A bowl of cherries

A bit of a mixed bag today.

We made jelly and playdough today. I'm such a cheapskate, but homemade playdough is so easy to make, I will post the recipe tomorrow. The one thing I miss though is the smell of the real stuff. I always mean to add some vanilla or almond flavouring into the mix, but it's always too late by the time I remember. The jelly went down well at lunchtime, served with trifle sponge, ice-cream, spray cream, grapes, strawberry and chocolate sauce. Yum :)

I love the village school but it causes real headaches in the summer holidays - the children have few friends because of the small class sizes (for example there are just three girls and two boys in Chiara's year) and hooking up with them during the break is a logistical nightmare. Some have working parents so are not around anyhow (being at grandparents, holiday clubs and so on) plus mix in that their own holidays and, well, the kids have done well with each others' company for the first week but now they are craving to see their friends again.

We managed to have two of Josh's friends around today, he is off to the cinema tomorrow with another friend and Mia is also visiting a friend tomorrow. But Chiara is having a real crisis. Not helped by the fact that she doesn't want people to come here, she wants to go visiting other people. I tried explaining that it wasn't good manners to ring up and invite yourself over, but she just couldn't get it. Thankfully Len was home early from work today so I made good my escape, a mini trip to Derby. I bought three t-shirts, a copy of Scrapbook Answers, then spent an hour with a coffee reading the same in peace and quiet. Bliss!