7QT - "Date Night Recipe"

In honour of a an extremely rare event, here are seven quick takes of our frugal-ish date "night" plans for tonight. Thank you Granny and Granda for a couple of hours of not-talking-to-each-other-staring-at-a-screen-romance!

1. Fill a zip-lock style bag with copious amounts of junk food gleaned from your son's Christmas sweets and a recent hormone-inspired grocery shop. Add a bottle of tap-water.

2. Pack up a box of leftovers from last night's dinner and some fresh-cut peppers, along with several puzzles and toy cars.

3. Take two doting grandparents and deliver leftovers, toys and a rambunctious three-year-old to their house.

4. Do not give them the junk-food!

5. Drive to the cinema to catch the afternoon (read: cheaper) showing of "Night at the Museum: we've filmed this one in London"

6. Eat junk food, drink tap water and feel a little smug that you didn't have to sell a kidney in order to enjoy a snack at the movies.

7. Collect munchkin and drive home in time for his bedtime. Continue date with a later leftovers/cereal dinner and the newer BBC version of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown DVDs. Bliss.

Now head back to This Ain't The Lyceum for Kelly's seven quick takes before the sick hits the floor. (31)

7QT - Seven Happy Thoughts to Help Me Fly

I need an uplift, a thrust to get me off the ground so here are my Peter Pan-esque happy thoughts to help me fly...

1. My gorgeous little boy James (dry during the day since twenty-three months) has returned to consistent dry naps (after a significant break, enough to reinstate nappies at naptime) and had one dry night this week, while also sleeping through, a complete first! Well done J!

2. My Hubs!

3. James singing all his favourite Christmas songs - Away in a Manger, Christmas Cards, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Dingle Bells (not a typo - he can't quite manage to say jingle yet). And the latest additions to his repertoire - One Man went to Mow and Ten Green Bottles.

4. My mattress - the best financial investment we ever made!

5. Mums (and Dads) - as one of my best friends buried her mother this morning, I can't be anything but grateful for my own and wept with my friend and can only pray for God's peace upon her and her family. My own mama enjoyed spoiling my son for a record five hours (I hardly ever leave him) while he entertained her and Daddy.

6. Mobile-entertainment-units aka children - playing peekaboo with my (newly mobile) eight-month-old niece yesterday and watching James playing the air-banjo and air-double-bass and trying (and failing) to do the splits and repeating his gymnastics warm-up (stick your bottom out, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle) for his grandparents, hearing all about new Frozen toys from my bereft friend's almost-four-year-old. Well, they can't fail to raise a smile.

7. James managing to say his Uncle Johnny's name for the first-time ever on Wednesday! Uncle Ronnie has evaporated with his developing speech - this sentimental mama is cheering him on even as she sheds a tear for another milestone reached.

So seven (almost) happy thoughts and here's to a more positive week ahead as we re-focus on all those resolutions we've already broken...

Now fly back to Never-never-land This Ain't the Lyceum for more quick takes and good reads. (55)