A Year in Photos – 2016

Sharon from the wonderful Sunshine and Celandines suggested the topic for today’s post. I already do a yearly video compilation (watch out for that in the new year), but I thought I would post 12 pictures (or video) that give an impression of the year 2016!

So here goes!

January: 

The year began with a little trip to North Wales. On a cold, drizzly day David and I visited Rhosydd Slate Quarry at Cwmorthin. The weather made the scenery even more atmospheric! Who knows how many ghosts wander the rugged, unforgiving slate scattered landscape?

Rhosydd Slate Quarry, Cwmorthin

February:

On another of David’s days off work, we visited the Lake District and took a leisurely stroll along Derwentwater. Little did we know, we would visit the shores of Derwentwater several times in 2016! I had discovered a new hobby!

Derwentwater

March:

With spring just around the corner, March was all about the yarden! I busied myself with planting free packets of seeds that I’d requested from Grow Wild, a Kew Gardens initiative!

April:

The much anticipated Hans Zimmer concert in Birmingham came and went in a blink of an eye! A good time was had by all that night! Hans himself introduced film classics such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy.

May:

In May, David and I returned to the shores of Derwentwater. This time I bravely stripped to my swim suit and slipped over rocky stones to embark on my first ever wild swim! It would be the beginning of many swims undertaken in 2016 in scenery that is nothing but inspiring!

Facing Blencathra

June:

For the second year running I took part in The Wildlife Trusts, 30 Days Wild. This year I packed even more wild into June. We built a pond, harvested our first crop of maris bard potatoes, grew borage for bees, and I even went without technology for a day!

Maris Bard Potatoes

July:

In July, David and I took a day trip to Sheffield to see their herd of colourful elephants.

August:

The year wasn’t all fun days out and wild swimming! There was lots of hard work to be done on the house. With detritus clogging up the space under the hallway and sagging/rotten beams found under the dinning room, the long summer days were filled with the sawing of wood and hours of reconstruction.

Dining room floor

September:

At Browns Liverpool, I partook in my first, but very rich afternoon tea. The red velvet cake was delicious but the whole afternoon was a sugar overload!

Afternoon Tea, Browns, Liverpool

October:

Autumn became centre stage in all its colourful glory as I participated in Wild October! I watched a garden spider spin its web, relived childhood by kicking fallen leaves, turned 40 and holidayed in the Lake District.

November:

The iconic Weeping Window from the Tower of London poppies came to Caernarfon Castle, just in time for Armistice. The poppies are touring the UK, thanks to 14-18 Now, and are a fitting memorial to the fallen.

The Weeping Window at Caernarfon Castle

December:

Christmas Tree

December is all about Christmas and spending time with family. My little 3ft Christmas tree, adorned with birds and polar bears always goes up on the 1st. Artie once again had an Advent calendar to count the days to Christmas, and this year I managed to get a Christmas wreath for the front door!

So there you have it, my 2016 in pictures!

For some this year has been a harsh year, but for David and I there have been more happy times than sad. Indeed we have made many wonderful memories out of new experiences this year.

I wish you all good health and happiness for 2017! Let’s make it a year to remember!

Thanks for reading,

Christine xx

Sunday Sevens #18

This week has been a hectic one!

We finally finished working on the dining room floor! It took all of David’s seven days holiday! He’ll need another holiday to recover! We still have the hall and living room floors to do but I am thankful that I have my kitchen and dining room back!

I felt lost without my kitchen. I put a lot of effort into cooking the evenings’ meal. So when all I can cook is microwave, convenience meals, I feel rather short changed! Also this week was Meat Free Week, (mainly for Australia and the UK), another initiative to get more people to eat less meat. So once I got my kitchen back, I was able to make meals such as a vegetable taigne.

Ingredients and Method, feeds two people

• I fried an onion (chopped), 1 pepper (sliced) and a green chilli (chopped) in an oiled pan until softened.
• I then added to the pan 2 sliced cloves of garlic, 1 tsp of ground cumin, 1/2 tsp of ground coriander and 1/2 tsp of chilli flakes.
• After a minute I tipped in a tin of chopped tomatoes and threw in a handful of frozen peas. I covered the pan to simmer gently for 15 minutes.
• Lastly I added a tin of chickpeas (drained and rinsed) and cooked for a final five minutes.
• I served on a bed of spinach, with two fillets of Quorn chicken (sliced) and crusty bread.

On Sunday we released Hoppy back into the wild. David had managed to get most of the thread from around her leg, it was a painstaking endeavour. However, everyday since, she has been heard pecking at the back door for her dinner, which we dutifully give! What have we begun?

Tuesday was David’s birthday! (‘Happy birthday!’) To celebrate we went to the cinema to see Star Trek Beyond, not the strongest of the three films but an action romp none the less. We were also invited to David’s brother’s house for a chickpea balti cooked by his wife Bilgen. I was touched by the thoughtful gesture that all of the meals were vegetarian! While we waited for the homemade bhajis to cook we were entertained but their 11th month old son.

Troy

Aura

Pet news, and Troy has a fellow patient joining him in the hospital cage. Poor Aura has had a relapse from his earlier condition which almost took his life last year. We found him on the floor of the cage squeaking, so we have administered anti-mite drops and are keeping him warm. Troy continues to be cursed by his inner ear infection, though seems much happier he has a bed fellow to snuggle up too.

The weekend dawned with the promise of warm, sunny weather (ha ha)! So David and I headed off for a walk, but where did we go? Post to follow. 🙂

Best wishes for the coming week!

Christine x

Sunday Sevens was devised by Natalie at Threads and bobbins.

Sunday Sevens #17

This weeks Sunday Sevens, (devised by Natalie at Threads and bobbins), comes mostly from our home, as David and I have embarked on a major ‘project’. The fortification of the beams that hold up the floors in the dining room, hall and living room. Phase one: so far, as I write this post, very tired and dusty, we have managed to work four days just on the dining room. David is ever the optimist, but I am a bit more realistic. Things never go according to plan, not in a 100+ year old house.

OH! My poor dining room!

Boards down!

Kitchen/dining room floor

Day one was all about taking the boards up and assessing what work needed doing. Day two was spent in DIY shops, too much time for my liking if you ask me! Work proceeded in fits and starts on day three! Day four we managed, (or more truthfully David) to finish work on the two sagging beams and replaced the floor boards.

Phase two: we have now moved our attention to the floor between the kitchen and the dining room. On taking up the boards David found that the job was bigger than we had hoped! It never seems to end!

You wouldn’t have guessed it but I began the week feeling much more chirpier. I baked an apple pie from the harvest of bramley apples we were given. I still have lots of apples left so when work on the house is done (ha ha), I will make an attempt at making miniature pies.

In between work, David and I have been catching some fresh air in the yarden. While I enjoyed the flowers, David played at being the bird whisperer. Firstly we found a pigeon, (Blake I named him), sitting scared in a corner of the yarden. David picked him up, and we saw what looked like puncture wounds on his wing. We tried to nurse him but he passed away a few days later.

Blake R.I.P.

Hoppy’s first surgery!

All week, David has been trying to catch one pigeon that has been seen with string around its foot. On Friday David managed to catch, Hoppy as she’s affectionately named. He gained her trust by hand feeding her and then captured her in a box! (Probably lost her trust then!) She is now resident in our guest room. How long she will stay is anyone’s guess. The thread that is wrapped around her foot has been covered with skin so David has been teasing the fibers daily in the hope of loosening some. Only time will tell.

I on the other hand caught sight of a large white butterfly resting on my buddleia, and my Grow Wild seeds have grown to become plants that have started flowering.

Large White Butterfly

I’ll end on that colourful note.

I wish you all a wonderful week ahead.

Christine x

People Should Visit these Places More Often!

With David taking the last two days off this week to join me in a nice break from work. We took to visiting some old sights of Liverpool.

I know with being a resident of Liverpool it sounds like I am blowing ‘my’ own city’s trumpet, but there are some good places to visit in Liverpool! Some places you may not even think would be nestled inside an urban conurbation!

One such place is Croxteth Hall and Country Park. It was always a staple place to visit for schools in the region when I was growing up. I remember visiting as a child but couldn’t remember much about the hall! It only cost David and I £14 in total to visit the hall (we were the only ones there!), the walled garden and farm. That’s cheap compared to other country homes!

The Hall itself has about 20 rooms open to the public. I presume that the other 100+ are left for public functions. They do cater for weddings! I was hoping to see a ball room, but the closest to this was the dining room!

Croxteth Hall dining room

David and I spent a leisurely half an hour walking from room to room, looking at the set displays of Kitchen and living quarters of the once residents, the Molyneux family. There was no tour guide or other visitors. It was lovely and peaceful. I had a riot on the elegant stairs. If only I had brought my evening gown!

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I had wanted to visit Croxteth Hall as I had been writing my ‘Jane Austen-esque’ novel… though at present it has gone by the by! However on a glorious ‘heatwave’ day, I thought where better to visit than a stately home with glorious grounds, where we could picnic under a blue sky!

The walled garden was awash with colour! Bees and butterflies milled about lazily and crops of artichoke and fruit graced wooden arches. The farm would appeal to families with small children. They had an array of cattle. David liked the Clydesdale horses.

David and Clydesdale Horse

We enjoyed a happy couple of hours at Croxteth. In the afternoon, David had an idea to take his Mum, Sister and Sister in Law with us to visit Liverpool’s Festival Gardens, made famous in the 1980’s! Now the site has been given over to the people of Liverpool to enjoy as a park! Though when we arrived there were only a handful of cars. Maybe due to the schools not ‘out for summer’ yet?

Bilgen, David’s Sister in Law commented that the park did not look like it was in a city! And it doesn’t with the iconic Japanese Pagodas set against a deep azure sky! Dragonflies skittered over the ponds and a shaded woodland walk was filled with the fluttering of butterfly wings!

I hope the Merseyside people get to enjoy these beautiful places that are on their doorstep! I know I did! 🙂

 

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We’ve survived!

Well it’s been a week of living independently in the new house… and I can safely say we have survived!!

I thought that living with David I may lose my identity but I have been able to do my exercises when I want too, (at last we have a gym!) and last night I even left him to his new TV and went to my bedroom to listen to Hans Zimmer soundtracks and relax before bed.

Yesterday David spent several hours in the loft trying to lay boards on the beams so we could store some ‘not so often used’ items.Today after shopping and trying to sift through the mountain of cuddly toys I own. We managed to store some of my belongings in the loft space.

Looking at my old bedroom, I still have a lot of stuff to either dispose of or store… it is quite amazing how much one accumulates in over 37 years of life!

This evening, I embarked on tackling the electric oven and hob! I have only known cooking with gas so facing an electric stove was daunting! I had two pans on the go, one for rice and the other for a vegetable chilli. All week I had been itching to make a meal. I even wanted to make a fresh loaf of bread, but David doesn’t like bread!

I was like a child in the kitchen, everything was new! I was excited at using my new sieve, then I opened my packet of wooden spoons and even using my new granite chopping board was a thrill, (I really must get out more!).

I think it will take me a while to get used to the electric hob, especially after the previous inhabitants had scoured away the markings from the settings. We had to leave it to guess work at what heat setting the hob was on. At one moment I was faced with a pan of simmering rice and then I lifted the lid and the water was still…the rice would take ages to cook in a luke warm pan!

Luckily I had started preparing early, so after an hour the chilli was cooked and the rice was fluffy. I was even cooking a serving for mum so I had three meals to make. On separate plates I placed some doritos and sour cream dip. I then warmed up some tortillas and shared the chilli and rice between us.

When David came to the dining room, my stereo, in it’s new home was switched on to Classic FM and the table was laden with food and drink. 🙂

Now afterwards, sitting with a filled tummy and a glass of wine coursing through my veins. I write this blog with the sounds of war coming from David’s ‘Battlefield 4’ echoing around the living room and the two finches Chocolate and Romeo chirruping in their cage.

It’s been a long day, in fact it’s been a long week. I am feeling tired so I am signing off for the night…

Christine x

…and Finally!!!

After over 18 months of hard work, changing both back and front doors, having a new roof put on and totally redecorating all rooms. We have… MOVED in to our new house!! 😀

We spent all of the 27th moving my bed and essentials in. I was exhausted from all the going back and forth! Thank heavens it was only to next door! 🙂

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Yesterday we spent most of the day shopping for things for the house, like colanders and waste paper baskets! In the evening we had our first meal in our ‘Red Panda’ dining room and today as David was out at his brothers doing yet more painting! I helped myself to some more ‘corked’ champaign and had my first soak/relax in the bathroom! I listened to Classic FM and read Kate Mosse.

I think we have made a home we can be very happy in! Fingers crossed for a fun filled future! 😀

Happy New Year for 2014!

Christine xx

I just want to Cry… :(

This weekend we were making the final ‘push’ so to speak on the house. It’s been well over a  year since we bought the place and after all the work done on it (new roof, front and back doors, replaced bedroom wall, outhouse demolished and new carpets, painting and decorating,) I thought we were nearing completion.

Yesterday, Saturday we spent nine hours on wallpapering the feature wall in the dining room with the Sophie Conran wallpaper I bought last year!

Today I wanted to put up the black glass dining table I had also bought last year! I was so excited!!

But a spanner was thrown in the works as we collected together from both my house and mum’s, the table and chair parts but what evaded us was the nuts, bolts and instructions. There had been some as we checked them on arrival. However a year on and with parts scattered between two houses, the bolts were nowhere to be seen.

David had all the rooms in the new house turned upside down looking for them and we went searching in mum’s house, but to no avail. I really don’t know where they could be!

As you can imagine, I am very upset. The room I had envisaged since the beginning has been the last room to be completed and now has no main feature. I really am at a loss. 😦

The only thing we could do was put in the black, high gloss sideboard I had also bought last year. (I am very impatient as you can see!) I did not think it would take us well over a year to move in and now my interest in the house has hit rock bottom. I really couldn’t care less if we move in or sell up! 😦