Food First

We are living internet free at the moment. It means that all we think about is food for some reason, what else can we do? I have popped back to our old house to do some cleaning and take full advantage of the internet connection we have in the house we no longer live in!

The fruit and vegetables are still forthcoming from the neighbour's gardens I have been caring for, this week we plundered plums. In all  honesty, I could have done without them during a house moving week but the girls begged me to stop them falling off the trees to the ground.

My big girl learnt how to make jam.

Selecting new places to put kitchen utensils, bowls and tins has been very enjoyable. Megan has set herself up a rather efficient baking zone with the mixer, cookbook stand and useful items in the drawers below.

Today she made white chocolate and cranberry biscuits.

We have been eating mostly homegrown veg over the last month or so; the courgettes are of course overwhelming. It was time for my favourite cake recipe...

Nigella Lawson's courgette cake with lemon curd. It is from her book 'The Domestic Goddess' if you have it or follow the link. She uses pistachio nuts to decorate it but I used toasted flaked almonds. 

I am looking forward to giving you a new house up date soon when the engineer has been and connected our internet. So for now, this is a slightly one sided post because I can not hop over to your blogs for a read but I will do very soon.

Happy Eating. Jo xxxx

What would you pack first?

We are in the very lucky position of being able to move into our new house while our current house is continuing to go through the contract sale stage. It does mean that I am constantly questioning what I can live with or without as I move things to one house while living in another. 

I took all of my baking tins vowing not to make another cake until we moved, then needed some to make my daughters birthday cake.

I took all of my cook books, then needed one to make beetroot chutney.

I carefully packed up all of my best dinner service and put it in the dresser with only one wine glass breakage.

I have taken all of my wool, patterns and knitting regalia and just kept my basket with a sweater and socks to work on in the evenings.

I have kept my sewing machine and some basics with me in case I need to do some school uniform alterations before school starts again but I have packed up all of my fab fabric, vintage patterns, lingerie sewing notions and Ottobre magazines.

The girls have sorted out their huge book collections and have sold surplus to a second hand book shop. Charity shops are mostly not open by us yet so getting rid of stuff is trickier than normal. I have an exciting pre-arranged drop off slot tomorrow at my favourite one.

We are trying to eat down one freezer so we can move it which feels risky if there is another lockdown and shops struggle to supply again but that is the way it is.

We shared steak and chips with our friends as our first official invitation meal in our new house, they are helping us move on Sunday. All of our friends who have trailers and pick ups are entering their busy harvest time so we are grateful to have lured asked them to help us before potato harvesting gets busy.

We were treated to a pastel skyline on Wednesday before we left, then watched the rain pour down with hours of lighting shows when we got back to our current house.

I will spare you the photo of neatly packed matching boxes because it really is not like that here, it is absolute chaos!

But all in all I know we will be just fine, I'm living the moment of moving day by day and enjoying putting our things into our newly built home.

What would you pack first?

Keep you posted. Jo xxxx

August...ing

Making - fleecy PJ's for my girl even though it is August.

Selling - our house! Only showed round one person with it on the market for five weeks. We will be moving to our smallholding very soon.

De cluttering - every cupboard and drawer in the house. The dross, honestly. This is the contents of the pine kitchen dresser drawers.

Building - our carpets are now fitted at the new house. I laid all the underlay and gripper rods myself. The guy said I put a lot of carpet fitters to shame!

Admiring - this local garden. I walk past it every day with the dog and get to peep over the wall. It gets better and better: phlox, hollyhocks, verbascum, mallows and yarrow.

Watering - two neighbours gardens while they are away with permission to pick what we can eat.

Making - beetroot chutney with the above: beetroot, apples and onions.

Eating - down the freezers so we can move them whilst still continuously filling them with courgette soup!

Revamping - my grans Victorian cabinet with Orla Keily gift wrap and PVA glue.

Knitting - the boring grey bit of my alpaca sweater but it is so soft to handle. I probably manage about two rows a night of mindless but comforting knitting. There are always socks when the mood takes me.

Saving - a beautiful quality M&S T-shirt with a vintage doily I bought in France 4 years ago. I got a huge grease stain right in the middle of my top but I've covered it with this little beauty.

Celebrating - having a teenager in the house with this awesome red velvet cake made by her sister. It was a faff but totally worth it even with the ermine icing. She coloured it with beetroot powder and added freeze dried raspberries as a topping with rose petals and fresh raspberries in the layers. Just divine!

  

Feeling - a little bit overwhelmed.

Thanks for dropping by. Enjoy the sunshine. Jo xxx

Easing in

Another little sewing project to ease me back into sewing. I don't have many sewing minutes of late but I still feel the need to sew a little during the light evenings. I have a head full of ideas for the summer holidays but very little time.

As previously mentioned, I had a surprise fabric parcel which arrived on my back doorstep. This beautiful piece of viscose was in the bag and I knew it was enough for a vest style top as soon as I held it up and admired it. 

 

It took me while to find the right pattern. I looked at the free sorbetto top but didn't have enough ink to print it out; a free tunic pattern I had since lost from the GBSB first book and then I found this one in my pattern box: Newlook 6035. I thought I would give it a try.

Just in time for a warm weekend. 

Thank you once again Lady Melchett. I have saved a little piece for one more thing that is on my mind which I will show you soon.

Hope you having a lovely weekend. Jo xxx

Saw it, Stole it, Made it.

The fabric shelf in my cupboard is looking a bit full of scraps, I don't mind this per se but I like to keep small pieces of fabric moving rather than festering. There are some nice larger pieces in there but they are being creatively obscured by the choppy bits. 

In order to get to the bigger stuff I decided to make a top I had been inspired to make by SoZo. I have not used up quite so many pieces as her version but it put me in mind of two fabrics that I knew would go together really well from my own cupboard.

The navy needle cord was from my friend in what I shall now refer to as the 'lockdown bag'! It wasn't quite enough for a skirt but it had a little stretch in it so it was suitable for a top.

My all time favourite pattern is the Scout Tee by Grainline Studio. If you do not have this pattern, I highly recommend you invest in it. It is not cheap but it pays you back over and over especially if you are a jeans-wearing-kind-of-woman. It is easy to make, uses very little fabric and can be customised in so many different ways. 

(It makes a rather comfortable PJ top too)

The final piece in the puzzle was a bit of viscose which I really like. I made this sleeveless top from it which I wear a lot with a red cardigan so I thought I would make the most of the last piece.

This is one comfortable top which had to go straight on my back the moment I finished it. A very happy sewer indeed. 

Do you have this pattern? Jo xxxx

ps. Thanks for the cord Lady Melchett x

Pretending to be on Holiday

I haven't posted in a while eh? We were supposed to be on holiday in Switzerland this last week but it was cancelled like many people's holidays. Instead we had a pretend holiday at the farm. Highlights include:

Some sock knitting by the fire. These are simply to use up some Drops Fabel so they are a little off the wall but still an enjoyable knit.

The children actually packed a suitcase to travel 8 miles in a bid to pretend we were really going on holiday! They slept in a tent in the field to add to the excitement.

They made sandcastles in some building sand.

We went on a much needed two hour walk one evening in the warm weather.

There was some light shopping in Church Stretton to buy cakes and books from a quaint book shop.

They played in a nearby stream which they absolutely loved.

Andy and I really knocked a hole in our snagging list on the house build. Some of the carpets were laid along with adding curtains, lampshades and some furniture. Hot water is so close I can smell it.

Meg asks on a weekly basis when we will put her new bed together so now that her carpet is down we all got stuck in.

I gave the house a really good clean up now that the dusty carpentry work is finished then in the end no one wanted to go back to our actual home! 

So we had a holiday of sorts. A break from work, the normal things that bug us and a proper change of view.

I just about managed to crawl over the end of term finish line last week where I have been working full time for a while during lockdown. It has made me realise why I don't do it anymore. I love teaching children but not all the other dross that seems to go with it. I am happy to work part time and enjoy family and friends as part of a balanced life.

Time for some sewing I think. I haven't been near the machine for over four weeks so I am getting tetchy.

I'm off to catch up on all of your news now. 

Thanks for dropping in. Jo xx