THE Designer Label!!

It's been an horrific week at work, and I can't tell you how many times I've bitten my tongue to stop myself telling them exactly where to stick it, so yesterday mornings knock on the door and the package the postman brought really put a welcome smile on my face. I was lucky enough to "win" this lovely bag, so beautifully made by Frugal Queen. Pretty & practical & completely recycled...Froogs is so talented :-)  (eat ya heart out Cath Kidston!) 

 I shall be proudly flaunting my "designer label" bag when out shopping ( but not during no spend October obviously)...so if you spot this lovely bag out and about in Reading, Newbury or Basingstoke come and say hello to the bag attached to it!!( b'dum tischhhh)
Many, many thanks once again Froogs...it's so lovely and I am SO chuffed.

Perks of the job..

My job isn't challenging or well paid...but it does have some perks. After 3 or 4 hours of being sat in front of a PC, and being crippled by the crappy chair I need to stretch my legs and get the kinks out....and just look a what I have outside of the office door!

This is Mum, Dad and all 4 cygnets. 5 eggs hatched but 1 was predated within the first week or so.

 

 

And here are the honey bee hives...sorry poor resolution / lack of photograhy skills means that you can't actually see the bees but they are there I promise you:-)

 

Lil fishies that have hatched out...hope they're not snacks for the huge carp

 

Some views of the pond/lake. I try to walk here at lunchtime each day...makes a nice break.

And finally, some bindweed....I think it rather beautiful when it's not in my garden!

 

 

 

Jam, Booze and errrr Booze-Jam???

It's been a soggy summer but there have been a few sunny lunchtimes in the last week, so I've been going for a walk at lunchtime and collecting up some blackberries. The recent rains and then the sun meant I found some real fatties...and 1 o'clock found me back at my desk with the telltale stains around my mouth and on my hands. I've very little freezer space so I decided to turn them into something that would keep. I googled some jam recipes and found a spiced apple and blackberry  and a blackberry chilli jam that I rather liked the look of...but I couldn't decide which to make. In the end I amalgamated the recipes and threw in blackberries, some crabapples I found when walking one evening, one of last years lovely red chillies that I had dried (no chillies this year....slugs polished off a dozen fine chilli plants...I have 1 scotch bonnet that I rescued and brought in to pop on the kitchen windowsill...it has survived being knocked about by the kittens so far and produced it's first flower this week) some mixed spice , some nutmeg and some sugar and boiled the lot up. (no - don't be silly - of course I didn't weigh / measure ) The result was 4&1/2 jars of really christmassy blackberry jam...delish...will do that one again.

 

Then I thought some wine would be a good idea and some blackberry I had made a few years ago turned out well so I thought I'd have another bash...so I found the plastic bucket that the birdy fat balls from Wilkinson came in and gave it a good scrub and a dunk in some Milton to be on the safe side.(It's all dead high tech in my kitchen!!) In went the blackberries, sugar, some lemons that were looking a bit dried out, a handful of sultanas, a cup of very strong black earl grey tea, and some boiling water and I smooshed it all with the potato masher. Searched high and low for my brewers yeast...not a sign anywhere...gave in and used the stuff I use for baking bread.

Here it is all ready to be tucked up with it's lid on to do it's stuff for a few days.

 

I gave it a stir around every day for a few days and then decided that it was ready to move on to the demijohn. Oooopppss...demijohn still has Elderberry wine in it and I have only 2 empty wine bottles....creative thinking cap on...drive to Hungerford...accost poor woman dropping off wine bottles at the bottle bank  and pursuade her to recycle bottles in my direction:-)

Bottles scrubbed and sterilised, Elderberry wine transferred to the bottles, demijohn scrubbed and sterilised ( this is 3 lines on paper, but I swear this seemed to be my ENTIRE Sunday afternoon)

Elderberry wine - much beloved by students - the 2009 was lethal...I would only drink it diluted, I think some students in Bournemouth may have had some headaches....

 

 

Bramble wine in the demijohn safely burbling! It seemed a shame to chuck the fruit that remained left over after I had put the wine in the demijohn ....so I threw it in a pan with some sugar and a chilli (naturally) , boiled it up, strained it (it was AWFULLY seedy by this point) and now bequeath to the world.........BRAMBLE CHILLI BOOZE-JAM!!

I think I've found my "signature-dish"...eat ya heart out Heston....you may have snail porridge but I bring you Booze-Jam.....thinking it might make a nice accompaniment (is that even a word?) to Quorn Roast.

I

Ready for winter...

Yes I know we've only just edged our way out of August...but I only have Ethan home for a few weeks of the year so I have to utilise him to the full when he's home. Yesterday, in line with the BBC weather report, we had a few hours of sun, so I had organised to have a cubic metre of logs delivered. I am mid terrace so they had to set the sack down on the road out front and we Ethan had to carry them round to the back.

 

I don't have a wheelbarrow so Ethan carried trug upon trug load round and tipped them onto the lawn for me to stack in the log store.

 

 

I have no idea how many times Ethan went back and forth...it was like the ant and the rubber tree plant..a cubic metre is an awful lot of wood:-)

 

 

I used my middle aged lady joker card and played log tetris to get them all stacked away. What a great team we made :-)

 

 

 

All done! Snug as a bug in a rug! A perfect little home for over wintering wasps and spiders...last year I had to check all of the logs for hibernating wasps as I brought them in...any I missed came back to life in the warm living room. Will be more careful this year.

 

 

Well that's another job off of the "while Ethan is home" list. (I've already had him up a ladder trimming back the wisteria on the front of the house...may have been a tad premature there as it's now putting on a bit of a growth spurt )  Order for Approved Foods done and he'll be home for the delivery in the week CHECK! Still to do...get the chimneys swept, get the Rayburn serviced. If I can get these booked in the next fortnight whilst E is still home it will save me having to take days off of work. It hasn't been all work and no play though...any evening that the sun has been shining we've gone for long walks when I've gotten home from work, and last weekend we walked to Hungerford and back...I think our route took us around 13 or 14 miles. I was really chuffed when Eth commented on how much my fitness had improved...he's a fast walker and previously had to slow down for me...not any more though...the lunchtime walks round the lake and evening and weekend walks up and down hill here are obviously paying off. Anyway, enough rambling on from me tonight...I've been properly domestic in the kitchen this week but I'll save that tale for another day.....time for a glass of wine for me, methinks :-)  Cheers!