Lovely Stuff

I know I shouldn't but I just can't stop myself.  I went to Leicester today because it was the open weekend at The Fabric Guild.  There are other shops selling fabric in my area but none can beat the good old Fabric Guild for variety and price.  The two large pieces above were only £3.75 for 3 yards and the fat quarters ranged in price from 60p to £1.75.  Fat quarters are usually at least £2.50 in most places.  I've got no idea what any of this fabric is for but I know that one day it will all be just perfect for some project or other.

I couldn't come away without some calico, 5 yards for £10.  I use tons of this stuff so I must always make sure I have plenty in stock.  It's great for so many things, linings, adding to fancy fabric as a contrast, embroidering on and just on its own, I love it made into a bag or sachet with lace and filled with lavender.  Then there are the printed fabric panels, I like the ones that have the designs in squares as show above.  This way I can cut out individual designs for all sorts of projects - £2.50 per panel.  Last but not least I buy my sewing machine thread.  I like their polycotton, a very economical thread at 60p, I don't know how many yards of this I must use in a year!

Soda Bread

We're having salad for tea today so I've made some soda bread to go with it.  This size loaf is just right for us, the full size one always gets wasted.

150g wholemeal flour ( I used rye flour as I didn't have wholemeal)

150g plain flour

1teaspoon baking powder

half teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 tablespoon caster sugar

half teaspoon salt

1 egg

200 ml yoghurt

Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix egg with the yoghurt then combine well with the dry ingredients.  Knead on a lightly floured surface for a few minutes then shape into a round.  Place dough onto a baking tray and mark a cross on the top of the dough.

Bake for 35 minutes at 190C/375F/gas mark 5

Chocolate Cake

This cake is from a new recipe I wanted to try.  It's rather dry in my opinion but still nice, I do like a very moist cake.

Ingredients

200g (7oz) Self Raising Flour

225g (8oz) Caster Sugar

half a teaspoon Salt

25g (1oz) Sieved Cocoa Powder

100g (4oz) Butter or Margarine, softened

5 tablespoons Evaporated Milk

3 Eggs. beaten

5 tablespoon Water

few drops Vanilla Essence

Heat oven to 180C, 350F, gas 4 and prepare two 8 inch sandwich cake tins.

Mix all dry ingredients together, add butter/margarine, eggs, evaporated milk, water, vanilla essence and beat for about two minutes using an electric hand mixer.

Divide between the two sandwich tins and bake for 35 minutes.

Filling/Topping

60g (2.5 oz) Butter, softened

1 tablespoons sieved Cocoa Powder

250g (9oz) Sieved Icing Sugar

3 tablespoons Hot Milk (I used evaporated milk)

Half teaspoon Vanilla Essence

Put all ingredients into a bowl and mix well together until combined.  Use to sandwich cake together and spread over the top.

One Of Those Days

I just can't get myself going today.  Don't know if I'm just tired or if I've got a bit of a cold.  On Sunday I shared a stall at a craft fair with a friend.  We've had a stall at this venue several times this year.  It is a total waste of time!!!  I did manage to get the stall fee back plus a couple of quid over.  Think I'll stick with swapping and giving gifts, so look out for items next year.

I finished this Christmas decoration yesterday evening.  I didn't do the cross-stitch, have I mentioned before that Graham does fabulous cross-stitch?  Can't remember.  Anyway, about twelve years ago he wanted a new hobby and said that he remembered his grandfather doing some sort of stitching and wondered about having a go himself.  Well he really took to it, first of all doing needlepoint but then trying cross-stitch.  Now his work would win prizes I'm sure.  It is so neat, back and front.  And the projects he does are usually huge.  He does the cross-stitch and I will make this sort of design into, for instance, a hanging.

Sorry about the poor photography.

We had hoped to get into the garden and do some clearing up and planting but neither of us have felt much like it.  We did clear the sweet corn and runner beans from the raised bed.  The sweet corn did fairly well considering the terrible summer weather we had.  The cobs weren't as well formed as they should have been but at least we got some.  It was supposed to be baby sweet corn but turned out much bigger than I expected.

Best Friends

The other day I mentioned that I had a photo album of my dogs but I also have lots of pictures not in albums.  The pictures here were taken about fourteen years ago.  Jack the Manchester terrier (deceased), Doobry toy apricot poodle and Perkins a blotched tabby cat (deceased).  They all got on really well and would often sit together - the cat was in charge of course.

We would often end up all sitting together like this, Perkins always had first choice of where to sit, then Jack, then Doobry.  I had no choice!!!

If I wasn't available to sit on these two would lie on the floor.

I have lots of pictures of my first two dogs that I will show another day.

While I was looking at these pictures it reminded me of how much work we were doing on the house at that time.

Graham working on the kitchen, what a mess!  It nearly drove us round the bend.

Me cutting out the wall to make a doorway for the new, upstairs, bathroom.

The stud wall we built when we converted part of a bedroom for the bathroom.  Apart from plumbing we did all this sort of work ourselves.

The house is now nothing like it was when we first lived here.  We've done a lot of work on it.  It was built in 1908 so takes quite a bit of maintenance.  When we moved here it had been 'modernized' quite badly so needed a lot of work doing.  We put the bathroom upstairs and changed the downstairs bathroom to a wc and laundry room and moved an internal wall so that there is an annexe to the kitchen for my fridge/freezer and further storage cupboards, replaced all the windows and external doors, replaced the floor boards in the main bedroom and built fitted cupboards and wardrobes, installed central heating, replaced the roof and did tons of other stuff.  I still don't count it as finished though.  Currently we have a problem with a leak over the bay window, I think rain is getting between the rendering and the bricks (why it was rendered I'll never understand).  What attracted me to this particular house was that it had a proper entrance hall, the kitchen was big compared to a lot of houses of this type and the size of the garden.  The garden is one of those really long, narrow types, it's split into several sections, the back door patio then a gravelled area where my greenhouse is, a slabbed patio, a lawned area with flower borders and old apple tree, the shed and garage area, then my veg plot area.  Also it is a few minutes walk from a fairly decent shopping area and our doctor is about two minutes walk away.  There is a very good bus service too.  All in all it's a great place to live.

50 Days to Christmas

Once the clocks go back I start looking forward to Christmas.  I've got everything ready for the Christmas swap I'm in, plus an extra set for myself.  I've got one more of the gift bags to finish then I can decide what my next Christmas project will be.

Join me for a cup of tea and a cake!!!  I'm still practising my cup-cake skills.  The piping is looking better and the chocolate truffle centres worked better than the Rolo centres.  I think the piping still needs refining, I can't seem to get the icing right to the edge.  I bought some blue glitter to sprinkle on them too but I don't know if I like the look of it, I just sprinkled a few with it and when I opened the cake tin I panicked, for a minute it looked like mould!!!


I enjoy reading other people's blogs and love the ones with pictures and writing.  That got me wondering why I do my blog.  Several years ago I had an online picture album but the provider did away with them, probably switched it to another option, I can't remember.  So, I think my main reason for doing a blog is to have a picture record of what I do.  We've got tons of photos hanging around our house that never get looked at.  I have a photo album of Colin from when he came home from hospital to the age of about two.  I have a little album of the dogs I've had and Graham has one of his walking adventures.  Also, I make such a lot of things that I forget what I've made so a blog is a good way for me to keep a record.  I've never been one to keep a diary either, I tried a few times but quickly gave up, somehow typing out my blog is much easier.

Our Garden

During the summer I took quite a few pictures of our flower garden.  Graham is in charge of this area, I'm in charge of the vegetable plot.  Because he was in hospital and was very ill, I took pictures to show him when I visited in the hope that it would encourage him.

This is the area near our shed, this year the geraniums didn't do well at all, it was just too wet.

This tub was my favourite, a couple of weeks after taking this picture it was even more beautiful.

The scented stocks in this picture were a much brighter colour than shown here.  At the back of them is a laurel, it was supposed to be just a small bush but grew so much we pruned it into a tree shape.  Each year a bird nests in it, I think it is probably a dunnock but it might be a blackbird, I don't poke around too much so as not to frighten whatever bird it is.  I know that dunnocks live in the hedge just here.

We planted this up this year and it started to fill out really quickly.

I can't remember the name of this plant.  The perfume from it fills the surroundings, it's been in this planter for several years now and has survived the winters.

Even though it was a very wet summer all the plants did well and we had some beautiful displays.

One picture of my veg plot, this is a raised bed and is crammed with plants each year.  There are three other raised beds that we didn't do much with this time.  We've got big plans for them next year!!!