Other Stuff

G has been bitten by the wood construction bug.

I showed him a picture on Pinterest of a wooden pallet converted into a planter and within an hour he had created one from a pallet we had in the garden.

Can you see the sink?

Our bathroom is slowly being decorated and updated and we saved the old sink to use as a mini pond in the garden.

From old bits of pieces of fencing a neighbour was chucking out G has made this little shelter for his bike. The long stick on the left was bought back home by T years ago after we all went out for a walk and it's lovely it's been incorporated in the design.

There is another new fence.

This one is 3 quarters of the way down the garden and is screening bottom section of the garden.

We have two of these garden storage boxes, which you can make out through the slats in the fence, but this forms a nicer barrier between the grassed and graveled parts of the garden.

It's not just the back garden G has been busy, he has also built a fence along the wall in the front garden to corral all our bins together.

So as you can see we've been busy at home, but there has still been the odd jaunt out.

Love the original art work used to advertise a church fete we popped along.

Reminiscent of the old railway posters.

We had a lovely walk to the church and came home with two jigsaws

Two books read, both which has been on my bookshelf for the longest time. I've never read a Mavis Cheek book which I didn't enjoy.

This one of Katie Fforde's was more enjoyable than the last couple of her I've read and I think it may be because it's not such a recent publication.

A £1.00 sale rail at a charity shop turned up trumps for me with this top which will be perfect for work come the cooler weather. It's sheer so will need a t-shirt underneath and so will we good for layering.

S and I went to Cambridge for her annual eye check up. All is well.
We got caught up in severe delays from Waterloo on the way home and didn't get in until 11.45 which made for a very long day indeed.

G was working until 10pm on the longest day. 
We lit candles, sipped Bailey's and gazed at the stars.

On Saturday we went to Eastleigh Unwrapped. We've been going to this free arts festival for a few years now and it's always a great day out.
Our highlight this year was the Happy Feet show of 100 dances in 100 minutes.
Participation was entirely necessary when you had Elvis leading the conga!

Not the best photo as G took it from a distance but here are S and me doing the macarena.

A new addition to my dresser is this jug I bought whilst we were out on Saturday.
It has an Emma Bridgewater look to it and looks fab with my EB heart cup and saucer, but there aren't any markings on the bottom so I have no idea where it originally came from.

Food and Drink

I made a mistake with the date for this first one. 

I thought that it was held on 2nd June but in fact the 1st June is Doughnut Day.

This is my take on it and yes I know it looks nothing like a doughnut, but bear with me.

A hole is cut from the middle of the crumpet thus making it resemble a ring doughnut!

That's my excuse for trying this concoction for Saturday morning breakfast.

The crumpet is very lightly fried in a couple of squirts of that one cal spray and then an egg is gently tipped into the hole in the centre.

I got this breakfast idea from Emily who posts on Instagram under What I Ate For Breakfast.

If you love eggs and breakfast and eggs for breakfast then you'll need to follow her posts.

We then hop along to 5th June and my take on Sausage Roll Day. These are Higgidy feta and red pepper rolls and they are delicious. I bought some to include in my picnic lunch when I went to Osborne House and the rest went in the freezer ready to be enjoyed in the park on my lunch break.

The following day (6th June) was Apple Sauce Cake Day and if you click on that link it will take you to the recipe I used to bake this beauty. So quick and easy and one of the most delicious cakes I've ever baked. The recipe suggests using cinnamon but S isn't keen so I just used mixed spice instead. We use golden granulated sugar at home and I think this helped give the cake an extra boost in flavour.

We now skip to Sunday 10th June and Iced Tea Day. I looked at making my own but there was so much differing info about whether it should be hot or cold infused and to add sugar or sugar syrup that in the end I just bought some.

At least I knew I was going to like that!

For World Meat Free Day I made myself and G these Marmite and mushroom tarts from details posted by another Instagrammer kateveggiedesserts. G doesn't like Marmite so I didn't tell him it was included, it just enhanced the flavour. Next time I shall add some cheese.

We're round to another weekend and with Saturday 16th June being Fudge Day there was only one choice of ice cream for me to go for when G and I went out, clotted cream with fudge pieces.

Yes it was as good as it sounds.

June 19th was Cherry Tart Day and as this day was taken up with travelling to and from Cambridge for S's annual eye check up I took the easy route of wearing cherries.

20th June was Ice Cream Soda Day. I can't remember the last time I had one of these although I do quite clearly remember the first time I had one when I was a child and we were visiting family friends.

I loved it then but I'm not so keen now.

June posts have got a little out of sync for one reason and another and a couple of days have been missed so I must just pop the adorable duo of Melvin and Malcolm onto the end of this one.

4th June was officially Hug Your Cat Day but to be honest most days in our home called be given that title.

Got It Covered Mark 2

Yesterday was the birthday of one Mr Barry Pincus, better known the world over as Barry Manilow.

And here's the (much younger) man himself enjoying a coconut cocktail a la Copacabana.

I wanted to do one of these album cover photos back on 23rd April for Barbra Streisand birthday but wasn't able to find a suitable record.
Then whilst on the look out for one for Barry I found the perfect one as it had her face on both the front and back cover.
Here's the front, a little difficult to get quite right due to the way she was positioned

but with the photo on the back we were able to produce this.

I think it was worth waiting for!!!

An Ambush of Tigers

When the children were much younger books featuring Mog the cat and The Tiger Who Came To Tea were firm favourites.
I have a wonderful memory of going to see the stage show of The Tiger Who Came To Tea with T and S and us all joining in with some tiger aerobics. If you have young ones and you get the chance to go and see this show then do, you won't be disappointed.
To mark the birthday of Judith Kerr today me, G and S have each made our version of The Tiger.
Mine is on the left and looks a bit like an owl.
G's in the middle looks like a fluffy pussy cat.
S's on the right is definitely the most like the original tiger.

Roses are Red

For Red Rose Day I thought we should indulge in a little bit of culture and try our hand at penning some poetry.

Our starting point was the classic  

Roses are red

Violets are blue

We came up with a long list of words which rhymed with blue and then we worked our way down the list, each of us wrote a poem using each word in turn and then we took it in turns to read them out, with much giggling.

S's anti-Valentine poem!

G's poo effort!

I was boring and stuck to the more traditional line.
And you may also spot the red rose brooch I wore to work today.

Circular Walk in Brockenhurst

I'm not going to say too much about the walk we did in Brockenhurst on Sunday, I'll just let the photos do the talking.
This is the walk we did if you would like to see the precise route.
We ambled and strolled and because it was so very hot we took frequent drinks breaks meaning instead of the recommended 2 hours it took us 3, but we weren't in a rush so that didn't matter.

As you can tell from the photos there weren't many other people around.
We saw a couple of dozen, mostly on bikes, so it felt like we had the place to ourselves.
We are very lucky to have such beautiful countryside just half an hours train ride from home.

Oxford was our Third Choice

Whilst S was off having fun in Paris G and I were going to go off and have fun in London.

We booked a night away through Air BnB but unfortunately the host needed us to change our arrival time to one which just didn't work for us so, mutually, we decided to cancel.

We then spent some time pouring over a railway map to help us decide on an alternative destination.

Frome was chosen and new plans were made.

Then the day before we were due to go the host, very apologetically, cancelled due to a double booking.

So what to do.

Looking at the weather forecast things didn't bode well.

Rain and thunderstorms were predicted for lots of areas.

But it looked like if we headed east instead of west we should be ok.

The idea of a night away was shelved and a day trip to Oxford was our new plan.

With no set plan beforehand we ended up having a wonderful day out.

On arriving in Oxford we made our way from the train station towards the city centre.

As we walked over a bridge I spotted one of my favourite things, an information board.

On investigation it showed a map for the Oxford Canal Heritage Trail, it looked interesting so we set off.

The trail is 3km long and we didn't make it quite to the end as we wanted to make sure we had time to see other parts of the city.

If you are ever in the area then I would definitely recommend wandering along the towpath.

We can also recommend The Hayfield Deli should you need some refreshment along the way.

To combat problems with graffiti in their local area a project was undertaken to decorate Frenchay bridge with various murals. This a snapshot of just a few of them.

We took a bus back into the centre and were enticed into visiting Balliol College gardens after seeing this tantalising glimpse.

The weather was kind to us all day, no rain or storms, just wall to wall sunshine.

So this shady seat was very welcome,

especially when the views were like this

From there we wandered past more of the colleges

onto our next discovery which was the Botanic Gardens.
The huge glasshouses were fascinating, this is where we saw the tiny pineapples and the cotton plants.
The beds outside were chock full of big blousey poppies which we took loads of photos of.
Situated by the river it really would be a perfect spot to enjoy a picnic lunch.

From there we sought out somewhere to stop for coffee and cake.

This turned out to be our downfall as once we had stopped we found we had pretty much tun out of energy!

We took a bus back to the train station, seeing lots more of the city (including a castle!) on the way and knowing that we had we would need at least one more day out in Oxford to explore it further.