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Winner bread

I “borrowed” Mum’s breadmaking machine and our first attempt has been a delicious success. I say “our” because Nipper 3.0 was the only family member who was not involved in its creation: much excitement about a machine that makes bread. I picked the recipe up from Bibliocook and the inclusion of fennel seeds is supposed to aid milk production. I managed to get all the seeds except one type and included equal amounts (about 35g) of linseed, pumpkin seed, sesame seed and sunflower seeds. We set the breadmaker to complete before breakfast and the aroma of freshly baked bread that greeted us this morning would put a smile on the face of even the grouchiest morning grump! Delicious!

Here’s a pic of the crumb of the second loaf I made (24/03/2010) – it has a great aniseed-y smell & flavour. Nipper 1.0 really likes it too

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Google Wave Gadget: Embeddy

Google Wave is a new tool developed by Google. I think they hope it will be an email killer. I say I think because the video created to present it to the world is 80 minutes long. Who the heck has 80 minutes these days? I will expand this post and add in links but I really just created this post to try out a gadget called Embeddy which should allow me to embed a Wave right here in my blogpost.

And that totally didn’t work…

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The First Dance

I don’t think it’s their very first time doing this dance, do you? How brilliant though and such fun! Congratulations to my cousin and my new cousin-in-law! Welcome to the family. You might possibly be madder than the rest of us…

By the way the cat is fine. Please send home all the babysitters. Thanks

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Get ’em while they’re hot!

The Old Short Cut (smaller)And let’s face it cheap! John O’Reilly, my common law brother in law or whatever you call em is holding a solo exhibtion from September 11th until October 3rd. One of his paintings was recently chosen for the RHA Annual Exhibition and was snapped up at that exhibition. I have a lovely painting of his that I picked up at a solo exhibition he held towards the end of 2007. While I adore this painting, it’s amazing to see how his style has developed even in the intervening two years. It seems to be a lot less focussed on crowd pleasing and much more on sights and sites that interest him. He has a keen interest in architecture, once upon a time considering it as a career. Four years ago who’da thunk we’d be saying, “Phew – glad he stuck with the painting!” The paintings in this exhibition seem to be, in general,  landscapes of forgotten but familiar places in Dublin.

The opening night of the exhibition is this Thursday the 10th at 6pm . The show will then run from September 11th until October 3rd. It takes place in Talbot Gallery, 51 Talbot Street, Dublin 1 (Opposite Connolly Station, above Graingers pub). Sadly I won’t be able to make the opening as I have a work do on but please don’t buy all the paintings! Himself just got a job so we may be able to invest!

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Parenting Teens, Inspiring Ideas to Help Your Child Prosper

Some mornings I stand back and look at my eldest and think, “We’ve skipped childhood altogether and gone straight for the teens.” The word “whatever” has been banned in our house, it caused me so much annoyance when it was used in reply to the most reasonable request. Probably not the best parenting technique but it was that word or me at one point last week.

My eldest is not yet six and we are hoping against hope that all his teenager-ly antagonism will be vented by the time he reaches his teens. Mind you with Mr. Destructo coming up close behind him I’d say we are damned either way.

So while it’s not for me (yet) I was interested in an upcoming event aimed at parents who are helping their teens make some career & study choices. Whatever about negotiating coats and bags in the morning and the longer term goals of reading and responsibility that one has with a six year old, helping a teenager with their choices for the future must be a minefield. So if you are facing into that period and living in or near Dublin, it might well be in your interested to check out the following post about an event to that effect from Irish Blogger, Krishna De. Parenting Teens, Inspiring Ideas to Help Your Child Prosper

(Disclosure: Krishna sometimes presents for the organisation I work for and I am on the IIA Social Media Working Group with her.)

Correction: Krishna is not directly involved in this programme but managed to obtain 10 free tickets for bloggers who would be interested in writing about the presentation.