A week in my shoes :: prologue

Tomorrow I am starting a week of short, daily posts about where I’ve been and what footwear I wore to get there.

If you would like to join in - even if just for one day - then please do. Just leave a comment here so that we can all go and admire your footwear and find out what you've been doing!


Tonight, at the end of a day at work, its thick tights and slippers for me, as I sit in front of the TV and sew. There is even a snippet of thread on one of my feet already. They get everywhere!

Randomness

I have been tagged by Willow from Contemplating Change in a Six Random Things meme. Love this.

• My favourite articles of clothing are aprons and hats.
• When G and I first started dating, each week he would buy me a bunch of flowers so enormous that I did not own a vase big enough to put them in. So he had to buy me an enormous vase too. I was very impressed.
• This week I bought a bottle of ink. Probably for the first time since I was at school. I dithered for ages in the shop about which colour I should get. I went with classical black eventually, but I'm now thinking blue would be nicer.
• My favourite girls name in the whole world is Edith. G vetoed it when we were expecting O. Quite vehemently as I recall.
• I am reading a Marion Keyes novel at the moment - Watermelon.
• I like eating smoked salmon for breakfast, but I rarely do. If I did, I'd have so much Omega 3 in me that I'd surely be a genius. A poor genius though.
  
  
  

And to finish things off, here is a very random photo of my copper coal scuttle.

Experiments in sewing

The first part of my week - at work - was madly busy, tiring and draining. Long hours and late evenings at the office.

And when it came to my days off, yesterday and today, I couldn't face any kind of to do list or busyness. After I'd taken the children to school yesterday I just headed straight back home and immersed myself in fabric, thread and ribbon. The very best de-stressing treatment there is!

One of the things I wanted to try and make was a suffolk puff - one of these:


I love the look of them, but never had any success with the cunning gadget from Clover that is meant to enable you to make them. But then I found a tutorial on Whip Up showing how to make one by hand - easy peasy.

I had ideas about turning the suffolk puffs into some kind of Christmas tree decoration for my swap partner in the 2008 Holiday Traditions Exchange. But I haven't come up with a way of using them that I am happy with yet. More experimentation (or inspiration perhaps?) is required.




However, I then went off on a tangent with some applique, inspired by this great book, and I now have one Christmas tree decoration for Christie that I am happy with. I just need to make a few more for her now.

Today was a non-uniform day for the children at school (in aid of Children in Need) and O wore her Clothkits funky chicken skirt. As I waved her off at the school gates I remembered that when I ordered the kit for the skirt, I also ordered the kit for a matching hat and bag. The kit had been languishing in my sewing box ever since and it was about time I made it up.

For some reason I was very nervous of this one - I think because I couldn't quite visualise how the hat (lined as well) was going to fit together. I imagined it to be very fiddly.


But in the end it was fine - it came together in under two hours and I'm really pleased with it.

So I've had two days of no work and plenty of sewing. I can't tell you how much of a treat that seems. And this weekend I'm going to have supper with old friends on Saturday, and then lunch with my extended family on Sunday. Work feels like a world away now. Enjoy your weekend!

A spicy after-work supper

I've been busier than usual at work lately. And I have found that the more I have to do at work, the more I think about food.
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Not just in that 'I wonder how long is it until lunch time?' that comes over me whenever I'm in any kind of office. But also in a 'I'm not going to get home until 8 o'clock and I've just got a packet of mince and an old aubergine in the fridge and I've only had a sandwich and a satsuma to eat since breakfast and I'm starving!' kind of way. You know.
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And the strange thing is that often when I get home after such a long day, that's often when I cook some of my nicest dishes. Suppers that take about 15 minutes and very little effort to make and which both satisfy and comfort me after a stressful, cerebral day.
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Here's tonight's super-quick store cupboard triumph.
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Quick spicy lamb with couscous

• 500g pack of lamb mince
• 1 aubergine - diced
• 1 tin of chickpeas - drained
• 1 red onion – finely sliced
• 1 tin tomatoes
• 1 tbsp Moroccan spice (see photos below)
• Bunch coriander – finely chopped
  
  Couscous or toasted pitta breads to serve.
  

Unless you buy extra lean cuts, which are much more expensive, lamb can be very fatty. To get round this I use a tip from Hugh F-W. Fry the lamb mince on a dry non-stick frying pan over a high heat, stirring occasionally until no pink meat is left. Then tip the mince into a metal colander or sieve to drain away the fat, while you cook the vegetables.

Add a slug of olive oil to the frying pan that you used for the lamb. Fry the onion and aubergine over a high heat until browned and softened. Add the Moroccan spice and the lamb, drained of its fat, and continue to stir fry for one minute.

Tip in the tin of tomatoes and the drained chickpeas and leave to bubble steadily for 10 minutes while you sort out the couscous.

To serve, sprinkle over the chopped coriander and spoon onto couscous. Add a dollop of natural yogurt too, if you’ve got some.

Oh, and I haven't been so busy at work that I couldn't catch up on Nicole's wonderful month of daily recipes as part of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo - I can't say that no matter how slowly I speak). Check out the utterly amazing Red Velvet Cake - I can't decide whether I am truly freaked out by it or whether I'm just in awe. A little bit of both I think.

10 bags seen on the tube

10 bags seen in one tube carriage between South Woodford and St Paul's, yesterday:

• 1 plastic laundry bag - stuffed full.
• 1 orange mesh bag with ribbon trim (very nice ribbon trim - got me thinking...).
• 1 hippyish, Peruvian, embroidered shoulder bag in turquoise. On shoulder of same woman as the orange mesh bag. She looked fabulous.
• 1 very battered and squashy, navy, leather bag with buckles.
• 1 smart and stylish, navy, leather bag with buckles.
• 2 non-descript, faux-leather handbags.
• 1 old satchel made from grungy, green plastic.
• 1 elegant, gold shoulder bag. Huge but empty.
• 1 Cath Kidston bookbag in new red paisley print (mine).

Too many spiders

These pesky spiders have been getting everywhere today.

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I blame this little witch personally.

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I have now appeased the spiders and their owner, however, by making some hallowe'en cupcakes. Phew.

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Hallowe'en cupcakes

• 125g self-raising flour
• 125g sugar
• 125g butter
• 2 eggs
• grated zest of 1 orange
• 1 tbsp milk

For the topping

• a good shake of icing sugar
• juice of 1/2 an orange
• dab of orange food colouring (optional)
• 6 squares of dark chocolate, melted

Put all the ingredients for the cupcakes, except the milk, in a food processor and blitz until smooth. Add the milk at the end, with the motor still running, to make a fairly sloppy cake mix. Spoon into 12 cake cases, set into a bun tin, and cook at gas 6 for 15 to 20 minutes until the cupcakes are lightly golden.

When the cupcakes have cooled, sift the icing sugar into a bowl (I never bother weighing or measuring icing sugar - just give a good shake from the tub). Add the orange juice, plus some orange food colouring if you want a more vivid icing than mine. Stir together until you have a smooth, runny icing. Dribble spoonfuls of icing all over the cupcakes. When the icing is cool, melt the chocolate and dribble over the top.

Feed to spiders and small witches.

Small things

For the past week and a half I've been on holiday and at home, away from my usual working world of Bank of England regulations, accounting standards, foreign exchange provisions and tax adjustments. I have slowed right down, rested and spent time by myself and with G and the children.

My time has been filled with small, simple things:

• Spending my evenings quilting in front of the television. I've been enjoying old Sex and the City re-runs, Paul Merton in India and the Gadget Show. Also a very spooky atmospheric DVD of The Orphanage, which I'm still not sure if I enjoyed or not.
• Raking up the cherry leaves in the back garden and feeding worms to the hens (I don't let them out of their run in the autumn, as they just head straight for the mounds of leaves and kick them everywhere in twittering exuberance).
• Taking time to do things with the children that I would normally rush through, or struggle to find time for. Things like showing O how to paint with her beautiful new Caran d'Ache coloured pencils (she keeps them lined up in colour order with the writing facing upwards, just as obsessively as I used to do several decades ago). Getting the playdoh out. Drinking cups of tea and watching Tracy Beaker with the children early(ish) in the morning while I'm still in my pyjamas.
• Wasting time playing on Yearbook Yourself. So funny - in a way that left me laughing out loud until I had tummy ache.
• Watching fat flakes of snow fall and the fireworks for Diwali go off - all in one magical evening.

I really needed this break. Sometimes you only work that out when you stop.

Back to business

In the last few days, the birthday madness has faded and normal life has started to return. This is a good thing.

The sitting room floor is once again covered in tiny snippets of thread.

• I've made some dolls clothes for O
• and pieced the top of a quilt for C.
• I've bought myself a small embroidery hoop and some linen and am going to teach myself how to embroider.

The birthday cakes are (almost) eaten and I am now in a big savoury-baking phase. This week it has been:

• sundried tomato and mozzarella muffins (you can eat these in person at a very lovely Cotswold cafe)
• a tomato and herb bread loaf
• cauliflower cheese

I've made it out of the house as well.

• I cycled through the crispy leaves in Victoria Park.
• I went geocaching in Wanstead Park with C & O - amazingly there are still a few caches here that I haven't found.

C and O don't seem to mind the birthday celebrations being over; they have many lovely new toys to play with and are finally on school half-term and now have the time to enjoy them.

This afternoon, O drew these Strictly Come Dancing inspired dresses in readiness for tonight's excitement. However, unlike O, I'm not wondering what dress Tess will be wearing - I am wondering what on earth the costume team will put Mark Foster in this week...!

Birthday buddies

Before I had children I thought eventually I’d have three of them, all the same gender and all very close in age. What I ended up with were two children, of different genders, and a pretty big age gap.

When I was expecting O, the thing that occupied my mind the most was how my children would get on. I didn’t have great hopes. That three year age gap, the different gender and, as it turns out, two completely different personalities. I don't think they even look alike – not even slightly. C is fair, with pale skin and bright blue eyes. O has very dark brown hair, with more olive skin and chocolate brown eyes.

But I shouldn’t have made assumptions, because as they have grown up, they have become such a double act. A unit. A pair. A twosome.

And I think much of this stems from the fact that their birthdays are a mere two days apart. C was 9 yesterday and O is 6 tomorrow.

In our family we have a birthday frenzy leading up to the big days, which lasts about six weeks. C and O look through the Lego catalogues together, talk about wishlists together, and co-ordinate between them who will have what sort of cake and who will have which meal for their birthday tea. They think that they have all the twinnish benefits of one mega, doubly-big, birthday bonanza without having to actually share the special day with anyone else. I think they might be right.

Happy birthday my loves! I hope that you continue to share this joint birthday excitement and easy love for each other right into adulthood.

Birthday party checklist

I think I'm ready for O's birthday party tomorrow.

• party bags packed - tick
• birthday cake baked (lemon drizzle cake, cut into squares and stacked in a pyramid - I've had very clear instructons) - tick
• sitting room floor hoovered to get rid of stray bits of cotton - tick
• birthday girl's dress ironed - tick
• party games decided upon - tick
• post party bottle of wine for G and me chilling in fridge - tick
• six little gingham aprons sewn for the birthday girl and her friends - tick

This last may be the nicest thing I've ever sewn. We are going to cook jam tarts and ice biscuits together, so I thought they all needed some little matching aprons.

And yes, I did trim them with ribbon. Of course I did.

Pattern adapted from the Vintage Apron Pattern in Amy Karol's Bend The Rules Sewing.