Sunday afternoon

I'm just about to make myself a cup of tea and as a special Sunday afternoon treat, watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (for the Aged & Beautiful) again, which is a lovely film about a group of more advanced citizens who end up in India. The cast includes Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench amongst others - and if  you haven't seen it, you simply must.  

It's been another good week and although we seem to end up in a little puddle of exhaustion by Friday, we are definitely starting to adjust to the hours and "full-on-ess" of running our own business with a busy family. The bakery is getting better and better everyday.In the past week we've added rosemary seasalt foccacia, soda bread and carrot cake to our daily list. On Friday we made white chocolate mousse cake, rose madelaines (having one now with my tea, gorgeous) blackberry & star anise friands and little sea dollar sugar biscuits.

The amazing news news is (and we're feeling very cautious about getting too optimistic just to have our hopes dashed) but we may have found our perfect little outlet/cafe. We will know in the next few days and then  the hard work REALLY begins - as we pretty much have to gut the place and redo it ourselves at night and over weekends, due to our miniscule budget. The children are just about to add paint stripping and plastering to their growing list of business skills they are acquiring along with grating, icing and carrying.

We've had a very social weekend too: A big braai on Friday night which turned into a complete party and which was a fairly painful way to start Saturday morning and then some friends around for dinner last night here, which was a lovely evening.   Most of our affairs are very informal with children usually banging around somewhere, but last night we polished the silver and got out the good glasses.  For some reason I always think that souffles are the epitome of Grown Up Dinner Parties, although this may be because I grew up in the Seventies, but Tyler executed a rather brilliant cheffy recovery, after I botched the tart citron and he whipped it up into a delicious lemon souffle - which felt a bit serendipitous.

Another highlight of the week was receiving my nephew Myles's cookbook at the post office. Felt very emotional as I read it and seeing Jane & Myles in it. They have a lovely restaurant on the West Coast of Ireland in Strandshill, Co. Sligo and have worked extremely hard and done so well. A lot of the illustrations are done by Myles's sister Paula, who lives in Melbourne (we are scattered to the 4 corners, we really are) so a real family affair.

OK, off to go and fall asleep on the sofa.