Home Cooking

Home cooked chocolate cake. MMmmmm. Now I have your attention!

This is the favourite cake of the son mentioned in yesterday's blog post and I have baked it especially for his return tomorrow. He has a reading week this week. As we haven't seen him for almost 8 weeks, you can imagine we were looking forward to having him home again for a week.

Then his girlfriend found a good deal on the internet for 4 days in Scotland. Now down to 3 days of seeing him.

Then he decided to come home in his girlfriend's car tomorrow rather than come on the train on his own today. 2 days of seeing him.

Then they decided to not leave Manchester until the afternoon tomorrow rather than the morning. 24 hours of precious 'son-time'.

Fortunately that coincides with my day off and so I am looking forward to actually spending time with him. As my daughter has Wednesdays off too, she will be home as well. Maybe we could actually have a nice lunch out in town. I'm not holding my breath though, plans could easily change!

So what has this to do with today's prompt? Not a lot, except that I have become a bit lazy recently in the kitchen. I always cook a hot dinner from fresh ingredients and I do really enjoy cooking but I used to bake - a lot! When my mum was still alive she would come to us every other Sunday and I always baked a proper 'pudding' and always had a freshly made cake for tea. I've got out of the habit and I need to get back into it as it is a good way to relax and the end results are usually worth the trouble. So this is my intention, to have a few posts relating to my cooking successes and disasters, hopefully there won't be too many of the latter but I promise to blog them when they happen!

In the meantime, anyone for a slice of chocolate cake?

A Message to my Son at Uni

and an update on the lounge (now finished)

Excuse the mess

Sometimes it scares me a little when a prompt from Shimelle seems so utterly appropriate to what is going on in my little life. Take today's class. Photos from around your home. How did she know that we are smack bang in the middle of decorating the lounge? Spooky.

Normally decorating is done as a team effort, me doing all the cutting, pasting, pointing out bits he's missed, making lunch and numerous cups of tea etc and my husband doing the difficult bits. Like the wallpapering, the ceilings, gloss work and all the bits I deem myself too short or not good enough to do. However, this time he has taken two days off work to do it and therefore, I have been excused participation. Today I have come home to this

which is what a 3/4 finished lounge looks like. Just the ceiling left to do and the glazed doors that open out into the dining room. Certainly nothing a 5' 1" person should be left in charge of ;-)

So while I am closing that door and forgetting about it for a while, let me show you a small part of the dining room that I love.

We decorated this room about 3 weeks ago. And I do mean WE! I painted 3 walls and he wallpapered the 'feature wall'. This little light comes from Laura Ashley and is so pretty. You can't see it that well but it has dozens of little glass beads hanging down and when you switch the bulb on it reflects and looks so beautiful. The shell was a gift from my penfriend who came to visit in May. We've been writing to each other for 40 years now and have met 3 times. She came over and stayed with us before her and her husband left on a Mediterranean cruise and when she got back to the USA she sent us some gifts. One of which was this shell which comes from the area of Sanibel Island, Florida where she has a holiday home. It's absolutely beautiful and I love it!
Normally when I post something showing a layout I have done, I merely put it on the carpet to photograph it, I think I may try using this corner to display things in future.

Now then Shimelle, no more classes telling us to photograph our homes until all decorating is finished - agreed?

Welcome to my Working World

Hello, it's so nice to see you. Do come in, and please excuse the mess. Did you pick up your security pass at reception? Good. So here we are then, ready to discuss the events of my day.
I work part time at a fairly large secondary school in Hertfordshire. About 1200 students at the last count. I work part of my day in the exams office, which is a busy place at the best of times but with Year 11 mock GCSEs starting next week and entries for January modules taking place it's manic.
So let's sit here in the main office where I work for the other hours of my working day, it's quieter in here, but no less busy. Oh, and can I introduce you to my colleague Dany, who is in overall charge of Work Experience but we work very much as a partnership in the months leading up to it. Our girls have just finished their week out in the world of business and we're starting the feedback part of the job.
I want to share something that may seem insignificant to the rest of the world but something that gave us a warm glow this morning and a feeling of 'job well done' all day.
Work experience can be challenging. Some girls know exactly what they want to do and are keen and enthusiastic and it is straightforward to find somewhere for them. It's been tough this year with the credit crunch, businesses don't have the extra staff or time to give up a week to show a 15 year old what they do all day, and quite frankly a lot of places locally haven't survived the recession. Some girls want the impossible, one girl wanted to work at a space station - well, we do have Science College Status so I guess we will always have someone hoping to aim high!
Bearing in mind I had 156 girls to try and find places for, and it's done on first come first served basis, by the time I am down to the last 10, inspiration is seriously lacking. My 156th girl was someone who is not academically inclined, prone to trying to avoid lessons and generally not taking much interest in anything. People told us to not bother taking too much time finding anything as she probably wouldn't turn up anyway.
But something in that comment made Dany and I determined to find something that would hold her interest. I am a firm believer that the 'problem' children are sometimes only a problem as they are bored and don't have any interest in the normal subjects. It is a matter of finding something to grab their imagination and keeping them absorbed. I also feel that everyone needs to feel that their opinion is important, to listen to them and show an interest.
By a convoluted sequence of events and a passing comment when she came to discuss work experience with us, we managed to secure a placement for her at an RAF base in Suffolk, based about 15 mins from where her grandparents lived. It was agreed she could live with them for the week and they would get her there. She absolutely loved it. She went every day, threw herself into whatever they asked of her, is absolutely set on joining the RAF on leaving school. The RAF sent in a glowing report about her, she was a joy to have there and she fitted in from Day 1. She's going back in a couple of weekends time to help out with a display and she has returned to school a more confident, enthusiastic person.
Sometimes you have to accept that a square peg will not fit in the traditional round hole and find the right shaped home for them. We honestly feel that a few extra hours finding something out of the ordinary for her might just have turned her life around.
Gosh, is that the time? The going home bell will be going any minute, thanks for popping in. See you again sometime I hope!

Take 5

My top five ingredients for a lovely lazy Saturday would have to be:

Spending the day here

The Sanctuary Spa in Covent Garden. Total bliss. 100% relaxation and an equal amount of pampering. Nothing less than all us stressed out scrappers deserve!

After being buffed and polished and massaged to perfection, home to a nice chilled glass of :
I never used to drink red wine much but over the years I have discovered that I do in fact quite like it! A nice glass of Montepulciano goes down very nicely but my favourite white wine at the moment is Torres Vina Esmeralda. On offer at our local Waitrose at the moment, don't just take my word for it - give it a whirl!

OK, so my body is relaxed and I am unwinding nicely, time to switch on the tv and watch

Strictly Come Dancing ! Hard to say who my favourite is yet, but most of the celebs I wasn't keen on have gone now. I'm still finding it hard to believe that Ali and Brian were in the dance off ... but I digress.

Of course while I am chilling and relaxing and applauding Natalie and Vincent, drooling over Ricky Whittle's six pack etc etc my darling husband will be slaving away in the kitchen, maybe having taken advantage of a nice M&S dinner offer

Lamb. Of all the meats, lamb is my absolute favourite. And don't try and make me feel guilty by making me think about those fluffy white sheep gamboling around in the fields. I just love Lamb. If we go out for a meal and lamb is on the menu, DH raises his eyebrows and says 'no need to ask what you will be choosing'. Predictable? Moi?

So how best to round off this day? Anyone who knows me will know that one ingredient is missing - chocolate. So I think we need to get out a big box of chocolates from Hotel Chocolat.

Has everyone tried Hotel Chocolat? What? How can you not have? They are the best chocolates ever. Check out their website now ! This has been a GOOD prompt Shimelle, I've enjoyed making my list and mentally working my way through it, time to put it into reality I think!

Proud Parents

Almost exactly a year ago, our daughter graduated from University. It was an amazing day and we were both so proud to see her walk across that stage in her cap and gown. The University Chancellor Professor who was overseeing the gradation ceremony was Robert Winston who we know through his television programmes like Child of our Time and expertise in Fertility Science. His speech was absolutely amazing, funny and interesting and inspiring to the graduates.

We have so many happy memories of that day, it was lovely to see our little girl in her ceremonial robes. The end of a 4 year course that had been eventful in many ways. I have already scrapped a page regarding her graduation but there are so many stories behind that page that can only be fully appreciated by her family and closest friends. Strangers watching her walk across that stage would never know the problems that she had faced and overcome. So this picture brings so many emotions to the fore.

Which Mr Man would you be?

If I were a character in one of the Mr Men books I would definitely either be Little Miss Impatient or Little Miss Messy.

I try hard not to be either of these things but one inevitably leads to the other. If I weren't so impatient, I would take my time to do things and be more neat in what I do. But I have always been the same, I want to do something - I want to do it NOW!

So today when the course started, I didn't want the pre-prompt, I wanted the real thing! I kept checking back to see if it were there and I've just seen it in my inbox. As I am out at a Rosemary Conley class tonight, I need to do my first day blog and so (you guessed it) I need to do it NOW!

So what have I been doing today? Well, this morning I got the sneak peek for the November crop day organised by Sue at Crafty Stash along with the class requirements for this month. Trying to guess what kind of layouts we're doing, I've had to search through my photos to find something appropriate. The second layout looks like it is black/white/red themed and I wanted to find a black and white picture of my daughter which would go with that theme. I've found that whilst she refuses to pose for a photo for me, she is happy to have her friends take pictures on nights out and then publish them on Facebook. So while browsing through there, I came across this

I think with a bit of cropping, this could be a good picture to use. Little Miss Glamourous?