Tag: Everyday life

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dear diary ~ normal life resumed

Most of the packing has been put away now until next time and just the washing remains. Being in the garden most of the time at the cottage means a heap of very dirty gardening clothes but as usual I always start with the bedding and towels so I can get them ironed and repacked ready for our next visit.

Yesterday we went to the supermarket to gather up the groceries for the week and a few extra to cover the bank holiday and hopefully beyond. The increasing prices have become the normality now so I try to stretch the food out as long as I can though I much prefer to do the shopping on the same day if possible but no amount of careful planning can stretch it out to a fortnight as we would run out of fresh fruit and veg. Whilst in town I aslo picked up a length of Coronation bunting to put in the garden. It was hard to find – I tried all the most likely shops (B&M, Wilkos, The Works) to no avail and was on the point of giving up when I discovered The Party Shop in the precinct, but why they are still making bunting in plastic I don’t know, it goes against the grain but I bought it anyway; why couldn’t the manufacturers print it on a cheap cotton that would at least be biodegradable.

Added onto the grocery bill I bought some new insoles for my gardening boots (£4) to make them last a little longer as the soles are wearing quite thin now and really need replacing but new boots would cost me about £35-£40 (I buy yard boots which are actually used for mucking out but are more flexible than wellies). I do find them both comfortable and quite tough – they are waterproof too and fleecy lined so are nice and warm in the winter and they cover my ankles and provide extra support.

My menu plan is still mostly made up of winter meals and I really need to introduce some more summery meals as the weather begins to warms up – but this isn’t the week for that task. I have planned some fairly easy meals for this week as I need to spend time in the garden here at home – we left it two weeks ago just waking up and now everything is shouting for attention – flowers to be staked, pots to be refreshed and a lot of feeding required.

The back garden is starting to look better than the front though there is little colour in the back garden this year as I didn’t get to plant the tubs of tulips. The front garden has all the colour as the tulips I planted for last Spring thankfully came back again this year but other than a bit of weeding and digging out a frosted and very dead Hebe I haven’t done much work on the front as I have changes in mind and this will take time and better weather – I hear from DH (my weather man) that rain is imminent.

I did manage to clean out the greenhouse on Tuesday and before the week is out I need to get those seeds going if I am to have any flowers at all this year. I bought three outdoor bush tomato plants in Scotland (they are always cheaper up there) and before we went away I did get the seed potatoes planted – the ones in the tub are already making an appearance. I never sow the courgettes too early anyway as they need plenty of warmth and the selection of salad vegetables I usually sow straight into the outdoor beds.

But today the worst of all days in my mind – a trip to the dentist this morning. I knew before the check up that there is dental work to be done as I have a broken tooth and I have 3 options to put it right so I have been given a little time to think about it and decide which course of action I want to take. I was uneasy about going as the previous dentist who I knew for a long time and I trusted implicitly retired during the pandemic and I didn’t seem to quite gel with the person I saw last year that had taken over who is slowly switching over to mainly private patients (I am still NHS) but today my appointment was with someone else in the practice as it has expanded and I felt far more at ease with this guy and in fact one of the options is to do nothing at the moment as the broken tooth is not painful or inflamed and he wasn’t suggesting I had to have expensive work done so that must be a good sign.

As it happens our electric Oral B toothbrush has just stopped working – we hadn’t dropped it or anything but it just will not charge or show any signs of life and we have had to resort to the old manual toothbrushes until we research a replacement. Luckily the dentist said I am doing a good job of cleaning my teeth and not having an electric one is not having a detrimental effect but they do not feel as clean to me.

Well better go and get these seeds started. x

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dear diary ~ progress with the preparations

Well I certainly feel much lighter today with my new shorter hair cut but no less tired. I am not sure if it is a tiredness of the body or the mind but I expect it amounts to the same thing in the end.

Before we head off we are trying now to ‘eat the pantry’ and fridge of course, and yesterday we made an omelette to use up the last of the eggs and filled it with an assortment of left over veggies from the night before – sweetcorn, green beans, courgette, button mushrooms and cold potato – it turned out well and we used the last of the watercress and roasted a few baby potatoes to go with it. I tend to use watercress in place of lettuce because it is nutrient dense. Those tiny leaves and stalks contain good amounts of Vitamins A, C, and K and smaller amounts of vitamin E, thiamine, riboflavin, vitamin B6, folate, pantothenic acid, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and copper as well as antioxidants and phyto-chemicals. So well worth eating some every day. I have been growing the American landcress in recent years which is quick and easy to grow and just as nutritious.

DH made a good quantity of leek and potato soup for the freezer and is making mushroom soup today. I have a tupperware box in my fridge named ‘Soup Collection’ and we put green bits and other odds and ends of veg in it like the thick broccoli or cauliflower stalks and the very green tougher ends of leeks etc to use up in soups. The red peppers and onions left in the pantry will travel OK as will the grapefruit and oranges and I can eat the two bananas before we go.

There are towels and tea towels left to wash now and dry but they are not ones I will be packing so if they are not dry in time it won’t exactly matter too much. So far today the weather is dry enough to put them out on the line with the duvet cover and sheets. I like to change the bedding before we go away so that we come home to a freshly made bed.

I have been busy planning meals for when we are in the caravan and making a list of things we need to add on to our general packing list. I have a little more paperwork to complete before we go and cards to write and then I can concentrate on the packing.

Fingers crossed it will stay fine enough to get the seed potatoes planted later this afternoon. This wet, cold miserable weather has gone on long enough now and has prevented us from doing much at all in the garden since last week. There are tulips in the borders waiting in the wings ready to burst out into flower once the sun appears and no doubt this will happen as soon as we leave and I will miss the best of them!

I have plants in pots that I want to take up to Scotland with me – a lot of self seeded aquilegia and fennel and I will need to put them somewhere sheltered overnight so they dry off a bit before they go in the car.

One of the lovely things that happened that I forgot to mention was the grandchildren did a surprise indoor Easter Egg hunt for me and DH before they went home. How sweet was that – they left little clues on Post it notes around the house that said things like ‘this way‘ and ‘up here’ for us to find the hidden eggs. We had to pretend they were hard to find and they got so excited when we discovered one. Sweetie, who is only four, could hardly contain herself and once or twice blurted out where an egg was hidden when we got close!

Yesterday I spent a bit of time packing away the Easter decorations – I didn’t have many but similar to the after Christmas period the house suddenly looks rather bare. I washed my windows and all the lovely Easter drawings the children did are now gone so I am pleased I remembered to take a photo. I will probably repeat this activity at Halloween and Christmas if they stay here – it keeps them busy and occupied for a while. I will keep the lovely cards up though for a while longer and then I will probably use them to make recycled ones for next year.

On my last trip to the village I called in at our local, but very poor library and managed to find a book or two to take away with me – probably won’t be taking Peppa Pig – the children enjoyed it (and secretley so did I) but I will skip packing it.

The watercolour book is very informational with lots of practical tips and illustrations and the aim is to try and improve my painting skills – same with the photography book although on first glance it looks a bit technical in places for me.

I think this might have been a bit of a rambling post and like my head at the moment all over the place as we now rush to be ready on time to go away.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and once again I apologise to anyone dropping by expecting to see a ScrapHappy Challenge here – there has been very little crafting going on, hopefully next month will be better.

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dear diary ~ recovery and preparations

The holiday is now over for us and ‘granny’ has gone into recovery mode!

It was cold, wet and miserable outside yesterday and inside our house seems far too quiet now with the children gone. I should have done a hundred and one things to prepare for going away but I felt too wiped out to tackle many of them. I put in a load of washing which had to be dried inside and put a few bits away, then walked to the village to post my sister’s birthday card. After lunch DH and I sat for a while and started watching a film on TV – that was a mistake as even less got done but we both needed the rest and a bit of just me time. The trip to town that we should have done yesterday will now have to be fitted in today between an appointment this morning and a hair appointment late afternoon.

There are a few bits I cannot buy locally in Scotland and the Sainsbury’s in Newton Stewart that we go to on the way is quite small so I shall have to buy them here at our larger branch. It shouldn’t take us more than an hour so we can be in and out quite quickly thank goodness. I shall make an easy tea tonight – either pasta to use up some cheese sauce or baked potatoes with a mushroom filling. I have leek soup to make this morning to use up the leeks and large potatoes before we go and then we can fill a flask to take with us for the journey and put the rest in the freezer for when we get home.

I did manage to look at some paperwork – nothing is urgent but I do like to keep on top of it so it doesn’t mount up. There are always statements to download and file away on the computer but at least I am beginning to beome paper free so that my paper filing drawer doesn’t become full again. Once we are up at the cottage I will continue with the decluttering of my lap top and get rid of old stuff on there.

Already my mind is a whirl of packing requirements, tasks that need to be done at the cottage, birthday cards that need to be sorted, written and posted or handed out before we go and tasks that need to be done here by the time we leave – like planting the seed potatoes. Of course the weather is being obstinate and sending rain rather than sunshine – isn’t it always the case when you are preparing to go away. Still maybe the cold weather now means that we will get better weather in the next two weeks.

For anyone coming over here to view the April ScrapHappy Challenge I will have to disappoint this month as I have not had a moment to do any crafting, but hopefully will be back with a challenge next month.

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dear diary ~ holiday almost over

I am writing this in a few snatched moments of peace while daughter and granddaughters are out for a wee while. The quiet and calm is just what I need for an hour or two to recharge.

On Easter Sunday we had all the family for tea and the sun managed to come out for a while so the grandchildren could enjoy the Egg Hunt around the garden. Of course we had to make sure each of them found a similar amount of eggs so I hid some quite well so they were not so easily spotted.

The chicken casserole went down a treat and I got the thumbs up from my younger daughter who was chief taster during the cooking process – being vegetarian I never get to taste what I cook if it contains meat. Whilst dinner was cooking the children made me some lovely Easter name cards for the table using a sheet of stickers I found in our local post office and crayons.

They also helped with some of the decorations – I had bought some of those white chalk marker pens for glass and let the grandchildren loose drawing patterns on my windows – they thought it great fun….and yes it does wash off.

Little Freddie was far too excited to eat very much, being an only child (though not for long now) he likes nothing better than having Little L and Sweetie to play with him and didn’t really want to stop for tea. DH played hide and seek with them and at one point Sweetie came to say that they had searched the house and could not find grandad anywhere – which is surprising as our house is not that big and DH not that small!

Yesterday we took all the grandchildren and their mums out to Portland Basin Museum in Ashton-under-Lyne. They have a lovely old fashioned indoor street of shops, a doctors, schoolroom, pub and chapel complete with dummy people dressed in appropriate costumes. They can seem a little creepy at times as they are so life like a bit like the wax works.

How many people remember £, shillings and pence.

There is plenty to see and do for little ones including a craft session making paper bunnies and mice – the museum is completely free and the craft sessions only £1.30 a child – so very reasonable in price for a lot of entertainment.

We had to eat our packed lunches in the car though as it was bucketing down with rain just as we arrived. Luckily, the museum is mostly indoors with a picnic area outside by the canal and being the holidays they were running boat trips on the canal. There was a big queue for the boat but we decided against a trip in the rain – perhaps another day.

I was a bit worried that the boat might have been this old wreck by the notice….luckily not…it was an old barge and you sat inside out of the rain but seeing through the steamed up windows wasn’t easy according to the people getting off the boat.

Tonight’s tea will probably be pizza with sweetcorn – finding meal combinations that fit everyone’s likes and dislikes is not getting any easier – though surprisingly there is never a problem with puddings – they can be too hot, cold, crunchy, sweet, sour or full of bits but they still eat them with no complaints!

Today was our last day with the grandchildren and tomorrow, if I have any energy left, it will be all hands to the deck to try and get ready for Scotland. The weather here has turned Siberian cold with an overcast sky and outbreaks of rain all day so no washing was done because I couldn’t guarantee I would be able to get it out on the line to dry and there is no space inside at the moment. I was too tired to go into the garden too so there will be jobs to finish before we go if we can. It suddenly occurred to me that I won’t be able to sow any seeds until we get back from Scotland as there will be no-one around to water them and they will probably need doing almost daily in the greenhouse if I cannot open the ventilator – so it would be a big ask of my neighbour who generally steps in and does a little watering whilst we are away. Oh well I will just have to hope they germinate quickly when we get back.

Hope you all had a lovely Easter holiday xx