Cycling freedom #motivationalmonday #themondayclub

Having five young children its always been fairly hard to actually be in a place where we can take them all cycling. There has always been one at that in between stage of being too big for a seat on the back of an adult bike but too small to be able to cycle independently without stabilisers etc etc.

Being as my OH is a bit of a bike nut, rides his bike to work every day, all the kids who are school age have been riding their bikes confidently without stabilisers since around the age of 4…it seems crazy that as a family we haven’t at least tried to do more! But the big draw back? I didnt have a bike. Until recently. We took the plunge and invested in a bike for me and so far we have had two bike riding days out with the kids.

Its a great way of getting out and about with the kids. Its cheap, green and you can cover some really quite large distances. So its lovely to make a day of it.

At the moment we have our two youngest still on kiddy seats on adult bikes. But im sure it wont be long before our 4 year old will be wanting a bit of her own independence!

Its easy to find dedicated cycleways and we discovered a long and flat route locally and this week we took off for an afternoon to attempt a little bit of it.

The kids had a great time and the KM just flew by without them even noticing that they were getting exercise! Made a lot easier by the fact that they had a couple of friends with them as well, so there was much laughing and giggling as we rode through the countryside.  We came across a skate park on our route and the kids all had a go on their bikes. Those ramps are steep and probably not the best place for a toddler. She played chicken with them most of the time and gave us a couple of near heart attacks as she dodged the bikes flying towards her!

We finished the ride of with hot chocolate on the beach, courtesy of the kelly kettle and it was a pretty good end to Father’s day.

🙂

these two in the first picture are my oldest and youngest…people always say how alike they are. er…yep. some family resemblence!! 🙂

 

My giveaway this week is rolling over from last week as it is such a great one! A fabulous Hotel Chocolat gift box, have you tasted their chocolate? It is amazing! Just follow the rafflecopter and don’t forget you can still enter to win a gorgeous luxury box from LUSH and help out the guys at the incredible charity beonpercent. Thank YOU!

 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Motivational MondaySpring Carnival themondayclub

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#silentsunday


Team LloydOneDad3GirlsTheBoyandMe's 365 Linky

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#satcap *the week before britmums* shhhhh

This is an interesting one this week. What he actually was saying to me was in itself pretty funny! Can you guess? Don’t forget to rock over to Mammasaurus to catch some more!

 


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Lens love challenge #mamarazzi #photography101#CountryKids

I am very very lucky to have a few lenses which i really really love but i don’t use that often. I have my work horses that pretty much do just that, they are functional, do the job and i have three lenses which are never far from my camera bag. They are the 50mm 1.4 ( this is the mid-range) 24-105 f4.0 ( my go to studio lens and its pretty good for days out as it has a bit of a zoom) and the daddy 70-200mm F2.8 ( this is a killer lens in both quality and size) Out of the three it is the one i use least for personal use but when im shooting for a client..it is pretty much the front runner. every.single.time.

I know there will be people out there thinking ‘well why dont you use it for personal use if its that good?’

One reason…

well five..actually 😉

It is a very heavy and valuable lens and when we are on days out and have all the kids, their stuff, the packed lunch, the dog, uncle tom cobbly and all along with me..adding the stress of a large lens bouncing around on my hip and threatening to give a small toddler a head injury..its just not going to happen. You have to be sensible about lenses when you are talking capturing your own family memories. A large, monster of a lens that might be fabulous but gives you chronic back pain is going to be left at home in favour of your iphone.

Go..on..you know im right. 😉

Getting something that works for you is the key.

Anyway there is a point somewhere.

So one of my lenses that i am lucky enough to have on a borrow from my dad is the 15mm Fisheye.

It is beautiful even down to its perfectly styled non-plastic camera cap. Really..its metal. I dropped it on the floor at the Olympic games (the cap not the lens!!) and the lady in front thought id drop a flask or a mug of coffee!  Its small but mighty and i love it. One of the things that i regularly do with the lenses that i dont use that often is challenge myself to only shoot with that lens for a day, a week or a couple of days…some time..so that i get used to using the lens and also a new way of looking at my composition and imagery.

This is SO worth doing. It really stretches you and takes you out of your comfort zone, you might even find that you fall in love with a new type of lens and way of shooting your subject. I know its more money and camera equipment is super expensive as it is BUT it will give you experience of getting an idea of just how different these lenses are and what they can do to an image. I get asked all the time..’So what is actually the difference between these lenses then?’ I went a bit more in depth about that here 

Here is your chance to find out!

I know not everyone has access to more than one lens BUT there are companies that hire out these lenses for a few days and they are not that scary prices either. I would totally recommend shopping around and grabbing something that maybe you are toying with the idea of owning or maybe even you just want to see what they would be like for the hell of it.

Its playtime 🙂

Some companies worth thinking about are: lensesforhire lenspimp lensfettish

Thats just a few, there are loads out there!

So.. here is what i got up to. It was an awful day today and it rained…a lot..so we went for a quick bike ride and fed the ducks. The thing about the rain is it makes the greens take on an luminosity that is so attractive..which is probably the only good thing about rain…well you know apart from that we need water to live ‘n all 😉

This post is linking up with the Country Kids too…so welcome all linky followers!

Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

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Lemon Biscuits.

I Love the flavour of lemon its one of my favourite flavours, especially in cakes and biscuits. Which means that when we pick up some lemons in the weekly shop then there is going to be some lemon drizzle cakes, lemon biscuits galore! Very tasty and very very easy to make.

These lovely little biscuits are very easy to make with the kids. This is one thing that my kids love to do is ‘help’ with some baking. They all love to have a go and get mucky. Which is good for them although sometimes leaves me twitching as i try to stand back and let them get on with it!

To make these lovely little biscuits you will need:

125gms butter (at room temperature ) or in the case of my house because butter left out of the fridge gets fingers and other things poked into it use the microwave to soften up the butter in a flash. 

100gms caster sugar

I free range egg

zest of 2 lemons

1/4 teaspoon of baking powder

1 pinch of sea salt

200gms plain flour

 

For dusting: plain flour for dusting and 3 tablespoons of demerara sugar.

 

Method:

 

beat the butter and sugar in a bowl with a mixer until creamy. Beat in the egg until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Add the flour and the lemon zest, baking powder and salt and mix in until you have a ball of dough.

Then important bit! Cover and place in the fridge and leave it for 2 hours ( hard bit to do when you have a toddler hassling y

ou for cookie cutting stage!)

When ready, heat your overn to 180degreesC. Roll out the dough on a floured surface until about 1/2cm thick.

Cut out shapes (we do circles) and then put on greaseproofed tray. Sprinkle with demerara sugar nad bake for 10-12 minutes until the edges are light brown.

 

 

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