was freezing though!!) & our usual Fri afternoon class.

Yesterday I was kiddie-free and instead of rushing around trying to do a million things in a short space of time, I took a step back & just enjoyed the time to myself. I had my hair done in the morning followed by a quick trip to Silverburn shopping centre where I bought a new perfume with birthday vouchers and I treated myself to a file & polish at Nail Girls in Debenhams. Loving the neon coral colour I selected. Perfect as the sun is out today!! I also picked up some yummy food from M&S and went home to put my feet up and enjoy some down-time (I was watching my guilty pleasure, Made in Chelsea on 4OD on my phone!). My friend Rhona & her husband invited me over for dinner which was lovely of them & I had a relaxed evening catching up with them both.

Taking some time out with Sainsbury's magazine and a cream slice

Nail Girls file & polish

Hot chocolate and a muffin at Starbucks

New haircut & colour

I prepared another #PostCircle letter

Making a new fashion statement wearing my hat!!

Colour overload!

We received some Ice Delight to review - it was really refreshing. Perfect now that the sun is out!!

I'm still doing Project 333 - that's been over a month now - and I'm quite happy with my capsule wardrobe!

{Saturday Snapshot}

Having a relaxing kiddie-free Saturday :-)

Happy Easter everyone!

{Easter: Crafts & Baking}

Last Easter I shared some ideas for crafts & favours for my little ones over the Easter period. As always, I've been scouring Pinterest and have come up with some new suggestions for you. A little bit late I know, but I've been rather stressed these past few weeks what with illness & selling house.

What are you up to this Easter?

Bunny Tails

Carrot Cupcakes

Origami Bunny

Donut Bunny Pops

Paper Strip Easter Egg Art

Easter Marshmallow Bark

Cheese ball 'carrot' favours

Easter bunny bags

Paper plate craft

Egg carton daffodils

{Easter in Glasgow - Family Activities}

I've got the kids on Sunday and Monday this Easter weekend and stupidly haven't organised anything for us to do as yet... I was trying so hard to be organised as well. Oops!

Anyway, here's a round-up of some of the activities and things to do that I have come across:

1. There are various free Wizard of Oz themed events taking place at Braehead and Xscape over the Easter holidays including crafts, parachute games, singing and dance workshops. Just follow the yellow brick road...

2. Ikea are also holding free daily workshops (2-3.30pm) where kids can take part in craft activities and there is also going to be a bouncy castle outside the store this weekend.

3. There are also free Funday Sunday activities every Sunday from 11am - 4pm at The Avenue shopping centre in Newton Mearns. 

4. The Bodyworks exhibition at Glasgow Science Centre is now open (being a scientist, I'm a little bit excited about this one!!) - probably more suited to slightly older children though, however there is an area at the Science Centre dedicated to toddlers and there are some short films running at the Imax which look good.

5. Hop on over to Whitelee Windfarm Visitor Centre for more free activities including making bunny ears and wee cute chicks.

6. Cadbury's Easter Egg Trails are on at a number of the National Trust for Scotland venues including Pollok House where there is face painting, games & story telling on Sunday and Monday from 10am. Entry to the house is £5 per adult plus £1 per child for the Easter Egg Trail. Storytelling with Mrs Cotton Tail is an additional £1 per child.

7. I've heard from friends that there are Easter animals (I'm assuming rabbits, chicks etc) at the Glasshouses at Queen's Park that little ones can hold.

What do you have planned this Easter weekend? I'm looking for inspiration!!

{Guest Post: Feature Chairs by the grey house}

I asked my little sister, Ali, to put together an interiors Fabulous Finds post for me. Here are her thoughts on feature chairs...

I’ll start by introducing myself and by putting a face to the name: I’m Ali (@the_grey_house) and am Sarah’s little sister.  Feeling the strain a bit here, nobody really reads my blog but I know there are plenty of people who read this one!

Sarah and I on my wedding day

I live in Aberdeen and write a blog about interiors and the renovations of my Victorian townhouse to a very small audience - Sarah and a few friends!

My interiors taste is on the traditional side but with a quirk, as a result Living etc is my favourite interiors magazine.  At the moment I am loving greys, clean lines and pops of colour.  I can’t stand magnolia (I feel people with no style choose magnolia); I also dislike most warm tones, red toned wood and the overly fussy and floral are not my cup of tea. (Thanks for that Ali... I'm sat here at my computer staring at a magnolia wall...clearly I have no taste?? Lol). 

{everyone needs a feature chair}

I have a vision of myself lounging in a feature chair gazing out the window with a cup of tea.  At the moment I can’t sit in mine because there is no seat pad and it's rank!  

My feature chair!

I acquired a wing back chair from a skip in Glasgow, I was there with Sarah dropping off a car load of her stuff and little did she know we'd end up bringing back a chair!  I just managed to squeeze it into my car and took it home to Aberdeen.  Shamefully it’s sat in my living room for over a year now without me doing anything with it.

I toyed with buying the tools to tackle it myself (there are some good guides online and YouTube) but chickened out at the expense of them and the fabric if it all went wrong.  A bit too challenging for a first upholstery project. I have some ideas for fabric and will pay someone to do the job for me instead!

I have been considering where my wing back chair will go in our house and think it might sit in the bay window of our soon to be open plan living, kitchen and dining space.  The colour scheme for this room is going to be white, grey and yellow / green / olive inspired by my future map which I bought as a present for hubby. This map is really cool and is a massive 2 m by 1 m. I am going to get it framed to hang on the wall.  It's also part of my 35 at 35 list to improve my geography!!

Future Map

With this in mind I have begun looking at potential chair fabrics and thought I would share a few with you.  I am enjoying stripes at the moment and would consider having the sides and the back of the chair in a patterned fabric and the remainder plain. These fabrics are from Harlequin:

Harlequin

Harlequin

I have also found a chair with bold zig zag print which I think is really cool.  This is an example of my taste exactly - traditional with a quirk.  I'd possibly choose dark grey and white fabric rather than black and white but I love both (images found via google).

Funky zig zag print chair

Grey and white zig zag fabric

If you don't have a chair to upholster a couple have caught my eye of late.  I found this one on one of my favourite furniture websites made.com.  Of course you can't go wrong with grey in my book and this has a cute little pop of colour with the buttons.  This chair costs £349 which I think is quite reasonable.

Ritchie Armchair in anthracite grey with rainbow buttons

I also love the Conran Shop and some of the Conran range in M&S.  I found this chair which I thought was simple but classic and liked the slightly retro style to the shape. Again, no surprises I like the grey version.  The different fabrics work well here too.

Conran Bainbridge Chair from £599

Do you own a feature chair? If you could have any feature chair, what would it be?

Thanks Ali for an inspiring Fabulous Finds post. I already have my feature chair (from made.com!) but I love the idea of reupholstering a vintage find... I'm thinking perhaps an ottoman for a bedroom or a footstool?

{Review: IceDelight}

It's no secret that I love ice cream, so when I was asked to review a healthy, guilt-free iced dessert, I jumped at the chance.

IceDelight (or Iced & Light - love the name, so clever!!) is a fat-free, dairy-free, gluten-free iced dessert that is crammed with fruit so that a serving (which is just 90 calories) counts as one of your five-a-day. Perfect!! One of the other things I love about IceDelight is that it's made in Scotland (Dunbar, East Lothian to be precise).

I'm drawn to nice packaging and I wasn't disappointed with the nifty cardboard box that the IceDelight arrived in. We were given five flavours to try - strawberry, raspberry, blackcurrant, lemon and gooseberry & elderflower.

My son requested a purple cone and so I duly scooped him out a dollop of the blackcurrant IceDelight  (the colour was amazing - a deep, rich pinky purple). However, after a taste, he decided that he'd rather have a white one. I obliged and gave him a scoop from the gooseberry & elderflower carton that my daughter was demolishing. He wasn't as impressed as her though and didn't really eat much of it. He's definitely the fussier of the two though. I have to admit I wasn't sure either of them would go for it as the flavours were quite strong in the ones we've tried so far. Hopefully they take to it as I quite like the idea that it's healthy and contains real fruit.

My personal favourite has to be the gooseberry & elderflower - I love elderflower flavoured food & drink and this didn't disappoint. It was really refreshing. Just a shame that we don't have nice Spring weather as I could picture me having a bowl of this whilst catching some rays in my back garden! Unfortunately it was snow here this morning!?

Talking of snow, the lemon flavour was as white as snow, and I really enjoyed the tanginess of it. Definitely more like a sorbet than ice cream. I could imagine serving this as a palate cleanser between courses or at the end of a meal, that's if I was to ever host a dinner party again - it's been a while!

There are some amazing ideas on the IceDelight website...combine IceDelight with fruit salad or meringue for a guilt-free treat, or if you're feeling indulgent here are the other suggestions:

• Try the velvety Blackcurrant IceDelight with hot apple crumble
• The rich, refreshing Raspberry IceDelight is yummy served with chocolate cheesecake or as part of a traditional Scottish cranachan.
• Juicy, fresh Strawberry IceDelight is perfect with white chocolate brownies straight from the oven.

I'm sold :-)

There are also a few smoothie suggestions on the website, and I reckon they would be great as a cocktail too - throw in some vodka, Chambord and basil with the Strawberry IceDelight for a Basil Grande perhaps? Or some rum & mint with the Gooseberry & Elderflower IceDelight for a mojito?? I will try and report back!

Overall I was suitably impressed and would definitely recommend you give IceDelight a try. Not so sure that all the flavours are child-friendly but my littlest loved the ones that she had. My son less so, but as I said he is rather fussy! Give it a go and let me know what you think.

Don't know about you, but I'm craving chocolate brownies and IceDelight now...!!

We were given five flavours of IceDelight for free as part of this review. Opinions, as always, are my own.

{Meal Planning Monday}

It's got to be said - I'm feeling pretty 'meh' right now and the cold weather is not helping matters!! I'm now back in Glasvegas after a fun weekend in Aberdeen with friends and family. Back to reality with a bump though and today after work I was at the dentist (again!) - this time for a crown.

Anyway, here's the meal plan for the week, bearing in mind that I'm having fish twice for the healthy happy hearts challenge:

Monday (just me) - chicken salad

Tuesday (just me) - soy & ginger salmon with noodles

Wednesday - scrambled egg & beans on toast

Thursday - fish cakes served with vegetables

Fish cakes

Friday - I might order in for a change... thinking wee cucina italian bistro rather than the usual Pizza Hut.

Saturday (just me) - hummous, olives & warm pitta bread to snack on followed by some sort of indulgent dessert. A night in on my own to relax... chick flicks, chocolate & early to bed!

Sunday - initial thoughts are a roast dinner in the slow cooker... a gammon joint perhaps.

What are you cooking this week? Do pop on over to Mrs M's blog to see the other plans this week.

{Sunday Roundup}

The week started off with discovering that my littlest has chicken pox... she has not been a happy bunny and had much worse symptoms compared to her big brother (I've heard that the first sibling to get the disease has a milder reaction to the second?).

Lots of cuddles required for my poorly daughter who was very clingy

Lots of spots!

I also started the Fish is the Dish Healthy Happy Hearts challenge

After a busy week of work and parenting, I hit the road on Friday lunchtime - Aberdeen bound!!

We had a lovely weekend catching up with family and we even managed to squeeze in a 4 mile run on Saturday morning (the wind was horrendous though!). On Saturday afternoon we went to Jamie's Italian for a late lunch with friends followed by lots of cocktails (& then chips, cheese & gravy on the way home)!!

Cheers! Bramble cocktails at Jamie's Italian

Posing in the window of The Tippling House

Silver Bullet (cherry vodka shot with silver edition Red Bull)

{Saturday Snapsot}

I'm currently in Aberdeen, sans children, for the weekend.

Ali (@the_grey_house) & I are just getting ready for a boozy late lunch... :-)

{Recipe: Orange Double Chocolate Cheesecakes}

The last recipe I shared was for a blueberry cheesecake, but whilst browsing my cookery books for #RecipeSwap I came across this amazing recipe for individual Orange Double Chocolate Cheesecakes that I just had to share! The recipe below makes 6. It's a little bit of a faff - I remember using countless bowls and making a bit of a mess, but it was worth it!!

{Ingredients}

25g butter
40g orange flavoured plain chocolate
125g digestive biscuits, crushed
150g good white chocolate
250g tub mascarpone
zest of 1 orange
1tsp orange juice
142mL carton double cream
3tbsp good strawberry jam, warmed and sieved
100g summer fruits (cherries, strawberries, raspberries, redcurrents)

{Method}

Line a 6-hole muffin tin with muffin cases.

Put the butter and plain chocolate into a pan and heat gently until melted.

Remove from the heat and stir in digestive biscuits.

Divide the mixture between the cases and press down lightly with the back of a teaspoon. Chill.

Break white chocolate into a heatproof bowl and rest over a pan of simmering water.

Remove from heat and stir until melted. Allow to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, beat the mascarpone with orange zest.

In another bowl, whip the cream into soft peaks.

Mix the white chocolate into the mascarpone, then gently fold in the cream.

Spoon the mixture evenly into the muffin cases and chill for 1.5 to 2 hours until just firm.

To serve, carefully peel the muffin cases away from the cheesecakes and transfer to a plate.

Mix the orange juice with the jam.

Decorate the cheesecakes with the summer fruits and drizzle with a little of the warmed jam glaze.


In Blue Peter style, here's one I made earlier...

(I had a shop bought strawberry sauce in my fridge which I used to decorate the cheesecakes instead of making the glaze described above)

I'm also joining in again with Mrs M's Recipe Link Party for March.

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{35 at 35: model for a day, check!}

One of the items on my 35 at 35 list was to 'be a model for a day'. 

When I was at primary school we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. I had said that I wanted to be a model and I was laughed at. That has stuck with me all this time and as such I wanted to be a model, just for a day.

Well, I have achieved my goal and I was a model (for a an hour!).

The lovely Transatlantic Blonde invited me along to a fashion photo shoot with for 'School-Yard Chic'... and here is the result. Yay! I had such fun (although it was slightly embarrassing!!).

Glasses by Dior

Zebra print scarf - Love Lala Boutique

Jumper - Warehouse

Skinny jeans - Next

Patent boots - Next

Turquoise bag from Fossil

Photographs by Alan Peebles