A weekend with the Outlaws

This weekend Husband's parents came to visit. There was top quality playtime with Sausages, inside and out. He adores his grandparents, and they must  like him too, because they frequently drive for three hours to visit him, then have to drive three hours home the next day. We're lucky to have such a supportive family, and people who love Sausages the way we do.

There was yet more garden activity, including the construction of my very own tree-to-tree washing line. When I was a little girl my mother made me a washing line by stringing some spinnaker sheet between two apple trees in our back garden. I had a beloved dolly called Susie, who had the most beautiful wardrobe of patchwork, spotty and lacy dresses, that would be washed outside on sunny days and pegged on my very own washing line. This new washing line makes me feel like I have fulfilled a childhood aspiration! Also causing me much joy is the prop for my line, handcrafted by my lovely Father-in-Law out of parts of a collapsed wardrobe. I feel like a proper mammy when I lift the line with the prop!

 Father-in-Law also built on our recent soft cheese making experiment by teaching me to make a hard cheese with vegetarian rennet. It didn't turn out as well as the ones he makes without my (ahem) assistance, but I'm pretty chuffed with myself! I can make soft and hard cheese! It's like a Lancashire in appearance, but it isn't matured, so the flavour is very mild. Tomorrow we will have to have homemade cheese on homemade bread: bliss!

Sunday was Father-in-Law's birthday, and last week I took Sausages to Studio Scribbles to make him a present. I let him choose the item and paint it himself. What does a two-and-a-half year old think his Grandad might like for his birthday? A ceramic spoon of course! He managed a brush for the front, but the back is mostly finger-painted. Grandad loved it, of course, and has promised to use it for his cheese making adventures. We've really been reveling in family life this week, and feeling blessed in each other. Does anything in particular ever prompt you to reflect on the same?

E

P.S. There was also lots of knitting, baking and yarn dyeing this week, but that will have to wait for tomorrow. A blogging cliffhanger, of sorts.