De-cluttering

It happens every year but most years I ignore it or our lives are too busy and well yeah, cluttered to do anything about it but not this year! 5 bags of stuff to the charity shop, a run to the tip and two full bins.

You see what happens is that I make our annual trip to the States and have a fabulous time catching up with family and friends. In the background while all the fun stuff is happening my senses are working without me really initiating anything, and they are seeing bigger houses, more space, different ways of organising things and then that knowledge gets played thru every room in our house. The solution is always the same. Too much stuff. Things without homes? Clear out. Clear out big time.

As I said I can normally side step the urge to sort and it generally diminishes after a few jet lag driven days. Not this year. So I started as soon as I got home. 5 days later and I had moved mountains. I was exhausted and the house? It still looks as crazy and well........ lived in as before. I have had at least three strops with the family about all that work and nothing to show for it.

And I am realising that five days of clearing will only begin to undo five and a half years of gathering in this house. The same way that I am realising to de-clutter my life and find the things that are really important to me is going to take time to. There are things we do because we need to and that is fine. There are things we do because we like to and that is fine. It is the things we do that we feel we ought to. These regularly need a bit of sorting thru.

As maladjusted as ever....

or at least I am committed to try and be.

Today a friend gave us a huge bag of eucalyptus leaves. I had questionned the gift as we clearly do not have a Koala living as part of the family. The response was something along the line of, seeing as I was into making my own soaps and stuff. Yep challenge set! A quick search round with the help of Mr Google and I was crushing leaves in the food processor and putting them in the slow cooker with some olive oil to gently simmer for six hours to make eucalyptus oil. And the result? Well, my better half had to tip the results into the brown gardening bin as I gagged any time I lifted the lid of the pot. He said the smell was OK. I beg to differ. My gag reflex is not that sensitive. I do now have lavender oil on the make and I will let you know how that turns out in a month or so when it will be ready, or not, as the case may be.

I hauled home a huge box of baking soda from our recent trip across that large pond so tonight I measured and mixed and produced shampoo, conditioner, bathroom scrub and rinse, kitchen scrub and general cleaner. All good stuff. I know this because I have been using them for two years now.

And during our trip, (from which we also hauled home a stand for beer butt chickens (2) and a giant cupcake tin, more details on both to follow) I took time to consider my whole thinking on this maladjusted thing. It has always been about more than cleaners and failed attempts to concoct with natural ingredients. ( I have only just thrown out the grape jelly gum/glue/ car reinforcer for those who do read this blog in any kind of detail; not that I am expecting anyone to still be there after this length of break!) I am still committed to my initial challenges but will over the next while be exploring a few more, maybe some a little deeper, a little more intense, and there should still be things to laugh about along the way.

Now where is that Koala, we have some leaves left....................!

New Life

We can only live in winter for so long. We crave new life.

I have looked in great despair at our garden for the last few weeks. So much deadness. I know that is not good English but I am sure you know what I mean. Piles of dead leaves, rotting. Plants that had so much life last summer brown and dry. And in the midst of that I had allowed the recycling to overflow, bits of trash to lie around and the weather being so cold we had an overflow fridge to keep our drinks cool right at the back door.

Two weeks ago I had persuaded my mother and the littler boy to go and buy some plants from the local garden centre, a determined effort to fly the flag for spring. Yet days went by while we continued to live with the mess, not able to juggle our time to get a bag of compost and some time to do a little work. Until today! Friends, people who listen and care in the small and the big things that make a huge difference, pitched up at church with a big bag of compost.

With the sun shining and a very enthusiastic little helper, I set about clearing out a lot of the deadness and replacing it with fresh soil and new life which will soon grow and flower. We swept and filled the garden bin. We got filthy in our efforts but both felt that a good job had been done. We even took a trip to the recycle area to clear out a pile of paper from the garage, just like Peppa Pig.

We need winter. It is about resting and indeed dying. There comes a time though when we need to have a good look round, do a bit of reflecting on what we want and then we need to clear out the things that have no life, get rid of some of the rot and move into a period of preparation, of caring for new growth and indeed expecting new things to come in.

And yes, it is not just in our gardens!

To blog or not to blog

It has been few weeks, maybe even a month or two since I last blogged.

I know.

It is not like I have forgotten. I have been busy. Life continues to happen, and that of course I am glad about, but at times it seems to happen with a little more intensity.

The thing about blogging is that I enjoyed it, I enjoy it. I never wrote to be read. I wrote because I enjoyed writing and if you happened to come along and read it, then great.

So to continue or not?

Am I still committed to the challenge of being maladjusted? Not just getting sucked into the norm without really thinking about what the norm is. Oh yes! But it is so much more than the five challenges I initially set myself.

Do I need to maintain these things but set some new challenges? What would these be? Am I crazy to add anything else into a crowded highly challenged life?

Is it about recognising the challenges that are there already and exploring these? Would that make for interesting blogging?

Maybe I should start with the challenge of finding time for things that I like to do? Like blogging?

Doesn't sound very maladjusted , does it?

Being thankful

It has been over two weeks since I last posted. Sometimes life just happens, and it happens in a way that is a little more intense that normal. Some tough stuff for folks and I needed to be there with them rather than here typing. I have missed the chance to type though because I do that for me. It really is quite a selfish activity. I know there may be a few folks out there who read it, and I hope you may enjoy it, even smile at it sometimes, or think for a minute or two, but really I write it because I like writing.

There was a lot I could have blogged about over the last two weeks.

My friend who in the midst of her child being in hospital, with initial uncertainty of diagnosis, told me how for the last two years she was managing to fill her kids advent calendars with lots of forgotten toys and have delighted children each morning. Great idea and as long as it works go for it. Those of you who have ever tried to pack forgotten toys into a charity bag, while your children were in the room, may have some idea why this would actually work!!

We have the littler boy eating bits of carrots. He will not admit to it if you ask him. He is a wise one and will not want you to get in on the game. Tomato soup too is a recent addition to his diet. These probably do not sound dramatic things to you but in our house they are the cause for much celebration.

We have Santa all organised for this year. He made the decision that while second hand is good and commendable there is a time when it is wise to have a new product with a years guarantee particularly when the second hand products are not that much cheaper. He also decided that one big family present was another wise move. Think the kids will approve, in fact they will be thrilled. They have surprised me in that they do not have a list for him. They are asking to put out a drink and mince pie for him and this year Santa better remember to eat it. The year he forgot caused a moment of panic which required a dear friend to rescue Santa's reputation!

I am having a wrapping crisis. Partly in truth because I have not actually bought the things I need to be wrapping and partly because the store that sold the rolls of recycled brown paper, the mainstay of my wrapping has stopped selling it. They do sheets but that just does not work the same. What to do now? I really like the recycled approach and I think I am probably too late to buy the fairtrade.

The fact is that while I could have blogged about all of these things in detail and enjoyed it, the biggest thing for me over these days since Thanksgiving, with all the busyness, the uncertainty and the bumps that life brings, is that I remain thankful and even more so for that list that I wrote about in my last post.

So if you have come to my blog a few times and have read again and again about being thankful you have been up-to-date with where I am at!

Thanksgiving

I truly have so much to be thankful for and I am truly sorry for the times I fret or downright stress over things that in the bigger scheme of things do not matter.

Here are a few things I am thankful for.

Family

Friends

Home

Education

Food

Health

My faith

........ and each of these things could have a hundred or more bullet points.

The more grateful I am the more I remember that so many are in need of help, support and prayer. There is so much I can be doing to be a blessing to others.

Happy Thanksgiving folks. Whether you are sitting down to a large and lovely meal (And this Scottish girl is getting the hang of this and is remembering to blend the pumpkin before it goes in the pie) or whether it is just a normal day, take a moment to be thankful for something. In fact take the whole day and be thankful for as much as you can!

Wind, rain and wasps.

I do count myself as a bit of a recycler. I find that I cannot actually put things in the bin that I know I could recycle. At times I wish I could, to be honest because recycling can be a pest.

This week our garden was beginning to look like the landfill site as our recycling container got full to overflowing and things started to blow round the back garden. Quite a few bottles and cans ended up filled with rain water. A trip to the recycle was certainly over due. My little recycling buddy was up for a trip. He headed off into the garage to find something he could use as a step so he could do his own fair share. Mum's back is not up to lifting him up so he can be helpful! A wooden box was decided on. All the bottles and cans and glasses were loaded up into laundry baskets and basins and off we headed.

June, July and August you take your life in your hands with wasps at the recycle station and this week, I realised that November, December, January and February, here in the land very close to the arctic, you run the risk of pneumonia. Me wee helper started most bravely and then very soon was heard to be muttering about his hands being so cold they would likely fall off, before he quit completely. When he got back into the car there was no way he could do his own seat belt. I fared no better but quiting was not an option. The moment when I went to throw in a beer bottle, and tipped it up only to empty a whole bottle of rain water down my sleeve, actually managing to have that freezing cold rain water go as far as my waist band was not a good moment.

Sometimes doing the right thing takes a bit of doing!!

Keeping the Christmas Machine unplugged

This is the time of year I get a little rattled when folks start to tell me they have all their Christmas shopping done and have all their presents wrapped. I do not enjoy the fact that our local Garden Centre already has its Christmas lights on and last month I deeply resented the fact that long before Halloween the other big garden centre in town had rows and rows of Christmas stuff there just waiting to be bought. Stuff I beg to suggest no one really needs. I mean a 4ft stuffed reindeer would look kind of cool standing near our tree. Who am I kidding? Can anyone out there justify a stuffed reindeer, we are talking ornament, people, not even a cuddly toy.

Hey..I appear to be ranting. Let me stop and tell you some of my plans. The kids and I have already embarked on making our Christmas gifts for them to give family and friends. Now I run the risk of a "Mummy I have a secret. It is your birthday present and it is a green house. Me and Dad bought it and it is in the garage hiding. Don't tell Daddy" moment but they are promising to keep their secrets.

We have for the last couple of years in my family just bought one adult present each, name out a hat style. It works great and I would highly recommend it. We do buy everyone small things too tho. Last year all mine came out the charity shops and were varied and well received. (I honestly think they were all relieved!) This year I am going fairly traded for these gifts and quite a few other gifts too. It means presents may be smaller as they will cost a little more but these gift will come from a small business set up to support a family or a local area. I like that!

So...........

www.traidcraftshop.co.uk

www.createdgifts.co.uk

www.ethicalsuperstore.com

And I do not need to leave the house. Aaaah, that is shopping!

Now what about the one who has a "don't need it, don't want it, won't use it" attitude to things? A wee bit tricky. I was thinking maybe a luxury alpaca hot water bottle cover. He doesn't need it, certainly won't want it and has absolutely no use for it!!

My big debate this year tho is how to wrap. I loved my wrapping last year. Recycled brown paper, pine cones we collected and green and gold ribbon bought from a charity shop. The gifts looked just great. What to do this year? I have the paper but just how do I source ribbon or what else can I do?

Inspiring washing

I have this thing about hanging out washing. I know it is so much more work than throwing it in the tumble dryer. I also learned this year that heat and humid do not ever combine to make dry. Aunty Bethie amusingly soaked through on the river rapids in Animal Kingdom spent the rest of the day damp! So July might be a great outside drying month in Scotland, but not so in Florida. Anyway I like the way the sun and the wind do the work without charging me.

If this was my washing line I would enjoy it all even more. The poles and ropes are positioned on the sheltered harbour just up the road from Anstruther, heading towards Kilrenny. I could hang up my laundry and contemplate life here. The view and the sea smell are big energisers for me. This picture was taken on a sunny October day of which we had many. Now November has hit I have to face the fact that I could hang out my washing all day and it might come in a little drier but it ain't coming in dry.

What to do? Radiators or the tumble dryer? And the decision is almost 100% tumble dryer. The excema and asthma seem to do better that way so I have hung out diligently for months knowing this season was coming. The electricity account is in credit and as soon as that sun starts to shine a little brighter...... well maybe, just maybe I can move sometime soon to somewhere with a washing line that will inspire me!

And last night when the little boy had what we call the barfy bug and we had mountains of grotesque sheets, pillows, pj's, quilts, blankets, towels to deal with? Well thank God for the tumble dryer, and we do often, thank him that is!

R.I.P.

We moved a few pepper and chili plants into our dining room a few weeks ago. Unfortunately they became infested with tiny little bugs. These tiny critters hatched leaving a pile of mess and were quickly replaced by a heap of new eggs. What to do?

A secret and deadly weapon to tiny bugs was discovered in the back garden and was given residency in our house. This little ladybird/ladybug stayed with us for a few weeks. I would be working on the computer and become aware of someone watching me and there he was on the curtain appearing to read blogs and facebook status.

Last weekend we decided that we needed to give up on all but one of the chili and and pepper plants. The ladybird took up residence on a great chili plant and all was well.

I was quite taken a back when I arrived at work on Tuesday morning to find him or her on the backseat of my car. Now I had a big dilemma. Root around the staff car park for suitable feeding material for him and find a box to keep him in or knowing that I had a pile of work waiting, realise that it was time to say "goodbye" and release him into the new, and potentially dangerous, world of the grass between the school car park and playground.

Roam in peace, little bug and thank you for your great service to our family.

Sugar highs and lows.

On Saturday Dad and the kids went out for lunch as a special treat while Mum was away on a special shopping mission. More on that later. Ice cream and lollipops were enjoyed as part of it. Mum then returned and took the kids to singalong a Jungle Book at church. Both kids ate a bag of sweeties, a lollipop and ice cream.

Does what we feed our children have an effect on their behaviour and energy levels? You had better believe it! When we got home after the Jungle book our two were bouncing off the walls. A bike ride, I thought, would do the trick to burn off all that sugar. Nope, we then had two tired and hyper children which adds cranky to the mix too. Feeding them good nutritious food was also tried but full of sugar tummies are not hungry tummies. So when the little girl asked to go upstairs and do a craft project it seemed she had devised the perfect solution to the problem.

Well, not quite perfect. She was quiet for about ten minutes which was good, but when she arrived back downstairs she looked a little different. It turned out that her craft project had involved a restlye of her fringe (US translation, bangs!), a not at all attractive diagonal cut having been taken out right at the front. And with it being diagonal there is no real good fix available. Time will be required to return her pretty looks.

Lesson learned. Craft and sugar highs are a strict no.

I hate landfill sites!

What to do? I had a broken old TV, a broken CD player and a broken dolls push chair. They had to go to the landfill site. At least I was able to recycle a pile of cardboard and safely dispose of a couple of years worth of household batteries at the same time. I am slightly eased too that the electrical items will be recycled carefully and not just mushed and crushed with my household waste as would have happened if I had thrown them into the grey bin.



What to do? Clothes the kids have grown out of, a pile of toys they no longer need, some books we are done with? Well they are now bagged carefully and are waiting, outside the house carefully tucked under the eaves sheltered from the rain, on the first charity pick up that will take it all away and hopefully sell it to their profit.



What to do? An old bike and trike that the kids no longer need? They are not in the best of condition but someone would get a turn out of them. The landfill site is the easiest option but http://www.freecycle.co.uk/ is just the best. Been a while since I moved some of our stuff on this way that I will probably need to re-register. I kind of feel that everyone should be registered. Someone out there may need want you want to get rid of and they come and collect from you at your convenience. Win win!

So I can hate landfill sites and keep our house and garage a little more clutter free. Love it!!

You got to have traditions!

When I was little a few years ago, well truthfully a few decades, I went on walks with my grandparents thru Lade Braes in St Andrews. It seemed a very long walk to me of very short legs at four or five years old but it had a great park and most beautiful trees. We return when we can with our own kids and I love to look at them and think of the little me running around back then, with not a thought of what might lie ahead. It is not hard to remember back because they still have the same horse, roundabout and slide play equipment - built to last in those days.




It has become our tradition to make a trip in October and to go on a conker hunt. There are seven or eight tall graceful horse chestnuts. As we get close there is always that slight apprehension we will be too late and they will all be gone and then suddenly someone spots one and the hunt is on. Who will collect the most? Who will collect the biggest? Who will find one still encased in its shell?

We did not collect many this year but there are some beauties and the kids are big enough this year to want to learn to play conkers so we will need to make that bit of time to get the biggest laced up and then it is fight to the death, of the conker that is. I seem to remember one of my brothers claiming to have at least a 17-er!!

Traditions can get squeezed out- not enough time, too many important things to do.

Traditions, you got to have them and it is so worth keeping them!!

Strictly not vegetarian

I have read a few blogs recently where the writers are clearly passionate vegetarians and the words meat and poison feature frequently together in the same sentence. I am no vegetarian, the thought of no bacon does it every time. The closest I have got to it would be my six months in Tanzania and our visits to the meat market........ almost too fresh for me but I was always grateful to Cathy, who could carry the warm, still pulsing, meat back to our kitchen and cook up a storm, which was a welcome alternative to the veggie mush varieties we mostly ate.

A few months ago Mike had discovered a butcher he liked the look of near my brothers house in Lenzie. A most wonderful T-bone steak had been purchased but it is hardly local to us. This last week, and who knows why, I had got to remembering stories a friend of mine had been telling about camping trips with a bunch of his mates, entitled "hairy man weekends". They fished, camped, drank a few beers and generally hung out, free of....... well, the rest of the world I guess. Sounded like a great idea, not least for the fact that that one of them was a butcher so the BBQ was of the highest quality. Well, middle age and caravans appear to have struck and there have been no more stories of the hairy men but off we set yesterday to find the aforementioned butchers in Limekilns.

Oh my goodness!! I suggested Mike just went in and had a look because two kids in a small butchers? I am not sure why but two minutes later we were all in that little shop. Mike was taken in the back to have a look at his T-bone steak, still in situ and ready in two weeks. The two men in the store, passionate about their trade, taught us and entertained us for twenty minutes, all of us. They listened to the kids, answered all our questions and more. They sell local sourced, fresh produce. Their steak pies are famous and their sausages are the real deal. You know that cos they are all different shapes and sizes. Venison, guniea fowl, lamb chops to name but a few things on display. We talked about folks we knew in common, where their different meats come from, why when your fry their bacon you do not end up boiling it in the frying pan as it is not shot full of water. We left the store feeling like we had made a couple of friends, our T-bone steak ordered for two weeks time and a handful of venison and sweet chilli sausages given to us as a gift.

I think perhaps there is some truth in meat and poison featuring in the same sentences. Maybe poison is too strong a word but what exactly are we buying in our cheap and cheerful meat from many of our supermarkets. Pumped full of water and who knows what else? We plan from now on to be regular visitors to this butcher in Limekilns. We have decided to spend more on better quality. It will mean that we eat less meat for sure, but that will not be a bad thing and our farm shop will be open in a couple of weeks!! And with two guys who are keen to help point us in the right direction of what to buy and how to cook it we are in safe hands.

And the sausages ............... they were so good!

Changing things............

It is hard to decorate and blog. In fact it is hard to decorate and do very much apart from trash out the entire house and be really grateful to friends and family who invited us out to dinner/sanity in the middle of it.

I stripped wall paper for days............................. . Many days! The kids loved it for short blasts and actually were pretty helpful. I thought that would be the hard work. Wrong! Stripping wall paper was just the boring work. The hard work came after Mike had filled all the holes, scrapes, bumps with polyfilla and it all needed sanded back. I hate sanding. The worst part was the fact that our sander was broken. After a couple of hours of sanding by hand it was replaced, believe me!! It took me 33 minutes to get to the store, purchase and get home. Sanding became tolerable at that point. Covered in fine dust, gagging behind a face mask I heard my partner in design utter those words (with a smirk) ......."Maybe we should just have kept the wall paper!"

I would be lying if I said it had not crossed my mind but I hated that paper, it looked 100% rotten. Change takes work, and lots of work is not much fun. That is the bottom line for this project and many other changes in life. The good thing is that once you have started there is no going back. You can stop half way and be left in a pretty poor, scrappy place or you can push on.

Are we finished? No!! We have smooth, painted walls. A charming white colour. No actually just white. We now have to decide if this is an undercoat or if we are planning to do something funky with it. The gloss work needs done. The carpet needs changed.

Are we finished for now? You better believe it. We are on holiday. All four of us. We are away to play for a few days. The little people are very excited!! And so are we. We have a lot of dust that needs blown away.

(NB the Grape welding/lollipop is still in the fridge unlicked and unused!)

Creativity in the kitchen

We have been really excited with our grapes this year. Planted initially to hide an unattractive archway which leads into our back garden. It had been my intention to plant a clematis but oh no the other decision maker in this partnership was determined on grapes. I had been adamant that grapes would not grow this far north and yes, the photographic evidence is there to prove me wrong.

Now we did not have heaps but enough for the littler boy to work with his Dad to harvest and collect the two different varieties for a few minutes on Sunday afternoon. The wee soul actually tripped up at one point and managed to fall on the ground stoically saving the grapes! Not one did he drop.

A beautiful collection! And we did what we do best, had a quick look thru recipes online and pulled up one for grape jelly. I have to be honest tho I tend just to use recipes as guides. I kind of read them and think that maybe doing it this way or that way instead might be better. A touch of arrogance perhaps or just some creativity? It is not like I have a proven track record on jam/jelly. Four jars in the fridge does not make me an expert. Well, clearly not!!

We gently boil up the fruit and Mike patiently pushes it all through the sieve to get rid of pips and skin. The pectin is in the pips, he had read, and he is a much more careful reader than me. He kind of gets more than just the gist of it!! So we throw the fruit back in the pot with the sugar and bring to a rolling boil. Well I was under the impression that a rolling boil was a gentle boil. I mean do you not think that rolling boil sounds like a gentle boil? Well it ain't! We had a jam jar full of juice you could have sooked up with a straw. So back into the pot and I set it to a rolling boil, which I had since read, was a belter of a boil. So boil it did and doing the spoon test after just a few minutes I had just a wee concern, a slight niggle, about how quick it had set, and set firm, in fact really firm. I did initially pour it into a jar but very quickly thought the better of it.

You see our precious grape harvest had been turned into a kind of grape toffee! Well, something more like a giant boiled sweetie. It has not set quite enough to break it into pieces. It has set just a little too much to be able to cut it.

It is now rolled up in a big wrap in our fridge. There is no way we are going to waste it but we have no idea what exactly we are going to do with it! Anyone out there got any suggestions?

Vintage!

This old lady is indeed seriously old but she is a game old bird. She has some real quirks about her and an ever increasing rust issue. I left her at the garage last week for her annual road worthiness test last week. We know there will come a time when it is far kinder to let her go, kinder to our wallets that is!!
"I'll call you!" said Alec, our local mechanic.
"I have no doubt you will!" was my reply imagining the conversation which would start with "I am really sorry to tell you but........." and he would reel off a list of things.
Well, the call never came and as the clock ticked on and we passed those lunchtime hours when I knew they had pretty much done their assessments I was beginning to have my suspicions. The call came at 4pm.
" That's your car ready."
"Unbelievable."
It is one of the oldest cars driving around the village. I know because I play a game when driving around seeing how many license plates record a car older than ours. I have my moments where I am kind of mortified, but you know what, you cannot aim for maladjustment and suffer from mortification. So get over yourself girl!! I am planning on designing a bumper sticker that says "Old, rusty but paid for!!" We have no loans on this car and with a very reliable engine (Honda, you know, very reliable or so I am told) we have paid nothing but wear and tear. Sure helps when we are working to be credit free.
I have been seriously tempted by the scrappage scheme. I mean £2000 would get us back more than we paid for her in the first place. Nice! A mere matter of about a £7000 loan however would push us to a place that my only working two days a week would not allow the sums to add up. I wonder how may folks have been encouraged again into crazy credit that they can't afford at a time we all need to learn some serious lessons about living within our means.
So the car and I keep our partnership. Alec warned me that she may be getting a little "soft" and might need some major welding if I want to keep her beyond next year so time to get saving some pennies me thinks!!

Is he really going to...?

This week saw the start of a momentous project, the removal of the last of the wall paper that this house was completely wrapped up in when we bought it. I mean, people,what were you thinking about?!! We have lived here nearly four years and we have had to take it one room at a time. Things like giving birth to the littler boy and the months of sleepless nights which followed kind of slowed the pace. The upstairs landing, the stairwell and the wee entrance hall were the most liveable with, covered in that thick kind of textured paper and painted white

We can live with it no more so this week armed with a scraper and a wall paper stripper, and a most excited pint pot sized helper, I got the project underway. There is something satisfying about stripping paper, particularly when it comes off in wonderfully large pieces. The littler boy was having a ball too, pulling at pieces which were running up the wall to heights way higher than him. The problem came for me when the wall paper pulled away from the ceiling and large chunks of very sticky gloss paint came loose like wads of chewing gum. Now I know what needs to be done. You need to run the knife along the edge of the paper leaving a tidy edge which makes the painting so much easier. I know this why? Mike has patiently explained this to me on a least two, actually make that three, occasions. Well, I had run the scraper firmly along. That was bound to have the same effect, right? Wrong!!

"Oh no!!," said I to the little helper, "Your Dad is going to kill me!"

"Ahhh," said he surveying the damage obvious even to a four year old. "Just don't tell him."

You what? You are just a little person, you have not even run wild through the school playground and your immediate reaction is to lie, or to at least lie by omission. So I gently had a wee chat about the fact that telling the truth is always the best option, even if it will land you into a bit of trouble.

"But Mummy, will he really kill you?"

Are you kidding me? Mental note to self - drop that expression from your repertoire!

"No sweetheart. Daddy knows that Mummy get things wrong lots of times. He will be able to fix this. He might just be a little cross that is all!"

We live in a world of spin and untruths. We need to consciously teach our kids to be honest and to value that.

This was reinforced this week when the little girl did something which will remain between her and I, and a few folks I trust with the story, and blamed it on her imaginary dog! There clearly needs to be some work done here. Telling the truth seems more important than teaching her to lie well!!

Recipe for Bramble and Apple Jelly

Ingredients
Brambles
Apples
Sugar

Method

Say "yes" when two small children ask to go out for a cycle round the village when you would really rather have a Sunday afternoon nap on the sofa.
Pack two carrier bags in your pocket just in case.
Take the route your better half suggests because he clearly has a plan. He packed the bags after all.
Listen carefully to two small children squealing about spotting loads of berries.
Stop and have a good laugh picking, and eating, as many as you can.


Pause at an apple tree randomly growing at the edge of the road, spotted previously by the route deviser, and stretch precariously to reach the ones that are high up, knowing that someone got there before and picked all the easy ones.

Give all the fruit a good wash, rough chop the apples and throw the whole lot, seeds, core and all into a pot and bring to a gentle boil, very slowly.

Run to the shop and buy a pair of tights because you do not own a jelly net and somehow you have to let the juice drip through leaving all the seeds and stuff behind.

Leave the fruit to drip for a couple of hours and quickly realise that the fruit is such a thick unjuicy mixture that the tights were a waste of a run to the shop.

Spend thirty minutes pushing the mixture through a sieve.

Test a little, a lot and often, just to enjoy the sheer yummyness of the very, very thick juice.

Put in fridge because it is now way too late on a Sunday night to do the next stage.

After a tough day at work, and at least two hours of homework ahead, take timeout to boil the fruit up for ten minutes with a 2 to 3 ratio of sugar to fruit. (g to ml!)

Pour into a jar

Enjoy!

Enjoy a whole lot. Eat lots of toast at various times of the day and night. Make a batch of scones. Make a Lemon Drizzle cake for friends who are coming over (hey, I have lemons that need to be used up!) so you do not have to share any of that deeply fruity goodness.

Anyone want to go for a cycle?

Food miles

This is Richard and he has come to live with us for a couple of weeks. At least two of us are most excited about it and at least one of us is quickly realising the responsibility of a pet! That would be me! Is there something written into the mum job description? And rest assured that the title of this blog does not apply to Richard. His family are off to Spain for a well deserved break and figured he would be happier with us.

We hear a whole pile about food miles these days. These most fabulous tasting plums were gifted to us this weekend fresh out the garden of friends of ours. Just a few miles on these. There were more but they were so good that the eating became more important than the photographing.

Check these out too....!

We have a dining room full of peppers, chilies and tomatoes. Our outside growing attempts may have been poor, in fact downright embarrassing in some cases, but we are having nice success with our greenhouse/indoor plants. When I say "we" I mean "we". Three families have been involved in the looking after of these beauties. Food miles has taken on a different meaning in our house. These plants, and more on other window sills, have been transferred round three houses on a fair few occasions in the last few months to ensure they have had the care required clocking up some food miles. I'll also clock up miles going over to my mothers greenhouse which is full of tomatoes. We are now all a bit confused as to whose plants are whose in fact. The rule is though, if there is something ready to harvest then enjoy!!

So while they all living it up in sunny Spain we are about to have a nice wee harvest to ourselves.

Result!