Flowers in the house

Well like most other places in England it's rained most days since Easter. I did manage to get the potatoes in on the best day so far but for the rest of the time I have had to make do with the flowers around the house to cheer me up.

Over the last couple of months I think my hubby has brought me more flowers than throughout our married life. He has been working 12 or more hours a day for 7 days a week for the last six weeks and is so tired when he gets in he usually just disappears upstairs to relax for the rest of the night, so maybe it's to make up for the lack of time he's been spending with me, but I'm not complaining!

These were fair trade roses and the best roses I've had for a long time. In recent times the roses seem to droop and dry out before they have even opened but I loved all the layers to these roses with their delicate petals.

I've had mini daffodils reduced to 50p on my kitchen windowsill, (sorry about the ugly tap) and my fireplace.

I thought these little easter cactus' were great for £1.50 each so I bought one of each colour and then went to buy some little pots to put them in. They didn't have the pots in the colours I really wanted but I think they still look really cute. When I bought them none of the flowers had opened but are now in full bloom, despite the gloomliness of my dining room.

These next pictures have been took with my semi-professional canon, which has a shallower depth of field, I think that's what they say anyway. It tends to focus on one area and so everything else ends up fuzzy but I quite like the effect of it. As I say I'm no photographer.





I think I'll leave it there for now, I just hope the weather picks up soon. I am having a  joint birthday party on Saturday with my mum as she was 68 today and I will be 40 next Tuesday. I was hoping for a garden party but I can't even get out to cut the grass at the moment.



    

Meringue

Last night I made a pie for tea and had some pastry left over so I decided to make some lemon curd tarts with the homemade lemon curd a neighbour had given me a while back. I then thought it would be nice to turn them into little lemon meringues, something I hadn't made before. So after cracking two egg whites and checking how much sugar to put in, instead of guessing, I whisked them up with a hand whisk and added the sugar as soon as it started to peak. I think I should have whisked it slightly longer as it tended to go a bit more runny after I had added the sugar, but I was so concerned about over whisking, as all my cook books said not to over whisk. Anyway for a complete meringue novice I don't think they turned out bad and everyone enjoyed them. With the left over meringue I just dolloped spoonfuls onto some baking paper, which would have been fine, despite being a trifle flat, if it wasn't for the fact they stuck to the paper and to eat them you either have to break bits off the top or eat them with the paper. I was so looking forward to having them sandwiched together with some double cream, maybe next time!

Sorry for the inferior photo I'm not very good and need to learn some techniques, I tend to just point and shoot, much to my husband's disappointment.



The evils of mobile phones

Well I've had a rather disappointing day, the weather has been cold, dreary and wet since the kids broke off and I really need to get out and plant my potatoes and sort out my little veg plot. I stupidly tripped over myself (floppy slippers to blame) and hurt my arm, my husband is working 12 hours a day 7 days a week so just wants to stay out of the way upstairs when he gets home, and my tele, that is only two years old and has already had one new power board replaced, will not stay on for longer than 10 minutes. What's this got to do with mobile phones you ask, well to top it all off I have found out that my son has gone over his phone contract this month by £90, making the bill £108. What a shock. I bought the phone myself on a contract because at the time it was Christmas and we had no savings for Christmas presents so I bought the phone as it had a free ipod with it, which my son had asked for for Christmas. After a year of hardly using the phone myself  and the fact that son no.2's pay as you go phone had broke, I thought he would make better use of it. The contract has 300 texts a month, which was ample enough for me as I probably didn't even use 10, so I thought would be ample for him. Well I certainly was wrong. In 1 day he used over 100 texts and had gone over his limit in 4 days. I think at the time he was texting a girl who he liked. She had been trying to go out with him for a year and he hadn't been interested but decided at this point he would go out with her, hence all the texting. The day after he said yes she told him she didn't want to go out with him anymore.
 My eldest son has always been really good keeping a track on his and never really going over more than a couple of pounds. Since I gave son no.2 the phone I kept reminding him to watch his texts as his friends are texting him all the time, (they must have unlimited texts). The problem was, although the network text you to say when you had used 75% of your usage, they never text to say when you had used it all and we weren't sure how to check exactly how much usage he had left. So I am now in a quandary, I think he has gone over again this month but not near as much. Should I take the phone back for myself and give him a pay as you go or should I give him another chance now he has realised how easy it is to go over and hope that he is more responsible and keep a check on it?

So I have sent all the kids up to their rooms and before I came on here sat down with this,

and a bit of this,

Let's hope for a bit more sunshine tomorrow!!

I'm back

Well it has been some time. I was going to start a whole new blog but decided to just change the name on this one instead and pretend I'm starting from scratch. Although I haven't written anything on here, my list of blogs I read is expanding daily and I seem to spend far too much time oohing and aahing over other people's pretty houses and gardens, dreaming of moving to the country and thinking of what I can make and do, instead of just getting on with it. I hope this time I can keep this up longer and manage to find some blogging friends before I give up again. So to start I wish you all

A Happy Easter

 Can you see the chicks?

Well it has been some time since my last blog entrant, infact I haven't written anything since my husband got back from Africa, but now the camera has been brought home from work and I've started making some Christmas decorations that my friend and I are hoping to sell at a local Christmas craft fair so I thought I should make an entrant before I lose all interest in carrying it on. Don't worry I haven't lost interest in all your blogs as your lives are a lot more interesting and you're all a lot better both at blogging and crafting than myself  but give me time. So here are the gingerbread men I have been making and today I took them into work to show my crafting buddy and I got some positive feedback and somebody even asked me if I could make them some. My kids love them and even my husband thinks they're good.

I started this a month ago and are only now getting around to posting it. All my gingerbread men have been sold with orders for another dozen which I really must do this week. I've also made some little pin houses and some other Christmas decorations.

My hope of making all my friends and relatives a homemade present is still on the cards, although I haven't actually started as yet. The fact that money is extremely tight, as in we have none and will be living on our overdraft this month means I don't really have much choice.

The kids have been off school for three days last week and the two older ones are off again today. They have extremely enjoyed the snow, as have I, although a lot of people are fed up with it now and the dirty heaps from people's drives don't look very appealing.

This week I have been painting our newly fitted bathroom and the blind has actually been put up after not having one up for eight months. The tiles and shower are still to be fitted when money's less tight but it looks ten times better than the original pink and grey bathroom. Photos to be added at a later date.

Still waiting

Well my husband was supposed to return home from Africa yesterday but it has been delayed till Saturday. After having two people threaten him for money he has decided not to risk walking down certain streets to restaurants after dark. This means I have to wait even longer to get my camera back. I went out on Saturday to buy a compact, thinking I knew which one to buy but went to another shop first to see what they had and ended up confused again so came home with nothing, in order to do more research. Hence I'll have to wait to show some of the things I have bought but now I can add some lovely books I am waiting on. In the meantime I have been painting my kitchen and some shelves to put up, reading more of your lovely blogs, something I think I'll have to stop doing for a while because it takes up too much time, there are sooo many, time I should be using to decorate my house and make the things I got my material for, the reason I started this blog in the first place, but what can I say, I spend too much time thinking and dreaming instead of doing!

I have been looking and dreaming about one day living in something like this:

or here

with a kitchen like this

and a garden like this

or this

I wish!!!

All these photos are from http://www.findaproperty.com/ 

Maybe

One day!!

Oh and can I say THANKYOU to my first follower over the Atlantic in 'cosylittlehouse'. I hope I soon have some more visitors. In the meantime I shall carry on enjoying reading your blogs.

Garden visitors

 I am not too great with a camera, I can't really be bothered with all the applications to try and make them better. My husband is passionate about photography and has recently got back into it after a number of years away. Because of this most photos on the blog will be ones that I have taken from various cameras and so, not that great. There may, however be the odd good one, of which case will have no doubt been taken by my husband.  Here are a few of my photos of visitors to my garden.

If you look closely you can see a fox running away from the tenfoot. Probably the same fox that killed 5 of my guinea pigs over a year time period. Sadly they have all now died, guinea pigs that is, and been replaced by two lovely rabbits, thunder and lightning.

A young wood pigeon decided to shelter from the rain in my bottle bin.

Two of my last remaining guineas.

Lightning

Thunder

And here are some of the things that grow