On a lighter note, we had a great party in the park for L. on Sunday celebrating his 2nd birthday. We met in Putney Park, near the giant sand pit with the huge climbing frame. There was something for everyone - views of the boat studded river, sun and shade areas, slippery slides in all sizes and plenty of space to run around. I vote it my favourite park so far. The merry-go-round cake went down a treat - in the end I used a playdoh cookie cutter to create the little horses. The top section was made with shortbread and I found the trimmings from the 'Fix' shop which has sweet treats from all over the globe. The whole cake was on a turntable so it turned around - L. and all the other kids had a great time giving it a whirl. Cake pictured right...

We've started building - well - virtually, that is... I've been constructing the house in a free 3D modelling program called Google Sketchup. At the moment I'm having troubling getting all the windows in - and there are quite a few! I decided to skip ahead to a preview of sunlight and shadows on the house only to discover the program was defaulting to northern latitudes (what did I expect, I mean America is the centre of the world after all). This meant that the sun was on the wrong side of the house. So I selected the entire house and tried to spin the whole on an axis, but this took 10 minutes to happen and then the house would appear upside down on the screen. P. decided to have a go and being the computer whizz that he is, managed to find a way to download a Google map of our suburb and actually place the house model on the map - in the exact spot! Now the sun is in the right place and we can even choose different days and seasons to see what the shadows will look like - I just need to get the roof on now... I'll give you a geezer at it once I've done that - OK?