On Amazing Weather & A Disaster

When the weather forecast predicted a warm spell we tootled off to Devon in the caravan last week and, BOY! were they right! A 5 day heat wave arrived!  It has been roasting but we had a wonderful week in Sidmouth.  It was too hot to eat so we lived on simple salads, fruit and lots of ice cream :)  We came back on Thursday last and it has cooled down considerably although I'm still wearing shorts around the house.

One of our neighbours promised to water our strawberry pots in return for watering their garden (they were away the week before us and came back the day we went IYSWIM) We came back to this.....

and this.....

To say I am gutted would be an understatement.  The second plant must have been in a slightly shadier spot and I managed to salvage a few strawberries for tea but that is the lot.....

We have our potatoes in a different part of the garden and another neighbour (totally unasked BTW)  trained his hose onto our tubs of spuds.  What a star he is.....

 

I had a little rummage around one tub and found these.....

 

 We ate them steamed, with HM quorn lasagne, peas & carrots.  They were delicious....

When we were away we had no internet access so I'm totally out of touch with what's been happening in blogland and need to catch up.  Next post I'll tell you all about an amazing knitting exhibition we accidentally found.  If you love knitting you'll love this exhibition.

Thanks so much for popping in and being patient.  Take care x

The Toothy Tale Continues....And Craft Fayre Woes

Poor OH is still suffering after having his tooth extracted.  The socket is still wide open after more than 8 weeks and he is so fed up.  Last week he visited his own dentist, the one who had referred him to the larger practice in the first place, who has now decided that something more needs to be done, referring him to the local hospital, this time to extract the impacted wisdom tooth next to the original extraction.  Apparently the wisdom tooth could be stopping the healing process.  Now, as OH had originally asked whether this tooth needed to come out and they had said no,  he is NOT best pleased.  Heaven knows how long he will have to wait for an appointment so he is still swooshing the socket after meals and cursing roundly as he does so.  The poor chap has lost half a stone in weight (no snacking!) and will become a shadow of his former self  if they don't hurry up and sort it.

It was the craft & local produce fayre this morning and I set up the stall full of enthusiasm...

Hardly anyone came through the door :(  As the £5 charged for the tables goes to local causes,  I agreed to try one more time in July (sucker, aren't I?) I've got a handful of advertising leaflets to distribute around the village so I hope next month will be better (yes, I know....I'm an optimist!)
The good bit of news is that I bought a large home baked iced lemon cake for just £2 from another stall holder so we can have a treat for tea.  If I had taken more money there would have been lots of other things there to tempt me to part with it, handmade jewellery, scarves, hand painted tea light holders, hand decorated canvas shopping bags.......the list goes on.

Have a great weekend folks x

Joyful June & Gently Does It

Gosh! Saturday again already, who ate the week?  We have had a very busy week.  Jobs (long put off) have been tackled, the garden tidied, the house de-cluttered (including 2 black bags of shredded paper from old bills, bank statements and generally any rubbish with our names and address on) and a bag of stuff taken to the charity shop.  I made requested ;)  OH to clear out the drawer on his side of the bed as it was so full it was in danger of the bottom falling out.  We ditched an old broken shaver, an empty box from the Satnav we had stolen 6 years ago, an old extension wire and empty box after empty box!  Boy did we feel better after that lot, de-cluttering is definitely good for the soul :)

A warm welcome to Julie, my new follower, how are you doing? :)

On Wednesday we went to the car boot sale but as buyers this time.  It was a pleasant day for browsing and I only bought some fruit and veg.  A big bowl of Jersey Royals for £1, 500g of small English tomatoes for 50p and a punnet of English strawberries also £1.

I can't believe it's already Summer.  Remember this photo of my Peonies?  The sun has made them burst forth in a veritable froth of pink tutu like flowers which have proven to be a bit too big and heavy for the stems.....

 

 

Of course, I couldn't let them just fall so this morning I trimmed off the biggest two to bring indoors....

Close up they are so beautiful.....

A while ago I bought something from Boots which generated 1000 bonus points worth £10.  As a rule I don't spend much in Boots as they can be much more expensive than the pound shop or even the supermarkets but I needed some Sensitive toothpaste (expensive at £3.50) so decided to use some points.  The antiperspirant was on offer at £2 for a large size and the handwash just 75p.  The little lot below cost my favourite price...FREE... They would have been £6.25!  And I still have £4.55 worth of points left.

 

 

As finances in May were a little stretched and we have a week's holiday coming up shortly, I want to spend as little as possible on the food budget and start June off gently.  We are going to eat simple and mainly home cooked food for the next couple of weeks.  I found a tin of condensed milk in the store cupboard along with some Tesco Value milk chocolate so made Millionaire's Shortbread using the recipe from the Hairy Bikers' Family Cookbook.  It's so simple (well, it must be if I can make it!) and it was a good job I did it because the family descended for a visit during the week and it vanished before you could say "Hairy Biker" !!



 

 

I will need to do some more baking to last us over next week, so today or tomorrow it will be a batch of scones, although I will wait until I have the oven on for something else too.

 

The LPG has been topped up (not too bad at £67) and I'm hoping that it will last us until September now that we don't need the heating on.  Showers and washing up take very little gas so I'm crossing my fingers.....

 

Later on I'll have a rummage at the bottom of the fridge.  I know we are out of carrots but I have peppers, tomatoes, those lovely new baby potatoes and a few mushrooms.  Frittata could be on the menu.  I'll see what else I can find.

 

That's all for now.  Have a wonderful weekend wherever you happen to be x