Party Prep!

Today I have been busy getting things ready for our Halloween party tomorrow night! There's about 60 people coming so we have quite a bit of food and drink to prepare!

Eyeballs anyone? I bought these floating candles from the supermarket and thought they'd look good in red water!

My mum grew a lot of pumpkins this year so we had a plentiful supply to make into decorations.

I bought these party favours to decorate the puddings.

This is the first layer of my slime green jelly complete with spiders!

I'll be posting more pictures of the party itself at the weekend. Happy Halloween everyone!

An Appeal to Green Gate!

If there was ever a shop that I wished I could buy online from, it is this one. They have some really lovely stuff but for some inexplicable reason they have no online shop. All you can do is infuriatingly browse their gorgeous catalogue. Being a Danish company they do have shops all over Scandinavia but here in the uk...nothing!! I know that there are a some retail outlets for their stuff here but they really are few and far between.

So come on Greengate, open a shop here or at least make your stuff available to buy online!

Autumn Garden and Shopping!

I've been a bit neglectful of blogging lately. Work is so busy at this time of year and I have had a cold for two weeks. Its getting better now and I'm starting to feel like I have more energy, so here I am and I thought I'd show you some of the garden. The holly tree is covered in berries at the moment.


The birds love the berries and when they are ready, quickly devour them so that unfortunately, when the holly is brought in at Christmas for decorating, there's hardly a berry left!

Because we've had such mild weather, the leaves have lasted on the trees, giving spectacular displays of colour.

A flowering currant turning pink.

These little toadstools sprout up all over the lawn at this time of year.

I've been shopping today and bought some party things including...

some fireworks for Guy Fawkes night...

some baubles for the Christmas tree...

and Halloween costumes for a party we are going to on 31 October. This is Andy's costume and...

this is mine, although it is doubtful whether I'll look as sexy as the witch on the packet, but I will do my best!!!

A Mish Mash

I seem to have got a bit behind with my posting just lately so this post is a mixture of things I've done and seen locally over the last couple of weeks.

These red sunflowers are out in the garden.

A concert in the park....

...with a picnic.

This balloon came in to land in a field near the house so I ran upstairs to take some photos through the bedroom window!

The logs have been delivered for the winter.

The corn is as high as an elephant's eye...well nearly!

Blackberry picking.

Walking in the fields.

View across the fields.

This is a first for me, photographing the inside of a garden shed! It is my brother's new shed and he's very proud of it so we were all invited to look at it before he fills it up with rubbish!

Today we dined in the library!! Well actually its the pub and a little celebration meal for my brother's birthday.

Shrewsbury School rowers on the river Severn.

Walking by the river Severn.

And finally...this is my parent's dog, Barnie who died today. He gave us lots of love, fun and laughs for the last 14 years. RIP Barnie. I will miss you lots and lots and lots.

Award Time

I have received an ‘Attitude of Gratitude’ award from Carol over at Old Glory Cottage . Have a look at her blog, it is amazing. Carol is a collector extraordinaire! The award celebrates the ability to "see the blessings where they're not obvious, and making lemonade instead of complaining about sour lemons"! I am now supposed to share what I am grateful for, and then pass the award on. Here are just a few things I am grateful for:

Lingen Davies Cancer Centre. This is where I received all my treatment last year for breast cancer, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy and will for ever be grateful to all the wonderful staff there who helped me and to the people who have raised funds to keep the unit going.

My Mini Cooper. I don’t know what I’d do without my mini. I travel 70 miles to work in it every day and it never complains and is always reliable. I would never buy another car now, I love it.

My garden. This is where I can chill out after a crap day at work by just simply walking around it and looking at the plants and flowers.

The Aztecs and Mayans: For inventing chocolate! I’m sure I’d be addicted to some other form of stimulant if chocolate didn’t exist so thank goodness for the coco bean. Green and Blacks is my favourite.

It goes without saying that I am very grateful to all the wonderful friends I have met in Blog land and appreciate all the lovely comments I receive. Here are the people I would like to pass the award on to. Please don't feel that you have to abide by the rules of this award.

Tracey at Tracey's Crafty Scraps
Amy at Bubbles blog
Mami at Mami's photo diary
Michela at Little Secrets from My Garden
Duchess at Rose Tea Cottage
Maria Cecilia at Casa dulce hogar

I'm dreaming of a new bathroom!

I just wanted to show you my new bath and other stuff that will be going in my new bathroom! I have dreams about using my nice new bathroom. We have been ‘putting up’ with a horrible, cold, dark, damp, spider infested bathroom for three years now and what's worse, it is downstairs, about as far away as you can get from the bedrooms upstairs!

Here's my new bath! Unfortunately it isn’t usable yet due to the fact that not only is it not plumbed in but the room it is standing in needs a lot of work doing to it! Still, the bath is in position and that’s a start! I can kind of get my head around how the room will look now and how much space I have left to work with. As you can see from the style of the bath, I will be having a vintage style bathroom. The silver on the walls is insulation material.

I wanted a big French style mirror for one of the walls and bought this one in Laura Ashley. It is one of the few vintage style things that shop does now.

This is the radiator/towel rail. It is new but Victorian style

Hopefully my dreams will become reality soon!

Sloes, Damsons and Gin!

I'm told it is a good year for damsons and sloes so that being the case, mother and I went into the orchard to pick some and decided, instead of making pies and jam we'd go down the alcoholic route and make some sloe (and damson) gin.

Damsons in abundance.

I had the task of picking the fiddly little sloes in the hedge while mother...

... had the relatively easy task of picking the damsons off the tree!

Don't they look lovely in their basket.

To make sloe gin you need to weigh out half a pound of sloes.

Buy some cheap gin - supermarket own brand will do and then drink half of it (not all at once)!

Prick the sloes or damsons with a knife and then put into an empty bottle.

Add four ounces of sugar.

Then add the half bottle of gin. Give it a good shake.

Then leave it for a few months to mature, shaking it every day for two weeks. After three or four months you can decant it into clean bottles and start drinking. Cheers!