coffee – the joy of five

This time of year is never my friend! I get depressed by the weather, long for brighter and longer days and generally spend the whole of January and February wishing away the minutes until the start of spring.

I am however hoping that this new series of ‘Celebrating The Small Things’ I started last week is going to bring a bit of joy to the next few gloomy months ahead.

This week I have picked a couple of my favourite moments that have involved things I don’t get time to enjoy as often as I would like.

One On One Time: With five children this is certainly something I don’t get the chance to do as often as I would like so I cherish them everytime I get the chance.
We took a trip to Southbank to an event where Frankie got to meet some of his favourite characters from the Cartoon Network show – We Bare Bears and we both sampled delicious coffee that had been expertly poured and topped with incredible latte art.
Aside from having to take some pics whilst I was there we spent the rest of the morning completely screen free, talking about all those radom things that run through the mind of a six year and and really just enjoying each other.

Healthy Changes On Track: For those of you that are followers of my blog you will know that the past few years have gained an ever expanding waistline with my change in career.
Its something I’ve been battling with for a long time now and this week I feel that I’ve finally broken the cycle and things have got back on track.
There have been no faddy diets, I’ve just cut out the rubbish and reduced my portion sizes, I have got back into all the exercises I love such as spinning and kickboxing and have been feeling and seeing the benefits both physically and mentally.

Getting An Insight Into School Life: When your children set off to school they spend over half their day in the care of somebody else and we have very little insight into what they get up to; and if your children are anything like mine they aren’t to free with letting you know what they do either.
At the beginning of the week I wasn’t to excited about the thought of having a meeting at the school, but was pleasantly surprised when we got the chance to join the children in the classroom to see what they get up to during their working day.
It was so lovely to see Frankie interacting with his peers, thumbing through textbooks and asking questions on things he was coming across and seeing how much he has come on during his short time at school.

A few weeks ago I was asked along to the Kenwood and DeLonghi press preview.

I am a sucker for kitchen gadgets and live off copious amounts of coffee so this was right up my street!

Upon arriving at the venue in West London I was greeted by rooms full of super enthusiastic people all ready to show what off these great new gadgets could do.

My first stop was to see Simon from Pasta Remoli. We had met before whilst I was doing a review for his wonderful restaurant and I knew that he would be full of passion whilst demonstrating how to make georgous, fresh pasta using the Kenwoods Chef Sense food processor.

I was initially really taken with the wonderful colours they came in that would look wonderful on any kitchen worktop.

The food processor comes with a huge array of attachments including the pasta maker that Simon was demonstrating.

He made sheets of perfect pasta with ease that were then turned in to the tastiest tortellini I’ve tried.

From here I sampled some healthy smoothies and delicious ice cream, all of which took minutes to make.

The whole range of Kenwood applicances were easy to use and more than pleasing on the eye. The food processor has been firmly placed on top of my Christmas list.

From here I was taken on a real coffee journey from roasting my own beans to enjoying the finished product with a slice of cake.

My eyes were opened up to what an intricate process it takes to get that cup of coffee we all grab to start our day.

We have been looking at coffee machines for a while now and after being introduced by DeLonghi’s new super machine any other will have a lot of living up to!

All of their machines produce fabulous coffee in a few easy steps, even for a technophobe like me.

The top of range machine has the best feature I have seen before though. A downloadable app can be set up so that you can have your own truly personalised coffee at the touch of your iPad screen.

Think back to the ‘teas made’ era and here you have the much improved version.

I came home with my head buzzing with new ideas and a huge lists of gadgets I would love to try out in the future.