Happy Birthday Nanny

Take one cute smiley face and the inevitable poppy. Mix them together and you have a birthday card for Nanny!

knitting projects

Lizyloo sent me this wonderful knitting kit - a bag and a mouse - and I finally finished today! I'm not sure about the safety of my sewing though so I may need to wait a few years until Belle is past that 'everything in mouth' stage until she gets to play with them!!! Thanks Lizyloo. xxx

Mmmmmm's

When we were little, we loved biscuits that we called "Mmmm's". I think they were Viennese Whirls but were loosely in the shape of an 'm' - hence our name for them!!! They were a treat and must have been quite expensive (compared to the family sized bucket of shop's own bourbons.) I have tried to re-create them as I haven't been able to buy them. Unfortunately I didn't have a large enough nozzle to make an 'M' shape so made a sort of swirly blob. They almost taste the same (I may need to practice a few more times !!) but I didn't have unsalted butter so made with salted and you can just about taste the salt - but they still taste yummy...Mmmmmmm!!!

Sleeping in the Sun

Molly loves to sun herself. Here she is on top of our small shed enjoying the rays.

A good cup of Coffee

I love a cup of coffee in the morning. If I was working from home I'd have one at my desk, and if I'd gone into the office again, I'd grab one to have at my desk. Then I would get caught up in e-mails, phone calls, customer issues, staff queries etc and I'd have a half a cup of cold coffee sitting there and not really remember drinking any of it.

We bought a coffee machine at home - one of those trendy expensive ones where you add a new 'pod' for each cup. It was rubbish. A number of problems with it

1. very expensive to buy

2. didn't get water hot enough

3. coffee tasted awful

4. you could only make one cup at a time (pain if you have 4-6 people round for coffee)

5. 'pods' were expensive

So we got rid of it and bought a relatively cheap coffee filter machine. Fantastic. Great coffee everytime from 1 cup to 10+.

Now I am at home with Belle I make a point of sitting down and having a cup of coffee (a big cup and saucer) without (too many!) interruptions. Bliss.

Harvest Time

Growing and eating your own food is so great - you get a real sense of achievement and you know what it has, or more importantly hasn't, been sprayed or treated with.
The last few weeks we have been enjoying peas (so sweet that it seems a waste to cook them so have been eating raw in salads), tomatoes, lettuces and cucumbers! The runner beans and french beans are coming along (planted these slightly later this year so that we didn't miss the crop when we went on holiday) and the greenhouse is nurturing aubergines and chillies. In addition we have grown lots of flat leafed parsley which we use loads of in our cooking and this has been a fantastic cropper. In some cases growing your own isn't that much cheaper than buying veg, given the soil and feeds that you buy, but the parsley has earnt it's place over and over. Still got carrots, broccoli and parsnips to enjoy..... Christmas Day when you go out and pick and cook your own parsnips is so great.