What a week...

It feels as though I haven't stopped rushing once this entire week.  Jake's schedule is keeping me pretty busy at the moment.  He's got extra lessons with his auntie twice a week, swimming twice a week and cricket once a week.  In between, we need to find time for homework and shopping and cooking.  As far as work goes, we've had our financial year end this week and every one needs everything urgently.  Thankfully, I only have a half day job.  So, life has been insane both at home and at work and I am exhausted.  Thank goodness it's Friday today, but our weekend doesn't hold much time for rest.  I have a kitchen tea tomorrow, Danie a bachelor's party and then we're off to watch the rugby at Newlands.  Sunday Jake has a birthday party from 3-6pm (it's might just actually kill me).

Breaking news is that Danie's had a jetty built at his house, which Jake absolutely loves.  I can't keep this boy inside when we're at Danie's house, he just wants to fish and fish.  I have all my fingers crossed that he'll eventually catch something of a decent size that we can actually cook it (boys have to clean it though), but for now he's learning a lot by practising his casting and doesn't seem to mind too much that he's not catching anything.  He was up at 6am last Saturday morning to spend time on the water's edge...

The jetty covers the entire front of the lawn, so it's pretty big.  We just need to get a pretty little table that we can take down to have snacks and drinks at hand for lazy evenings...

Jake's also been working on cubs badges again, so hopefully he'll have another one or two to add to the 4 he's already got.  We've been working on his cooking badge and as part of it, he has to make a sweet.  As in fudge, or something along those lines.  We found a recipe for gummy bears, so decided to make them.  They're pretty easy, although a little messy, but heaps of fun for the kids.  Basically, you put 3/4 a cup of cold water in a pan, pour in 2 sachets of unflavoured gelatin (we used 2, because 1 was too soft for us), pour in a packet of flavoured jelly and leave it to soak for about 10 minutes...

 

 It'll end up looking like this...

 

 Next, you heat it up, stirring it until all the gelatin has dissolved.   The liquid will go clear...

 Put it into some kind of pouring device and pour into bear shaped chocolate moulds.  We had to go buy one and also got stars, dinosaurs and fish moulds...

 If you're eager, pop them into the fridge to set.  Takes about 5 minutes.  Then just peel the sweeties out of the moulds.  We didn't use any grease or power to dust the moulds and the sweets came out easily.  We did dust them with cornflour, because they were a little sticky.  You could use castor sugar or icing sugar too...

 Jake loved it and was thrilled with being able to make his own sweets, whatever shape he chose...

  

We ended up making 3 batches and they were gone by the next day.  We need to play around a little, but I'm pretty sure you could use fruit juice instead of the water and just add an extra packet of gelatin.  It was fun and pretty low effort.  A nice one for a rainy day... 

 I still don't have PhotoShop, so my pictures aren't great, but you'll get the idea.

Enjoy the weekend, I'm so relieved it's finally here, but by the end of it, I'm sure I'll be equally relieved to see Monday.

Take care!

Love Sue XXX