Lately

Let's have a little catch up of things which have been happening chez J&J shall we.


From the kitchen we have produced three things never cooked in there before.
S made sweet potato cookies. She decided to bake these as part of her homework on Zimbabwe from a traditional recipe found online, earning herself some words of admiration from her teacher. Very nice they were too.
I made British style patatas bravas, which earned a mixed reaction. One loved it, one tried it but didn't like it, one refused to eat it. Sound familiar? 
The last new thing on the menu was a whipple-scrumptious fudgemallow delight for Roald Dahl day. Oh my. 

I was very pleased when Friday evening rolled around and I was home with my feet up. It had been a busy week. I really felt like a glass of wine but we didn't have any in. What we did have cooling in the fridge was a Snowball. I had bought them a couple of weeks ago as it was something I had wanted to try. Out came the very infrequently used champagne saucers, the drink was poured and very quickly quaffed. I thought it was delicious. This now begs the question, do I try Advocaat on it's own? Any advice? 

Whilst (kind of) on the subject of glasses I wanted to show one of my latest purchases. 
I had an afternoon out with my sisters at the end of August, it was to spend time together on the anniversary of when we lost our dearest Dad. 
We went to a vintage and antique emporium where I found this little gem. It's now my glass of choice for my morning orange juice.

I've been very organised and sorted out all of C's birthday presents from the stash of items I have accumulated for her. I have a fair amount of things towards her Christmas present and for her birthday in October I think I counted 15 items for our budget of £10. I shall be wrapping them soon and will make sure I photograph them as I go. I have also decided on the gift for my other sister T whose birthday is in November and I'm really pleased with the theme running through it. This candle is part of it and when I have bought all the items I'll share it here.

Last week at book club our read for August was given a thumbs up by all. Black Hills was something a bit different and an enjoyable read but I felt it was about 100 pages too long, I got a bit bored with the two main characters trying to sort out their relationship when you know how it's going to end. Also whenever I looked at the cover I started singing 'Take me Back to the Black Hills, the Black Hills of Dakota, to the beautiful Indian country that I love' from the film Calamity Jane. And as much as I love Doris Day and that movie I was getting fed up with it!
In contrast this month we have The Spinning Heart which is only 160 pages long. Or should that be short. This should mean I have some time to read another of the books G gave me for my birthday. 
I have read the Phryne Fisher one already. G bought me that because we were hooked on watching the TV series on Netflix which was hugely entertaining. My next one will be The Year of Living Danishly.

We didn't go booting this weekend and the weekend before we only went to provide a bit of support to my mum and sister who were there selling so I only had time to have a mini wander and make a couple of purchases. A checked shirt for T and a sequinned top for S.

The lady who was on the pitch next to my sister didn't want to take any of her things home and gave me this length of Christmas fabric which she said is used to hang from a mantle. She said it had originally came from Denmark. I think I may wrap it around the metal base of the tree to hide it's ugly legs.

We were hoping to go on a wildlife walk at a local nature reserve at the weekend but when we got there for the advertised time we found it had already started. Weekends over the next couple of months will probably be a bit quieter as there seem to be less events on as we head into autumn, so it was a little disappointing we had missed this one.