Chocolate & Charity Shops

Last week we did run out of the chocolate mix we use to sprinkle on our cappucino.
So, that was one of those little tasks that needed to be done in this family B&B. (Seriously, I think it's more like an Inn, as my family doesn't only use it as B&B, but they also have lunch and dinner here.)
I got out cacao, cinnaman and sugar candy.

And with a little help from my late Gran´s coffee grinder, I made us some chocolate mix for our cappucino again.

Something I just wanted to share with you is this poem, which a friend of mine posted on my facebook wall:

Obiously I shouldn´t spend too much time dusting, so I guess our Family resort is going to be called 'The Dusty Dream Inn'.

Some of you may know I just love to go to charity shops.
Here are some of my latest finds:

Yay! A Daisy doll, a bit grubby, but she cleaned up beautifully

And what´s that? Blossom Knickers! And in good condition too!

doll outfits for my DD´s

Moxie Girlz for the DD´s

a chair for Daisy

a teapot for the dollies

a necklace which I intend to make another necklace with

a book for DD8

a book for DD11

I haven´t been taking pictures of everything I found over the past few weeks, but as you can see I found quite a few nice things.
Because of all the dollstuff, I also had a doll laundry day, which I do in my kitchen, with a special doll clothes cleaning product, called Perk, from Twin Pines of Maine.
With a family of 5 you may imagine there´s also quite a lot of real life sized laundry to be done, and that was only too true, as I hadn´t really been keeping up with it, so between washing some dollstuff, I wrestled my way through mount Washmore.......

Frantic Friday & Fun

Yesterday was a kind of lazy day with not much to blog about and nothing to take pictures of.
I cleaned the windows at the front of our home, helped a lady from church who has a hernia, so I did some dusting and vacuming for her. In the afternoon I had 2 hours just for me alone, in which I dressed up and put on some heavy make-up, to practise for next week friday. In those 2 hours my parents came over to visit me, so I opened my frontdoor for them, dressed up and acting like, well, the character I'm going to be..... Dad didn't even recognise me at the first sight, so I think it's going to be a good disguise.
Thursday evening was kind of busy, as DD8 will have balletlessons and tapdance lessons, and then DD11 will have her tapdance lessons whilst once every 2 weeks DD8 will go to a club from church after tapdance, and DD11 will go to another club from church after tapdance. So after playing mums private taxi, I did some small repairs on the girls clothes.

Friday is almost always my most busy day of the week.
On friday I walk my postround, and go to 2 different groceryshops to get all my groceries for a week (unless I forget something... muahaha!) and there is also a charitiy shop that is only open on friday, so I try to go there as well, you never know what treasure lies hidden there.....
After bringing the girls to school this morning, I went to the first grocerystore, where I met the mum of one of the other girls from DD11 balletclass, so had a chat with her about the girls practising points. When I got out of the store it had started to rain, oh no!!!!!!! And I had to walk that postround!!!!!!!!!

DD13 is homeschooled, but she wasn't very motivated today, so let's say it wasn't really a great start of the day.I did do a part of the postround, but had to get the girls home for lunch all too soon.
After bringing them back to school, I went to the second grocerystore and picked up the rest of the groceries, and went to the charityshop right afterwards, where I picked up this fabulous book end.

When I got back home, Garden Patience had arrived, what a super cute doll! I had so much fun with her!

Of course she will get her own real photosession and some more attention in my dolly blog.
But I still had to finish that postround, which I didn't manage before school was all finished, so had to wait until DH arrived back home from work, so he could look after our DD's .
As you may have guess I haven't been doing much in the kitchen today, DH even cooked dinner whilst I finished my postround.
The only thing I did was make some more apple compote.

Inspired by my sisters decorating for fall The Greedy Minimalist, I decided to do something with the old stuff I had lying about:

the old stuff

As you can see, I had quite a fun project for this evening.

A Wonderful Wednesday

As you may have guessed, I've had a lovely day today.
DD8 & DD11 woke up before 7 am, and told me to stay in bed, while they would prepare 'breakfast' for me. (I told them I'm not very hungry so early in the morning, but that I would love to have a rice cracker and some tea) After some 20 minutes they came upstairs, with a nice cup of tea & 2 rice crackers. They decided to have their breakfast upstairs in my bedroom with me. DD11 also had 5 minutes of points excercise in my bedroom. So we really had a very enjoyable start of the day.
They arrived at school in time, and I went back home, trying to figure my plans for today.
I started a load of laundry, relaxed a little while behind the pc, had a real breakfast and saw a big bowl of apples on my kitchen counter, so decided to have a go at making tarte aux pommes with the recipe I found here: tarte aux pommes . Of course I had to have my own go at it, and added some cinnamon to the pâte brisée and sprinkled some on top of the apples as well.

I also made apple compote with the rest of the peeled apples, but I forgot to take a picture of it, and the jar got finished over dinner.
When I was working on my tarte aux pommes, I found out I didn't have almonds anymore, so had to go to the grocers for it. While I was there I remembered I needed potatoes, and saw sweet potatoes were on offer, so I bought a bag of sweet potatoes.
I also bought a basket of flowers, to brighten up our entry.
As I had used 2 eggyolks for the tarte aux pommes, I had to figure a way to use up the egg whites as well, and found a recipe for meringues: meringues

I think they turned out quite well for a first time, and my 3 DD's love them.
I even managed to remember that load of laundry I had started in the morning, and folded it somewhere in the afternoon.
Those lovely empty laundry lines didn't stay empty for long yesterday, so today I folded everything that had been hanging there since yesterday too.

So now those laundry lines are almost empty, apart from some bedlinens and the new placemats that came out of the laundry very lovely and clean.
After dinner we went to another charity shop, where we donated the stuff I had ready in my donation box and where I bought an outfit for a foxhunt next week. (DD11 will have schoolcamp from wednesday-friday, and the foxhunt will be on friday. I'm so looking forward to dressing up!!!!)
This weeks missions from FlyLady have been a breeze, as this weeks zone is the kitchen, so on monday it was wiping down the trashcan, which only took a minute, tuesday I was supposed to scrub the countertop. As you may have figured, when working in the kitchen and preparing food half of the days, scrubbing the countertops is something that I do a couple of times a day. Today I should have shined the sink and scrubbed the faucets, but again, when working in the kitchen so much that's something that  happens automatically, so I don't really feel like I've been doing any of the missions. Instead I scrubbed the kitchentiles over the counter and the bottoms of the hanging cabinets, which was something that does need to be done every now and then when mixing, cooking and baking away.
I think the only thing to do for now will be setting the table for tomorrow and lay out my clothes for tomorrow.