Its All change around here!

Picture courtesy of the Edgar Welchman collection.

Well our house sold, the 1st people that viewed it bought it so yeh, very lucky!

The only downside to this is that we had to move in with my parents at the end of September, we are very lucky as it means we are saving up whilst doing up our new house.  The above photo is of our house in 1910, we have tried to replicate the windows that were in there then.  Very costly but they do look good  even without glass in them at present.  The house renovations are very slow as hubbo is doing the majority now the roof/extension/building work has been complete .  Hopefully for us and my parents we are trying to be in by March at the lastest, but lets not hold our breath.

My Brothers Wedding

It was my brothers wedding at the end of May.  The wedding was in Gretna Green, not my idea of a wedding venue, but you know what we had a fab time and the weather was lovely.  Little dear was one of four bridesmaid and she had the best day of her life (apperently).

Great piece of art.

When i go to my local town of Retford, I park in my usual car park, after getting my ticket I have to walk through this slightly depressing passage way!  But a few month ago this appeared, its to celebrate the life of the ladies that used to work in the Clark's laundry rooms which were located inside the building where the art work has been done.

WIP - Shiny new roof!

Progress is being made on the house, the roof is now complete (re roofed & new fascia's and guttering), this is a major job ticked off the ever growing list of things to do, but thankfully as the weather is warming up the house is starting to dry out!

Breakfast Muffins!

This was the 2nd time I have made these breakfast muffins and they went down a treat again.  They are so easy to make.

1. Remove the crusts from a slice of bread.
2. Use a rolling pin to flatten the bread.
3. Butter thinly and place in a muffin tray.
4. In the interim, cook some streaky bacon in the oven.
5. Once you think the bacon is cooked through, make up the next layer in the muffin case (bread).
6. Warm through a tin of beans and then use a spoonful to make up the next layer in the muffin.
7. Crack an egg and remove some of the egg white as usually there is not enough room for the whole egg.
8. Cook in a preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until egg white has cooked.

What a treat!

My new project!

 

After a lot of tooing & froing with solicitors we finally managed to get our hands on 'Our House'.  Believe me it needs a lot of work.  Its an old shop/post offce, that has not been touched for the past 20 years, but the owners managed to smoke 40 a day so the interior is very much 1 colour!

This was the state of the garden in September

This is after spending a day cutting back, this weekend!

I will keep you informed of the progress, and hopefully will have you making some decisions for me alog the way.

Christmas Highlights!

Me and my sister over the last 2 years having been putting together a hamper for both my brothers, parents and a family friend as a gift. This year the theme was a Morocan meal as there was preserved lemons, couscous and homemade harista paste.  All the ususal jams and pickles and more alcohol this year was added.

Christmas morning, just before little dear decemated the presents. Christmas day dinner at my parents, both turkey and pork were cooked as my sister refused to eat tasteless turkey, but who do you think thought it was lovely!

This years plans, not a lot as we are due to complete on a wreck of a house later on this month, so all time, effort and money will be put into that. I will take lots of photos during the refurb. Due to this we are really having to tighten our purse strings so a £50 weekly shopping budget has been set. Also hubbo is 40 this year and the only thing he wants to do it go down to the River Cottage canteen so in June we are off down to Dorset.

Here's to 2013 (bring it on)

Halloween Hell!

Well at least the kids enjoyed it! 93 kids, same amount of adults, apple dunkin, gooey hands, craft corner followed by hotdogs and chips!

£240 raised towards a new heater for our local village hall.

SUCCESS I THINK!

WI workshop.

In our wisdom back in January me, my sister and a friend offered to run an in house workshop to save on the pennies at out WI.  The title of our workshop was 'Homemade Christmas'.  We spent time decorating the souless grey room that we meet in and gathering together all of our resources. We broke down the workshop into 3 different sections, home decorations, gift wrapping & gift ideas. We tried to get it through to the ladies the idea of gathering things throughout the year, old wrapping paper, broken jewellery, sale items!

My section was gifts, ideas were given such as homemade fire lighters, teenage breakfast set, movie set, lavender sugar, sloe gin, baking jars and homemade body scrub.  After a brief talk we then moved room into the kitchen area after a brief stop at the refreshment station of Mulled wine & mince pies. I then showed the ladies how to make a body scrub it went down very well.

Lavender & Rosemary Body Scrub

Granulated Sugar
Olive Oil
6 drops of lavender oil
4 drops of rosemary oil
tablespoon of lavender

Get a jam jar and fill with sugar until almost full. Tip into a bowl, add the olive oil until all the sugar becomes stuck together but not saturated. Add the essential oils and dried lavender, mix well. Put back into the jar decorate the jar and voila a perfect homemade gift.

Its been a while, I missed you!

 Me & little dear at Hardwick hall in May (need to loose weight)

Well I have really missed you!

I don't know about you, but I use my blog as a diary of my world.  It all started off to promote Just Original which is fine and there are still snippets of that going to go on, but I miss writing and taking pictures for my blog.  I downloaded pictures going back to March of this year from my camera today which is really sad.

So here goes I am going to try and blog at least once a week, there will be some catching up first and then hopefully I will try and keep it up to date as much as possible. I am away in Keswick at the moment and we have just got WIFI finally into the apartment so this has inspired me to get my bum in gear.

Things to look forward to are a WI workshop that me, my sister and friend are running for our WI, called 'Homemade Christmas', were trying to get our local WI back to grass roots as such. I have organised a childrens Halloween disco as a fundraiser for our local village hall. We are in the middle of buying a new house, which is a wreck so we saving our pennies where we can, so there will be some money saving tips and also some great finds from the house as much of the contents are being left. It was the village Post Office/Shop and has not been touched since 1993 when it closed down.

Hope you keep with me!

Happy Easter

Hope your having a great break!

Winter Wonderland!

We have been very lucky here, we got snow! So on Sunday we went on an adventure to Daneshill

It was so peaceful and untouched.

The Chickens on the otherhand were less impressed!

Budget bags!

Me & my sister were on a mission to collect some pieces of furniture that she had spotted. When we got to the shop typically is was closed, but the shop next door was open and lucky for us that its was. The 1st thing both of us spotted were these, one for me & one for little dear!

Both for the bargain price of £15.

Cannot put it off!

It had to be done, I needed some workable work tops. My mum get complaining about the clutter (I told her that's what you get for a small kitchen). I have had a right sort through, there was some herbs that expired in 2004, 5 lots of cereal that were out of date or gone soft.

It feels all inspiring to me now, I may bake tomorrow to celebrate!

Charity Shopping at it's best!

Not sure if there old or new, but a visit to the charity shop paid off yesterday £1.49 for each piece and they are large too. Any ideas what to do with them?

Spring time!

Last June we became the proud owners of an allotment in our next town. The plot had not been in use properly for 3 years so you can imagine what state it was in. Knowing that me & hubbo would not be able to manage it ourself or have the know how, my Ma & Pa are pitching in.

We missed the main growing season last year but luckily we managed to turn over a small plot and get in some winter vegetables. Most were free from fellow plot holders who had some spare plug plants.

Me and my Ma paid a visit yesterday for a few hours to turn over a section. Whilst there we dug up some swede, kale, cabbages, celeriac and leeks. There was even enough to give out some freebies to friends and families. It felt good to be out in the fresh air it almost felt like Spring!

New beginnings!

The picture has no significance other than I love this picture of my Mum at Betty's in York back in September, very Calender Girls but with clothes on!

Well we are now 8 days into 2012, I've had a cold, not done any baking and been out once on my bike since before Christmas, so resolutions/goals are up the swanney all ready.

Hopefully I will be here a lot more than 2011 as I love the way you can look back on it.

Lemon Curd!

Today has turned out to be a very productive day in terms of Jams & Preserves. 1st in the pan was Blackberries & raspberries to make some lovely jam. Next to be started was homemade Lemon Curd, we seem to have a glut of eggs at the minute, so time to use a few. I used the Mrs Beetons recipe and it has not let me down yet.

Lemon Curd

4 Eggs
1lb Caster sugar
4oz butter
rind & juice of 4 lemons

Break the eggs and separate white & yolk. Whisk the yolks, add the other ingredients and stir oer a gentle heat in a bowl over pan of hot water for about 20 - 30 minutes or until thick. Pour in to sterilised jam jars.

It normally makes 3 jars and keeps for about 2/3 weeks.

Just Original Animals!

On the last post about our ever growing animals I showed you just 2 original chickens, Beatrix & Mabel. But after a visit to an agricultural show back in May I could not resist little MAY our Rhode Island Red Bantum. We thought she might get bullied by the other 2 bigger chcikens, how wrong were we. She has a British Bulldog instinct!

If I had known what great pets they make, I would of got Chickens years ago!

Here's Boo my daughter Beautiful Bunny, very loving and loves getting out in the garden with the Chickens.

Restlessness

I don't know if any you out there are like me & hubbo but we are desperate to move but so many factors are stopping us!

The usual: Money, jobs, practicalities such as who would look after daughter when I am at work, etc, etc.

We look at Rightmove every day for houses within the vicinity of where we are looking, we do find houses within our price range and within the area we want but the doom and gloom of the practical side of a move put doubt in our mind.

We were 3 weeks away from moving in August 2009 when me & hubbo split up. Obviously we are back together again now, but the reason we wanted to move are still there. We do live in a nice village now, the reasons we moved here was to be close to the road network as both of us were based out on the road, but these are now the same reason as we want to move.

Our chosen area for the move is the Yorkshire Dales, we do love it there we went to Reeth for our 1st ever weekend away together 10+ years ago. We have looked at other options, Lake District & Scotland but property prices and distance put those areas on a back burner, so Yorkshire Dales is still our 1st choice.

We have twice jumped in the car to look at properties as it is only 1hr - 1hr 1/2 away. The pictures show a few of the properties.

However this long winded post is all about the fact that this weekend I have had a blow out and basically decided we are not looking anymore as I feel I am putting my life on hold and not getting on with the NOW!