dear diary ~ an eventful weekend

We celebrated our family Easter get together early, because on Easter Sunday we will be going further north to see my mum, so this last weekend was our opportunity to see our daughters and the grandchildren. On Saturday they all descended on me, I had only a few hours notice and needed to find activities for them quickly, as well as some lunch.

DH did most of the washing and chopping of the salad items for the cold buffet lunch and we had boiled eggs, cheese and cold sliced chicken. Sweetie had persuaded her mum to buy some bunny paper plates, cups and serviettes in Aldi for the table. It is a squeeze now seating everyone as we have grown over time to ten of us. My younger daughter had to sit on the small folding steps as we are a stool short at the moment having lent it to goodness knows who.

After lunch I didn’t have time to make any biscuit dough but I did have a slab of plain cake in the freezer that I had made a while ago to use up some eggs. I found the Easter cutters (bunnies, chickens etc), made up some white icing and got the tray of sprinkles and pastel coloured tubes of icing that I had bought in readiness back in January for such an occasion.

I cut the cake into four pieces (one each) and the children had great fun cutting out shapes and icing and decorating them – even the off cuts were decorated…or eaten…mainly eaten, but nothing was wasted.

I displayed their ‘efforts’ in the cardboard trays I keep from the tomato packs, they do come in handy.

Whilst I was clearing the table the children had free reign to officially draw on my windows (which always excites them) with those white chalk paints. I had printed off some bunny pictures from the internet and DH went outside and stuck them to the window for them to use as a template.

Master Freddie decided his bunny was going to be hidden in long grass!!

The table was covered with the paper cloth and out came the felt tips so that they could decorate the Easter bunny cards I had found (from the Range or maybe the Works).

Sweetie decided she was going to turn hers into bunting.

Baby Chocolate drew a spaghetti bunny!

Master Freddie made some 5/8th bunnies as he is all into fractions at the moment.

We also covered kitchen rolls with pastel paper and decorated them to look like bunnies.

All bunnied out the children went home for their teas and DH and I had a lie down!

On Sunday it was throwing it down here, wet, wet, wet.

Of course it is the school holidays, it is bound to rain. Many an Easter Egg trail was hit hard by the weather this weekend. We met the grandchildren and their mums and took cover indoors in a local museum. The lady on reception gave the children a clipboard and a sheet of Easter egg shapes to hunt for and copy the pictures of eggs hidden throughout the museum to claim a prize.

The other exhibition event, advertised for last Saturday and Sunday and through the week in the Kirklees Museums brochure, and on their website and on social media was

‘Moving Pictures – From Magic Lanterns to Cinema’, a chance for the children to learn about how moving images became films with optical toys and making their own moving pictures‘ –

Sounded good…. but it turned out to be a non-starter because no-one at the museum knew anything about it!! There was no exhibition or optical toys or crafts available to make their own moving pictures. How can that be? How can they publicise something that they then forget to do. I have never known that happen before.

The museum is very much about the Huddersfield district and how it grew with the coming of the textile mills and they had displays with old weaving looms and factory looms.

I hadn’t realised that the women of Huddersfield had played such a large part in the women’s suffrage movement.

The journal of Florence Lockwood on display is especially noteable at the moment – she heads the page Signs of the Times and part way down is the entry on August 4th 1914 ‘England declares war on Germany’.

In our troubled times I might well be writing something similar soon in my journal.

This made me smile – how true back then.

The other noteable item on display was this rather beautiful patchwork quilt made up of varying pieces of scrap fabrics, probably cut from old garments and painstakingly embroidered. I will definitely be going back without the children for a good look around.

So now the playroom is deathly silent, the toys and crafts have been tidied away and all will be waiting for when the grandchildren descend on us again. Very soon I hope.

Have a lovely week, back soon with that recipe. I am making the mushroom soup today for lunch. x

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