Sunday – weeds out and plants in

Oh dear, lost my secateurs, so nipped out to buy some more from The Range, bargain seed offer when we got to the checkout, all the packets in the basket were charged at half-price.

We spent the rest of the morning tidying up the borders, cutting back the tops of the old perennials from last year, pruning and tying in the roses, then weeding out the couch grass, nettles and dock leaves, that’s the trouble with country gardens. One bag of mushroom compost later and I saw a huge area at the front of the border that was so bare I felt guilty, I couldn’t leave the bed like that, so a trip to Haskin’s was needed.

Dad’s favourite spring flower is aubretia, now I’m looking after the borders, I’ve put some in plus some wonderfully frilly pansies and some other white perennials. Then I watered them in and just as I was finished, it start to drizzle, perfect timing and now they are settling in nicely. It was a lovely surprise for Mum and Dad, they had been having an afternoon nap, whilst they were asleep the garden fairy turned the bare soil into a pretty garden.

Lots of possibilities this year in the garden, we are trying to make the border a lovely cottage garden, now I need some more hollyhocks in different colours, the double yellow ones were beautiful last year, the lupins are already bursting from the ground and the other perennials I put in last year and now beginning to shoot. Spring is such a lovely time for new awakenings.

Discussions about the future were interesting, the most thought provoking was, to get chickens or not?  They would be great at getting rid of the slugs and snails as we seem to be inundated and they ate most of the crops last year, but they need looking after, feeding and could eat what they shouldn’t. The debate continues, but my hunch is that six chickens will appear in the next couple of weeks, Dad’s such a softie and daughter hasn’t ever looked after chickens and will work on her grandparents whilst she’s on holiday.

Watch this space!

A wonderful day for gardening

After waking at 5.30am, I decided to get up (well the clocks go forward anyway tonight so I’m already readjusting my internal clock ready for Monday). I watched some Teacher’s TV washed down with a hot cup of coffee.

Once the basics were done, the farm shop called it’s merry tune, we stocked up on meat for most of the week, now I need to plan the meals for the week ahead, a chance to try a new recipe or two.

Tuna and sweetcorn salad for lunch fired us up to work in the garden and greenhouse. It was a productive afternoon, I’ve moved one staging rack so that I can get more seed trays and pots in.

From the seeds planted last week, there are now pea shoots showing, Webbs lettuce, rocket and mizuna. The rocket and land cress are showing the odd white speck where a shoot will appear. The temperature in the greenhouse reached 30degC, it was gorgeous, I managed to move the bubble wrap to allow the air to circulate.

I’ve planted one strawberry plant in a pot in the greenhouse, to get some early berries. A large container of carrots and another of dwarf purple podded beans. I also planted some modules with 3 different types of beetroot, golden, red and white ringed and also normal red beetroot, plus a tray of kholrabi. This is a first for me, normally I plant them direct in the garden, but hope that this will give me a head start and allow me to intercrop better and increase the yield in the garden. The other strawberries are now in the garden, they are Mara Des Bois strawberries, which are a cross between wild strawberries and cultivated, so you get the flavour of wild with size of standard, they also produce over a long season, so hopefully we’ll get lots of strawberries over the summer. With the sun shining today, the vitamin D felt good soaking into the skin, a wonderful boost.

Time to sit back and watch a film with a lovely cup of tea.

Getting ahead with the cooking and shopping

After a very busy day at work I needed to relax. The fridge was full of meat, some dates were getting short, so if I’m going to pop one dish in the oven, I might as well make it 2 and save on energy.

It was great, I started making a lancashire hotpot, then venison stifado. Whilst this was all in the oven, I made dinner, a paella but without any seafood just the chicken with chorizo.

Was I pleased I had done this, by Wednesday I was shattered and just needed to put the hotpot back in to the oven to bubble and brown. On Thursday after a very tough day at work, I reheated the stifado and served with chips and peas.

I finished work in time to collect daughter from school, she’s now broken up for Easter, we headed off to Sainsbury’s to stock up on salad, veg and also a few other treats to go with dinner.

Now a perfect evening lies ahead. The roast lamb is studded with garlic and is in the oven, it’s nearly time to make some dauphinoise potatoes, then I just need to steam some spinach, oh and make a starter with the wonderful prawns that seemed to jump into my shopping basket.  I’ve got the film Julie and Julia on, this was a present from hubby for Mother’s Day and I love it. I now want a great french cookbook, do I get the Julia Child’s book, or another french cookbook, then I can started working through the book as I get the time and widen my repertoire.

I think this weekend is going to be filled with gardening and cooking, lots of fresh air and wonderful aromas, totally lush.

Garden centres - arggggh

I followed my own advice and I created a garden centre shopping list on my phone, added a sprayer, beetroot seeds, organic slug pellets and potato fertilizer to the list and hubby and I headed off to the first garden centre.

We fell in love with a really cute woolly sheep tea cosy , it reminded me of my pet sheep, Jenny, who I was given when I was 8 years of age and lived at home with us for a couple of years until we returned her back to the farm in Wales due to her antics. Hubby met her just after we got married when I was 24. Jenny’s antics, now there’s a tale for another day or 20.

Tick off the slug pellets, fertilizer, but their seed range was so disappointing, 20 varieties of carrots, 25 of tomatoes, but only red beetroot :( they had 3 different seed suppliers displayed too.

Off to garden centre 2 – still no golden beetroot, just the boring red. The displays were identical to the first garden centre, the size and positioning of the packets, none of the interesting varieties, yes they can read a display chart from the supplier and it is really annoying that there is no difference.

Garden centre 3 – yes, same display, still no unusual varieties. So I headed home and onto the Internet.

Finally, there is a different supplier, I add the yellow beetroot to my basket, then concentric ringed white and red beetroot. Oh, Saltwort now that sounds interesting as I love Samphire, some baby aubergines, Red Sorrel, Chinese Broccoli, Honey Squashes, oops, and Strawberry Mara des Bois plants that combine the taste of wild strawberries with a standard strawberry and producing over a really long season. Roll on the summer, cream and sugar.

We are really proud that all of us are serious foodies, our daughter may be 16, but she’s so good in the kitchen, came home to a wonderful salad, “Mum, I’ve added some of the hazelnut oil to the salad, I think it makes it taste really nice”, and yes, she had made a perfect dressing.

Sunday afternoon – the time for daughter to finish homework and me to plan my lessons for next week, we always put a film on and today it’s “Julie and Julia”, a true foodie’s film, I was given it last week for Mother’s Day and we watched it last Sunday afternoon, snap today, I think this may become a regular pattern for Sunday’s.

It’s time to put a loaf in the breadmaker for tomorrow’s sandwiches and to prepare the roast chicken in true Julia Child’s style, covered with lashings of butter. Scrummy roast chicken sandwiches for my lunch tomorrow. We managed to get some wonderful forced English rhubarb at the farmshop this morning, so I’ve been asked to make a deep rhubarb pie for pudding.

I have decided that I need a decent french cookbook, perhaps Elizabeth David, or is there a better book, perhaps a Cordon Bleu book. I think I need to do some serious research and then drop some hints at my hubby/daughter.

I think this evening is going to be foodie heaven.

The greenhouse beckoned

Yippee, I left work in daylight and got home before the bewitching hour of 5pm. So after getting into jeans and scruff order, I was in the greenhouse by 4.30 and started sowing seeds. One of the best things about the greenhouse is being able to grow lots of salad leaves which can’t be beaten for freshness and are great for mum to pick as she wants. They are a fortune in the supermarket and aren’t as fresh, just a few leaves here and there and we have a really varied salad.

So planted some large pots of mixed salad leaves, mizuna, land cress, rocket, parsley, sweet basil, pea shoots and also to get ready to go in the garden 2 trays of broad beans plus some Webbs wonderful lettuces.

Turned the hose on and got soaked, the multi-sprayer was left outside over winter and has been damaged by ice, it’s splitting all over it and water was spraying everywhere, yuk, now drying off in the warm.

Add new sprayer to list and also some different varieties of beetroot, saw them on Raymond Blanc’s cookery programme and they looked brilliant. I only have the traditional variety Boltardy at the moment, so need to find some different ones when I next go shopping.

Time to put a garden shopping list in my app on my phone and make sure I don’t forget.

The seed potatoes also arrived, so need to get some organic potato fertilizer now, then they can go in old compost sacks in the garden.

A nice cup of tea is needed now!

Well laid plans.....

Isn't it typical, you ave all these plans and then something gets in the way to stop it happening.  I have been looking forward to half-term for ages, it's been so chaotic at work recently plus on top I've been struggling to fight off a cold, so the thought of half-term getting organised has been my dream.  Well on Wednesday evening last week I started sneezing, by the morning I was suffering with the blocked nose, sore throat and a temperature, but I was determined to keep going and not give in, I succeeded and managed to finish the week. Saturday and I hit rock bottom, the sofa beckoned and the cat stapled me to it.  So feeling poorly for valentine's day and also my birthday was tough, but I've got to the age where I can celebrate later without worry. I found a pad of paper and started a todo list, well I might not have been capable of doing anything physical, but the brain was working (if a little slowly).
Well Wednesday morning and I was feeling much better, so the organisation has begun, lots of junk cleared out, paper burnt up, hoovering, scrubbing.  Guess who over did it?  So I'm back on the sofa wheezing, but feel chuffed that my husband noticed the difference.
Organisation happens in small or large amounts, the little bits build into larger amounts.
 I now have a todo list for the rest of the week, I can start ticking off items, that means, I've made progress.

So much achieved, I'm happy

I've had a lovely day, first of all I put on over 3kg of seville oranges with a couple of lemons to soften. With the help of my daughter we then shredded the skins (once soft), removed the pips from the pulp, and then boiled it all down with some preserving sugar, really pleased as we ended up with 11.5 pounds of seville orange marmalade (rustic style).  I also used my new hand mixer and made 18 chocolate cupcakes. Put a loaf in the breadmaker and rustled up faggots with peas for dinner.

It's going to be a very busy week at work, so I've taken time to relax and recharge my batteries, my poor hubby has a nasty cold, I thought I was getting it, but with echinacea, vitamins, brazil nuts and healthy food from the farmshop, I'm managing to keep it under control.

To keep organised, I just need to type the letter for school giving permission for my daughter to be absent when she doesn't have a mock exam.  Poor thing would have to sit in the examination room if she couldn't escape.

A whole lot of logs

Bless them, Mum and Dad hadn’t realised how low their oil was for their heating, the red light started flashing 2 days ago, they have tried to book a delivery and been told 10-14 days. They’ve been and bought some electric oil filled radiators, but that’s going to be expensive.

Luckily they also have the option to have a real fire in the lounge, but Dad is beginning to feel his age and can collect logs and bits of firewood, but isn’t upto sawing or chopping the logs up if they are too big.

Let my darling hubby and daughter loose and 3 hours later we have managed to produce a huge stacked wood pile to hopefully keep them warm for 2-3 weeks.  Dad was a sweetheart, he grabbed the chainsaw from the shed and was going to use it until I took it and said, “time for me to start using it, now teach me”, so I have been a brave Mum and with Dad’s direction have been happily sawing up a fallen tree into logs, feel really chuffed that I’ve done it.

I had bought a new saw and axe for hubby along with some wellies for his birthday and Christmas pressies, you can hear the tune “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK” ringing out as he started singing it.  Really happy family atmosphere, daughter started using the axe to chop the large logs into smaller chunks and was amazing. I was in charge of stacking it all under the woodstore in neat rows so that it will dry out and be easy for Dad to get at.

Well we are now ALL organised, team spirit is oozing, I’ve found muscles I forgot existed, we are all going to ache tomorrow. Who needs a gym, we have had a fantastic workout today that was far better for us, lots of fresh air, the odd snowflake too. We were amazed at the number of robins that were around us, they normally fight, but we’ve got about 6 that must have been from the same brood, they were scratching and picking up any bugs they could around the woodpile.

We’ve filled all the bird feeders, bless them, the birds are starving and they can’t get at the grubs in the soil, so we’ve put out a complete range of different types of bird food.  There was a redwing in the garden yesterday, it was so pretty, a much more striking version of a thrush with pink on the chest (just under the wings), lots of blue tits, great tits, coal tits, long tailed tits, goldfinches, greenfinches, dunnocks, greater spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches, robins, blackbirds, doves, pigeons, thrushes, chaffinches, wren, oh, and the odd squirrel too.

Going to settle down for the evening with some muscle lubricant (can’t decide what to have in my glass tonight but it had better be strong and effective).

Oh how I wish for some snow, it seems to have been every but here (.5 inch isn’t much), daughter is praying that she can get snowed in and she is desperate for a white birthday on Tuesday.

Going to cook a paella style rice dish tonight with free range chicken from Littlemoors, some chorizo for flavour, red pepper and peas.

Time to relax and put my feet up.

New Year 2010

Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
Well it's all quiet on the western front. Last day of late lie-ins, no more late nights, back to 6.30 alarms on Monday, so need to get used to it asap or will be a wreck next week.
Organisation is beginning, planner is well underway, family are happy to join in, which is a really positive step.
A couple of hiccoughs though, a nasty virus managed to disable my protection software, so laptop is getting a medical at the moment, thank goodness hubby and I are pc bods. Can't print anymore pages for planner.
Day of marking ahead, better to get ahead, could be inspected at any time by OFSTED so need to be focussed and use my task list properly so I stay on control.
Technology is great, I'm still able to keep blogging, facebooking and mailing using my phone.
I'd better get started, 10 digi assignments, then food.
Have fun!

I need a planner

Every Christmas I use my special handmade planner, it is amazing, I have records of all the presents we’ve previously bought, all the recipes I use, my card lists, even the shopping lists (held on One Note on my PC which I reprint every year).  The family are trained to pick it up as we leave the house, if I’ve forgotten it, but it is our lifeline over the festive period to ensure Christmas runs smoothly.  We’ve been using the planner since 2005 and it’s great.

So why do I use the planner, to make sure I do everything and don’t miss anything out. Then why don’t I follow on this idea and create one for the rest of the year. 

This is going to be my first step in my year of “Organisation”, there is no point starting anywhere else, I need to have somewhere to keep the lists of food in the cupboards, fridge and veg box, and to plan the meals for the week that the whole family can refer to. An easy starting point in my mission.  I’ve done some research, found lots of useful sites and will be getting my crafting things out today to make a start. I’ve got new toners for the printer (I don’t want to leave it empty or I will be very unpopular).

I’m going to print my inserts before making the cover, I can then work out the size to ensure that the tabbed dividers fit.

Organised Home

OK, so this is what I need ALL year to keep me organised.  I started looking yesterday and have found a great starting point on the Organised Home website. This explains the Household Planner and everything that could be included, ideas for the dividers, pages to be downloaded and printed.

I also found the planner below with some great pages.

Brenda Arnall’s planner

This is the front of a lovely planner that Brenda Arnall has made on her blog. I love the look of this, there are lots of templates available to download, you need to go near to the bottom of the November pages to find all the details, but very easy to follow.

I want to keep the binder flexible, so will use some bookrings to hold it together and then tie on lots of ribbons (same method as my Christmas planner). I do need to make it easy though to add pages, so will remember this time to use a standard hole punch so that the holes are all in the correct place.

I suppose I could use a standard A5 ring binder, but it doesn’t feel “mine” in the same way.

I will print her pages on paper, I don’t want the planner to become too thick, if producing a bound book (what a great present for someone) then I’d use card and my Bind-it-All.

Martha Stewart

There are also loads of excellent tips on Martha Stewart’s website. I’ve also added her calendar’s into my outlook, so that I can choose to do or ignore her suggestions for the week. Simple things like checking smoke alarms etc.

Time to have some fun at the same time as getting organised.

Enjoy

Technology is the future and boy I love the future

I've been browsing my favourite sites for the last few days, Facebook, UK Scrappers, watching Tweetdeck alerts, keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, and have discovered some interesting websites, concepts and ideas, plus I've added new applications to my phone (Window Mobile).

So what have I learnt?

• Through a post on Facebook from one of my friends, I saw a fantastic idea called postcrossing where you can send and receive postcards to random people across the world, I've just got my first 5 addresses, ranging from USA, China, Finland, Italy to Holland. I've now got to get some local postcards to send off. Once they start getting logged as received, I can then send more and I will then start receiving postcards in return.  I've decided to create a scrapbook of the places and locations.
• Whilst looking on UKScrappers - I spotted a thread about "One Little Word 2010", this is inspired by Ali Edward's.  Well I've done my thinking and my word is "organisation", if I put more effort into getting and keeping organised, my whole life and family should have a better balance, the garden will get planted, our home might be tidier, in my work I will not be overloaded, my time will be well spent, there will be less waste, more money and I'll have more time to play and relax. This needs some more thought and perhaps I need to dedicate some time to putting my thoughts and ideas into a specific blog, pulling together ideas and websites that help me, the ups and downs the successess and catastrophies. My hope is that by this time next year, I have benefitted and our lives are more fulfilled.
• I have signed up to Windows Marketplace and now have some new applications on my HTC phone, (all free so far), I have a shopping list manager (well that fits with the step above), a great weather forecast application and Google Maps.
• I've also started to add tasks and manage my calendar on outlook more efficiently, lets hope I can get a complete list of the tasks that need doing and then start doing them. I've got the rest of the holiday to catch up and get ahead.
• OFSTED - love them or loathe them, we've got to be ready for them, we were told on the last day of term, that they now only need to give between 3 days and 2 weeks notice that they are coming in to do an inspection. I am determined that all my files and paperwork are going to be ready. More to go onto the task list.

There's no point in dwelling on what could have been or how things have gone pear shaped, draw a line under it, move forward and change the future.  I hate wasted energy, picking holes in what could have been, worrying, criticism, all negative entities, that drain energy. This year is going to be filled with positivity, opportunities to be grabbed and used, more forward steps than backward. Things will happen that are going to halt our lives, but they must be taken as small hurdles that need navigating and not huge fences that force you to turn back. We aren't going back, forward all the time, whatever route it takes.

About me

I'm married to a great guy and we have one daughter who loves cooking and eating, thankfully she is very adventurous in her tastes. I'm a real foodie and enjoy all aspects of food, from reading about it (over 160 cookery books), to growing it and above all cooking it and teaching my daughter to cook too.

All of us are very handy in the kitchen, it's how we all relax and we are very adventurous.

We shop at farm shops every week and we love to try out different dishes with the wonderful array of vegetables and meats available.

When time permits, we are hoping to grow as much of our own food as possible, you can’t get fresher or healthier, we aim to grow organically, but the slugs were better fed than us last year, so I may have to resort to organic slug pellets.

When time permits we love getting out into the countryside, geocaching is a great way to enjoy the outdoors with the added fun of finding treasure at the end of your walk.  We also love foraging for free food, I am enjoying the fruits of our labours at the moment, sloe gin.

Links

My favourite links

Dolly’s Dreamings

Ali Edwards

Shimelle

Littlemoors Farm Shop

Geocaching

Postcrossing

Bookcrossing

Caching and hugging

It was a glorious day today, we were inspired by Autumnwatch to go back to the ancient trees we found last weekend in the New Forest and measure them to enable us to log them.  I also did some research before we went as I knew we would be going past 2 war memorials and I was positive that there were geocaches near each. My hubby lost friends serving, so this would be an ideal opportunity to visit and claim the caches too.

The first cache was called “Heart of Stone” and was very near to this memorial near Ibsley.  It was good to get back doing a simple cache and dash. We then continued on a lovely trip through the forest.

  

 

The trees were magnificent as were the  ponies. At least this time we had our daughter with us as she is horse mad. We also visited a Canadian memorial near Bolderwood.  Found the cache “Little Canada”, this was a regular cache, it was good to drop off the Travel Bug I’d collected in Cornwall in the summer, picked up a fantastic Geocoin for us to move on, not going to leave it so long this time before we go caching again.

The trees were huge in the forest near Burley, we’ve recorded the sizes of 4 trees, luckily hubby had a tape measure in the car so we didn’t need to do any tree hugging, but even with our best intentions, we still needed to hug to pass the tape onto the next person. Some of the trees were over 6 metres in diameter, therefore according to the autumnwatch guide, you convert to centimetres and divide by 2 and that gives you the age of the tree, over 300 years old truly ancient trees.

It was brilliant to have so much time together in the beautiful forest together, all that fresh air it certainly revitalises.

 

 

 

 

My intentions for my future blogging/scrapbooking

I’ve just started Shimelle’s latest class “Blogging for Scrapbookers” and I need to define my intentions for this class.

I need to get better at blogging events as they happen, as I easily get diverted onto new and then forget the details that are important and make the memories so special.

I must make more use of my camera phone, download and blog.

College smiles

I was so happy today, 2 new smartboards have been installed in the classrooms I use at college. We previously had mobile smartboards with very old pcs and they were so feint you couldn’t see the screens and they took 20 minutes to boot up before you could use them.  This isn’t very good when you teach computer animation and digital graphics, so need memory intensive programmes.

To make sure that they working for my lesson that started at 9am, (I had spent 4 hours yesterday building a Smart Notebook to use), I went to the classroom early at 8.30.  They never seem to leave you instructions, I’m happy to twiddle and had my machine working within a couple of minutes.  It was brilliant, lots of happy students, all could see the board, they loved the Notebook, the lesson went really well. I then spotted that the software hadn’t been properly installed, all the features weren’t there, I couldn’t write over everything displayed on the screen, still these are minor irritations.  It is hard when you share classrooms, I taught 2x 1.5 hour classes this morning, then ended up back in at 3 for another 1.5 hour lesson by which time another member of staff had run an old version of the Smartboard software, so my snazzy Notebook would no longer work. One of our IT support guys worked with me this afternoon and yippee it’s now working wonderfully, just hope that the staff are careful and don’t repeat the error again.

I will take photos tomorrow of the new board and I can then add to this blog entry.

We have open evening next week, so I just need to create a self-running video/presentation to display on the board, no pressure!!!

So much to do, so little time, but I love a challenge.

All things blog

Well I’ve signed up for Shimelle’s “Blogging for Scrapbookers” course and been browsing through Shimelle’s latest class notes on the forum and found some interesting links and materials. I’ve updated the look of my blog and I love the new look and feel. Through the forum, I’ve come across some blogging software call windows live writer.

 

 Windows Live Writer

Thank you to stacey for pointing me in the direction of Live Writer. I hadn’t realised that I’d downloaded this in the past, but never set it up.
This is a great way to create my blog posts without the normal method of signing into blogger.

Halloween Fun

A lovely day here, about 18 deg C which isn't bad for the last day of October. Managed to completely clear out the greenhouse, wash it inside and out, put up the bubblewrap insulation and then put back the plants that need to overwinter. Now I need to pot up some lettuce, rocket and land cress, plus some pea shoots, to keep us going in winter salad leaves. I love being able to harvest our own leaves at Christmas. Might persuade Hubby to buy another box of living salad from Lidl too, about 40 plants in that, they can go in a planter/grow bag in the greenhouse too.

Finally managed to get to steam the Christmas Puddings, all 8 individual ones (much more sensible). They only took 3 hours, so I can now wrap them ready to store.

Still haven't managed to make the Christmas Cakes though, my Kenwood Chef has appeared from storage, but it needs a good scrub before I can use it. I don't fancy creaming all that butter and sugar and eggs by hand.

Did some pumpkin carving last night, didn't realise that my Mum and Dad have never had a pumpkin lantern before, until I put it in their garden, in view of the patio doors. They were amazed. Oh for the internet and downloadable templates. I tried to pick something that wasn't too scary. Must remember to get a new pumpkin carving blade next year, mine is beginning to bend and is going to suffer from metal fatigue before much longer.

No to get the pumpkin back and turn it into a pumpkin pie, soup, muffins............... etc, well it is a huge pumpkin, huge chunk to Mum too for her to use.

We don't get trick or treaters in the country, I do miss the little kids, but not the older ones who can be quite menacing.

New Hair

We went to a friends wedding at the weekend and my daughter read a poem, she had her hair restyled the night before into a modern bob and wow is she stunning.

Here we are having a bubble blowing contest.  The wedding was in Paignton in Devon at the most beautiful place.

The grounds were vast and so picturesque.

 

I also caught a lovely photo of Laura with our cat Boots, who was being very soft and soppy and not wanting to move.  He wouldn’t get off the chair, so he needed lots of hugs so that Laura could stand up and get on with weighing up the ingredients for the Christmas Pudding and Cakes.

He has been a different cat since we lost his brother earlier in the year, a complete personality change. Sloppy as they come, like velcro when he sees a lap available, but does have a tendency to launch himself on us at 3am every morning, just to let us know that he’s in and needs to warm up.

Christmas prep here we come

Ooops, I've been missing in action, poor blog, it's been forgotten and been left all alone. Well it's time to resurrect and get chatty again.

Half-term has been a relaxing time (I normally have to work, first time the college have allowed us to take a full weeks holiday and boy did I need it).

Today is the start of Christmas preparations. I managed to find some tubs of whole candied peel in Julian Graves earlier in the week, my daughter's current sat on the sofa chopping it into tiny pieces. The fruit is being weighed out and ready to be steeped in brandy overnight. I love Delia's recipe, I don't want to change as it is so good. To make it very special, I've put The Santa Clause on to watch and get us in the Christmas mood, I believe the magic of Christmas gets trapped in the fruit, so we start the process by getting ourselves into Christmas feel to trap even more magic in the mix. Going to make 2 cakes this year, 1 for us, the other for my Mum and Dad.

Will mix together the pudding later, it also needs to be left overnight.

I then need to put my planner together, I need to print new inserts and then get the planner back into operation.

Ho Ho Ho

A medieval rsvp

I am delighted to have been asked to create an RSVP card for a friend who has been invited to a Medieval wedding.

I need to find a suitable paper, embellishments and text in the style of the invitation.

Does anyone have any ideas?