My Inner Martha

This weekend I unleashed my inner Martha again. I know I'll never be like her but sometimes it is nice to try. 

For some time I had some slate samples on my kitchen table; the tiles didn't make the grade for the bathroom but as with everything I couldn't bear to throw them out. Thank goodness I found a small piece of turquoise felt as I was tidying up my fabric stashes last week. With the help of a bit of PVA I now have some lovely coasters for my new look lounge. 

After making a few bracelets for the updated Busy Betsy shop I made a yummy coffee and walnut cake from the lovely Sainsbury's Cook Britain cookbook. It was my first attempt and I was rather pleased with the recipe; it looked and tasted exactly the same as the one in my favourite deli for a fraction of the price. The down side was that I ate a third of a cake over the weekend. With Mini Betsy complaining that I do not do enough exercise I felt rather guilty and only had salads for lunch. However I do feel that soon enough there will be plenty of times that I will be working up a sweat as this morning I received a rather unexpected call: 

After having been on a waiting list for nearly three years I am finally the proud landlady of an allotment!! I made Mini Betsy very happy today, she can't wait to take our tools and plant seeds. Unfortunately that is a long way off. The lovely ladies at the allotment gave me some magazines to study and on the first page I read that potatoes need to be in by or around 1 March. With all the weeding and clearing rubbish to do I think I might miss that deadline this year! I will need a lot of advice (and help!) so if anyone can point me to some good blogs I would be most obliged. 

Now to finish of the day, feeling rather pleased with myself I just made a feta and mushroom parcel, ready to go in the oven and to be enjoyed whilst watching the fabulous Mr Selfridge. After that I shall delve into some gardening books.

This was one very pleasant and surprising weekend!

Holiday Baking

I am planning ahead.  Although I haven't finished all the projects that I had hoped I would I am already planning girl monkey's birthday party which is at least 3 months away. I think she is so keen because her little brother just had his party and she is not one to stay behind. In that spirit we bought some new cake books. 

We baked some little cupcakes with cream cheese and lemon icing....

... and one bigger one for the neighbours. 

I promised girl monkey to serve mocktails on her birthday so we will be trying these out soon too!

Christmas preparation

All of a sudden Christmas isn't so long off at all. Summer has only just been (well not really as we didn't have one) and we have already started to count down the weeks to the holiday season. The monkeys will be learning their songs at school soon and I have started to prepare for the the Christmas fairs in the next few months. There were cards galore as my Phoenix order arrived. My floor looked like this :

My table like this :

So I needed to do a bit of clearing up before I could finally start making things again. It is not always easy to get organised when all your lovely friends pop in for a chat and a nice cup of coffee. As a special treat today I made a delicious apple - plum crumble pie (I hope Mr Betsy is impressed, don't they say that the love of a man goes through his tummy?) Anyway by the end of the afternoon my table looked like this :

Meanwhile I have cut quite a few bits of fabric but as I am in the middle of making butternut squash soup I'd better go to the stove. I really am trying to impress Mr Betsy! If only I had the energy to make some crusty granary rolls to go with it but alas I am not perfect.......