My new crush

Thanks to my lovely sister, Rob and I escaped to the movies on Saturday night. Rob saw Hellboy II. Funnily enough I didn't really want to spend £8.50 on that so luckily Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day was on at the same time so I went to see that instead. And I'm so glad I did! It's a charming wonderful film. I love Amy Adams to pieces and she's brilliant in this. As is the phenomenal Frances McDormand. But it was Lee Pace who grabbed my heart...

Now I've seen Pushing Daisies - watched the first 3 episodes and it didn't grab me at all - I think my dislike of Anna Friel wouldn't let me like it even though I thought I would. And he didn't impress me in that at all - too nervy and geeky. Such a consummate actor he is! In Miss P he's a piano playing, singing, slightly bad but really good boy......and I'm in LUST! So here is a pic for you to enjoy. And if you want a lightweight but great romcom then go see Miss P - loved it.

Oscar is 4!!!!

Yes my baby boy is now a four year old. On the 24th August - had a monster party at our house since Kirsti was here to help (thank god). About 15 kids, assorted adults, a pinata and pass the parcel - jelly rabbits, home made cupcakes - a brilliant brilliant day. K had brought all sorts of goodies from America so party bags were stuffed full (at a fraction of the cost it would have cost if we'd bought stuff here). The theme was Cars (Oz's favourite). Loads of people came, including the Jessup-Morrison clan all the way from Guildford. Photos are here

And a couple of vids from Youtube.....
Pinata joy:

You can see on this one how many kids there were:



Oz had a brilliant day so thank you to everyone for coming, thank you to the weather fairies for enabling it to be such a success - if I'd have had that many kids indoors it would have killed me (and the house)

On a sadder note, Kirsti left the next day and is sorely missed. Oscar managed to distract himself by spending his birthday money (he got £50!) at ToysRUs on a Transformer Jet and an ambulance that makes a myriad of loud obnoxious noises.

Toby had a blast at the party as you can see from the pics. He's averaging a new word every day at the moment - totally amazing. He can now say (and there is more but I can't remember)

• egg
• door
• milk
• fork
• spoon
• mummy
• daddy
• bye bye
• ello (very Sarf London)
• bubble
• biscuit (though it comes out Tibbit)
• hat
• ball
• balloon
• bird
  
• poo poo
• tree
• nummy or yummy (when eating)
  
• oh dear (very funny)
• uh oh (a la teletubby)
  
• ouch
• snack
• drink
• wassat
• juice
• moon
• zoo
• book
• lolly
• Charlie
  
• Lola (guess where he got them from!)
  
• star
• up and down (in the correct context)
  
• and NO (a favourite)

He also puts his finger on his lips and says shhhhhh. Amazing. In this vid you can see him having a phone conversation with his fab lolly where he demonstrates "ello" and "lolly". a lot!

More photos and vids

Yes you can tell Kirsti is here - pics galore! Too many to upload here but if you're really interested the sets are here

There's also a bonkers video

and one from a few days ago - here (to view it properly you need to click the little icon on the bottom with the triangles on it - to rotate it)


In other news....Clare had her baby! I'll leave it to her to reveal details but huge congratulations from us all. Can't wait to meet her....

How gorgeous is Oscar?

My new fave pic....



Kirsti is here - HOORAH! She took this - more to come....

Fantastic new site

Thanks to Neil Gaiman I've discovered a fab new blog - Fashionista Piranha. Wonderful name - wonderful place to discover some books with great reviews. Plus there is a competition giving away Gaiman goodies....so check it out

Cookies!!

It's a sad but true fact that it's taken me 37 years to actually make a proper batch of cookies from scratch. Before I'd buy a mix or some pre-chilled dough and bake them myself but it doesn't count. As a summer holiday activity I decided to make some with Oz. I got the most amazing recipe here and I can tell you they are EXACTLY as promised - chewy inside, crisp outside. It makes a big batch so I only cooked 6 to start with:
If you do what the recipe suggests and use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to make hockey puck size lumps to start with, they spread a lot and are quite massive - as you can see from Oz and Toby below - I think it was as big as Toby's head!!
Oz doesn't look happy but he is, I promise!!

Toby in cookie heaven!

I even filmed em....

So if you have some spare time and aren't worried about your cholesterol (there's a LOT of butter in these cookies!) then make them. They are the best cookies I've ever had! And I made em! Which is very satisfying indeed!

Stolen in entirety from Clare

Read this on Blog my Wiki. It looked interesting, so I thought I'd have a go. (and so did I!)

“Someone” [she doesn’t say who] reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. It’s not the Big Read though — they don’t publish books, and they’ve only featured these books so far. In any event . . .

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 or less and force books upon them.

I can't work out how to underline so I'm bolding and italicizing the ones I love....

1. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
2. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
3. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
4. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
5. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
6. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
9. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
10. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
11. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
12. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
13. His Dark Materials (trilogy) - Philip Pullman
14. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
15. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
18. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
19. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
21. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
22. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
23. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
24. Animal Farm - George Orwell
25. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
26. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
27. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
28. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
29. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
30. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
31. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
32. Complete Works of Shakespeare
33. Ulysses - James Joyce
34. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
35. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
36. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
37. The Bible
38. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
39. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
40. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
41. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
42. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
46. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
47. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
48. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
49. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
50. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
51. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
53. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
54. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
55. Middlemarch - George Eliot
56. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
57. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
58. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
59. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
60. Emma - Jane Austen
61. Persuasion - Jane Austen
62. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
63. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
64. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
65. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
66. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
67. Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
68. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
69. Atonement - Ian McEwan
70. Dune - Frank Herbert
71. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
72. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
73. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
74. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
75. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
76. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
77. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
78. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
79. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
80. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
81. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
82. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
83. Dracula - Bram Stoker
84. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
85. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
86. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
87. Germinal - Emile Zola
88. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
89. Possession - A.S. Byatt
90. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
91. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
92. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
93. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
94. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
95. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
96. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
97. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
98. Watership Down – Richard Adams
99. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
100. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

Ok so how have I done...I've read 38....and I loved 15......

Nicked from Moxie

41 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

I'm quite relieved. Yes I have red nail polish and I use profanity and slang....and my slip is nearly always showing! Tell me how YOU did!

Happy birthday

To me.