Ferris Bueller Has Nothing On Me

Days off mid week are utterly delicious. They are like stolen gems of time and are enormously more fun than a week-end. Those are simply days off for working all week. These are the days spent chasing those chores that slipped away when you came home too tired. Week days spent lounging are like a month of Sundays-rare, but even the thought of them make your toes wriggle with delight.


Tomorrow is one such day. Tomorrow is for hanging washing on the line outside, a big pot of tea and the papers. It is for a big breakfast and for a jaunt into town. It is for a look around the delis and charity shops. It is for tea and cake where ever we wish to visit. For garden centres and gardening. Tomorrow will be good.

The Great Comic Relief Bake Off

I have loved every episode of this show!!

The funniest thing i have seen in ages!

Can't wait to buy the booklet!  Job WELL DONE!

Welcome November

November time again and I find myself wondering where the year went. The jumpers have been brought out and freshened up from their exile on top of the wardrobe. There are so many pretty cosy things in the shops right now that it’s easy to stay warm and stylish in this weather. I find the prettiest clothes are always found in shops in the colder months, but then again if I could get off with cropped t-shirts and mini skirts I might think differently.
November is a busy time at home normally as the imagination has to be put into overdrive attempting to think up meals with the odd things found in the second freezer we’re trying to empty for Christmas food making an appearance. It’s busy as I never make enough gifts to give out and need to buy-and so this is the last month to realistically do shopping too.

November this year is quite different as we are moving. We need to be in the new place by the time our first advent calendar door is opening up and this means that our Christmas time stress has just been squared!

I hope you are all having a much better time pottering around and getting your lovely crafts sorted.

We are Moving

We have had an awful lot of going back and forth, but we have finally decided that we are going to move house. I am someone who is totally averse to change and as we don’t hate the place we’re in, that’s a good enough reason for me to want to stay. We have, however, been given an amazing opportunity and the chance to live in an area that I’ve been in love with since I found it.

There is going to be a little bit more stress attached to this move, as we only have the month of November to sort out two houses. The new one needs the walls to be plastered and skimmed throughout, sanded down and painted, there needs to be carpets put on floors and other floors buffed and polished. There are various cupboards that need fixing and an awful lot of tidying. The old house-where we live now-needs to be put back the way we found it which isn’t really a lot, but its an awful lot that needs packed up.

AND BREATHE….

TH has holidays to use up and so will use plenty of those to get everything in order. I have half a day to last me until the end of the year and so will not be following suit.

I can’t wait to get my laptop sorted and share some pictures with you. Its been broken for so long its really annoying as I have so many already, but time marches on and they become less relevant all the time!

Anyway-lots of change and impending stress soon….hope things are brighter where you are!

Making the House Warm

If it’s a bit passé to write “It was a dark and stormy night….,” can you write the same thing about the mornings? All of a sudden it’s become darker when I wake up each morning. Lamps are going on when once there was no need. We had a rainy summer time, but I never needed light to get me through to the kitchen for that first cup of tea.

This is when I start replacing lamps and moving them around the house. I’m a really big fan of salt lamps, and they’re so warming and send out such a pretty amber glow in the once gloomy corners I place them in.

Apparently they are good for clearing up some dampness in the air-which helps when you’ve just come back from a long walk with Daisy Dog. So they are my current favourite thing and will probably continue to be until the daffs start poking their heads above the soil again.

A Book to Inspire

Have you read The Book of Idle Pleasures? It is one of my favourites at the moment. I first read it about a year and a half ago and it was exactly my kind of read. I first read it when The Husband and I were in Edinburgh in early Spring. I’d been going through a tough time at work and was loosing my way and my priorities. We had an amazing time in Edinburgh and I spent a lot of time walking around with Daisy Dog and thinking about this book. It is full of short pages on ways to spend free time-or more importantly things that don’t cost very much and should be put into every day-to make each day better.

This book is certainly a ‘getting into the cosy seasons’ book and certainly makes me want to take a couple of days off to get into the garden and potter.

Anyone who has even spent 5 minutes on this blog will know I’m a cosy season’s sort of girl. And when the calendar rolled onto Saturday the first of September-certainly autumn in my opinion-The Husband and I decided to have the laziest of lazy days.

Pottering should be held with more regard, it should be thought of not as a bad thing, but a very, very good one. We were clearing up the back bedroom making it a calm and beautiful room again, letting the wonderful amber autumn light pour in through the windows. We plumped cushions, and picked up bits of treats Daisy Dog had long since discarded. We did what we wanted and what came naturally. It was a good day.

Soon to be Makes and a CK Fan!

When a new shop opens it always nice to go in and have a little look around, but when the new shop that opens is a Cath Kidston shop it really is quite a different thing for a girl like me.

I love the vintage, the floral and the pastel coloured look. I love the table linen, and pretty dresses. I love almost everything in that shop-and given half a chance (and lots of pennies) I’d carry bundles home with me after every visit.

When the new Autumn magazine dropped through the front door, I did what any normal girl would do. I made a big pot of tea and found a thick marker to circle things with. When I spotted that they are running sessions on making your own lampshade I lamented over the fact that these things never come this far North-oh but look, what joy! They do travel to Aberdeen! They travel all the way up to my local store! So with that information I marked in my big pink diary that I was to phone at 9am sharp to retain some tickets.

True to my word I was ringing at ten to, five to, on the hour…annoying the poor operator on the other end of the line….until….I got the tickets!

On the 19th I’ll be standing there with my besty Holly and with all the skill I can muster I will form my own lampshade only to carry home that little prized possession to show The Husband. Like a small child I will stand in the middle of the room-holding aloft my newest creation….oh and we get 15% discount on the night too (but those bags will be sneaked into the house).

Every so often I make myself a big pot of tea and plan to write on here. I get half way through describing a place I have been or a book I have read and I stop only to delete the paragraph, get up and start washing the dishes.

I do however spend time reading other blogs, which say, do and make many things I wish I could.

The Husband and I recently returned from a lovely two week holiday in Cyprus, and I guess very much like a New Year makes us say we will act differently, and I feel a break does the same.

This leads me to the point of why I wish to write on here now, and not get up half way through. I wish to say that I haven’t fulfilled many of my New Years Resolutions, and getting into my favourite season is going to spur me on to do what I actually want to do with my own free time.

My New Seasons resolutions are to use up the flexi days that I am entitled to through work. I am very lucky to be given an opportunity which not a great many have, so I will use it…and do you know that in my head they are already spent? I plan to potter, and potter a great deal. I plan to use up weekday holidays moving plant pots from one room to the other. I plan to use them by completing a great book in a day. I plan to drink plenty of tea.

Another resolution would include spending more quality time with The Husband, who falls into a category marked ‘other’ at present. We sit together when there is not another task to do, we walk together when there are not other people wanting our time and we collapse together when we are tired from the activities of the day.

I look forward to bringing these resolutions into the Autumn, and I also look forward to actually blogging in the season too.

There are still some things around..

Every where i pop my head in blogland there are some more Spring stories and pretty pastel flowers.  Up here in the North of Scotland its still a bit frosty and there is still sleet coming down on us every so often, we don't have any spring things yet or pretty pastel flowers.  We still have cold.  We still have wet, and inside of the house we've still got some decorations I've forgotten to take down....oops, bad luck.  So here they are now, not to be seen until the end of this year!

Lots of cook books, and a bit of home made decorations 

Darn flash!  I do love Paddington 

I love my cookbooks, very varied and good to read up and get lots of ideas from 

Even the cups got a little tinsel on them

This corner doesn't look too festive... 

oops, i spoke too soon! 

these lights are staying up, no matter what month it is, i love the light glow in the evening 

All the bags piled up on the sofa ready to go into the loft.  Poor rabbit, he cant see a thing! 

The tea shelf, just a wee bit of tinsel still hanging around.  I promise this week its all coming down, all the bits i thought id gotten earlier, I'll find and put up in the loft!

January is here!

Oh January, I used to think you awful. You used to be plain and boring after the excitement of December, November had Bonfire Night, October is our anniversary and Halloween, and before that is the general excitement of Autumn. January used to just be exam time at University, or thawing snow.

This year is really quite different. Not only is there no snow, but the garden is completely untended to, and although it’s mild, oh my gosh is it windy-and the whole place looks a mess. This is not helped by the fact the fence is half blown over, the gate has been whipped off, and rubbish is strewn across the place from toppled over bins and recycling totes, and a busy, busy Autumn meant the place was never really tidied after Summer in the first place.

This means that on top of the normal things like sowing sweet peas (if you want to get lovely strong ones), I need to dig everything over. I would like to grow my own potatoes this year too, so will have to get a move on and start to chit some of the many varieties taking up vast corners of garden centres at this time of year.

January is actually quite exciting this year. My friend Holly who was involved in a terrible accident has an amazing outlook on life which has completely rubbed off on me. I feel like last year was a bit ‘Urgh’, I think lots of people have thought that. There seems to be a general consensus-certainly around the coffee table-that yes we did get through it, and yes we should learn whatever lessons it’s taught us, but it was a bit of a long hard slog.

I think we are still in comforting food mode, but a bit more ready for fresh things with bite too. Re-heated second helpings of Christmas and New Year dinner are long forgotten! We’re planning on going on holiday with my family this year and getting a villa in Cyprus for two weeks, so like last year I think I'm going to be having lots of Greek and Cypriot food as we’ll be booking our flights early and I tend to get in holiday mode early…very early! There is loads of gamey foods available, and we’re incredibly lucky that our local butcher has such a wide supply of really good food. Living by the sea means that we’ve got a massive choice in fish namely; John Dory, Mussels, Oysters, Scallops and Turbot. There are bundles of root vegetables about for filling up on, and the clementine’s are always there for a burst of colour.  I'm living by the BBC foodie website here which is full of really great ideas from a range of really great names.

Most of all I think its time to get like Paddington Bear and make some marmalade with Seville oranges!

I'm hoping to have a busy year, I'm planning to go out and do more, this means lazing about less, but with working one normal job means I spend less time travelling. I hope that I'm busy actually doing fun things, or at least a chore I need to do. I don’t want to fill my time with travelling, I don’t want to fill my time with nonsense I don’t want to do, and I don’t want to spend time with people that drain my energy. Those are pretty much my new year’s resolutions-but probably something that you should subscribe to in general-and something I should have had the sense to actually act upon long before now.

Christmas no more

Goodbye tree and presents sitting underneath

you're not there anymore, you're not sitting proudly upon presents for the whole family 

i guess it'd be easier to keep you tidy now....but still, i do wish i could see be-ribboned things everywhere 

and those paper chains, i miss you paper chains 

and those twinkly lights (and good ol' re-runs on TV)  

every little corner, decorated in sparkly things 

and cards

until next year 

oh my tummy,  too much chocolate

The decorations are slowly coming down.  Our eating habits are becoming normal again.  The last of the relatives are heading back to their own homes.  No noises of little ones.  No bickering over the remote control.  It is beginning to get quieter.

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My home

I love my home because of its proximity to the sea shore. I love walking out of the front door and smelling the salt. I love knowing what the sea is like before I reach it. I want to know what sort of day it is because of how the air smells.

I like that I can smell peoples fires. I like that there are roses and sweet peas outside of my front door. The window boxes outside the front door and our window are filled with lavender as well. I liked planning those boxes, I dreamed of those boxes for so long before we got them.

It doesn’t seem like much but it can instantly make you happy. I smile as soon as the scent hits me. It’s my home, its how I planned it and I’ve always wanted it.

I think it’s not very wrong to want lots of things, it just depends how you go about getting them and how attainable they are.

I want lavender and sweet peas. I can get them easily and it’s a very good goal to want those. It’s in the same respect I think about little children. I know when I have children I’ll want to give them everything I can, I already want them, and part of the way we run our home is about the planning for children. I will give my children everything-but by that I mean good food, days in the garden and books. Walks down the beach and shell collecting, warmth and hot chocolate. Blankets to make forts with and patience. I will give them tiring days and the scent of sea at bedtime, lavender outside of their window and lots and lots of love. It doesn’t seem like much, but it will be everything I have, and what keeps me going-when wishing alone doesn’t always work, is that I have more time to prepare and gain patience.

No more sandy shoes!

Oooh ive just been having a look at the wonderful Martha Stewart website (she was on an Oprah repeat and i couldnt help myself) and i saw the most fabulous ideas for outliving.  Living by the sea means that we go down to the beach every day, and so every day sand gets pulled back into the house and kicked all over the place.  The website states that you should set up a 'rinsing station' at your front door.  All you need is a teak bath mat which provides slip-free footing and good drainage. The steady stream from an ordinary watering can cleans every unwanted speck from your feet and flip-flops or waterproof garden shoes.

I'm off to get some supplies that will make this Summer much easier!...if summer comes after this misty Spring time!
x

Green Cleaning Tips

There's always a time to clean..i mean the shops would want us to believe that wouldn't they?  You have to have a big clean in Autumn, you tidy away the toys or things from summer to get ready for Autumn and Winter.  Then you clean up for Christmas and the visitors, you then have a Spring clean and then you pull out all of those harsh chemicals again for Summer visitors, or that awful clean you do before your Summer holiday.
So here are some handy tips for GREEN CLEANING and the items that are already in your cupboards that you can do it with-which by the way, also makes it a bit cheap!

• One cup of baking soda mixed with a teaspoon of liquid soap, a bit of water, and a few drops of antibacterial essential oil (such as tea tree, eucalyptus, rosemary, or peppermint) makes an effective cleanser for your bathroom or kitchen.
• Milk is great used in combination with white vinegar, it does wonders to remove ink stains on clothing. Simply soak the garment in a bowl milk or white vinegar.
• Combine 30 to 40 drops total of up to three different oils (like a lemon-lavender combination) with 1 cup of water in a spray bottle to make a beautifully scented room spray.  It'll save a bundle on plug ins and burning candles for guest rooms.  Just remember to give it an extra good shake to mix the oils.

All of these tips have come from various Country Living issues.

Homemaking Heaven Tips!

• Want to know a super effective nontoxic trick to clean the silverware is to fill an aluminum pan (or one lined with aluminum foil) with hot water, add salt and baking soda, and stir to dissolve. When you add the silver pieces, a chemical reaction occurs, removing tarnish!

• Fill up your freezer, since the fuller it is, the less energy it uses to keep food frozen.  I put plastic bottles of water into it so that they they are icy cold-this usually happens the closer we get to shopping day, but it works just the same.
• For greasy pots and pans try scouring with salt.  We all try to be great cooks, but every so often things go wrong, so just remember this trick..just in case.. Fill the pan half full with water, so that it covers up any grilled on spots, spoon in baking soda, let it soak overnight, and bring to a boil...then easy peasy lemon squeezy the stains come away!

• You know when the sink gets a bit clogged up with rubbish every so often, so matter how much you try to stay on top of it?  Well just pour 1 cup of baking soda down the drain, followed by 3 cups of boiling water, and let science take over. It's a much safer choice than commercial drain cleaners, which can harm skin, eyes, lungs, and the water supply.

You can get all of these tips and much more from Country Living mags.  I keep all of my old ones, but every so often i put together a scrap book of things i like.
I hope these have come in useful!
x

Believe

Oooh a little make!

Ive seen bucket loads of decorations that say Believe, and decided to make one up myself.  I'm really new to sewing, and this is honestly one of the first things I've done.  Ive been meaning to show off some little decorations I've made for a while now, and they're the first things I've ever made!

All i need to do is string them up with some wool!

November thoughts

We are in November now! Is that exciting or what? Please don’t answer that!! I am disproportionately excited at the thought of spending Autumn and Winter in our new home.  Although when you have to head out and its dark in the morning and at night when you shut up the library at five it does get a bit much!!  I just want to go home and sleep! 

I am, however, excited that I have a new hallway or room to decorate; I’m excited that we’re making a home out of an empty shell, and the memories will always be ours. I hope that when we have people over to stay they see the love in the house, maybe not the best of everything-I wonder if anything, but they will see two old souls wondering from room to room attempting to ‘fix’ things, attempting to make things and make a home.

We are so blessed-we are so utterly naturally lucky with some things, and one of those things is that very little can please us and make us happy. I LOVE-and I mean LOVE, much more than any normal person should-lighting candles in the porch. I think our new little lamp and our old tatty lanterns are welcoming. And honestly, that’s the only thing I care about. I am proud that I look at our home and think it looks cosy or warm or friendly. I am proud when I can smell the slow cooker with our yummy tea inside. I am proud that I don’t need a great many things in life to feel this way.

Have a great November and week ahead, I hope that you are meeting the new month with excitement of Christmas ahead but also happiness to live in the moment (oh and getting those tulips planted!!)

Sheila

x

The Golden Rules

I've been reading the sweetest little home making book which gives many a tip for the ‘newly married modern woman’, I'm talking 1933 if you hadn’t guessed!! I love the way that the housewives were told to act like home making was a career choice. I really don’t know when it happened but so many people act like they are embarrassed that they run the home all day (and don’t stop at 5:30).

Here are some Golden Rules ive put together from the hundreds on offer in the book!
The Golden Rules of homemaking!

1. A place for everything and everything in its place.
2. Don’t put off till tomorrow what should be done today
3. Make the most of what you ave, don’t worry about what you could do if you had this or that
4. Clear up as you go along, and you’ll never find yourself in a muddle.

Yummy Autumn Food

Last night I had a hankering, you know when you just WANT something? It can be good, it can be bad, but you want it, and nothing will replace it. Mostly its chocolate and I'm telling you, a piece of fruit will not fill me up the way a piece of chocolate does. Yesterday my hankering for was Toad in the Hole.

I must confess I'm a bit of a philistine when it comes to sausages. I eat Cumberland but that’s about it, I'm perfectly happy with a good Irish sausage. As long as its not filled up with rubbish and gunk I'm happy. My friend told me about a great butchers website here, its excellent value for what you get.

Anyway, I will be making this recipe tonight, but I’ve made Toad in the Hole countless times before, and its not technically something you do need a recipe for, but here it is anyway.

Ingredients

8 Good quality sausages
1 Onion
‘A dash of olive oil’
(For the batter)
100g Plain flour
2 Medium eggs
300ml Full fat milk

Method

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 7 (about 200)
2. Chuck in all of the sausages (a good snug fit) and throw the sliced onions, the dash of olive oil  and the seasoning over them
3. While that’s cooking (10-15 min) make up the batter-sift the flour and add a pinch of salt, make a well in the middle and crack in the eggs, beat lightly, then add the milk slowly. Just keep going until its lovely and smooth
4. Take the sausages out of the oven and pour the batter over them.

Supper should only be about 25-35 mins away now, or when the batter goes all goldeny and crispy!

"Mum, can i have some?.........please?"
"Just a little bit Daisy, your tummy is too little"

Dumb days and saintly sheds!

Don’t you just adore this time of year? It makes it so easy to use up left-over’s and call them some other culinary masterpiece! (masterpiece is maybe too strong a word!!) I just feel like in summer you can’t throw everything into a slow cooker with some raw veg and loads of gravy and then come home to an actual meal. Everything is fresh in summer, which is great-because you eat so late in the day and the sun is still shining, but I love Autumn and Winter because they positively call for left over’s and therefore thrift (which is the watchword now-a-days)!

We’ve been eating out of the slow cooker loads what with the horrible rain and dark clouds that have been following me about The Shire! But it’s ok, as the sun did peep out for a little while yesterday. I think its so magical when its cold but bright, we had so many little ones come into the library today with their gloves on and their little rosy cheeks and noses! It was too adorable for words!

Yesterday I did probably the most ‘blonde’ thing I’ve done in a while, went out with The Husband to work, made my own way home and forgot I never brought my keys with me…D’oh! For some reason I believed I could ‘break into’ my own home and climb in through the window I always leave ajar, however when I got home I promptly figured that I wasn’t going to be able to click the window off the hatch with my credit card and had to find something to do for two and a half hours!

So although I may not be able to run off with the Pink Panther Diamond any time soon, I feel very happy that I have finally ticked one thing off the Autumn Things To Do List and got the shed cleaned out. Everything was thrown out of the thing (which still had paint/china/dirty towels in there from its previous owner), but it was tidied and cleaned up in no time at all really. I got the fire pit set up for getting rid of the unwanted stuff and also a cosy night outside with The Husband (who thinks I’m the number one ditz around), but alas, it started to get dark as we headed inside.

I got some bulbs planted in the containers that have been sitting empty for much too long with some compost I found hidden in the back of the shed too. I still need to tidy up the garden a bit and will probably continue to do so for a while now as we’re lucky enough to have three quite big trees, but the shed looks quite empty and so can take the bikes for over winter.

I’m so happy that I managed to get outside, and I guess it was possibly a blessing in disguise that I did as dumb a thing as I did, or else I would maybe have put cleaning up out of doors until it was much too late. I am becoming increasingly addicted to sewing up some Christmas decorations I read about in The Christmas Book…I’ll be posting about that once I can finally show off a finished one though!

For now I hope that you’ve been able to keep on top of your own Autumn Chores Lists!

Sheila

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