Home organisation Chez Pirate

As this little guy starts school next year and we are about to renovate our house, I spent this weekend thinking about what I needed to do to get as organised as possible. Currently the Captain goes to pre-school 2 days a week and I rarely drop him off before 9.30am, next year he has to be at school at 8.30am... clearly, our morning routine needs a bit of streamlining! So whilst child in question lay around reading Tintin comics, I set to work and began a major overhaul inside the house.





I am trying to work out the best place to store art and craft items. I had lots of jars and bits and pieces in various spot so I collated all items used daily into a vintage (literally) harvest basket! I will pull it out whenever they need something and hopefully they will pop whatever is used straight back in, which will make for quick and easy clean up! Positive thinking people!!!


Recently our hall stand has gathered bags of items I have been planning to pass on and just have never got around to doing. As part of "Operation get the Captain to school on time" I decided to deal with it all immediately. The cloth nappies have found a home with a friend who is planning to use cloth on her new little one and the books are off to South Africa with a flight attendant friend who will pass them onto the "Our Kid Project" a charity that supports children with HIV/AIDS.

Look at my hallstand now! Hooray!!! Further tales from "Operation get child to school on time" to follow. In the meantime, if anyone has any brilliant ideas about how to get small children ready quickly in the morning I would welcome any tips or suggestions!

Baking a Dolly Varden

My sweet little niece recently had her 4th birthday and in our male dominated household of helicopter, pirate ship and digger cakes, I thought it would be a lovely change to bake a Dolly Varden cake for her. Foolishly I thought that this would be much easier than it actually was. It all started out well and I felt quietly confident as I popped the cake into the oven and sat down to drink my tea... after first stopping to admire how nicely my Cornish Ware pudding basin matched the mug... hmm clearly should have been a bit more focused!

Uh oh! Total disaster... husband came to the rescue and opened the bottle of red in the background.

After a glass of red, a bit more oven time and an urgent phone call to sister-in-law seeking advice on where to amputate Barbie's legs. (We went for a full leg amputation). I then wrapped Barbie's pelvis in glad wrap to keep things neat and tidy (ie. no cake inside Barbies bits... that sounds bad but you know what I mean!). The end result was not as catastrophic as I was anticipating. The clothes peg in Barbie's hair was to keep her hair out of the way for icing.

Happy Birthday Miss Zee!