January

Yes it's come to this - monthly posts! I will try for more but for now it's going to be monthly round ups, although this one goes from 31st December 2015 to 1st February 2016.

We like to see the New Year in but are not party people, and I'm not good at late nights, so our solution is to have an extended NewYear's Eve dinner which will see us through until the midnight chimes. This year Andrew's sister Carole - plus Dexter the dog, joined us and we had a convivial afternoon cooking and prepping. Aperos were a selection of tapas with a glass of champagne, relaxing on the sofa. Carole had provided the first course, a rather delicious spinach and feta tartlet. Next was a mango sorbet which I'd made in the summer from a box of overipe fruit. Main course was confit duck (obviously not for me!) with trimmings.

Duck confit and trimmings

A small green salad followed and then our pièce de resistance - café gourmand. All three of us had become just a little addicted to these on our recent trip to Montreuil and had decided that this would be our dessert, with each of us providing one mini sweet treat. I made rum and raisin ice cream, with raisins that knocked your socks off as I'd soaked them in rum for a week! Andrew, after trialling several options the previous week, settled on pannacotta with figs and maple syrup and Carole provided the most chocolately brownies with a raspberry jus. Apologies for the quality of the photographs but by this time a lot of bottles had been opened! We had given up on the idea of cheese by this stage.

Before

After

New's Year Day was the traditional pursuit of a walk on Old Hunstanton beach. It was quite chilly but that didn't stop Dexter and Mortimer throwing themselves in the sea, and I discovered I needed new wellingtons...

We finally managed to finish bedroom three, although I can't style it yet as we've had to put some things from bedroom four in it (our next project). Remember the puzzle you used to get in Christmas crackers where there was one empty space and you had to move all the squares around to get the right pattern? well that's our house. But the wardrobes are up and running and at last my shoes (well the winter ones) have a home.

Halfway there

Mortimer gets very confused about the dog in the mirror!

Organised shoes - at last

Andrew's side

I confess that after taking the last photograph I did sneak into Andrew's side and reorganise his shirts into a better colour order.

Like many of you January has been wet, windy and mild. There are masses of daffodils out, as is the blackthorn blossom and I'm a bit concerned about the bees. Andrew called me into the garden a couple of weeks back as there was a lot of activity around the hive. I stood looking for a while and realised that there were a few dozen bees undertaking orientation flights. These are young bees out of the hive for the first time getting their bearings. It's a very distinct zig zaggy pattern that gets wider and wider. The thing is I shouldn't have young bees at this time of year but because it's been so mild the queen has taken to laying eggs again. The main concern is starvation so I put half a kilo of fondant in for them in case their honey stores run low.

We did have  a couple of cold and frosty days which were very welcome, grey and bleak but the unharvested apples gave a boost of colour to the day.

Mortimer loves frosty mornings and just loves to roll in the cool grass.

I did have a couple of days off when an old school friend visited and we undertook a lot of gossip and retail therapy - although no shoes as there's no room on the shelves! Andrew kindly took over the cooking for her visit giveing me even more time to chat :-)

Finally the month ended with a weekend in London. We wanted to visit the France Show and Carole kindly let us stay for the weekend and get dragged along. There were a couple of companies we wanted to catch up with, which was useful plus the sampling of some cheese, wine and croissants. The following day Carole took us to Morden Hall Park which is an oasis in south London. Once an estate on the river Wandle, and featuring a restored snuff mill, it's a lovely place to wander and walk the dogs. Dexter threw himself in the river

 although Mortimer was little more hesitant

So that was January. February is the month we start bedroom four and I have more bee keeping training. See you next month!

End of year round up

Since it's been two months since I last posted I would be very surprised if anyone out there is still checking in with me. It just seems that there has been too much to do in a day and something had to give - namely blogging. This also included reading my regular blog list and so I have to apologise to all my blog friends as well.

So a quick catch up. Finally we finished the dining area so we were able to tick that off the list.

Dining area

Our summer plan was to clear and knock down part of the garage/workshop and create an outside dining area. This building takes up far too much of the garden and has a really ugly collection of roofs. I did manage to do quite a lot of clearing but autumn was upon us before we were really ready to start demolition and we just couldn't face it so we changed tack. With just two bedrooms to do indoors we thought we would complete one before Christmas and the second between the New Year and Easter. Ho hum!

We cleared the room to this stage (meaning everything had to go into the last bedroom which is chaos)

and knocked all the plaster off the chimney wall and then put up our old friend - the insulation.

We decided the best thing in this room was fitted wardrobes and Andrew said I could have half the space! Before he knew it I had the tape measure and graph paper out and had designed bespoke storage for my shoes and handbags (and am still a little nervous that there isn't quite enough room). For reasons I can't quite remember the shelf unit had to be built separately and then fitted over the chimney breast. I helped Andrew put the thing together and was a little baffled when he kept saying that the shelves "had to be this way round". Surely if they were symmetrical it didn't matter? But there had been a few issues along the way and so I decided it would be best if I kept quiet. I even did so when it was up and I realised that the shelves weren't symmetrical. After a couple of hours Andrew asked if I had noticed something, and I confessed that I had. It turns out that he had made one side bigger that the other just for me and my shoes!

However work ground to a halt and this is where we are today with an unusable, half finished room.

Away from the house Andrew discovered a wonderful little cook book. We both like Indian food and realise that when (and it's such a big when at the moment :-( ) we get to France, Indian restaurants will not be quite so plentiful. So many Indian cooks books are way too complicated and seem to want you to use every dish and saucepan the kitchen cupboards hold. 'An Indian housewife's cookbook' by Laxmi Khurara is marvellous. Simple cooking but with the complexity of spices that we love - it's highly recommended.

My favourite - vegetable biryani

So we finally made it to Christmas and spent a lovely, relaxing day - just the two of us and Mortimer, by the end of it I think we all felt like Mr M!

Happy but exhausted!

I hope you all had a happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.