Posts

Posted on

dear diary ~ a day to ourselves

We had a lovely day yesterday with little Freddie – he is so cute and some of the things he says makes me smile. He is so amenable if you ask him to do anything he will reply ‘OK’ and just do it. He helped me to make the nut roast for Sunday and I think he might make a great chef one day, he isn’t afraid to taste new foods either. We had a pleasant walk to the village in the sun and I was surprised to find very few people around yet the roads were quite busy. No doubt everyone rushing to do last minute shopping.

Once his mum had been to pick him up at 6 o’clock we did have a long sit down before making our own tea. Goodness knows how we will cope once the baby arrives and we have them both for the day with different needs – there will be a 4 year gap, the same as between Little L and Sweetie. When the newest member of the family is born the gap between the oldest and youngest grandchild will be 12 years, so that is going to be fun when we all go on holiday together. I think many people like my own mum and dad had grandchildren whilst they were in their 50’s we are almost 70 and we are finding it quite tiring at times, but I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to look after them for the world.

Today we have the whole day to ourselves and most of the food for tomorrow is sorted. I am planning to make a chicken casserole on Sunday morning as an alternative to the nut roast – being vegetarian all my life it is not anything I have made before but the lady in Sainsbury’s did say that the mini breast fillets I got would be fine in a casserole so I hope she is right.

After a nice long shower, a leisurely breakfast and a few household chores I plan to go in the garden (weather permitting).

I am missing the large tubs of tulips I had by the greenhouse for the last two years – I didn’t manage to refresh the tubs last autumn and was very late planting some bulbs straight into the border, but at least these have sprung up quickly and should flower soon. We are still having overnight frosts here but once the sun is on the greenhouse mid morning the humidity can build up quickly if I don’t remember to go out and ventilate it. I have plants in there waiting to go into the garden but need hardening off now, then I will give the greenhouse a good clean down and sow my seeds. I will probably do many more Zinnias this year I just love the splash of rich jewel colours in the summer and they have such a long flowering time.

I always try to get my potatoes in on Good Friday but that was not going to happen yesterday whilst we looked after Freddie – I am sure he would have been most helpful but the thought of him wading into a tub full of manure made me think twice – so hopefully I will get them sorted today.

Posted on

dear diary ~ Easter upon us already

Hello again, you can always guarantee that when I find my way back to write here I am between a busy period that has just ended and one that is about to begin! It is my lull before the storm.

I was still in Scotland in my last post and we will be venturing up there again soon – but Easter will be spent at home with the family (not sure even now who will be coming or when but there will no doubt be a house full on at least two days). I hope the weather is good or good enough for an Easter egg hunt in the garden with the grandchildren – I have got my Easter tree on display now and the whole house has been cleaned in readiness for our visitors. Sadly, I never found the time to make my own Easter cards and had to resort to buying a pack from Sainsbury’s.

Yesterday we had to go shopping – mainly to get in extra food and as expected the supermarket was busy. I would have preferred to have gone on Tuesday of this week but we made a flying visit up to see mum 90 miles away in North Yorkshire. It was not a good move as we haven’t done a trip there and back in one day since my back problem began almost a year ago now and I have discovered that it is too much of a journey to do in one day as my back pain was quite severe by the time we arrived home. To make matters worse when we got to the outskirts of our village there was an incident involving many police cars and the road was blocked by them so we had to drive a few miles round to get home by another route.

DH had his tooth removed and all seemed well for a day or two but then an infection took hold and he had to have antibiotics which always upset him and leave him with gut problems. This time we took no chances and I got him some pro-biotics to take at the same time. My sister also had a tooth out recently and she is on her 4th lot of antibiotics – talking to friends it seems quite common these days that antibiotics are required after an extraction.

We have had little Freddie quite a bit recently to give his mum a break. His new baby brother or sister is expected in May and due to less than perfect maternity care so far the pregnancy has not gone that well and I am so worried for this baby – on each visit to the many consultants and midwives (and there have been many) she leaves feeling more confused and upset as they each have opposing opinions and cannot agree on a course of action, leaving my daughter not knowing what is going to happen. In all this they seem to be ignoring the fact that she is short of iron which is leaving her breathless and tired. They can’t even retest at the moment as due to brexit there is a shortage of the chemical they use to do the ferritin tests.

The weather here has been so unpredictable, one day sunny and the next rain so it has been difficult to plan anything. On the wet days I have continued with a bit of re-organisation and decluttering and on the dry days I have been in the garden. I can only do short spells before my back starts to ache and at that point I don’t push it any further, so it is a slow job. We are just on the edge of the Pennines here over 700 feet above sea level and due to the extreme spells of cold weather we have lost quite a few plants this winter. I will have to deal with these one by one and think hard about what to replace them with that might be more hardy.

Today we have little Freddie again to entertain us and I am hoping he will help me make the nut roast for our dinner on Easter Sunday and maybe some chocolate cornflake nests to put the mini eggs in. I will probably just make sandwiches for Sunday teatime or maybe homemade soup – I already have a plain victoria sponge cake in the freezer for afters – I splashed out and bought a small pot of double cream and a pot of mixed berry compote for the filling. Of course there will be jelly and ice-cream for the little ones with chocolate sprinkles – just in case they haven’t had enough chocolate by then!

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend and some much needed warm and sunny weather. x

Posted on

dear diary ~ wet, wet, wet and files, files, files…

I know it drives some people mad but I find the noise of the rain on the caravan roof quite comforting to listen to when I am in bed.  Being snug and warm inside whilst outside it is lashing with rain is a reminder of how lucky we are to have a roof over our heads and can still afford some heat.  The sound of the rain is never so obvious when we are at home.

We are on our last day here at the cottage.  It has not been a very productive visit this time as the cold weather, even on the sunniest of days, together with sporadic down pours has meant little gardening has been done.  DH cut the front and back grass and washed down the caravan.  I attempted the trellis border and lane side border and was rained off each time.

So instead I made soup and curry and tomato and butterbean casserole and each time whilst they were cooking made an effort to clear out digital files on my laptop.  It is surprising the amount of old stuff on there and as with my paper files at home I have opened one or two folders each day and dealt with the documents inside – either keeping, archiving or deleting. 

At least there is no shredding involved.

Whilst I have been decluttering these digital files there has been quite a bit of shuffling around too and renaming of folders and then reordering the folder list – though I am not altogether satisfied yet with the running order – I am very particular about my folder list (no doubt a nerdy thing).

As the folder list is automatically sorted alphabetically by name I can end up with the most frequently used folders nearer the bottom so to bring the important ones to the top of the list I just add an exclamation mark or two to the front of the label name to be able to adjust where the folders appear on the list and make my own partially alphabetical one.  So folders such as  !STATEMENTS or !!ONLINE ORDERS and  !!!CONTACTS that are in frequent use are easy to find.  When Xmas comes around and I am using this folder more (which usually resides at the bottom of the folder list) I can rename it with an exclamation mark !XMAS and it will bring it to the top of the list temporarily over the Christmas period.

One day soon I do need to tackle the mass of photos – they are eating into the free space on my computer and many of the ‘blog’ photos can be deleted as I often take several shots and choose the best one to post.

To help with my current quest to go paperless in our office at home I have been searching online for manuals to download so that I can get rid of our paper versions. I have also downloaded the assembly and care instructions from the Ikea website for the flatpacks we have bought over the years. I am not sure we would ever need to refer to them again but if we do they will be documented on the computer. Any important instructions and manuals that I can’t find online I will probably scan onto the computer before putting the paper version into the recycle bin as there is no danger of any of our details being on these.

I will be sad to be leaving the cottage but I know there is so much to do at home too and no doubt the garden there will suddenly spring into life once (or if) we have some warmer weather.

We usually stop in Castle Douglas on the way home – a small market town with some great shops one of which is a family run craft shop over two floors and piled high like a treasue trove with wool, fabrics, artists materials and all things crafty – far better than any Hobbycraft, although not as organised but that only adds to the pleasure of discovery and the temptation to buy is just as difficult to ignore.

It is Mothering Sunday this week so as soon as we are home we will be setting off to pay my mum a flying visit (she lives in North Yorkshire about 90 miles from us) as we have to be back home again and at the dentist on Monday afternoon for that tooth extraction – I will no doubt have to make a big pan of soup for DH to eat afterwards.

Thank you for all your kind comments on previous posts and welcome to all the new followers, those of you that have your own blogs I will be over soon for a nosey – I know some of you are fellow crafters and I am looking forward to seeing all your handiwork.

Posted on

creating ~ ScrapHappy March

Welcome to the Scraphappy challenge post for March. This challenge uses the tiniest scraps of fabric – those little pieces that you sometimes end up with at the end of a sewing project too small for anything but the tiniest of patchwork – but I save them as they can prove useful as you will see in the pictures below.

For Christmas I made my sister in law and her husband a picnic hamper packed with a few edible goodies, a handy flask and a copy of The Picnic recipe book. 

To make it a bit more special and personalised I made them a napkin each with their names on. I used a couple of inexpensive white cotton napkins I bought from Sainsbury’s years ago and that I had stashed away in my craft drawer (for a project that I can’t even remember now!) and machine embroidered their names on……

…..and using an assortment of the tiny fabric scraps appliqued a simple flower design.

I say simple as it was the first time I had ever done any free hand machine embroidery and it took quite a bit of concentration ….but I was quite pleased with the result.

It might even be something that I make again or perhaps I will do a tea cosy or I am sure my two granddaughters would love a personalised pillowcase each – I still have plenty of tiny scraps to go at!

If you enjoyed this post do venture over to the other bloggers to see what they have been making. There are two new members to welcome to the group this month. Just click on each of the names below to link through to their blogs.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Debbierose, Nóilin, Viv, Karrin,
Amo and Alissa