A weekend of South African fun!

So a few weekends ago my aunt Diane from Cape Town came to visit.  We hadn't seen her in 16 years! and so I really felt like we were getting to know her for the first time.  It was super exciting! so we all headed to Shropshire for a little reunion!

Luckily we had one rain free day! so we headed into Shrewsbury and started out at The Quarry.  Apparently my aunt was very relieved to find such beautiful gardens when we arrived, and not a hole in the ground with lots of large rocks...I guess it's a misleading name!

They keep the gardens so immaculate and every flower bed was bursting with colour, ever year they plant the exact same flowers in the exact same place.

We then made a trip to our favourite bakery, Shrewsbury Bakehouse.  Diane surprised us all by ordering some bread pudding, we didn't know she was a fan! Apparently Grandad Dallender used to love it too so that was fun to learn!

We stuck to our favourite raspberry and white chocolate danish pastries...they are super delish!

After browsing around a few of our favourite gift/homeware shops, we stopped in at a vintage fair inside of the cathedral.  Diane runs her own vintage shop so she was keen to look around. There was a fifties style vintage singer who was serenading us all with some tunes.  Mom went to request 'We'll meet again' by Vera Lynn and here the sisters are enjoying it above! The funniest part was when the singer made a shout out to the lady at the back who hadn't seen her sister for '60 years'!! She had misheard the 16 part...we're not quite sure how old she must have thought Mom was for them not seeing each other for 60 years!!

We headed home to celebrate South African style with a big braai and so Byron - the best braaivleeis boy around grilled us up some super yummy meat! including tons of boerewors which we had brought up from the South African shop in Milton Keynes...

and whilst the meat was cooking we had a few shoot outs in the front garden.

Mara proved to be the best shot amongst the girls,

and balloons proved to be the most fun targets!

Even Diane got involved!

and of course no family reunion at our house is complete without a dessert bar! Mel whipped up a delicious Canadian inspired dessert bar! 

We called it our 'hello/goodbye' dessert bar, hello to Diane and a farewell to me and By.  We were particularly impressed with the brownie pops filled with marshmallow fluff - they were super yummy.

and we all know A&W puts a smile on my face! 

Mara contributed some Rocky Road Brownies

and Mel went all out and whipped up these maple syrup flavour cookies, complete with maple leafs and everything!

It was quite a spread! South African meats and salads and mango Rubicon at one end of the table, and sweet treats and root beer at the other end!

Let's take a closer look at those ribs! yeah we know how to party!

The next day I wanted to take more family pics, but only remembered to do so as we were all saying goodbye and there were a few too many tear streamed cheeks so no one was really up for getting their photo taken! so I'll leave you with another scrummy food pic.  Just before we all headed home, Mom (along with Arne's help) whipped up this amazing paella complete with crayfish, prawns, mussels, chicken, chorizo and squid.  

It was a fun foodie filled weekend at the Jones', just how we like them!