Monday, November 10, 2008

Bonfire night celebrations

Ollie is self-admittedly a bit of a pyromaniac so when, four years ago we let him be in charge of letting off the box of fire-works in the garden I think we unleashed a monster! Since then he has revelled in buying home fireworks and putting on a mini display.

This year was no dissappointment as he practised the skills he has honed since we first let him launch a rocket from a wine bottle. All the family came over at five, and we started with my infamouse home made veggie soup.


Soup recipe
Veggies - you can select what you like but I usually use the following:- 1 leek
Half a small swede

1 large onion
4/5 mushrooms
1 carrot


Roughly chop vegs, cover with water, add 3 oxo cubes ( like beef but I am sure veg stock will work too) .


Bring to boil, simmer until veg are soft.


Use slotted spoon to remove veg to a liquidiser. Depending on how much of the veg you liquidise depends on if you like broth or smooth soup).

Put liquidised veg back into stock, bring to the boil again.

I dont season but let my guests add salt and pepper to their own tastes.


After the soup we all went outside where Ollie had placed all his fireworks from the two boxes him and Kelly had bought with them, in the order that Ollie felt would give the best display. He had even professionally numbered them. I was very impressed. And it was worth the time he had taken. Unlike the parties I had as a kid where dad and Uncle Ray would spend ages between each firework with their torches in the metal box (always one for safety my Dad) peering at labels and trying to decide what to light next, Ollie's careful planning meant a smooth transition between each display and a clever buildup to the finally with each cascade of light becoming increasingly more spectacular.


We loved the rockets, no idea how much the kids spent on these, but they really were quality and went really far up into the sky. We were a bit norty and got a bit competitive with the neighbours, a rocket war I am confident we won hands down!


I was a tad dissappointed in the sparklers, both in quanitity (I love sparklers and two each was no where near enough in my book) and the quality as mine bend very quickly on lighting making it hard to do any sky writing.

Over all though a really impressive display and we all had brilliant fun, so thank you very much kids. Of course you have now set a presidence and we will be expecting even bigger next year!!!


Afterwards it was all back indoors for jacket spuds, hot dogs with heaps of fried onions and ketchup, followed by apple crumble and custard, and finally a Sainsbury birthday (bought by Ollie and Kelly) candles, happy birthday and singed hair as I tried to blow out the candle flames.


No photos, we were all having far too good a time to worry about cameras. So a big thankyou to my family for my birthday tea!!!!


Yet again I have not been called up to do supply work so I am going to spend some of today scanning in my christmas cards and hope to get them uploaded. Here is a couple I scanned yesterday, as I have given up attempting to get a decent photo in the rotten light we have at the moment. Guess what? Its chucking it down with rain again today.




I really like these two, This one I simply run the background cardstock through my zipemate using swiss dots, and rubbed over with a blue cats eye ink pad.


And this one was even faster, practically the only work apart from printing out and cutting paper was to distress the background paper (Shabby Princess Holiday sample kit) with some Ranger distress ink.,

1 comment:

Kelly Matthews said...

Well you should have said you wanted another sparker - we took 2 packets home! Ollie turned around to get the next lot and everyone had gone back inside!!!

On the bendy front, if you bend the end into a loop and hook it over your finger it doesn't bend so much and you still have plenty of space between the fire and your finger for safety.