Nice things

Brr, it's cold. I've just spent the morning out Christmas shopping, and there's a nasty chilly wind. Much better to stay inside and play with some of the nice things I've recently acquired.

At our St. Nicholas party, my friend Evert gave me this very handy and thoughtful gift. It's an organic vegetable planner, which will come in very handy indeed for my new plot! It's a brilliant invention; it tells you when to sow, when to reap, what sort of soil to plant in, and even has tips on crop rotation and what plants grow well side by side.




Alan and I went to London on Saturday, as I'd promised to take him out to dinner for his birthday. But before that, we did some shopping. Alan bought some shirts, and I got hold of this pretty bottle of organic rum:




Here's another thoughtful gift I received, from one of my colleagues at school. It's a Victorian baking set for making shortbread - one of my favourite things! I guess my baking skills have not gone unnoticed!




Yesterday was a cold but lovely day, and Alan and I took a walk together to make the most of the sunshine.





Winter is nice, but mostly for sitting next to the radiator with a mug of hot tea!

Freedom!

Well, the end of term arrived at last, and after a very fun last day at school, I am now free to rest and relax, and not crawl out of bed at 6.40 in the morning! Of course, it's lovely to have a holiday, but I'm so glad that I don't feel that I NEED this holiday - I've really been enjoying my first term of teaching and I love my school! I've recently been given extra responsibility and I really feel like building a career here. It's very nice to land on one's feet!

But it has been busy; too busy to write about the Saint Nicholas party we had last weekend! I did not want the traditional Dutch Sinterklaas to pass unnoticed, so I invited a few friends and I spent a day baking pepernoten, the spicy little biscuits that accompany the festivities. I love them to bits myself, and I even made some more to hand out to my pupils on the last day of term.



One of my friends is also Dutch, and he brought along a fabulous surprise (pronounced a la Française) containing some lovely gifts, accompanied by a brilliant poem. Though his Sinterklaas did look slightly scary!


I had done my best to get as many traditional sweets as possible, including these cute marzipan beasties.


I had also made a little surprise for Alan in the form of an effigy of himself:



I had also made him a marzipan 'cake' with candles, as it was his birthday the week before. Somehow he acquired three bottles of port in the course of the evening!

All in all it was a very good night. We played a game in order to win presents, and there was some fooling around with the fur hat Alan had brought back from Budapest.




It was very gezellig!

Thanksgiving

Alan and I were invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at my old house last night. In addition to a pumpkin pie, I also decided to make some sundried tomatoes and olive bread:



Alan also pitched in and produced a cranberry sauce, made with port, calvados and Dubonnet (shown here in the lovely pot we received from my sister Lotte):


Our friends had produced a veritable feast. There was homemade hummus, mackerel pate, salsa dip, leek soup, nut roast, gravy, candied potatoes, sprouts, mashed potato, sausages, stuffing, and of course a huge turkey, which was sitting prominently on the table, a slightly intimidating sight to the vegetarian guest!



In fact, we ended up with three different cranberry sauces!



There was soooo much food! We didn't even eat half of it. And then, of course, there was dessert, comprising of pecan pie, pumpkin pie and oatmeal cookies. Too much, too much! My recently shrunken stomach was struggling to cope with it all. There were so many leftovers that I decided to abscond with my own bread, as it was rather nice, if I do say so myself.




Mmm - lunch!

Cleansed

I didn't have time to write yesterday, but I still want to share how excited I was about this:



Yes, that's a little bit of yoghurt, a rice cake and half a glass of carrot juice, but it was a divine breakfast after six days of no solids! I'm slowly increasing the amount I eat now, although I think I will continue to eat smaller portions. I did lose some weight as well, which means I now once again look the way I feel I ought to look. I'm quite amazed the detox was so easy to do; I wasn't really hungry, but I did crave food!

I'm looking forward to eating lots of things (in moderation), starting with this weekend's Thanksgiving feast, hosted by one of my American friends, for which I have just baked a pumpkin pie (it smells delicious). I have such a newfound appreciation for food!

Land ahoy!

Alan and I (or I, really) have been on a waiting list for a garden allotment for a while, and a space has opened up. I wish it could have been earlier in the season, as there's not a lot I can do with it now (it being freezing cold and raining and all that), but I'm still excited. Last year, I was living in a house with a garden, and spent some happy time growing tomatoes (total crop: 3 tomatoes) and herbs. It will give me rest, relaxation and exercise, and hopefully some homegrown veggies too!

I went to have a look at the plot. At first, I though it was huge. Then I realised the plot was actually two plots (mine's actually the one to the left of the white marker, so not really shown in this picture!).


It's still pretty big! My plot is in a corner, so hopefully it will be warm enough to grow basil and some other mediterranean shrubs. Fingers crossed for a better summer next year! I can now spend the whole winter thinking about what I'm going to grow. :)

So far, so good

I haven't eaten anything all day and I'm feeling fine, surprisingly. I did have a few rumblings of the tum and perhaps felt a little bit more tired than I ought to, but otherwise no pangs of hunger or lightheadedness. I wasn't even slightly tempted by the impromptu food party thrown by one of my classes, even though they brought home-made cakes, which under any under circumstances I would have tucked into. I'm really hoping this detox will have an effect on my oft-troubled digestive system! And that I'll lose a few pounds as well, naturally....

Remember my trip to the fabric shop this weekend? And how I got that nice navy fabric with little flowers on it for our coffee table? Well, when I put it on, Alan was less than enthusiastic. He said it looked 'like static on tv'. But he liked the strawberry fabric, and said it suited the sofa as well. So, our coffee table now looks like this:



Here is a close-up of that fabric again, just for good measure:



Lovely.

Sauerkraut-juice day

Day 1 of the fast was not technically a fast, because I was still meant to eat some light meals, although I skipped dinner. All I ate today was two portions of yoghurt, two rice cakes, a banana and a small salad at lunchtime. Plus, the sauerkraut-juice.


I tell you, that stuff is vile. Especially first thing in the morning. Seriously, don't drink it unless you have to. The first sip is not so bad, you think 'Ah! This tastes just like sauerkraut, and I like sauerkraut!' But then it quickly deteriorates, and you begin to feel that there's something a bit wrong about drinking the juice of sauerkraut, and also it's not actually very nice just on its own, and really ... yegh. I didn't think I'd be able to finish the bottle, but I did, and I'm proud of myself. Also for not being hungry and generally feeling okay. I even went to the gym tonight! Thankfully, there's only one sauerkraut-juice day. From now on, its proper fasting, and veggie cocktail juices. Yummmm. Ha-hum.

Cleansing

Recently, I've been feeling overly chubby. It was making me unhappy, and I was whinging about it lots, but not actually doing anything about it. Until I decided that enough was enough - time for some discipline!

So I've been on a diet cutting out all chocolate, biscuits, snacks etc, and trying to eat smaller portions in the evening, because I usually cook far too much and then feel compelled to eat it all. I've also been going to the gym in an effort to become healthier and fitter overall.

But I want to do more! I feel I need a good old cleansing, and so, from tomorrow, I'm going to be fasting and living on vegetable juices (yummmmm.... well, I hope so!).

Here they all are, ready to go:


I hope I will be able to sustain it! Let's hope I don't faint in the middle of one of my lessons....

Fabrics galore

When my parents and sister were here, we paid a visit to Abingdon. Although we soon discovered that Abingdon did not necessarily have all that much to offer, we (or rather my mum and I) did stumble upon the immense treasure trove of Mason's fabric shop.

Immediately, my mum and I were salivating. We were in fact so taken with the place that, after we'd driven back to Oxford to drop off Alan and my sister, who were going to a lecture in London, we came back especially to Abingdon to feast our eyes on the goodies in the fabric shop.

We were in their for almost an hour, until closing time, and we felt pretty panicky, as there was just soooo much fabric and we simply couldn't decide which ones we wanted; it was pretty obvious, however, that we definitely had to buy something! My poor dad must have been pretty bored...

In the end, my mum bought a nice autumnal selection to make this autumn leaves quilt. I came up with a similar colour range:


Yum, they're like sweets. So lovely. I spent the whole way back looking at my yummy fabrics. My mum advised me to start on a fairly simple quilt, which can be extended to something quite large (such as a wallhanging to replace our brown one?). So we decided on this one:




I also bought this strawberry fabric, although it doesn't go with the other ones. It was just too good to leave:


Yesterday, I decided to go back to the fabric shop. See, I now have loads of material and ideas, but not the right equipment. For one, I needed a quilt ruler. And while I was there, of course I had to have another (lenghty) browse.

These two dinky ones suit the strawberries above, I think:



The pink floral one on the right (a bit over-exposed in the picture) goes well with the selection of pink fabrics I used in my first cushion cover. Speaking of which, I was also hoping to find a fleecy fabric with multi-coloured cats on it for a cushion cover. I'd seen it before, but unfortunately it was all sold out. But I thought these wicked ones would do just as well, once made into a fiery patchwork:


The yellow one is so pretty, and the flame-y one was just too fun to leave.

Alan has been requesting a table-cloth for our coffee-table for a while, so I had a look for anything suitable, and found this one:



So, lots of fabulous niceties to work with, now! I can't wait to get started!

Finally, a picture of my lizzard mosaic which my parents brought over with them:




Yay!

Autumn's best

Oops, I haven't been here for a while. My parents and sister came to stay for a week, and after that I've had two busy weeks at work. I think winter fatigue is beginning to set in, unfortunately.

I have been enjoying the beautiful autumn we've been experiencing. Admittedly, the summer was dreadful, but not many people seem to have noticed how many beautiful autumn days we've been having.










When my parents and sister were here, we went to the Arboretum near Oxford. It was looking its best in autumnal colours, and we had a pleasant walk there.





Autumn is my favourite season by miles!

Projects Two and Three (and One...)

This is the project I started last night. It's going to be a black-and-white diamond quilt. As you can see, I've done my best to plan ahead this time!


And I'm very excited about the next project coming up at some undetermined moment in the future. I bought two big stacks of patchwork squares in the fair trade shop today:



Lots of lovely patterns, many of them featuring elephants! I think they're African fabrics. I could make another cushion cover, a bag, a huge wall-hanging to replace our brown one...

And for good measure, to satisfy my pride, some more pictures of Cushion One:


I didn't make the one with the butterflies, unfortunately, it was bought for me!

Project One finished!

My first patchwork cushion is finished!


I must admit, I'm feeling quite proud of myself. I did it all by hand, without a plan and with constant mistakes in measurements, so I think it didn't turn out badly at all.


Admittedly, it's not perfect....


Still, it's done! Just in time for my parents and sister coming to visit. I've already started my next project...