A Fun Filled Foodie Weekend for Mara's Bday!

When the Jones family get together you can guarantee there is always going to be lots of food involved, it's just how we roll! Mara's pre-birthday celebration was no different! Her actual birthday is this weekend but since she's getting off to Copenhagen (lucky her!) we celebrated last weekend in Shropshire instead.

We headed to Shropshire for the day because Mara had picked Tropeiro as her restaurant of choice for her birthday meal - we went a few years back for By's birthday and loved it then! and have been wanting to go back ever since! because what's not to love about an endless supply of delicious meat! 

It was green cards all round so that when the meat man came round he knew to pile it on our plate - por favor! 

Ella really got the hang of things and was joining in the scoffing! 

The resident veggie holding up her 'no thanks' red card and sticking with a plate of salads instead!

Ella was like 'all that meat for me?!'

She got stuck in with her tongs!

After a spot of shopping we headed to the Ice Cream Farm, another family fave! because despite a never ending feast of meat…there's always room for dessert! 

Ella rode a cow before we headed in - check her sticking up hair in the back! it just didn't want to go down that day! too cute! 

and she continued her tractor tour of Shropshire/Cheshire! I think this is her 7th one!

Swinging fun with Auntie Mara and Granny! but be prepared if you do it with her once she'll want it again and again! 

Checking out the chickens!

and finally settling on some tasty flavours inside!

Ella was perfectly situated between Daddy and Auntie Mara so she would point to Auntie Mara and get a little spoonful of her ice cream and then point to Daddy and get a big lick of his cone, and then repeat, repeat, repeat! After a while she decided she preferred Auntie Mara's flavour and just pestered her continually with 'more, more, more' she is quite the little ice cream fiend these days!

Once back at home, Mom crafted this bunting and we got all her presents ready...

By improvised without a blindfold and used his jumper to guide her up the stairs so she didn't know what was coming! 

and then I produced the cake I'd 'secretly' been making in the kitchen - nothing is ever too secret in our open plan house though! and we sung happy birthday and laughed as she attempted to blow out the candle - there was no blowing out that beast though! 

Smiles all round…but really we were desperately waiting for a piece of the cake! 

a banana special (Mara's a big banana fan) with chocolate cream cheese frosting and flakes and mini gummy bananas plus banana chocolate bark on top! because you can't have a birthday without an over the top cake - it's a must!

It was the best kind of weekend!

Ella's 1st Halloween

So we couldn't let Ella's 1st Halloween pass by without a fuss! and let's blog about it before Christmas arrives! 

 When she was just a newborn her Granny Kathy bought her those little pumpkin booties as a gift, and so I planned the rest of her outfit around those! and our little baby pumpkin was born! 

She loved the goggle eyes! and I'd hold her up in the mirror so she could see them shake around!

I gave her these little baby pumpkins to hold...

and you know how it goes!

I feel like this squint face is such an Ella face right now! 

I have always wanted to go to a pumpkin patch! Even when we were in Vancouver I was desperate to go, but the day we had planned to go it poured with rain and so we gave it a miss and I was always sad we didn't make it! 

I always see American and Canadian bloggers posting pictures of these amazing looking pumpkin patches and have always been so jealous that we didn't have anything like that over here!

So when I read online about a place in Shropshire near my parents that had started growing pumpkins each Halloween I knew I wanted to pay it a visit! 

It was pretty far from our house here in Wales, but as luck would have it the Saturday before Halloween Byron had a church meeting somewhere near Chester which then meant the pumpkin patch, Malpas Pumpkins, was only 40 minutes from there...so our day out was planned!

I had assumed it was just going to be a field of pumpkins and not much more so was pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find that they'd put a bit more effort into it than that!

We started off in the corn maze!

with plenty of ghoulish looking characters around every corner!

We met my parents and sister since it was only about 20 minutes from their house and so Ella got some bonus Granny time!

Look at that sticking out tongue - so cute!

Another Granny bonus meant we got a pic of the three of us for once!

Ella never tires of a ride on the shoulders!

She loved getting up close and personal with all the characters checking them out, and wasn't a bit scared!

Even of the pirate one!

She liked pulling this guys hair!

and then we emerged from the maze to this little patch of pumpkins! Funnily enough, I later found out there was a much larger pumpkin field on the other side of the maze which we missed altogether! but we were still pretty impressed with what we saw on the day!

My mom found this baby pumpkin, perfect Ella size!

I think Ella had just twigged that she'd been dressed up to look like the giant orange things on the ground surrounding her! 

My favourite part of the day was loading up our wheelbarrow with our picked out pumpkins, along with an extra stowaway! 

and off she went, being wheeled around like lady muck! 

Granddad's photography skills clearly need a bit more work ;) but I'll take a photo of the 3 of us any day even if it means chopped off legs and babies looking the wrong way! 

Ella was having a little chat with a fellow stowaway in a passing wheelbarrow! and that was it! We exited the patch, and paid for our 2 pumpkins (£3.50 each) and it was £1 per person to go through the maze in the first place...so not too bad for quite a fun little afternoon out! There was a bouncy castle and face painting and little stalls for kids to buy things from with snacks and drinks too. So for our first visit to an English pumpkin patch it wasn't too bad at all! and the funniest part was when we exited the patch into the main farm there were crowds of people gathered around all staring at Ella in the wheelbarrow and talking about her! it was almost like she was a little pumpkin celebrity!!! 

Of course no trip to Cheshire is ever complete without a pit stop at the Ice Cream Farm! Our family loves this place! 

With flavours like white chocolate, raspberry and Oreo - how can you not! 

Ella was especially pleased because we finally got to try out some new play equipment! We go to the playpark every day in our village but the only thing she can go on is the swings...so it was nice to have something different for a change!

In fact I'm not sure who was having more fun - Daddy or Ella! 

and the little pumpkin slept nearly the whole trip back to Wales! It's hard work being such a cute pumpkin I tell you!

Tex Mex Tuesday: Lupita & a Bank holiday in Wales

Our Mexican Monday adventures could no longer happen on a Monday due to the time constraints of getting to FHE on time...so we had to pick a new day and for the sake of alliteration it had to be one that we could add a Mexican term too so Mara cleverly came up with Tex Mex Tuesdays! 

Last week we found ourselves at Lupita, in Charing Cross Road area, they were 4th in the top 20 Mexican restaurants so we were expecting big things.

It was crazy busy when we arrived at around 7ish, they didn't have any tables free so we sat at the bar area where you could watch the chef's cooking everything right in front of you.  We could also watch the screen where all the orders came in on and we should have known then how the evening would progress but we were hungry for Mexican so we stuck it out.

I had a delicious mango and honey juice and Mara had a Horchata - a traditionally Mexican almond and rice milk drink. 

The service was absolutely terrible, we had to wait at least 20 minutes before our order was even taken and the drinks took a long time to arrive too.  My starter of tortilla chips never arrived, well they were going to try and give it to me after I'd had dessert but I politely declined! 

Luckily for us, the food was amazing! 

Mara had the namesake 'Lupita' Tortas - a Mexican sandwich filled with a chicken escalope, ham, chorizo, avacado and refried beans...

and I had the pork and bacon Taco, that had been cooked on a rotating spit served with pineapple - it was delish! 

and we had the most amazing Churro's I've ever tasted! The Churro's were that good that they made the whole terrible Lupita experience worth it! 

Having said that they definitely need to up their game for service, the staff including the manager (who was the one who forgot my tortilla starter) were running around like headless chickens and seemed completely out of their depth - they are not going to win any awards running a restaurant like that! 

On the way home we stopped off at Cyber Candy in Covent Garden, because we couldn't not grab a root beer! plus they had loads of amazing new chocolates and sweets like Coconut Twix and Dairy Milk mint filled Rolo type chocs! 

On Thursday night I had a late night baking sesh in preparation for our weekend in Shropshire, if you want to try your hand at baking Mini Coconut Cream Pies, Key Lime Pie Cupcakes or Coconut & Banana Bread you can find the recipes here

We headed to Shropshire on Friday night with all the family descending to have a double celebration of Mom & Dad's May birthday's.

Here is Mom opening her hamper of goodies, with a cheek full of Biltong!

and here she is showcasing her Key Lime Pie Cupcakes - one of her favourite flavours! 

and my coconut loving Dad didn't miss out, he got a Coconut & Banana Birthday Bundt cake which he was pretty pleased with.

We decided to give the boys another shopping free weekend and so we headed to Stapeley Water Gardens.

The flowers were quite incredible! have you ever seen a pink and orange bougainvillea? my mom was quite amazed! 

We saw some Meerkats, which pleased By greatly since they're his favourite animal.  I love that we snapped this one in his little lookout position.

By got involved with the spider holding action...

it was a tarantula but apparently it was the least scary kind! 

We heard a few stories about snakes and what great 'pets' they make, and then the cockroaches came out and that's where I draw the line.  I had more than my fair share of them in Turks and Caicos so I wasn't about to hang around and listen to what fantastic creatures they are...no thanks! 

We finished off our Bank holiday weekend by visiting the quaint little railway town of Llangollen.

It was really picturesque, and just to please my Gran in South Africa we managed to drag Alli (my photo hating sister) into the picture! 

That cute little church and rolling green hills made for a very pretty scene.

and we snapped a pic sitting on the station benches.

Back to the 3 sister shot again...

and we even managed to catch the old steam train in action!

and ended the day perfectly with some ice cream and shakes!

Now it's back to work..boo! Hope you all had fun filled Bank holiday weekends too!