29th October - 4th November

This week I have been

Enjoying - the flame red colour of the leaves on the trees. There is a line of half a dozen of these trees in the car park near my place of work and they are a delight to see.

Loving - the fact our bathroom is another stage nearer completion. The lino was laid on Tuesday which means it's an awful lot warmer in there now. I really love the differing shades of grey and silver.

Having the floor down also meant that the new to us piece of furniture which has been sat in the dining room for the past couple of weeks could be put into place.
We found this pine child's size wardrobe on Gumtree for £35. The seller very kindly agreed to deliver to us for an extra £5. G painted it a shade called Stormy Blue and it's now home to our towels, bathroom cleaning products, loo roll and other odds and ends. Perfect.

Celebrating -Halloween with friends. This year we invited our friends G and M over with their two children J and G. S was in charge of helping them dish out the sweets to our treat or treat callers. It was a slow start to the evening but in the end I think we had somewhere between 70 and 80. 
S made these gruesome looking eyeballs for us all to eat

and whilst she did those I used a tube of black icing to paint faces onto marshmallows which I took in to work so we could have a sweet treat there too.

Trying - out a couple of new recipes for breakfast time. During the week it's always two Weetabix but come the weekend I want to have something a bit different. With G on the Slimming World regime I have been looking at ideas on various websites and baked oats is a firm favourite. I made these on Saturday morning, they are flavoured with lemon fat free Greek yogurt. I served them with a blob of jam and natural flavoured Greek yogurt. Warm from the oven they were lovely.

Then on Sunday I made this jammy dodger french toast inspired by sarah_sw_recipes on Instagram. I didn't put in enough cinnamon so I know to increase that the next time I do these. This really filled me up.

Going - out in our, new to us, car.
Yes we are car owners once again. I detest the whole looking for cars thing. Both G and I have zero knowledge when it comes to cars. We have been half heartedly looking for a few weeks but the time had come to make more of an effort. 
The result is that we are now KA owners.
We are in the incredibly lucky position of not needing a car to get us to work. With it just being the three of us these days we now don't need a larger family size car.
Most of the things we need to do can be accomplished (with a bit of forward planning) on foot, with public transport and online shopping, so it is a bit of a luxury having a car sat outside for the convenience of being able to pop out and get us from A to B when we need to do just that.
Considering all of these things we wanted to buy something small and cheap to run and fingers crossed this will fit the bill just nicely.

Halloween

Compared to recent years this Halloween has been a much quieter affair.

With T no longer living at home, G on a late shift and S out for an hour trick or treating with a gaggle of girlie friends from school it was just me left at home handing out sweets.
We had in the region of 80 callers this evening.
Most arrived in groups of 5, 6 or 7 at a time and the last lone caller was just before 7.30.
This was ideal as it gave me plenty of time to be sorted and sat down in time to watch The GBBO final.

I didn't put up many decorations this year.
Although we did have pumpkins, which as tradition dictates were all carved by G, I don't have photos as by the time I came home from work it was already too dark.

Instead this post will just have to make do with the dress I wore today. 
To my way of thinking the black and white pattern is very reminiscent of spiders and so I thought it would be ideal attire for Halloween, teamed with my pumpkin brooch.

Our Week In Mosaics - which includes some mosaics

As I mentioned in my previous post we weren't going to be having our annual trip to the country park for the Halloween trail but we did keep with the second part of that day's activity. On SaturdayS and I picked up my mum and then took ourselves off to Haskins for a hot chocolate and a wander around the Christmas department.

On entering the store you were greeted with a winter white wildlife scene

and then once into the store the main attraction was this huge sleigh and enormous stuffed toy reindeer.

For all the festive glitter and sparkle I can honestly say that I could count the number of decorations on one hand which I would have been happy to buy and hang on my tree.

I remember they had a very poor selection last year too.

Sunday morning we needed to pop into town as S will now be playing hockey during her PE lessons and so needed a gum shield and shin pads. It was such a lovely mild day again and as we still haven't managed a proper autumn walk we took a wander through the parks before we did our shopping. 
A proper crunchy, scrunchy walk through the fallen autumn leaves.

We made an interesting and colourful new discovery in one of the parks. Apparently these mosaics were laid last year, a collaboration between local residents and a local artist to depict the wide range of international heritages of Southampton's inhabitants.

Of course Monday was all about Halloween. G worked his pumpkin carving magic and I'm pleased to say that the pumpkin being sick earned lots of 'yuck' and 'ergh' comments. I had amassed 86 treats for callers, which S gave out this year as she didn't want to go out herself, but we still ran out. We had to ignore the last 2 knocks on our door as the cupboard was bare.

In between trick or treaters we had our own bit of fun posing with these silly photo props.

When I arrived home from work on Tuesday G said there were a couple of treats for me in the kitchen. One was a Portuguese custard tart and the other was this huge leaf. I popped it on the cushion so hopefully you can get an idea of it's size. He had seen it on his way to the train station and knew I would love it so he bought it home to me. Now that's true love. 

Halloween Half Term

We've had a half term week full of variety.

On Sunday we went out for lunch before G and T took the train to Norwich.

They stayed there until Tuesday so T got to spend time with his birth siblings.

S was kept busy on Monday when she had her friend C over.

They busied themselves and I hardly saw them apart from when they came into the kitchen to bake some cakes.

With G away I caught with on a couple of things I had recorded on BBC.

A few years ago I bought this book but it has just sat on the shelf being passed over for others because it's quite a thick one and the print is tiny!

When I saw the story had been made into a documentary and was to be presented by the author I knew this would be something I needed to watch.

A love story lived out in India during the 19th century and it was as fascinating as I thought it would be.

My second watch was The Scandalous Lady W. This was absolutely riveting from start to finish. The true story of Lady Worsley, her unhappy marriage and the court case which her husband instigated against her lover seeking £20,000 in compensation. The way women were regarded as their husband's property is shocking.

Tuesday morning we went to the cinema to see the Minions movie. 
All very good fun with some bits which made us laugh out loud because of their general silliness.
From the cinema we walked into town to purchase a new pair of school shoes which, thankfully, was a quick and easy process.
Tuesday evening I went to a WI meeting. I found details online of a group who meet at a pub in the town centre. October's meeting was all about keeping happy and healthy during the winter. Next month will be Christmas wreath making. There are  two other meetings which take place each month, one is a book group and another a craft group.

On Wednesday we had our annual trip,with my mum, to the country park for the Halloween trail.
I have a feeling this will be our last one. S was as keen to go as always but once we were there and she had the trail in her hand and she read the cues she said 'I know the answers to some of these already.' Plus as we walked round she recognised some of the clues hidden in the trees and said 'These were here last year!'
After the trail we go to the garden centre for hot chocolate and here we were joined by my two sisters. After a drink and a chat we had a good wander round the Christmas department, the final part of our yearly tradition.

Thursday and Friday I was at work and G was at home. 
T saw friends and S spent time on a homework project. The topic at school for the next half term is the Greeks and G has helped S produce a power point display on the story of Perseus. Before they broke up S's class had a trip to the Baring Room at the art gallery to see a series of works by Burne-Jones depicting the Story of Perseus.

Saturday was all about Halloween.
G carved the pumpkins and the children decorated the outside of the house with all manner of ghost and witch themed paraphernalia. T set up some music and we had the theme from Ghostbusters blaring out to greet our trick or treat callers, we had 84 during the evening, all chocolate bought for the occasion was given out and we had to ignore the last couple of people who knocked as we had not a thing left. 
G took S out and she came home with a bag brimming with sweet treats.
I saw this idea for a trifle in one of the free supermarket magazines and made one for us, minus the biscuits on top. 

To round off the week we come to today, S kept busy at home playing and adding the finishing touches to her homework, T went to the charity shop and I attended a talk at the Dolphin Hotel entitled 'Why Jane Austen preferred Southampton to Bath.' The Dolphin was the venue for this talk because as the plaque on the building quotes 'It is said that Jane Austen celebrated her 18th birthday in the ballroom on 16th December 1793 with her brother Frank.'
More on that another time.

Halloween Half Term

We've had a good half term so far.

Sunday morning I took S into town with me as last weekend was the last chance to see a photography exhibition housed in a historic building called The Wool House. This was formerly the home of the Martime museum and is now being used as a venue for exhibitions and workshops. The event we went to see was part of Black History Month and the information said that items were chosen from events from over the last nine years and unfortunately some of the pieces did look a bit old and tired. 

Laid out on a big table underneath the right hand window on the first floor was a roll of paper and a lots of felt tip pens. Next to it was a sign saying 'draw what you can see out of the window'.

This is S's interpretation of the Tesco lorry she saw waiting at the Isle of Wight ferry terminal opposite.

On entering the Wool House one of the first things you see is this big clock from the Docks. I'm not sure where it was originally hung, but as my Dad worked at the Docks for many years I did wonder if maybe it was something he would have seen on a regular basis.
I love this dress which is made from plastic, so intricately cut, the bugs are cut from old plastic milk bottles too.

It was very windy on Sunday and so we didn't stay in the park for very long. S burnt off some energy on the swing, slide, climbing frame and finally the trampoline before we headed home. 

Monday morning the three of us went to the cinema to see Despicable Me 2 which we all really enjoyed and in the afternoon S and I cut out some pumpkins and bats to be used as part of our Halloween decorations later in the week.

On Tuesday we put on our wellies and went to the country park for the Halloween trail. We found a fabulous den which had survived the stormy weather, a couple of others were looking a bit worse for wear.

No words needed!

No photos of the trail pictures as they were all the same as last year so instead we have one of S sat on a badger.

After we do the trail we go to a garden centre for hot chocolate and a mooch around their Christmas department.
We liked the display just by the entrance, a shed with stag head over the bright red door a mini stack of pumpkins and the children patted the head of the dog sat behind the hedge!

We have eaten quite a bit of Halloween themed foods this week. Mainly junk I have to admit. The treat tin has snack sized packets of biscuits in, for lunch we have had eaten crisp webs and there has been potato pumpkins and Halloween shaped pasta for tea. 

Today we have been busy putting out our decorations for Halloween. A ball of bobbly black wool from the 99p shop was wound around tent pegs to create a spider web on the gravel in the front garden.

S made a wonderful Hello Kitty pumpkin. I found the idea ages ago on Pinterest and S loved it when I showed her. She did loads of it herself, she painted it, cut out the ears and stuck on the eyes and nose.

When G came home from work he got busy with carving the other two pumpkins we had bought. Both look great

but this one is a real triumph. We heard lots of our 50 plus trick or treat callers squeal with delight as they spotted it and said 'ugh look that pumpkin's been sick!'