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! 

Birthday BBQ's and Bakes

A few weekends back we headed to Shropshire for my mom's birthday.  This was the view that greeted us from our bedroom window! Of course it helped that we had amazing sunny weather all weekend too.  Yes, England in the sunshine is pretty spectacular - it's a pity that sunshine is as infrequent as it is! 

I told my dad the massive purple flowers in the front garden were amazing, he said what purple flowers.  What flowers? They are all over our garden!! Apparently once I referred to them as Rhododendrons he realised what I was on about.  

I stumbled upon these enormous Tulips! have you ever seen such big Tulips? I hadn't, so I just had to snap a picture of them looking all lovely basking in the sunlight! 

When the birthday girl got home from work it was time for the present opening to begin.  Flower arranging books a la Paula Pryke, sticks of Droewors (a South African meat) and Root Beer Floats made my mom a very happy birthday girl indeed! 

As did this rustic jug that she got from my dad, and if you'd known the presents he's got her in the past you would be as surprised as we were that he actually did pretty well this year! She promptly went downstairs and arranged one of the bouquets of flowers she had received at work along with some greenery from the garden and came up with this lovely arrangement - yeah she's a bit of a pro! 

and we ended the night by all indulging in a piece of my mom's favourite dessert - Key Lime Pie! 

On Saturday, we headed over to Weston Park.  I have no idea why the grand house was flying the American flag, but it certainly made me happy to see it! 

Here is a pic of my mom just before she made her amazing discovery of some 'ancient' coins! Yes, she found a pile of coins on the ground and was sure they were going to make her a small fortune.  Upon closer inspection By realised they were 2p's and one of them even had the date of 1992 on it...ancient indeed! We laughed about that for a while and teased her for the rest of the day but she put them in her bag and is convinced that they are going to be of worth to someone...some day! 

For the tree lover in our family, that's Byron, he was loving all these huge unusual trees that surrounded us.  

Dad was less enthused, haha.  No, he's just been in the wars recently and so all the walking around was taking it's toll on him.  We left him resting under this tree for a while and picked him up later! 

You can't really see but in the shadows underneath that tree were loads of deer just chilling out, I think they were shading themselves from the hot sun! 

The happy couple...soaking up the sun...

and By was loving it too - we haven't had many shorts and t-shirt kind of days recently so when they come around you just have to make the most of them! 

Of course if you're South African that means having a braaivleis so that's exactly what we did! 

Boerewors and all...because nothing says braaivleis more than Boerie rolls! 

My new flowery headband, courtesy of By.

I whipped up a pineapple and carrot salad, to complete our S.A theme! and my mom whipped up a mango and avocado salad.

We brought a little taste of America to our evening with Root Beer Floats because no Jones family fun is complete without them! 

Here are the South Africans, enjoying the fruits of their labours...

and just to finish off our weekend of tasty bakes, my mom made a traditional South African Granadilla Fridge Tart.  Her mom used to make it for her growing up, and I don't know why she's waited so long to make it for us because it was amazing! I can see it making plenty of appearances in the future!