52 Weeks of Happy...49/52

The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything.

Joining in with my friend Jen at little birdie, here are some of the little moments which have made me happy this week.

1. Finding this jelly strainer in the sale for only £3. I christened it with blackberries, rosehips and windfall apples, which became my first batch of hedgerow jelly.

2. I spent a lovely morning in Ikea this week with my friend Debora and her youngest son. After a coffee we browsed the store and I bought some bits and bobs, mainly toy storage for Angus's bedroom. As we were leaving I spied a new pick and mix sweets display and nearly did a happy dance. I love pick and mix and these were Swedish sweets which I'd not seen before and made it more exciting. I bought far too many. Lots of liquorice and really, really sour ones, the best sort.

3. Picking these tomatoes from the garden, almost two kilos altogether. I've just made a batch of cherry tomato and chilli chutney with all the red ones, and tomorrow I'll make green tomato chutney with the rest. I love chutney. It does make the house smell of vinegar though.

4. Everyone should have a bright yellow napkin holder shaped like a cloud on their table. Especially when it's only £1.50. 

I wish you all a very happy weekend. 

The Colour Collaborative: September - Earth

There are lots of different ways interpret earth colours, once you start to think about it. They can be the colours of the landscape - browns, greys, yellows, oranges and greens. The colours of nature, subtle and muted. Or you have your pigments - ochre, sienna and umber, raw or burnt - those tones are fiery, saturated and heavy with colour. But the earth colours that I'm really savouring right now are the ones that were dug up out of the earth and turned into lunch. September is the month of abundance and harvest, of enjoying the last of summer while taking stock and gathering in for the autumn and winter ahead.

I think this is summed up rather well by the humble squash, in particular this fabulous Harlequin squash.

It has provided colour and variety in our lunches this week. Roasted and tossed in a salad with goats cheese and pumpkin seeds one day, then blended with chillis and eaten in a soup with rye bread the next.

To make a salad for two, peel and dice one small squash. Tumble onto a baking tray and drizzle with oil and season. Roast for around 30 mins at 180°C/350°F. 

Put some salad leaves on a plate and add the squash, some crumbled goats cheese and a handful of pumpkin seeds. I made a quick dressing from a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Eat while it's hot.

For the soup, peel and chop one onion and one squash. Saute for a minute or two then add one clove of garlic and one chilli, chopped. Cook a little longer then cover with vegetable stock and simmer for around 20 minutes. Puree in a blender until it's smooth then taste and season. Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche.

It doesn't have to be a Harlequin squash, any sort would do. Simple, versatile, thrifty, tasty and colourful, it's the best kind of seasonal food.

Don't forget to check out the other great 'Colour Collaborative' blogs for more of today's posts, just click on the logos below ... 

What is The Colour Collaborative? All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.

A Dry Spell

Today is exactly half way through the month of September and exactly half way through our Alcohol Free Month. This is what the contents of our glass recycling bin looks like today and yes, you'd be forgiven for thinking it looks a bit empty, as we stare into the void that is the glaring absence of wine and beer bottles. 

It feels like a very long month. 

I often hear of people having a "dry month" in January to compensate for the excesses of Christmas and New Year. But January, the bleakest of months, is not a month I'd ever choose to give up something I love - I need the promise and reward of a nice glass of red wine by the fire to keep me going when the days are short and cold, sunshine is scarce. and bank accounts depleted. But September, the month of beginnings and new resolutions, felt like a good month to try it. It seemed like a good idea when we were in France, eating and drinking lots - possibly a little too much - to have a month off. To give our livers, wallets and waistlines a rest. To just see if we could. John is abstaining with me and I'm very glad he is, as we stop each other wavering and feeling tempted. 

It's really made me think about my relationship with alcohol. I do like a drink. In particular, a glass of wine, nice wine. A cold bottle of beer or gin and tonic is always welcome too, especially in the summer, but wine takes first place. I look forward to that time of day, around 7.30 pm, when the children are in bed and we are cooking our dinner and we open a bottle of wine. The clink of the wine glasses coming out of the cupboard. It feels sociable and friendly, cooking side by side and sipping our drinks, a moment to savour at the end of a busy day. But we can still have that without alcohol, I am finding. It's ok, we haven't killed each other yet.

The reactions of others have been interesting, too. I keep having to repeatedly assure friends that no, I'm not pregnant, I promise. Does a non-drinker (even if she's only a temporary one) make drinkers uncomfortable? I went out for a meal at the start of the month to celebrate a friend's birthday and another friend had brought along of bottle of champagne. Despite being the driver for the night and explaining about our "month off", my polite refusal to have a drink was met with a "don't be rude!" attitude and I ended up accepting a small glass just to be nice. I had two sips and found that I didn't really want it. But the next night, at book group, no-one batted an eyelid and they made me a cup of tea. Which was lovely. 

I'm glad I've come this far and we will definitely see it out to the end of the month. But I will be honest and say that I'm very much looking forward to the first of October and to opening that really nice bottle of Riesling we brought back from France.

52 Weeks of Happy...48/52

The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything.

Joining in with lovely Jen at little birdie, here some of the simple things which have made me happy this week.

1. Despite the sudden drop in temperatures, I am still finding raspberries growing in the garden every day. I've never seen so many! There's never enough in one go to make in jam or a pudding but I love picking these handfuls of berries and they were lovely with Greek yogurt and honey. A lingering taste of summer.

2. Unwrapping a perfectly fresh and brand new soap and using it for the first time is one of my favourite things to do and it's even better when it reminds me of our holiday.

3. When it's cold and damp, butter two slices of bread (fresh is better but all I had was the Kingsmill 50/50 I buy for the kids) and place fishfingers on one and some crunchy iceberg lettuce on the other. Sandwich together with mayonaise and sweet chilli sauce. Amazing.

4. No photo to illustrate this one, but it did make me happy - last Sunday we came downstairs to find a puddle of water on the kitchen floor from a leaky pipe in the bathroom above. John spent all Sunday either under the bath or in B&Q, fixing the pipe (and swearing under his breath). The leak appeared to be coming from the boiler, which we feared was on it's last legs. Our nice plumber turned up, tightened a valve thereby fixing the problem, refused to take any payment, and told us we don't need a new boiler. We are relieved.

It's been a funny old week here as we settle into new routines and I've taken extra comfort from these small happy moments as they appear throughout my day. They help me feel grounded when I feel a bit cast adrift. John and I find ourselves in the house during the day without children for the first time in seven years, and it's very strange. We go running together. We eat lunch at the table together. It's all very civilised, but it feels odd too. I haven't relaxed into it yet. So far, Angus appears to love school. He goes in happily, produces a prolific amount of drawings, paintings and junk modelling (mostly abstract as far as I can tell) and tells us sweet snippets of his day, such as when he played football with one boy or how he enjoyed doing PE in the Big Hall. But after school...oh my goodness. He is stroppy, argumentative, oppositional and altogether difficult. From the minute he leaves the classroom it begins. I didn't bring the car. We are walking. He doesn't want to walk. We get home. He's ravenous and has a snack. He wants his tea. We sit at the table to eat and he wont eat any tea. He's so tired that I have to feed him. He wants to go to bed but refuses to get undressed or get into the bath. And on it goes... He's just finished his first full week at school and he's exhausted. He's only four. I feel that school gets the best of him and we the worst, but I know that it's just for now. He will get used to the longer days and we'll all be happier.

Sunflowers

I picked the last of the sunflowers. They were starting to look a bit sad and droopy and, since the weather has turned so chilly, I thought it would make more sense to enjoy them indoors rather than out. It gave me such an enormous feeling of satisfaction to bring this big armful of flowers into the house. I grew these! They are easy to grow, I know, but still! I thought I'd have one flower per stem, but there were so many of them. They grew branches and just kept growing and producing more flower heads. After I'd shaken off the insects and pulled off the dead leaves, I divided them into two bunches. I put the biggest flowers, with their long, sturdy stems, in a cream vase on the dining room table. They brighten up what is always the gloomiest part of the house. The smaller, more spindly ones are in a little blue enamel jug on the mantle above the fireplace. The mantlepiece is always my favourite place to display things. I am always fiddling about with the bits and bobs I have up there, arranging and re-arranging. Don't ask me what that loo-roll tube covered in beads and sellotape is. Bella made it. I have no idea.

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Your response to the bramble/blackberry issue in my last post really got me thinking. My understanding has always been that a bramble is just a blackberry which grows in the wild. They tend to be smaller than the cultivated blackberries you can buy in the supermarket, which can be quite large - similar to the size of a cherry - whereas brambles are more like the size of a raspberry. It's confusing because the word "bramble" is often used to describe any kind of prickly, wild bush. Also, people (myself included) use the words bramble and blackberry interchangeably. If I say I'm going blackberry picking, then I suppose really I'm going bramble picking. And if I'd used that fruit I picked at the weekend to make some jam with apples, I probably would've called it blackberry and apple jam, as I did when I made some this time last year. But I wanted to call it Bramble Jelly because I think the name has a faintly old fashioned, autumnal feel to it. Plus it reminds me of the wonderful Brambly Hedge series of books, which I loved so much as a child and read to Bella now. I saw a recipe for something called Hedgerow Jelly recently, which could include blackberries or brambles, elderberries, sloes, damsons etc - whatever you find growing wild, I suppose. I am quite taken with the notion of making Hedgerow Jelly, as much because of it's evocative and romantic sounding name as it's potentially delicious flavour.

Quiet Autumn Activity

The weekend passed in a hum of seasonal productivity. Saturday was good. After a tedious morning we decided to salvage something from the day and went bramble picking. We walked along the old railway line and were rewarded with plentiful fruit and a huge improvement in everyone's mood. Sometimes all you need is to get out of the house for an hour and do something like pick brambles.

Inspired by Sue's post about jellies I decided to have a go at making bramble jelly, rather than bramble (or blackberry) and apple jam as I usually do. I washed and weighed my fruit (not quite as much as I thought, annoyingly) then added two chopped apples and simmered it for twenty minutes. 

Then came the straining bit. I don't have a proper jelly strainer so I rigged up an old piece of fabric (I did wash it first) on the clothes airer with some pegs. The only place for it was by the kitchen door, next to the muddy trainers. I'm pretty sure Nigella does exactly the same thing. 

I left it overnight to strain, then on Sunday boiled the juice with some sugar until it was set, then poured it into my jars.

I got one and a half jars. Actually, I like it when I have half a jar as that one doesn't count and can be eaten straight away. 

It has the most beautiful deep, jewel-like colour.

Absolutely delicious. I think this will be good on top of rice pudding, which I plan to make this week. It was also very good on top of bread.

I've been working on few little crochet projects. The small flowers will eventually become a garland for a friend's birthday. 

And the squares, which are from this fantastic book, will be strung together into a sort of bunting/garland affair. Trust me, it works.

I've also been slowly making more squares (of a different pattern) which I forgot to photograph. I started this project on holiday and it will eventually become a big blanket for our bed. Probably by autumn 2014, at the rate I'm making them. 36 down, 160 to go... But that's fine. I am finally learning that it's about enjoying the process, not rushing to complete.

The weather is still cool. There is a nip in the air and blankets and throws are coming out of the cupbords and going onto beds and sofas.  We been lighting the fire in the evenings. I say lighting, when I really mean turning a switch, as we have one of those pretend coal gas fire type affairs. When we installed it we both wanted a wood burning stove but we said to ourselves no, it will look silly in our 1940's three bed semi, too "faux country", let's get something low maintenance and sensible. But every winter when my friends place their orders for wood deliveries and talk about the pleasure of lighting that first fire of the season, and I see so many cosy images of stoves and open fires on blogs and instagram...well, I wish we'd gone for the stove every time. One day we'll have a stove.

52 Weeks of Happy...47/52

The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything.

Joining in with lovely Jen at little birdie, here are a few things which have made me very happy this week. One very big happy and three little happies, which are no less valid for being eclipsed by number one but let's face it, it's not often you get a letter from the Queen.

1. A few weeks ago Bella drew a picture of a palace guard. She wrote an accompanying letter and we posted it off to Buckingham Palace. Imagine our total delight and joy when we came home from our holiday to find a reply on the doormat. The thick, cream envelope bore a Buckingham Palace stamp on the front and a satisfyingly big, fancy royal crest on the reverse. We opened it very carefully with a knife so that we didn't tear it (it was the first time in my life that I wished I owned a letter opener) and inside was a letter written by a lady in waiting to the Queen and some information about the palace. Bella was thrilled. I was thrilled. Even John was slightly impressed. Bella stood up and talked about it in assembly this morning. Something for the memory box.

2. Ok, not quite as exciting as a letter from the Queen, but the sight of these two on the doormat was a very welcome and happy sight.

3. Using the basket I bought on holiday as my new crochet work basket. Useful, pretty and full of holiday memories.

4. This little posy I picked from the garden earlier in the week has made me happy every time I look at it. Those sunny, vivid colours are especially welcome today when it's 12°C and raining. 

I wish you all a happy weekend. It's raining cats and dogs here and I'm hoping for a quiet two days after a full and emotional week. Angus settled really well at school - thank you for all your good wishes. He looked a little lost when we dropped him off but he's always smiling when we go to collect him and seems to be taking it all in his stride. I am still - slowly, slowly - getting round your blogs to say hello and catch up and am looking forward to doing more of that this weekend.