I really have been busy!!!!!

Hello!!!! I know, I haven't written anything for days!! And believe me the spirit's been willing but the flesh has been pulled in all directions!!! First of all "THE QUILT" has taken up an awful lot of my time - and not in any grudging way either. I've thoroughly enjoyed making it and I'm delighted to report that it's now well and truly finished and will be on its way to its new owner very soon. I won't flash any photos around just yet though - don't want to spoil the surprise!!!!

There was a darn near catastrophe on Tuesday when I couldn't find my "How to do Christmas" lists! I like to jot down everything that we buy and eat for future reference - except I lost it!! Luckily after a frantic search (through my memory as well as every drawer and basket in the house) I found it where I keep the printer paper - of course!! Denise said I should type it out on the laptop, but I do have a thing about nicely written lists where I can grab 'em any time of day or night!!! Panic over, for now!!!!

Otherwise there's been a fair amount of tinkering about going on! I did get those ruddy drawers put together and then a week later embarked on a pair of underbed drawers to go with them. Plus several holes drilled in the wall to hold various bits and bobs that have been sitting around the house for a while and I think I've finished the DIY... for now!!!! (The next big chore is the Christmas lights and I am SO NOT looking forward to THAT job!!!)

We also did a little advance Christmas shopping, which I enjoyed immensely as usual. The BIG shopping day in next Friday and that's the best fun ever!!!! Tiring though!

Also there was Children In Need, for which I finished the fairy costume and half killed myself fancy dress weight training and the high-heeled aerobics was hard work but great fun and involved a fair bit of pole dancing!!! Of course!!!

That afternoon we had SIX little boys for a lunch and a playdate and made a "Pudsey Custard Sponge" (variation on Nigella's Birthday Custard Sponge minus the chocolate topping, but with an extra layer of buttercream and a LOT of Smarties!!!) which didn't go down as well with the kids as I'd hoped, but the cat liked it!! Miserable moggy nicked a great chunk off it when we weren't looking. Boy!! She didn't get any tea that night!!

Remember those Christmas cakes and puddings I made? Well there's one of the finished cakes at the top ready to be sent to it's new owner once the icing is rock hard. I loved the fact I could find a length of irridescent ribbon to match the sparkly glitter on the top and the little sugar snowflakes were a good discovery too - not great though!! They're very fragile and a swine to get off the card even after following the instructions to the letter.

Until yesterday every evening had been filled with activities or hand sewing so it was a relief last night to not have to do anything pressing and have David and Emma over for tea. In honour of the occasion (and Happy Thanksgiving for those across the pond) I made "Mars Bar Cheesecake" - a wonderful confection whose recipe I shamelessly plundered from Saffron's Brownie leader:

225g Maryland Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

50g unsalted butter

400g soft cream cheese

10 x medium sized Mars Bars (total weight 365g)

Something yummy to sprinkle on top

Melt the butter and blitz the cookies to crumbs. Combine and press into the base of a 20cms cake tin lined with clingfilm. Cool in the fridge.

Chop the Mars Bars and melt on a low heat (or in the microwave on a medium setting) being careful not to cook the caramel centre.

Beat in the cream cheese until well mixed and creamy.

Pour over the biscuit base and leave in the fridge to set.

Decorate with sprinkles or chocolates - these are Cadbury's Snowbites.

Try to make this the mornig before you need it to allow the filling to firm up nicely. Carefully peel off the clingfilm and place on a serving dish. It serves six generous portions or eight modest ones, but no more than that! I have doubled the ingredients for a party and used a 25cms tin.

So that's that for now!! Today I started making a cushion for a friend as a Christmas present so don't expect to see a photo of that for at least four weeks! Yes, it really is only four weeks until the shops shut! Now where's that list again...?

Can you tell what it is yet?#2

I am SO embarrassed that I haven't written a thing for nearly a week!! Partly this is due to working like trojan on various projects and largely 'cos I can't get to the laptop when I want to!! It's a kid-eat-mom world!! On Thursday Saffie's bedside drawers arrived by courier and my face fell as I was presented with a very, very flat pack. Boy, was the air blue as I assembled that!!!

Obviously I still can't share the quilting project with you yet, but I had a fab day on Saturday with a group of ladies, stitching away while Jerry and the kids went to play Vikings. We (the ladies) are actually a very unladylike lot and the jokes and comments were more than a little coarse!! Though my favourite and most memorable was the comment about shapewear! Don't ask me how we got onto shapewear, but one of ladies said that her children refer to her (extra large) big-girls' pants as "Harvest Festivals". "Why?" you ask (so did we!!) Because "all is safely gathered in"!!!! I practically had to be resuscitated! However, I did redeem myself that day by providing a batch of Chocolate Brownies - luckily there were a few left over to bring home, otherwise I reckon there would have been a mutiny!!

Sunday was quite a special day too. Every year there is a Yule Festival at the Anglo Saxon village near Bury StEdmunds, West Stow. As a family we're Friends of Stow and we also don our 5th century garb to hang around the village looking the part. Everyone brings reasonably authentic and celebratory food for this (month early) gathering and my contribution was Fromerty. This takes it's name from the French "froment" which is "wheat" and is a very much dark age dessert (so must have a proper anglo saxon name too) but just as good today as it ever was. It makes great breakfast cereal too! You must allow at least 24 hours to make this and you'll need approximately:

1 cup of Bulgar (cracked) wheat

1/2 cup ground almonds

3 or 4 cups of double (heavy) cream

1/2 cup of mead (optional)

2 cups chopped dried fruit

1 cup runny honey

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Soak the dried fruit in the mead overnight (36 hours before you need the dish) This is the optional bit.

You can use any dried fruit, but I prefer to use dried apple and apricots as an authentic fruit.

Combine the wheat, cream, fruit (and mead), honey and cinnamon in a large bowl and stir thoroughly. Cover and place in the fridge.

Over the next 24 hours stir thoroughly as often as you can remember to prevent the wheat from clumping together.

It's a good idea to use 3 cups of cream at the start and add a fourth later if it gets too thick.

The finished dish should be the consistency of thick, creamy porridge and it tastes divine!!!

Yesterday, in the process of having a quick tidy up in the dome (that's another story!!) I rediscovered a length of fabric I'd bought to make a new cover for a beanbag for Leo. It's really lovely with Noah's Ark and animals all over it in gorgeous soft colours. I made myself cut it out and finished the cover in an hour!!

He loves it!!!!!

I have another minor project on the go too!! Friday is Children In Need and I'm taking part in a fancy dress aerobathon at the Leisure Centre: fancy dress SRT and high heel aerobics!! So I'm busy manufacturing a fairy costume. Can't wait!!

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS!!!

WOW!!! What a day!! What a week!! My head's been buzzing ever since we found out, quite by chance that, that Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds is touring again next year so armed with my O2 priority password I sat here at 9:00am this morning and... got the tickets!!!!! Eight rows from the front! I still can't quite believe it! The slight downside (and only slight) is that the show is on 12th December... NEXT YEAR!!!!! Well, it's something to look forward to I guess!! Even my (many) weddings weren't planned that far ahead!!

The upshot of all this commotion, factoring in the "new bed for Saffie" saga and the "finding a new skirt" saga is that I haven't done a lot of creative stuff this week. I did need a new skirt for the ceremony today and I did have a rather fun time finding one - a very pretty, almost Victorian affair in black taffeta with ruffles and beading. This is all because the weight training has altered my shape and I now actually look quite good in a smaller sized skirt!

The bed saga involved dismantling Saffie's HUGE hi-top bed ready for her very neat new bedstead. At one point Rowan helped me lift the top bunk down and we ended up trapped on the wrong side of it (it's a narrow bedroom) Just as we were chuckling over this comic event, the phone started to ring! "Go and get the phone!" says Ro to Leo. "No!" says Leo. "Leo, please go and get the phone for Mummy!!" "NO!!! I'm trying to watch this!!!" It was, in Rowan's words, a truly sit-com moment!

It has to be said that a lot of days are like that in this house. And today is NOT going to be one of them. In a little while Jerry, Saffie and I are going to watch David and Emma's graduation ceremony and then take them out to Wagamama's for dinner. (Rowan is looking after Leo for us and his treat is in a couple of weeks) Woohoo!! I get to be a grown up!!!

PS Isn't it a bit wow that both of my followers live in Seattle? I wonder if they know each other?!!

Guy Fawkes?

Sorry about that!!! It seems a long time since Wednesday and I feel like I haven't got a lot done, but actually I have - I just can't show and tell just yet!!! Suffice to say that by Friday bedtime I'd completely finished piecing, layering and tacking the quilt and it's beginning to look lovely. Friday was a pretty full on day anyway with morning coffee in the usual place and a delicious, relaxing lunch at a friend's home (a Phil Vickery pumpkin stew recipe and I could have eaten bowlfuls of it!!!!) complete with wine and dessert - bought I'm afraid - I kinda ran out of time, but it was still nice!

We can't really do Guy Fawkes at the moment. Leo really HATES fireworks so unless the other kids get an invitation to a friend's party we tend not to go to the organised events. We can watch them from the front door, but it's a bit difficult with a tiny terror clinging to your leg and refusing to let you open the door!! The irony of it is we live in a town famous for it's involvement in wrecking the Gunpowder Plot. Lord Mounteagle, who lived a little way down the hill, warned King James (who lived further down the hill) not to go into parliament that fateful day. The rest is, as they say, history!!!

Yesterday we were down the allotment - finally!!!! A dry day and an opportunity to "put it to bed" for the winter. There are still a few odd jobs to be done, but essentially all the empty beds have been raked over and the dead stems piled on the compost heap. The onions are in and the broccoli looks fine, though we'll need to buy proper cloches for the nets. Jerry also laid a few more pavers across the largest of the beds to help with managing it over time. By the time we left it looked quite neat and tidy. We'd had the last of the pumpkin and squash soup for lunch and I made brownies for the weekend. Homemade pizzas for tea - one meat feast and one seafood. There's still rocket on the allotment so we had some of that in the salad too - yummy!!!

Unfortunately, last night was a disaster as poor Leo was up four times being very sick - even to the point that he threw up cooled, boiled water too!! I think we managed about five hours sleep and a lot of washing! Hopefully he'll be a lot better tomorrow, but I'll still keep him at home until he's on full rations again - just to make sure! We'd offered to take David to work this morning as the trains had been cancelled and luckily I didn't feel too tired at 8:15am, but by 11:00am when Viv and Ray were due for coffee and a pre-Christmas chat (with notebook!!) I was feeling more than a little sleepy. Somehow Jer and I have kept going and we've managed to get Leo to keep down a small packet of Mini Cheddars and an ounce of pasta i pesto! Somehow I've managed to cobble together a lasagne so we won't starve tonight and there's the end of a bottle of Cab Sauvignon with my name on it!!! Jerry has a bottle (or four) of Piddle - yes, really!!! Viv and Ray bought them for his birthday: Jimmy Riddle; Piddle in a Bottle; The Silent Slasher and Yogi Beer - all made with water from the River Piddle. You just couldn't make it up!!!!

Can you tell what it is yet?

Yesterday I had a cracking migraine (awwwwwwww) but determination won the day and I got on with a much cherished task. Monday evening I'd cut out nearly all the pieces I needed to make a small quilt for a friend (I'm not going to give too much away at this stage just in case they're reading this) and I was thrilled to bits that I had just enough of my favourite fabric to do the full sized version of the design. I had been a bit worried and thought that maybe a wall hanging would fit the bill - but who wants a wall hanging when you can snuggle under a lap quilt in front of the TV?!!! Anyway, I was chuffed to bits when I managed to construct the first block in an hour (while laughing my ass off to "Ladies of Letters" on Radio 7) and I'm hoping to get the main patchwork piecing out of the way by the weekend. I'll keep you posted on it's progress - but don't expect more photos until after it's finished and safely in the hands of its new owner!

Last night was Priory Quilters monthly meeting. We're a group of ladies wot quilt (and bead and knit and various other crafty hobbies) and we meet twice a month - first Tuesday evening and third Monday afternoon. I'm also on the committee so I get to see the girls once in a while to chat about what's occurring. Every so often we spend a whole day finishing projects - a UFO day - gossiping and eating cake!! There's one coming up in a week or so and that's why I want to get the small quilt assembled so I can sit and quilt it for SIX WHOLE HOURS!!!! Woohoo!! Anyhoo, at November's meeting we always try to make a Christmas decoration and this year it was little Ribbon Angels made from wired ribbon. They're only a few inches tall and very sweet and take less than an hour to make - if you're really desperate to make them I'll email you the worksheet!!! Sue and I taught the class (well, "teach" is perhaps too strong a word) and everyone seemed to really enjoy it and a few ladies came and thanked us afterwards which was really gratifying, especially as I STILL had the migraine! (I only just found out last night that the Quilt Show is on at Chilford Hall this weekend and I can't go - well, I suppose I could, but it means dumping Leo on Jerry again!)

SO, I (nearly) slept like a baby last night and lifted 7 kilos at SRT - not much, but I only started on 2 Kg - so I think I've earned an hour making another block for the small quilt. After I've finished the washing and got the dinner on - chilli!!!! Bolognese with kidney beans and spice - or "kid me" beans, as Leo calls them. Ahhhhhhhh...

Christmas Bake!!!

Every October half term I try to get the Christmas cakes and puddings baked/steamed so that they can mature in time. This started way back when the kids started school and then became more of a routine when I started teaching too. Because of the hours involved in the actual baking and steaming you need NOT to be going out anywhere! Sometimes I make my own mincemeat too, but this year I rediscovered a kilner jar of the stuff right at the back of the cupboard (as I was hunting for the ground almonds) so I'm off the hook. It keeps for ages because of the HUGE quantity of brandy in it - though I suspect I may have launched that batch with a good slug of Amaretto.

By the time I'd finished fannying about making everyone a cooked breakfast (WHY?!!!) it was nearly lunch time again! I'd made brekkies as each one got out of bed so Jerry, Leo and I had ours about 8:30am and Ro was last at 11:00am!! Then it was cake mixing time!! The fussy bit is greasing and lining the tins, but I guess it's worth all the effort. I don't make a traditional cake anymore - my sister gave me the idea of using tropical fruit instead to make a lighter, more exotic cake and it is truly lovely. I use rum instead of brandy, coconut and pecans instead of almonds and papaya, pineapple and mango instead of raisins, sultanas and currants. It's proved a hit with relatives and visitors too so this year I made and extra one as a gift.

The puddings are more traditional, but I'd forgotten to buy the ground almonds so I used up a handful of pistachios instead. I'm sure it'll still be yummy!! Both puddings and cakes have their fruit soaked for a week in rum (I should get shares in Captain Morgan) which adds to the luxury of the whole experience. It takes virtually all day to do it (they're still going strong now - I'll have to upload the photos tomorrow!) but the smell around the house is wonderful!!

Yesterday I made a lovely soup out of the pumpkin pulp and the last of the pattypans. It had a very delicate flavour and colour - I didn't bother with a photo as it didn't look particularly inspiring, but the cheeseboard definitely warranted a picture!! Clockwise from the top: cheddar with pickle; austrian smoked (Leo's favourite); bog standard mature cheddar; a tiny piece of wensleydale with date and honey; in the middle, mediterranean cheddar with olives and peppers and lastly a dark coloured sticky toffee apple cheddar - it's absolutely gorgeous and reminded me of a rich cheesecake!!

We ended up having quite a jolly Hallowe'en with our neighbours. Because we both have little kids we just Trick or Treated each other and invited each other in for a glass of wine. It was a lovely social occasion and made more fun by one of the guests who had spooky sounds on her I-phone and plugged it into the speakers! The children seemed to enjoy it enormously! I was very envious of my neighbour's Graveyard muffins which looked a heck of a lot more appetising than mine and whose icing hadn't run off the top in a sticky mess!!! Ah well! Better luck next time!

Apparently it's only 54 days to Christmas! Yipes!!!