love those cupcakes

Tales of the unexpected

Rather a lot has been happening here, though not quite in the way planned.

1.  We're lucky to have more than enough, erm, facilities in our house (two up, one down, which works out at one toilet each when there's just the three of us) but it's annoying when one of the afore mentioned facilities suddenly decides to impersonate Niagara and merrily gush water ad infinitum.  A repair is beyond the mister's capabilities (though he did manage to dismantle part of it, exposing the innards and leaving the bits on the bathroom floor for people to stub their toes on, especially when they're using the striped towels that make your eyes go funny), so it's now a question of waiting for the plumber to fit in a visit in the middle of installing a sparkling new Christmas kitchen for someone else.  And of remembering the facility is not functioning.  I did stick on  a warning note but the ink leaked onto the lid which now shouts 'DO NOT USE ' in a lovely shade of teal.  And I'm mindful that my mother would have been most unhappy with all this talk of *toilets*.

2.  The mister then decided to do a teeny tiny straightforward refurb in the shower room by replacing the door seal, got carried away and, as a result, the shower is similarly out of action and we've now strayed into more than minor works territory, necessitating the ordering and delivery of various strangely shaped parcels and tools amidst much humming and hawing over Google search results.

3.  With the house looking worryingly free from Christmas, we decided to escape the sanitary sick and wounded and get the glitter ball rolling by popping out to buy a tree.  Two hours later, we're parked in a lay-by about 10 minutes from home, in a vehicle with a flat as a pancake tyre, waiting for what feels like forever to be towed home by the breakdown truck.  And, we observe, we're still tree-less.  And why do I always think about toilets (sorry, Mother) the minute I'm nowhere near one? 

4.   The Boy was in the kitchen baking industrial quantities of something with religieuse in the title on Sunday night to discover, whilst up to his elbows in egg shells, the waste disposal unit had given up the ghost.  Now I realise this was yet another first world problem but I'm so used to chucking disgusting stuff into that handy gadget  and I really dislike having to stick my hand deep into it to retrieve whatever it was I'd unthinkingly tried to get rid of in an environmentally friendly way.  And yes, I've seen that Final Destination scene and know only too well what can happen.

5.  Maybe deciding we'd had more than the usual three troublesome things, the waste disposal unit unexpectedly bucked the trend and somehow healed itself.   I mentioned it to the Boy.  'It's a Christmas miracle', was the muttered reply.

 * * *

(In view of the unsavoury nature of much of the content in this post, I give you a picture of vegan mince pies, baked by my own fair hand to my own recipe and intended for the freezer. They were delicious, by the way.  Every single one of them.)

 

Idle chatter

Sweet smells are an important part of my life.  I wear perfume every day, use scented hand creams (the current favourite is ginger), there are fragranced candles and melts dotted about the house, we have room sprays and those little bottles of smelly stuff that you plonk sticks in.  I buy things like bathroom sprays, shampoo and washing up liquid,  laundry powder and handwash (ooh, chocolate orange and bubblegum) purely based on their pong.  

Memories, as we all know, are so often tied up with scents.  

Like my mum's face cream, my gran's Sunday lunch apple pies, Lyons' coffee bubbling away on the gas stove in the percolator 'bought' by my parents with Embassy cigarette coupons, the first bottle of scent ('Miss Americana') I bought for myself.  

Like the sawdust that covered every surface in my friend's grandad's workshop which we visited to collect little offcuts of wood and which I discovered many years later was where the coffins were made for his undertakers business.

Like the calomine lotion dabbed on 'midgie' bites in the summer, teeny paper wrapped rectangles of cinnamon flavoured Dentyne chewing gum, ink stained fingers after practising joined up writing in junior school using scratchy pens dipped in inkwells filled by that week's Ink Monitor, the perfectly folded packets of Beecham's powders my brother always insisted cured every ill.

Like the kitchen sink being scrubbed with Vim, the green blocks of Fairy household soap my dad used to wash his hair, the mister's aroma of patchouli oil when we first met.  

So so many, a whiff of any of which would catapult me right back. 

A recent present from me to me (why, thank you) was another candle.  

Oh my goodness.  It's the smell of packets of crunchy Parma violets, of little bunches of purple flowers with heart shaped leaves which used to appear on the nature table at the back of Mrs Whitehouse's classroom, of Yardley Christmas gifts bought for my mum at the Co-op chemists with a ten bob note from my dad and enough left over to buy something for everyone else on my list.  A tad expensive but so beautifully packaged and so highly fragranced, I may not need to light it.

A new (to me) aran jumper also found its way through the letterbox (actually it was left by the garden gate).  It's a lovely handknit and, after a careful wash (I'm renowned for my efforts at keeping Barbie's wardrobe well stocked), now smells of what the container describes as 'Sunburst'.  

Still doesn't make me look like Alexa Chung, though.

 

One of those weeks

You know the ones, when....

You buy flowers, you buy some more and then you're given an enormous bunch on Mothering Sunday.

You run out of vases and have to employ a coffee pot to display the overflow.

You add to the substantial TBR pile with yet more bargain reads. And then some.

You realise you've already read at least one of them.

You stop, look round and finally accept that you'll never write that 'My journey to minimalism' post.  Me and my stuff?  We're meant to live together.

You arrange a working lunch in the local art gallery with your friend, only to pass like ships in the night because someone who isn't you got the time wrong.

You just can't seem to shove in enough broccoli.

You meet your Girlie and the littlest for a day in York.  No plans, just time to wander, catch up, eat good food, drink good coffee.

You share an otherwise empty train carriage with the shiniest, most well behaved traveller and his owner on the journey home.  Ah yes, the perks of first class rail travel.

You stumble down pothole ridden paths in mud laden boots in the dark one night with a complaining  ('will you just let me off this lead?') canine and a moaning ('will you just point the torch over here?') mister to try to catch sight of a steaming beauty.  And maybe, just maybe,  you did. 

 

Week in verbs

Taking advantage of a sunny afternoon to walk round the park.

Noticing signs of Spring and plump squirrels.

Signing up for an additional weekly yoga session.  Another baby group but still, it all helps.  Right?

Continuing the Scandi love with a few beautifully wrapped treats.  For the house, not me.

Welcoming visitors with mango bellinis and nibbles.

Concocting a supper of savoury strudel, grilled courgettes, peas, feta and mint, and roasted peppers, sunblush tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, with fresh from the oven brownies, raspberries and vanilla ice cream to finish.  Quicker to make than to type.

Forgetting to take foodie pictures before the demolition squad moved in.

Surprising myself and everyone else by marking the 14th of the month with homemade offerings of peanut butter cups (excellent recipe from here) for the big people and a card for the littlest. 

Ignoring comments about some sort of plot having been lost.

Watching activity at the bird feeder.

Waking up to snow.

Wondering if it is etiquette to point out that someone has a little dab of something on their chin.

 

One down, eleven to go

Thanks so much for all the comments on my last post.  My experience certainly touched a nerve (see what I did there?) with many of you.  The repair to my tooth (not a front one, fortunately) was completed yesterday (with anaesthetic, I might add)  and it feels so much better.  Though I now have a very attractive fat bottom lip after an altercation with some instrument or other.

In other news, marmalade, in all its citrusy, sticky glory, has been made and stored.  I was concerned I'd ended up with jars of orange soup but it actually looks like and tastes of, well, marmalade.  

Books have been read and enjoyed.  Both of these are recommended. 

The current book at bedtime, Julian Barnes' Arthur and George, is based on a real criminal case of the early 1900s and alternates the stories of the accused, one George Edalji, and a certain Arthur (his identity is revealed on page 61 or thereabouts) before their eventual unlikely meeting.  A brilliant book.  And, look, my home town even pops up.

Cheap as chips daffs have filled vases.

So now we're into the second month of the year.

Today is World Cancer Day and I'm wearing my unity band.

Someone here celebrated a birthday.

And we're off to live a little Danishly for a few days.

Back soon.

 

The good, the bad and the giveaway

The good

The sun was shining and there was nothing in the diary so I decided to give my little car some tlc.  For two hours, I shampooed, rinsed, polished, brushed, cleared (ooh, lovely, a pound coin), dusted and polished a bit more.

The bad 

Him (having just returned from the car wash in his own vehicle):  'You did a terrible job on your car.'

Her:  'What do you mean?  It's gleaming. Inside and out.'

Him:  'You missed a bit.'

Her:  'Where?  Show me.'

Him:  'There.  See it?  Bend down.  Now do you see it?   Not there.  There.  On the wheel trim.'

The good

I managed to not slap someone across the face with a wet shammy (or chamois if you prefer).

The bad

After all these years, someone clearly hasn't learned when to keep their trap firmly shut.  

The good

I baked a batch of extremely chocolatey brownies with just the right amount of squidge.

The bad

I ate most of them.  And I picked off the bits stuck to the baking parchment.  I may even have chewed the baking parchment.

The good

I bought the ingredients for a new knitting project.

The bad

The pattern turned out to be far too complicated with an unfathomable multi size/multi piece chart instead of instructions and on which 'x' meant both knit and purl depending on which row you happened to be on. So I ditched it after three attempts and started something more manageable.  Hopefully.

The good

I cleaned the oven.

The bad

Said oven went into shock and stopped working.  

The good

I couldn't cook anything more elaborate than beans on toast for several days until the Oven Man could work his magic.  It was like being on holiday.  A very basic holiday, admittedly, but still.

The bad

Someone should have told me the Oven Man would need to poke about in the cupboard where I chuck all the bags of flour and icing sugar to find the main switch. When he'd finished, his right side looked like it had been caught in a blizzard.

The good

This book.  A tricky subject (domestic abuse).  Two storylines (a journalist writing a book in the late 1960s about an ongoing criminal case and the story of the accused, in her own words with an interweaving of the perspectives of others).  Highly recommended.

The bad

Not bad, exactly.  It's just that I've already read it and have a copy (different cover, in my defence) on the bookshelf.  I do this rather a lot these days.  Though I should have realised with this one as I have a collection of most of Anita Shreve's novels. But Strange Fits of Passion is such a great story, and I couldn't remember a lot of the detail, so a re-read was no bad thing.

The good

An enjoyable evening with writer Joanna Trollope.  We're not friends or anything and there were others at the event in our town's main library.   A reminder, too, of just how lovely this building is.  

The bad

I bought another book.  Couldn't not buy after hearing Joanna (yep, on first name terms now) talk about her research (she spent time in Stoke and at the Emma Bridgewater pottery) and the writing process.  She wrote in it.  And I started reading it that night.

The good

The signs are there.  Nights drawing in (or as my dad used to say, it's getting late early), changing colours, heartier meals, the distinctive tang of summer on the wane.  We are definitely on the cusp of a new season.

The bad 

The er..........erm............nope, nothing bad.  I love autumn, me.

The giveaway

To mark the blogging milestone mentioned in the previous post, and as a big thank you for your visits, support and comments, I've put together a few bits and bobs, a little selection of some of the kinds of things that have appeared here in some form or other over the last eight years which I hope you'll enjoy.

  

 1.  Rifle Paper Co. labels and stickers   2. Melt scented candle   3. To Kill a Mockingbird brooch made from a page from the book

4.  Rifle Paper Co. set of notebooks   5. Copy of the novel 'Astrid and Veronika'   6.  Book of National Trust baking recipes 

7.  Packet of Sarah Raven Pictorial Meadow seeds     8.  Bar of drinking chocolate

 

Just leave a comment on this post by October 3rd and I'll do the name out of the hat thing.

 

Weekend in verbs

Watching Jurassic World.  Saturday night, the cinema was busy, the dinosaurs were big and bad, Claire/Bryce Dallas Howard ran though the jungle in pristinely white high heels and the mister noisily chomped his way through a giant bag of salted popcorn. 

Deciding I need a coloured glass vase and buying one for a couple of quid in a charity shop in town.

Baking a batch of cupcakes.  It's ages since I made any (which is odd for someone who named her blog for the love of the finger lickingly sweet treats).  I've fallen out with piping bags and nozzles so went for a dollop of buttercream and topping overload - chopped up Reece's peanut butter cups, Snickers, Crunchies and a bar of chocolate with Malteser bits in it,  a sprinkling of dried raspberry pieces here and there, a drizzle of caramel and a final flourish of melted white chocolate.  The cake version of a Christmas selection box.

Adding to the book pile.  I had no reason to go into Waterstones but I did and, well, you know the rest. Pity I forgot to add to the points on my loyalty card.

Popping into a charity shop on the way to the supermarket to buy the afore mentioned chocolate bars and spying another glass vase.  Seems I now have a new collection.  As I was indulging in a spot of show and tell, someone here asked, 'So what are you getting rid of to fit them in?'  Like someone's some sort of Grand Master of decluttering and sorting.  Which he most definitely is not. (The answer, by the way, was 'Nothing'.  Or something along those lines.)

Wandering along the riverside, looking for ducklings and spotting not a single one.  There are none at the local pond, either.

Visiting the aunt.  She's still in hospital though no longer in isolation (a raft of tests found no evidence of any nasty infections).  Now we're just waiting for the nod for her discharge and transfer to the care home for a couple of weeks of respite which hopefully will establish new habits and routines.

Admiring someone's sartorial style.  Garboesque, I'm thinking.  Well, I suppose if you've got it...........

 

Weekend bits

The Girlie came home for a pre brithday weekend, we stayed local and kept it simple with:

• fresh from the oven breakfast pastries (and if you haven't tried JusRol pains au chocolat which just happen to be vegan, go buy a pack)

• lunch and a breath of bitterly cold sea air at the beach

• a mooch in the charity shop

• the (predictable) purchase of a stack of new to me books (the commitment to reading from the to-be-read pile here obviously excludes charity shop buys. And, of course, books bought with Christmas money)

• a Burn's Night supper served a day early and which looked exactly like this one from a couple of years ago

• posting a card to a friend and being reminded of the 150th anniversary of the publication of a favourite story

• a Sunday morning visit to the excellent farmers market in the park and bringing home soil covered vegetables, fancy shortbread, the crustiest sourdough loaf and fruity spiced teacakes the size of my head

• a rendition of the birthday song and a celebratory cake

Even the inevitable washing up (yes, we have a dishwasher but not everything goes in it) seemed less of a chore with the unmistakable heady scent wafting from the pot of hyacinths on the kitchen windowsill.

I love simple weekends, me.

 

 

Is it just me (part 2) ?

• I have my hair cut and blow dried (with occasional highighting) every five or six weeks.  After an hour and a half or so of chopping, faffing and industrial strength straightening in the salon, I come home and immediately wash and dry it all over again. Every. single. time. There was a slight change to the process the other day as I delayed the hairwashing to take a picture (for blogging purposes only, you understand) of my considerably shortened and flattened locks and eat some much needed lunch.  'Oh. Your hair looks very short.  And very flat', remarked the very observant mister. Little does he know how much it cost to get it like that.  Nor how close he came to wearing houmous and salad.

• We went to see Gone Girl at the cinema earlier this week.  I remember in the lead up to the release of the film there was talk about a different ending to the one in the book.  I've read it but can't for the life of me recall how it ended (and I can't check because my copy was dropped off at the charity shop a while ago).  Actually, it's a wonder I remembered any of the story as these days, almost as soon as I've read the last sentence and closed a book, I can't tell you what it was about.

• No surprise, then, that I find it impossible to have more than one book on the go at the same time. I was kind of forced into trying recently when I was accidentally separated from the current read (it's written in the format of a very long letter to a one time friend with not much in the way of action) and had to start another.  Of course, when I returned to the original book, I'd forgotten who was who (Ruth? Who she?) and had to re-read parts when I picked it up again, which took ages and meant that I ended up no further forward. Talk about one page forward, three chapters back.  Sheesh.

• During the festivities, we had a discussion about eating (well, we were doing rather a lot of it).  It turns out the others here share the habit of leaving the best bit on the plate to eat last.  I do the opposite and go straight for what I consider the tastiest morsel.  I mean, what if you're too full at the end to really savour what you've been saving?  

• It seems I've never learned that you can't always assume, especially when you're not wearing your specs, that that stray peanut which you spot on the kitchen worktop and pop into your mouth really is a peanut and not a cat treat.

• You'll probably have gathered by now that the mister here isn't lavish with the compliments. We were in the middle of some meal or other a little while ago when he noticed my hands (huh, after all these years), which I'd be the first to admit are very veiny (and very unlike his).  'Ugh' he exclaimed, mid chew, 'it's like you're an alien or something'.  Actually, they're my mother's hands (if you know what I mean).  I happen to like them, veiny as they are, because they're just as I remember hers. Incidentally, I also have my dad's nose (which has been passed on to the Girlie though hers was enhanced when she was at primary school and a teacher dropped a chime bar on it during a music lesson).  I'm happy with that, too (my nose, that is, not the chime bar incident).  Regardless of what the mister says about it.

• The January sales haven't been too enticing though I did bag a set of cheap as chips bedding (not that we needed any more given the over filled state of the airing cupboard).  The design is a range of tickets.  It's probably just me but I look at some of those tickets and think bourbon biscuits.  Edited to add: Homemade bourbons, of course.

 

Sloan Ranger

The knitting I mentioned in the previous post turned out badly (I wasn't surprised, it usually does these days) and so has been consigned to the bin.  I then started a little cross stitch project, so little I can't see the holes to poke the needle into, so that's been shelved.   

Now I'm trying my hand at painting.  Not pictures, I know I'm no artist.  Furniture.  A smallish bedside cabinet, to be exact, which could be used in a recently decluttered bedroom. Not that I have a good track record in painting furniture.  Not that I've ever painted anything.  Well, apart from the bathroom door in our first house when I used the slap all the gloss on at the top and spread it down technique.  It took absolutely ages to dry before the mister could set to with the sander.  

Made from a dark wood and with ball feet, this was the cabinet that was always next to my bed when I was growing up and which has followed me to whichever house I've lived in.  The mister was very clear from the beginning that me, the cabinet and the piano came as a package.  

It's been languishing at the back of the garage for ages, filled with DIY odds and ends and an unused car vacuum cleaner. It was also host to an enormous spider which was speedily rehomed with the help of a Kilner jar, the Betterware catalogue and a pair of oven gloves.

My dad had a couple of attempts at renovating the cabinet over the years. I came home from university one summer to discover he'd painted it the colour of lint dressing which is still evident in parts.  I have no idea why he chose pink, or that particular pink,  given my bedroom walls were dark purple at the time and he was allegedly aiming for a 'psychedelic effect'.  He repainted it white just before the mister and I were married and trying to furnish a rented house on a very limited budget and it hasn't been changed since.  Even allowing for the passage of time, I think I can safely say furniture painting was not my dad's forte. I have a feeling I may be about to confirm it isn't mine.

Annie Sloan chalk paint is everywhere in blogland and Pinterest and I realise I'm very late to that particular party.  It's also rather expensive but, seduced by the assurances of quick drying, that preparation and priming is unnecessary and no painting experience needed, I ordered a tin along with a tin of wax.

The first coat was applied yesterday.  It doesn't look good. It looks the exact opposite of good. The mister has been critical.  'There are drips on the doors'.    'They're not my drips', I retorted huffily, 'they're my dad's drips and I quite like them as they're part of the cabinet's story and anyway they're on the inside so won't be seen.'  Unlike the huge blob I did manage to leave on the front of one of the doors which his eagle eye appears to have missed.

The cabinet is back in the garage awaiting a second coat of paint.

It may be there some time.