Friday and Saturday morning saw scenes of frenetic activity; cleaning, cleaning, cooking, shopping and more cooking and cleaning. The reason was all down to preparation for my latest (and probably first) fundraising initiative: the Pennington Pop-Up Charity Restaurant.
I don't have the biggest of houses when it comes to useful ground floor living space, but we still managed to move furniture and borrow tables in order to turn our living room very effectively into a restaurant for the evening. The theme was French February and the bookings were reasonably healthy - or so i thought! at 8.15pm i emailed a friend of mine to check the family were still coming. 'No, that's March!' She said. Whoops! Entirely my fault for not reading the email properly, and so our evening for 12 was now an evening for 7. Nevertheless, I am pleased to report that everyone thoroughly enjoyed the food and the evening.
I did confess (after a couple of glasses of wine myself) that the creme brulees were attempt number 2 made by The Other Half. Mine were a disaster. They didn't set at all and were duly rinsed down the sink. C'est la vie!
We raised just over £200 which is not too bad considering it was the first one and a true experiment. We are now looking forward to Mexican March! At least I know for sure that i have a table for 5 booked already :)
Sunday was a wash-out of course. We had turned the restaurant back into a home by 8am and with the boys gone for a day of sport, and Girlie revising for exams upstairs I turned to doing some research on desert life.............I sat down wrapped in a duvet with chocolate within easy reach and watched Lawrence of Arabia on the big TV - awesome!
A very satisfactory weekend!
