September Goals Review

• Drink more water! - done! I've cut down on coffee and pop and drunk more tea and water.
• Organise and celebrate the European Day of Languages. - done!
• Complete three sewing projects. - one and a half done...
• Take a family photo. - done!
• Keep up the running. - this kind of tailed off in the second half of the month but I am cycling again.

Recipe: Banana Bread

This is a recipe I first tried a while ago and have made almost every week since. It's great to take to work - filling and healthy. Unfortunately, no photo yet - we eat it too quick!

Ingredients:

• 4 bananas
• 3 eggs
• Vanillin
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp butter
• 200g ground almonds
• pinch of salt
• baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Combine the ingredients. Fill them into a baking tin in the oven at 180 degrees for 35 minutes. That's it!

Make It Monday - Patchwork Blanket Update

 I'm just halfway through my next sewing project so I thought I would update you on my knitting this week.

I'm currently working on patch number twenty-one! Above you can see the twenty finished ones. I'm still really enjoying this project and keeping my brain active with new patterns every week.

 These two are my favourites so far. Can't wait to see them all together!

Weekly Wisdom

source

The Saturday Update

Another busy week here. Luckily Dad has been here to help us. He's flying home as I write so we're on our own next week...

At work I had parents' evening, European Day of Languages and the Weserhelden sponsored walk among other things. I'm starting to get into a routine but it's still a very busy time and things aren't likely to get much quieter this year.

Isabella had a good week. I even cycled her to nursery twice which was fun. We got her calendar of events for the year and it's packed with fun. I'm excited for this new stage of family life, starting with parents' evening next week.

I managed to get a bit creative again with sewing and knitting after what seems like a long break. I'm looking forward to the holidays for some time for bigger projects.

Next week is even busier with work, nursery, seminars and a whole new month!

European Day of Languages

Tomorrow is the European Day of Languages. As it's a Saturday, I've been doing quizes and lessons on it all week and we're having a whole school competition next week.

We haven't celebrated it in school before but it's important to get the kids to recognise the importance of languages and learn a bit more about them in a fun context.

This week I learned:

• there are around six thousand living languages,
• a third of them are African,
• some sign language,
• Japanese is written from top to bottom,
• the palindrome 'was it Eliot's toilet I saw?'.

I'm hoping to make it an annual event in school.

Garden Update

 At the weekend I was lucky enough to have some gardening expertise from Nico's gran as I was clearing out the flower bed in our garden.

Above is how it now looks. It still needs work but after all the flowers (see below) died, I cut them back to the bulbs for next year and ripped up lots of the weeds.

There are still some flowers, strawberries and a bush. There are also a few weeds that still need to come out. I need a big plan for this area before I get stuck in again.

For now it will do and there's something quite cathartic about cutting it all back and pulling it all out.