Who's cooking dinner.. ?!

There's nothing like the smell of charcoal to get the juices flowing! I worked all of yesterday and although very tired, I decided to drive over to Ledbury to Helen & Adrian's BBQ, I'm so pleased that I did. Although the weather wasn't brilliant so we ended up inside, Adrian still faced the elements to cook us (well charcoal!) some lamb cutlets, pork and burgers! Although it was difficult to see what we were eating by the time it had been chargrilled to a black crisp, it still proved to be a tasty treat. It was great to catch up with friends and it certainly helped me relax.

Meringue envy...

The good news is - the light fitting is still on the ceiling! The bad news is that I mistakenly declined the offer of pavlova! It wasn't just any pavlova but a beautifully shaped homemade meringue with berries and a big dollop of cream on top. Believe me, I had meringue envy just seeing it arrive at the table next to us.To be honest, they had what I would have done if I hadn't been so stuffed from the night before! They had roast beef with the biggest yorkshires I'd ever seen and I had liver. They had what looked like a delicious bottle of rich red wine and I had water, tap at that. Then to add insult to injury they had dessert and cheese and I had peppermint tea. I must go back sometime when I'm really hungry and take someone to share a bottle of wine with. Meanwhile, someone enjoyed her baked alaska after a gentle walk along the river in Bourton.

Happy Saturday..

Today was a great day. I picked Liz, Jeremy and his mom up from Kemble station and managed to fit all into my little car. Jean had travelled all the way across the Atlantic so we had a relaxing day, a walk down into town and back up the hill for pie. In the evening we all went to the Bell at Sapperton. That place serves delicious food, I just wish I could share a bottle of wine instead of always being the "I'll have a small glass!" kinda girl. We had a quick photo-moment on the way when I spotted another combine harvester. They are an incredible sight, I think it's just their sheer size and the fact that you only see them this time of the year.

Shake, splinter and 'hole'... !

You know that feeling you get when you realise you've been a total idiot? When you wish you could turn the clock back but you can't and even if you close your eyes and open them again, the problem hasn't gone away! I'd had a great day until I decided to change the spare bed. Oh yes, one minute I'm shaking the freshly laundered quilt and the next minute, I'm standing in a shower of glass. My supa-doopa light fitting is dangling limply from the ceiling with just two shades intact instead of three. I was still holding onto the corners of the quilt and hoping it was just a bad dream. But two minutes later, I'm still standing there and nothing has changed. It's not easy to see glass splinters when your quilt is decorated with tiny sequins! And the taxi driver waiting outside must have thought I was bonkers standing on the wall outside shaking a quilt. I've dysonned my shag-pile to within an inch of its wooly life, removed every bit of glass and replaced all the bed linen so there's just the one problem. The light fitting is still dangling from the ceiling in a very sad way. Then I remember.. I am a top crafter and suddenly I feel a brainwave coming on! Heath Robinson eat your heart out.. ! Three pieces of double-sided sticky foam later, some clear gunge and a few dabs of superglue and it's adhered itself to the ceiling again! I'm hoping it's going to stay there because if not, my daughter's boyfriend's mother, who arrives tomorrow morning all the way from the US of A may well be seeing stars, not sleeping under them!

Festival of Quilts...

13A

Have you ever thought how great it would be to have talking appliances? We have a talking lift at work and, although that's annoying, the idea of talking appliances could be so useful for lots of practical reasons. If my car would say 'I need a service' rather than flashing up 'minus 60' for two seconds when I switch it on, it would be so much more useful. Today I switched my kettle on - nothing. Last night it was ok, this morning it's not. If, when I went to switched it on, it had said 'I need a fuse' I would know exactly what to do. Instead, I have to turn off my girly head, think like a boy (not easy!) and through a process of elimination, start to work out what's wrong. Faced with something that worked one minute but not the next is always baffling to me. I know boys like those kind of challenges but I don't. So here's to talking appliances - but just for girls!

I lost an hour...

How come it's easy to lose an hour yet it's nye on impossible to lose a couple of pounds without starving yourself?! I've just eaten a very delicious vanilla flavoured virtually fat free yoghurt, which is a mouthful in itself. It's got me thinking about 'virtually' - what does that really mean? The dictionary says, 'Almost entirely' but if that's the case, why couldn't they try just a little harder and make my yoghurt absolutely 100% fat free? Did they just decide to give up or is that tiny spec of fat actually good for me? The term 'virtual' actually means 'not real' - tell that to my thighs! Reading packaging is very confusing and you need big specs like bottle bottoms to read the small print. In Anna's world then calories would all be virtual, my stomach would remain the same size always, just like my head does and chocolate would always be 'virtually' good for me!

Simply red.. simply wonderful.. !

A little bit of surfing and me and Lisa end up at Newbury races with a Simply Red concert to follow! We had a fantastic day. Super noodles in a chinese take away box for lunch washed down with a tiny bottle of fizz. Bet £1 on a couple of horses the had an hour an a half concert with Mick. We drove back top down ducking the dark clouds then had a lovely chinese meal in Cirencester to finish off the day.

Blissful wish list of must-have stamp sets...

There are many that just wouldn't understand just how much joy a little plastic cd case of clear stamps can bring. It's a fact, I'm in love with papertrey ink stamp sets! They are beautifully made, stamp so nicely and the fonts are just delightful. Every tiny image has been carefully thought out so it fits inside the circle shapes and those then sit within a border and so it goes on. My favourite must-have now has to be the button clear stamp set. You stamp and the attach buttons in the spaces. I've seen some examples of these cards and the are so clever - I have to have them now!

Blooming bugs..

I was going to spare you the stomach churning queasiness by putting the tiniest picture of my new best friend on here.. but ;-) I decided against it. Here's another blooming critter who, as you can see, wasn't clever enough to keep out of my way! I reckon he has Alexander Beetle for his father and Spiddy Sue for his mother!

Must-have stamps...

Back in July, I looked on the papertrey ink website and did that oooh, ahhh thing! Their stamps and inks were just so gorgeous so it was really hard to choose just a few sets, but I managed it! Seriously, I could buy everything, the stamp sets are just fantastic to use and the ink pads stack beautifully and best of all, the colours are yummy. My good little Ginger fairy picked up these goodies when she was over in the States and brought them all the way home for me. Papertrey ink release new stamp sets every month and there's so much to tempt me which means I will have to make lots more cards. I'll just have to remember to send one or two occasionally too!

Here's the good news... raspberries are fat burners!

The bad news is... it's because they have greedy, creepy crawlies inside them! I just spotted one crawling over my fresh fruit, healthy breakfast. Just the one, which leads me to wonder how many little critters have I just swallowed for my breakfast! Next time, I'm sticking to melon, you don't find those little things with lots of legs crawling about inside those, do you?! Curiously though, scientists in Japan have found a chemical, or something similar to one called capsaicin, a substance found in red peppar that dissolves fat, in the dear old raspberry. So the message is, every story has a silver lining (and I don't mean the trail left behind the phantom slug!) and one way or another I should be a few miligrams slimmer tomorrow, hurrah! Munch away boys...

Ginger Girl has come to stay...

I did say she could have the spare room but seems to prefer the window sill! There's a whole lot of scrapping going on and I don't mean the physical contact kind - oh no!

Prescott Vintage race day

The sun shone for the first time for ages and the rain stayed away - hurrah! Myself, Liz and Jeremy met Dom at the Vintage races at Prescott and we all had a fab day. We sat and had a picnic with Andrea and Tim, Dom's godparents and they're always great at entertaining us with a good bottle of something white and alcoholic! Dom, as always, brought enough picnic to feed the entire field but it was gratefully received and all washed down with a flask of hot coffee. It's becoming a bit of an annual event now so I'm putting it in my diary again for 2010!