Happy November

Goodbye October, I can't say I'll miss you. You were rather too full of doctors appointments for a child with unexplained stomach pain, and opticians and meetings and migraines and damp. I did love the blue skies at the start of the month, and the grey fog is very melodramatic and makes for wonderful spider webs with water droplets, and I did eat an awful lot of cake and have a wonderful weekend away with a friend, but you're still not my favourite month. Sorry....

So November what will you bring?

 I'm happy about "parsnip appreciation day", although I certainly don't want the children to start appreciating them, they're the one vegetable I don't insist they eat, the parsnips are mine, all mine.....

I can admit that I'll "get excited about fireworks day", we're lucky enough to be able to watch a public display from just outside the house, it's at the bottom of the hill, we get a great view, and can stand with steaming mugs of soup and watch and ooh and ahh to our hearts delight, 

Most of all I'm looking forward to "don't worry about anything day"

Happy November, I hope it's kind to you. 

What are you looking forward to?

a random ten

a random ten, inspired by Annie. 

1. I feel as if we are living in a cloud. It is Very wet, very grey and very very foggy which makes it hard to see past the end of the car, which makes driving difficult....

2. So far I have gone out three times in the car already, and I have at least two more trips to make. Sometimes I don't go out in the car for days and days on end. Those are the days I like best......

3. It is also very muddy. And someone with little white but not clean paws is in disgrace. I sent the photo to J who suggested we might be having kitten curry for dinner. Luckily for the disgraced cat in question I had already planned tonight's dinner.....

4. I made cookies. It is Leanne's fault. I read about them about an hour ago, and now there are two trays of cookies in the kitchen. I used Doves Farm gluten free flour and gluten free certified oats, and they are thin and crispy and probably won't last very long.

5. I'm taking E back to the opticians later. This will be the 4th lesson in "how to fit contact lenses."

Oh it looks so easy and really really it isn't. He wants some for sport lessons occasionally and for youth theatre (curse you English teacher who doesn't like to see children in glasses in his productions..........) but he really can't get the hang of it. 

The impossibly long and curly eyelashes aren't helping. They keep getting in the way....

If only I had those, and he had my almost non existent short and straight eyelashes....

6. I messed up ordering tickets for the world record attempt of most witches.
Now I only have to make two costumes.......  Every mistake has a silver lining........

7. We're planning on going to the Woodhorn Museum tomorrow to see the Weeping Window installation of poppies from the WW1 Centenary.  All the pictures I have seen are incredibly dramatic.

8. I bought some tortilla chips from the supermarkets earlier. I've been buying the same ones for months, and they used to be gluten free but now I see the label says "not suitable for wheat allergy sufferers due to manufacturing methods" The ingredients are maize and oil and salt for goodness sake. Presumably they're made on a line that also produces wheat products. I looked up on their website and their more expensive tortilla chips manage to be gluten free - they also cost twice as much and have more salt on them.......... grrrrrrr. makes me so cross. It's bad enough that there's gluten in so many things anyway, and then when manufacturers change the production so you have to check every time you buy something...... oh and pay more. ok rant over.

9. J is going to London next month for a meeting. I have convinced him that he has to go to Selfridges foodhall and buy gluten free donuts. When you spend too much time on instagram you learn that such things exist and where they can be obtained from.

10. The Coffee lady has got me addicted to Chai tea. Oh the irony..........

Starry Starry Night

Starry Night Quilt. November 2013-October 2015.

Hurray, I just got in under the two year time window! Although a good part of the latter part of this time was putting off the actual quilting of it, and then finding a solution to the endlessly snapping threads that were driving me mad.

Anyway enough of that that. You want to see photos right. The problem is that photographing the largest quilt in the world is not easy. I enlisted a friend. We went out into the woods. One person really can't hold it on their own. We tried a self timer on the camera, and I nearly fell off the wall we were balancing on, and nettles stung me through my jeans. You have to really want a photograph to put up with nettle stings in my world.......... 

Then I balanced it on my head and pretended to be a giant ghost.

We tried out some props, but I really couldn't bring myself to drape it over the rather mucky but lovely vintage tractor........

so we retreated back inside for me more tea and I just draped it on the sofa instead.......

in reality though it's easiest to photograph quilts in their natural environment.

on the bed.

details of the rest of the quilt story can be found here, here, here and here!

October

Hello October. 

You are Miss K's favourite month. 

Well apart from December, but then that has Christmas and birthdays and so it wins.....

Miss K loves you because of Halloween. Even at nearly 17 she loves it. Spiders and pumpkins and decorations and this year we'll be joining in with a Guiness world record attempt for the most people dressed as witches in one place.

 I'm less keen on Halloween personally, although I suppose I can make soup of out the pumpkins so it's not all bad.....

I am looking forward to be proud of yourself day, I'm happy to join in with  feed some ducks day

but most of all I'm excited for duvet day.

Happy October everyone.

autumn equinox - thermos to the rescue

the first day of autumn.

crisp blue skies, crunchy fallen leaves, conkers, apples, and blackberries.

or if you live in the North East of England it would appear that actually what you get is grey skies, Lots of rain, mist, fog, damp, wind, cold feet, and soggy socks....... (oh and spiders, so many spiders.)

also you get a rather grumpy teenager who has an extremely heavy bag and a long walk to school, and is in need of a little comfort by lunchtime.

The 6th form common room serves a variety of hot food and drinks, but the teenager can't eat the food as none of it is gluten free and despite my best efforts she doesn't like tea........

I asked her what she would actually like to have at school, and the answer was quite definitive.

Soup, or soup, or soup, or soup, or hot chocolate.

so a flask then.
we have several flasks already, but they were all proving to have something wrong with them;
too big, too small, too leaky, doesn't keep anything hot, too untrendy..........

teenagers really are quite fussy.....

anyway I think we have the solution.

thermos travel mug. this one is bright red, it hasn't leaked, it keeps the soup hot enough it's nice to drink out of (although for thick soup it's better to take the lid off and use it more like a cup than a travel cup) and because it's steel it doesn't have any glass in like the ones we used to take on picnics when we were children and then find that it had smashed on the way and there was glass Everywhere.....

on the one chance I've had to use it it kept my tea nice and warm, it fit in the cup holder of the car neatly and I didn't spill tea everywhere when I drove J to the station at a horribly early time of the morning, always a bonus! ( I didn't need to use the little hook provided on the lid for my teabag, as I always make my tea in a teapot and then pour it in, but it's cute if you like that kind of thing, and you're not sceptical of teabags with strings......)

apparently it will also keep drinks cold for 9 hours without the outside of the flask sweating, can't vouch for this yet, but should we ever go anywhere hot ever again I'll test it out.

thermos kindly provided me with this product, they have a range of designs (all BPA free) in a back to school range, designed for younger children through to university students in need off coffee to keep them awake.

oh and if you have any great soup recipes do let me know, so far there has been a lot of carrots.

five excuses

five truly rubbish excuses why I've not posted for 18 days.

1. I was decorating banister rails; sanding, undercoating, glossing, swearing when the gloss had drips in, and more swearing when the masking tape that was protecting the carpet pulls off a layer of gloss paint from the base of the railings.....
2. urmm.... no nothing, no more excuses,     well I suppose I did go and choose some paint samples for the walls, at the moment it's a toss up between chalk white and sail white. no-one except me can tell the difference between the samples I painted on the walls, and someone else said they liked the colour the wall already was better than the new choices........... I am wondering why I thought it was a good idea to decorate the hall at all.........
3. I've finally managed to buy E a pair of school trousers that are long enough, he's only been back 2 weeks, so it's not that bad surely.... and I did have to drive 20 miles to collect them, and sit in the store's cafe drinking tea until I got a cheerful email telling me my order was ready to collect. 
4. I baked the nicest blackberry crumble in the whole world and then ate so much that I couldn't move from the sofa for hours. 
5. I was abducted by aliens and therefore couldn't take any decent photos or doing anything that might actually be worth writing about?   this is as good as excuse as any in reality............ 

I can imagine this being marked at school. E for effort. Must try harder..........

joining in with Amy's five on Friday.

Hello September

Hello September. Gosh you got here quick. I'm not quite ready for early mornings, and school bags, and making sandwiches, and uniforms just get, so if you'd like to go away for a few more weeks that would be fine. I'll have extra August.  I'm not ready, we still need to buy school trousers, and I have no idea whether the school ties are in a safe place. I'm not at all sure about anything on your list September, there is no chance of me remembering passwords, I write them in a secret place......... but I'm happy to try notice small things day,  it would be gracious to celebrate be lovely to everyone day and who can resist be thankful for pineapples day!

Do you have fun plans for September? Are you excited by new stationary, or dismayed by the lack of autumn flowers in your garden? Does anyone else think this summer went really fast, or was that just me?