Rainy Sunday

It may be unfashionable to admit, but I love a rainy Sunday. Unless you have something exciting on, or are on granny-bashing* duty, it's the perfect excuse not to charge around or go to the park, but stay all cosy at home instead.

If you were to ask me my ideal rainy Sunday activity, it would have to be curling up with a good book and a chocolate cake. That ain't going to happen with little a around (WHY is it that on week days I have to wake her up to say goodbye before I go to work, but on a Sunday she's there on the dot of half six prising my eyelids open and demanding a story?) so my next best is a day of quality time with my daughter, baking and making and generally pretending to be supermum.

Even the early start is kind of a bonus, since by 9 this morning we had finished our book, got a cake in the oven, bread on the rise, and glitter strewn across the kitchen table.

The book was IVY & BEAN, which we discovered thanks to Ottie and The Bea, our delicious local toyshop. We've had it a while, but little a hasn't been interested before. This week, we've been loving it. Two chapters a night, lots of naughtiness, not many pictures, and a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter which had us full of anticipation for the next night's instalment. The only downside is that it's full of references to dollars and sidewalks, which brings me out in a terrible American accent ...

So now we have read our first full length non-picture book cover to cover, and we loved it so much that we spent the day making a house for Ivy and Bean. It all started when little a decided she didn't like having the paper cover round it. The publisher/collector/inner librarian in me yelped at the sacrilege, then galloped downstairs in search of scissors. Our first plan was to make a badge (oh yes I bought a badgemaker! I always wanted one when I was a kid. Now I have one. That's being a grownup for you). But we quickly got diverted by a shoebox and my memory of the hours of fun I had making houses with my sister.

So, while I kneaded bread (supermum!!), little a painted the shoebox and made glitter wallpaper (all her own imagining, I might add). Then we sat down together and cut out furniture and gardens from magazines. I'm not sure that Bean, with her love of worms and danger, would be much impressed by little white company bunnies and bunting, but little a is more of an Ivy at heart.

It was very fun. I like rainy Sundays. Did I say?


Today I made: bread, Focaccia, chocolate fudge cake, flapjacks, roast chicken ... and (helped with) a shoebox house. Tired but happy. Manic baking inspired by breadmaking course at Blackheath Cooks.

*'Granny-bashing' is my dad's phrase. How weird that he's now the granny to be bashed. If you know what I mean ...