Pat and Kevin came on another grand European adventure together just before Easter, stopping in London, Dublin, the south of Spain and Cambridge of course.

They’re on their way back to Vancouver tomorrow and I’m glad we got to spend some quality time with them and that they brought the sunshine over to us. Suffice it to say, it was fantastic to catch up with them both and to show them around as best as we could….and no better way than on bike and by punt.

Safe home to you both and make sure to come back soon!

I love learning new things but lately I haven’t really taken the time to learn to actually do anything completely new. We bought a sewing machine a couple of weeks ago so we could both get stuck into something a little different and also to try to become a bit more self-sufficient. I tried my hand at repairing one of my skirts that had a hole in it and that worked out really well. But I was ready for a bit more of a challenge and Easter Monday afforded me a bit more time than normal to just sit myself down and figure some things out.

So I set about making myself a pouch for my ipod as a first project. I bought some really cool material in town, some pink felt for the inside and a nice patterned cotton for the outside. It took me a fair bit of time to practice actually sewing in a straight line on some scrap material and then I spent absolutely ages trying to figure out the button hole function with a lot of help from my wonderfully patient husband. The great thing is that I don’t have to glue my eyes to the instruction book to thread the machine anymore and it’s all becoming a bit more natural.

And at the end of Easter Monday night, I had actually created my own little pouch. It’s not perfect but it’s very pretty and functional and I learned a lot from the whole process. I’m also itching to get going on the next project, something slightly more challenging this time. I’ve found some great sewing blogs lately that have given me lots of inspiration and in the meantime I can keep making pouches, like the cute little tweed one I made for Ryan. It was supposed to be for his phone but it ended up being a bit on the tight side (tweed is an absolute nightmare to sew) so it’s now a pouch for some of his bike tools!

Watch this space – lots more creations to come…..

We had such a nice break over Easter and it was really great to stay in Cambridge, relax and spend time with friends. We fit a lot in to our four-day weekend and I felt refreshed going back to work again which is a really good feeling.

On Good Friday, our friend Martin organised a 50 km bike ride around the Cambridge countryside for his birthday. We got the best of the weather in the morning; it took us about 3 hours to complete and we headed back to Martin’s place for a hearty lunch afterwards. It’s the longest bike ride I’ve ever done before and I didn’t find it too strenuous although we were taking a pretty leisurely pace, except for Ryan and Martin’s friend Christian who went all out at the end and left us all behind in the dust. It was fun getting to know Martin’s friends and getting to see some more of the countryside. It still amazes me how quickly we can get away from cars and surround ourselves with green fields and we definitely need to do it more often.

Easter in Cambridge is a fantastic time for music and we treated ourselves to a concert at King’s College chapel on Saturday night along with two of my friends from work, Helena and Adam. It was a Haydn celebration and the chapel was completely packed. I thought the trumpet concerto was going to be the highlight of the concert but I enjoyed the choral music and solo singers a lot more. It’s such a wonderful setting to enjoy great music in and a great time of year to visit. So if anyone feels like a trip to Cambridge at Easter next year, make sure to let us know and we’ll be here for at least another 3 and a half years now that my PhD funding is all settled (more on that at a later date).

I was excited all week about having an Easter egg hunt in our back garden but I had no idea just how much fun it would be and I think it will have to be one of our family traditions from here on in. Helena and Adam came over early-ish on Sunday so we could get started on the egg hunting, dinner making and egg painting. Ryan was our Easter bunny and got stuck in hiding loads of little chocolate eggs and three special chocolate bunnies all over the garden and then the three of us let loose like little kids with our homemade newspaper baskets. We spent the rest of the day feasting on delicious starters (a cheese ball and Czech open-face sandwiches courtesy of Adam), getting our delicious leg of lamb dinner ready (well Ryan did pretty much most of the work, and what a wonderful job he did) and blowing out eggs so we could paint them to our hearts’ content. And we finished the evening off watching a movie and demolishing Ryan’s homemade onion dip and chips. Absolutely scrumptious!

Easter 2010 in Cambridge anyone?!