Beautiful Days Festival

Hello,

Hope everyone has had a great summer.  It's been a bit of a strange one here; I was constantly waiting for it to start but it never really did!

We had a fantastic time at Beautiful Days at the end of August.  It's a festival run by my favourite band, the Levellers, which very helpfully happens in a field not far from my mum's house.  I don't really "do" camping, so my mum drops us off and picks us up each day - not very cool I know but at least we get a comfy bed and a proper shower.  I expect by the time she is in her seventies she probably won't want to be doing it any more but hopefully my dream of getting a split-screen VW camper will have come true by then!

We got to see loads of great bands; as well as seeing the Levellers twice we saw Carter, PWEI, Gogol Bordello, and the amazing Tim Minchin - Mr D even met him backstage, I was VERY jealous.  Next year I am going to get him to get ME a backstage photo pass.

As well as the music, there was lots of lovely food to eat, cider to drink, stalls to shop at and groovy people to watch.

I didn't take him up on the offer but lots of people did!

Mr D enjoys a lovely pint of Poltimore cider

 

I also got loads of inspiration for things to make - bet I was the only person there thinking up knitting patterns and designing patchwork! Before next year I'm going to make a big patchwork flag with glow-in-the-dark bits so that when Mr D returns from taking photos he can find me in the middle of a crowded field.

Tickets for next year go on sale in the next few weeks - I'll definitely be getting mine!

I've got a few more photos to show you and bits and pieces to tell you about, so will try to do some more posts over the next week.  We are going on holiday this time next week - SO excited! 

Much love,

Hxx

WOW-Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Have you missed me?!  Sorry I haven't been around but have been a bit busy attending committee meetings, sending millions of emails, putting up posters, talking about balloons and learning the words to Jerusalem.  Its all in a good cause though as a week today will be the launch party of WOW-WI - the Women of Weston-super-Mare Women's Institute!

WOW-WI aspires to be a modern, fun, forward-thinking organisation which appeals to a diverse range of women.  We want to reflect the traditions of the past and develop our own traditions for the future.

Our members will benefit from opportunities for personal growth through education and friendship as well as making a meaningful contribution to their community by being involved in charitable and campaigning activities.

We will offer a varied programme of events, allowing members the change to learn more about our event themes; Arts & Crafts, Community, Environment & Public Affairs, Food & Cookery, Health & Wellbeing, Home & Garden and Inspirational Women.

The launch party is at the Blakehay Theatre on Wadham Street in Weston-super-Mare on 20th September from 7:30 - 9:30 pm.  If you are happy to travel to Weston for meetings, we are happy to have you as a member.

email:	WeAreWOWWI@gmail.com
blog:	http://wowwi.blogspot.com/
twitter:	@WeAreWOWWI
facebook:	Women Of Weston-super-Mare Women's Institute (WOW-WI)
linked in:	Women Of Weston-super-Mare Women's Institute (WOW-WI)
email:	WeAreWOWWI@gmail.com

So please come along and support us if you can - if nothing else tempts you there'll be lots of cake!  Feel free to spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested.

Normal "Made From Scratch" service will hopefully be resumed soon.

Love to all

xxx

Wedding Anniversary

It was our 4th wedding anniversary last Thursday.  It's amazing to think that so much time has gone by.  Our wedding day was wonderful, I spent many happy hours planning it, looking for bargains and making bits and pieces.  I did all the stationery myself, my sister and I made our tiaras and a friend helped me make sugar roses for the cake.

We had a civil ceremony in a lovely hotel in Clevedon, followed by ceilidh dancing in the evening.

So, because our anniversary was on a Thursday and we were working on Friday we just had a quiet meal at home on the actual day, followed by a meal at an Italian restaurant on Saturday night.

I set the table with the place name tables from our wedding and made braised lamb shanks with crushed herb potatoes (potatoes and thyme grown from scratch of course!), followed by home-made strawberry ice-cream with rosewater biscuits:

 

 As the evening went on we did get a bit silly with the letter biscuits:

 Should have predicted that really!  It was a lovely evening with lots of happy memories of our special day and of our marriage so far.  We're so lucky to be happily married and it's always good to take time to remember that.

My oldest friend

Sorry I haven't been around for a while, I don't know where the time has snuck off to.  Sneaky sneaky time sneaking off like that.

I had a lovely day on Thursday because my oldest friend came to visit with her two boys.  We were at the beach all day, chatting and walking.  She's just got an amazing camper van so after our picnic we were able to have a cuppa in a proper china mug, luxury.

I wanted to blog about lovely Angela because I feel so lucky to have a friend like her.  We have known each other since we were about 5 years old.  I can remember going to her 5th birthday party, clutching her present which was some kind of story tape.

We went though all sorts of things together and became really close in our teens, mainly due to a shared love of illicit smoking and trying to ingratiate ourselves with the cool kids.  I remember us having a perfectly serious conversation about how we would give up smoking when we were sixteen.  Yes you did read that correctly.  Ange even had a little smoking kit comprising ciggies, hairbands, mints and Impulse to spray the fingers with.  How we thought our parents couldn't smell it I will never know but we thought we were very clever at the time.  And cool.  "People say smoking doesn't make you cool but look at the cool people we hang around with now" - these words actually passed my lips.  Oh dear.  We've both stopped since by the way but sadly we were both considerably older than sixteen when we gave up.

My darling girl had some pretty tough times growing up and was exposed to things and people she shouldn't have been.  I really admire the way she made a success of her life in spite of all of this and is determined that the same won't happen to her boys.

Very importantly if it wasn't for Angela I would never have met Mr D (I wouldn't have met the boyfriend I had before him either but we are trying to be positive here!).  Angela's sister was going out with Mark who is Mr D's best friend.  Very lucky.

Here we are at Angela's 21st.  The skanky pub this was taken in has since been converted to swanky apartments with executive houses in the beer garden.

We almost lost touch at one point, when I went away to uni and it was difficult to keep up from further away.  Happily an invitation to her hen night brought us back together and we went to each other's weddings.  The first time we met up before the hen night, it was as if we had never been apart and we were rabbiting on and on and on and on....

 Here we are at various wedding-related events in the last few years:

At my hen night

 

I promise I did look better than this on my wedding day, I'm just not very photogenic and I was a bit hot!

With Angela's sister at my wedding

Bit worse for wear at her sister's hen party in Bath

At her sister's wedding

To bring you up to date here are some from Thursday.  Her big boy Seb is a little sweetie - he was "flying" his car around on the beach.  I said, "Wow, Seb, a flying car, that's amazing, how does it do that?"  to which he replied, "You hold it up in the air, like this".  That told me - ask a silly question and all that...  He looks so much like Angela and her brother and sister.  The new baby, Reuben, is gorgeous, so well-behaved.

Sorry I hid your face Reuben

It is wonderful to make new friends and it's such fun to find out about people, but there's nothing like spending time with someone with whom you have a long shared history.  It's lovely to remember old times together and laugh at the funny people we used to know.  You can't pretend with someone you've known that long. 

When we got home we had a diary meeting and organised two get-togethers in the next couple of months - yay!  It was a really lovely day and really reminded me about what's important; simple pleasures and appreciating the good things in your life. If you can spend a relaxed day at the beach with a friend, why would you want to do anything else?

I'll try to be a better blogger in the next few weeks....

Doors and music room

I've been stripping some reclaimed doors today.  We've had them for a couple of years and we're finally at the stage of being able to use them.  It was a very low-carbon reclamation process - we spotted when our neighbours were getting rid of them and carried them down the street to our house!  They've been sitting in the garage ever since, getting really dirty and grubby.  This is what they looked like when we brought them in:

A couple of washing-up bowls of black water later, they looked like this:

A bit better.  Today I started stripping them with the hot air gun.  I love removing paint, it's nearly as enjoyable as peeling nail varnish off.  I used Nitromors for the metal bit where the handle goes (there must be a proper name for that, is it escutcheon?), I love using that as well, especially the sound it makes when it starts blistering the paint.

This is what they look like now

One is going to be the door from the kitchen to the music room and the other is going to be the door to the understairs cupboard.  There's still quite a lot to do to them, but I quite enjoy this kind of job. 

Talking of the music room, this is what it looks like at the moment

 

Not exactly beautiful but believe it or not this is significant progress as it's now ready to be re-plastered.  

I love looking at houses on estate agents' websites; I call it property porn.  It's a brilliant source of inspiration, much better than magazines as I can see what people have done to houses similar to mine.  I was struggling to imagine what the room would be like when finished and how much space we would have, but then I saw this on Right Move.

This house is in the next road over from mine.  Shows how slow the housing market is - you can see a fire burning in the grate!  Can't wait until my room looks more like this.

Hope you've all had a nice weekend too.

Versatile Blogger Award

 

Lovely Cuckoo so kindly gave me an award a few weeks ago and I've finally got round to doing what I have to do.  I've linked back to her blog so that's the first thing.  Second thing is to pass the award on to 7 other blogs which I like - I think some of the people I follow have already had this award, so I've tried to avoid doubling-up, but apologies if I have and don't feel you have to do it.

Little Tin Bird

Violet White 

I Heart Cupcakes 

Sandiart's Blog 

Cake Journal 

Madelief 

The Wool Sanctuary 

Finally I need to post seven facts about myself.  On reflection I think these are more like seven random ramblings, but I'm sure they'll do!

1. I was born in Worcester and lived in Evesham until I was 3.  Then I lived in a small village called Whimple (my sister was at school with the folk singer Jim Causley), near Exeter in Devon until I went to university in Cardiff.  As part of my degree I lived in a town in the north of France called Amiens (don’t bother!).  After I left uni I went to live with Mr D in Bristol and nearly eight years ago we moved to Weston-super-Mare.

2. I am fascinated by the Mitford Sisters.  A few years ago I read a book about them and ever since then it seems that everything I watch or read has a link to them.  There were six sisters in this aristocratic family; Nancy was an author and wrote Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love; Pamela married and divorced a millionaire and lived quietly in the countryside; Diana married first into the Guinness family, then the fascist leader Oswald Mosley, and was the mother of Max; Unity was friends with Hitler and shot herself when war was declared; Jessica ran away to the Spanish Civil War and became a communist in America and the only surviving sister Deborah married into the Devonshire family which owns Chatsworth and was sister-in-law to JFK.  Their story covers such a fascinating time in history and because of their position they were connected with so much.

3. I love Ribena!  I don’t think I could live without it.  With cold water it’s refreshing and with hot water it’s lovely and comforting.  Of course I mean the “full fat” stuff, not that reduced sugar rubbish which is full of aspartame.   

3. I have researched the history of my house at the Somerset Records Office, online and at WsM library.  Nothing terribly exciting has happened here but the original architect’s plans are really interesting and useful and it’s lovely to have a list of the names of the people who lived here.  It’s incredible to think of people living here through two World Wars and all the changes over the last 103 year.  When my house was built they didn’t even have the internet – imagine! 

5. I am allergic to horses!  I discovered this when I was a little girl; after stroking a neighbour’s horse my eyes went red and itchy and I had a rash like a nettle sting all over my face.  Actually I haven’t been near a horse for about fifteen years so I may have grown out of it by now, but I don’t think I’ll take the risk.

6. This one is more of a confession; I struggle to tell my left from my right!  I often have to look down at my hands – left hand has my wedding and engagement rings and right hand has a mole.  I don’t know why I can’t just remember it; maybe I wasn’t taught at a young enough age or maybe it’s just because my spatial awareness is nil.  Maybe there is a link between this and fact number seven….

7. I’m a nervous driver.  Until a couple of years ago I was too nervous to drive the car at all.  I was fine in all my driving lessons until I sat my first driving test and I was shaking with nerves, so much that my hand went weak and I couldn’t take the handbrake off!   I had never been so nervous in my life, exams, job interviews in French, playing in concerts had given me butterflies but nothing like this.  I managed to pass – on the fourth attempt! – but then I was too frightened to drive on my own.  When I had a panic-attack whilst driving with Mr D in the middle of Weston, I decided I couldn’t rely on him to give me lifts for the rest of my life and it was time to do something about it.  So I got hypnotised!  I couldn’t swear that it was the hypnosis that made the difference; it may just have been determination, particularly as the sessions were expensive!  Either way, I then had the confidence to drive.  I was still very anxious at first and used to get very frustrated with myself, but eventually it got better and almost became second nature.  I’ve got my own little car now and I don’t know how I lived without it.