Blackberry picking day!

So here is our first blog post, and we're kicking it off with a busy day of blackberry picking and baking!  My morning was spent tidying up and ironing while the two eldest monkeys watched tv and played horses and cars and the littlest monkey slept as is her usual activity in the mornings.  Lunch was very boring corned beef sandwiches, but afterwards we packed our backpacks with empty plastic tubs, pulled on our fleeces, I put baby Hannah in the sling and off we went to the lane at the end of the village.

It's just a lane giving tractors access to some fields, but hardly anyone ever goes down there and a few years back, Harry and I discovered that there were a LOT of blackberry bushes all the way down.  We stopped for a bit of hide and seek on the way...

...and then we got to the blackberries!  Lots of fat, black juicy berries, interspersed with stinging nettles.  After a few stings (mainly me) we picked a heap of blackberries. A lot were eaten, most of the boys' tubs in fact!

But luckily I had picked enough for all of us to take home.

And there were certainly enough for the crumble, though we added apples and pears as well.  This is it before it went into the oven, but no photos of afterwards as we took it along to my mother-in-law's for after dinner as the boys were having tea there.

It was lovely with hot custard, but I think next time I need to put more butter in the crumble topping as it was slightly powdery, and more oats as well.  I might try adding some chopped nuts too. 

So after a chaotic time at Nana's (two younger cousins were also there and a bed bouncing game quickly ensued) we headed home to put Hannah to bed, have a quick milk and biscuit and an episode of Tom and Jerry before two little monkeys went sleepily off to bed.

So now, I am sitting here watching the X Factor with a nice glass of wine and my crochet, and feeling that it has been a good day all round.

Hope you had a lovely autumn day too!