Scrapped My Day

Sunday 25th October, 'Scrap your day' day, was a Saturday and it kind of followed a normal Saturday routine. Get up, cup of tea, have breakfast, go to supermarket, have lunch, do some baking, go for a walk, have a cup of tea, spend two hours with Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Well, let's be honest, it's not every Saturday night I get to spend time with them, and ok, it was at the cinema and there were dozens of other people there too! But that is how I spent my Scrap Your Day in October and here are the photos to prove it ...

Up North

It was the first day of the school half term yesterday and the ideal opportunity to head up the A1 and visit our son at university in Sheffield. It's a long way to go in a day - 300 miles round trip - but well worth it to see him after a month away from home.
He seems to have settled into uni life so well and is enjoying exploring the area and visiting other friends who have gone to uni in the Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield kind of area. He's also loving the music scene up there, and going to so many gigs and expanding his musical tastes.
It's only a month since he moved up there but he seems to have grown up and grown so independent in those few weeks. Student life suits him!
It seemed a very long journey home, leaving him behind again but reassuring to see that he is coping so well with living away from home and making new friends.
Nevertheless, I am counting the days to him coming home for reading week, it will be good to have the family all together again.

Pies

I love Lemon Meringue Pie. It's possibly my favourite dessert but you don't often find it on restaurant menus. I would choose it over anything chocolatey and anyone who knows me will know how much I love chocolate. In the Sunday supplement of the newspaper this week, there was a recipe for LMP and it sounded lovely so I decided to spend some time this afternoon trying out this new version.

I've tried bits of it at every stage and have left a lemony, sticky mess as evidence around the cooker. For me the ultimate LMP will have a sharp but not bitter lemony custardy bottom and the meringue has to be crisp on top and gooey inside. Can't be soft all through or chewy in the middle - not that I'm fussy or anything! I'm not convinced this one will be nicer (or maybe even as nice) as my tried and tested, family recipe but as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

New outfits

Now I don't think that my daughter ever reads this blog, but if she does I want to say this - "Look away now!"


OK, has she gone?


Today I went shopping with a friend to Cambridge and it was really nice to have a leisurely look round the shops with nothing in particular to buy. Shops are all getting their Christmas goodies in and it was lovely to start to get the Christmas atmosphere without all the crowds. We were in the Grand Arcade and I noticed that a Build a Bear Workshop had opened. I had bought Rachel a Build a Bear for her 21st birthday and every now and again I buy her a new outfit. It's coming up for Rachel's graduation in mid November and I saw that you could get a Graduation outfit for the bears. So here is Princess, ready for the ceremony:

Ah, doesn't she look cute? So now the bear has a new outfit, and of course Rachel will have her cap and gown, so I'm guessing that as Mother of the Graduate, I will need something new too ;-)

Breaking the rules

I normally refuse to buy anything relating to Christmas before November starts and have already found myself almost buying advent calendars over the last couple of weeks before I mentally shook myself and said 'NO - it's too early'. But this weekend I saw this young man:

I don't know why, but he just appealed with me so much that I had to buy him. And then having broken the 'Not before November' rule, I bought a festive tin of Toblerone Tinies too.

There are two dangers here. I now need to put Robbie the Reindeer somewhere safe so that he doesn't get lost or damaged before we decorate the house for Christmas. This relies heavily on me remembering where that safe place is when mid-December comes. The second danger is that bearing in mind what has happened to my Trick or Treat sweets 2 weeks before the event, I need to restrain myself from opening that tin of Tinies ..........

Feeling ashamed

Whilst in the supermarket at the weekend, I noticed that they had a huge display of Halloween goodies and right beside them was a special '2 for 1' offer on sweets. Seemed a good idea to stock up on some for the inevitable tide of 'Trick or Treat' visitors that we will have in a couple of weeks time. But those packs of sweets have been calling to me, they've been enticing me into opening up their colourful little packets and I thought, "well, I'll just have one" but as is often the case, once you get the taste of their fruity, juicyness, one is never enough ...

I have had to go out and buy another couple of packs as the first one is already empty.

I wonder how long the 2 for 1 offer is on for!

Cupcakes

Look at these gorgeous little darlings! Aren't they fabulous? My friend Mandy is a brilliant cook and recently made almost a hundred cupcakes for her daughter's wedding. (sorry Mandy for the awful picture below. It was taken after a few glasses of champagne and I forgot to use the flash!) After baking all those, she must have been sick of the sight of cupcakes but knowing how much I enjoyed sampling the various flavours, icings etc while she was developing the ultimate wedding cupcake she very kindly made more and brought round a box last night. I'm not telling how many there were to start with or, more to the point, after a day at home how many are left ...

Autumn weekends

I feel a bit guilty. Having told my friend Denise off for not keeping her blog posts up to date, I see that I have not written anything since finishing LSNED.

Last weekend was really lovely and it seemed a shame to spend time indoors so my husband and I went for a walk out in the countryside near where we live. It takes about 10 minutes from leaving our front door to being out in the country and it was so nice to be out in the autumn sunshine. The leaves on the trees are all changing colour and it was beautiful around the lake and going up to the church via the farm. Was a bit sad to see that some of the conker trees seemed to have died though. I have happy memories of conker trees. When the children were younger, we used to collect conkers by the dozen, it was a family competition to see who could find the most!

On Shimelle's website, she has a page where she talks about colours associating with certain things, so here are a couple of pictures of around where I live which show all the colours that I associate with autumn.

last pages

Well I have had a happy day today finishing off the Learn something new every day project. Although I was anxious to finish it within a decent amount of time, now it is done I feel 'what will I do now?'! I do need to go back and number the pages and sort out any embellishment malfunctions but on the whole it is finished and I have really enjoyed doing it. Sometimes it was easier than others to find a lesson learnt, especially on days that consisted of the more mundane aspects of life but 30 days down the line, I managed to find something for every single day- success! So here are the final 3 pages -



and not to mention the title page:

Changes

This time last week I was walking along a beach and last Sunday I ate my Sunday lunch in the garden of a pub. How can two weekends be so different?

I know which weekend I preferred!

27 September

On 27th Paul and I went to Southwold on the Suffolk coast for a long weekend. The weather was superb and we had a lovely time. Southwold has 3 landmarks - the lighthouse, the pier and the beach huts. I took so many photos of the beach huts, they are so lovely and colourful and it wasn't until I went into a craft shop and bought a mug with pictures of beach huts all over it that Paul started to worry that perhaps I was becoming a little obsessed!

26 page

The continuing story of a husband on crutches! One advantage of emails and laptops means that even if you can't get into the office, the office can get to you. So despite Paul being unable to drive into London to get to work, or brave the trains and tubes, he was able to catch up on a lot of office work from his temporary office set up in the kitchen at home.

24th and 25th September

Oh dear, going away for the weekend has meant that I have fallen a bit behind with this! But here is my page for 24th. Inspired by the thought that you can tell Christmas is coming when the catalogues start arriving on your door step.

The next page was prompted by having to work on the evening of the 25th as it was Open Evening at school for prospective students. I may only work 3 days a week, but I do various jobs while I am there, and this week I have taken on new work helping the admissions officer. When we arrived for Open Eve, we were given labels to wear so prospective parents would know what role we held at the school, and my boss had printed one saying 'Wonderwoman' following a rather hectic day in the office preparing for the evening ahead. I did have to relinquish it for a 'proper' one, but for a few minutes, I felt really appreciated!