Let's pretend it's still Summer

A couple of weeks ago we headed down to East Head for a day at the beach... we had a typically English day, pretending we didn't care about the rain. The hardier members of the party swam (my Mum even bought her yellow swimming hat) and C paddled and collected shells.
We had a lovely picnic with only a little bit of added sand and then headed home feeling refreshed from sand, sea and wind. As Autumn sets in I'm trying to fight off the gloomy feeling of impending grey days and remember that you don't need sun to have fun.

A (small) Instant Collection

These wooed me at the market - I'm imagining them in a cabinet in our bathroom at some point.
I bought them purely on aesthetic value, not sure from where or whence they came! This is what they purport to have once contained:
Bi-Chroma Potassieus
Eucalyptus
Cichorium Intybus
Chiendent coupe
Angelique Semences

Looks like I'll be frequenting Apothecary Collectables to add to my new collection!

Want an instant collection?

I love collections - problem is I've never really settled on one thing to collect. I was traumatised early; I used to have a collection of small glasses that were displayed on a shelf in my bedroom. One day when I was about nine years old I came back from the Saturday morning roller-disco to discover that my brother had accidentally knocked the shelf down and broken all but a couple of my glasses. I've never been able to commit to one collection since, but my market trip on Tuesday might have put an end to that... I bought an instant collection of glass jars (which I'll post later) but I could have gone for tins, cross-stitch pictures of cottages, silver shell plates or old maps (in too-lovely marbled envelopes)... tough decisions!

Stamping!

C was introduced the the wonders of the rubber stamp today!
For our fourth wedding anniversary I wrote H a love letter (in the loosest sense). I was inspired by a wedding poem that I saw on 'not on the high street', but instead of just writing the letter I actually hand printed each of the 1955 characters individually by hand... it was a labour of love, and one that I enjoyed... sometimes a monotonous task can be quite therapeutic.



Today I was making some friends a card in the same style and C really wanted to get involved, so I gave her a box of animal rubber stamps that had previously been packed away for when she is older (I'm a sucker for premature present buying). So we had a happy half hour stamping away... group therapy for toddler and me.

Spira Haga Fabric

Five meters of this fabric has just arrived on my desk (thank you Northlight Interiors!)



Hopefully it won't be too long until it's made into two blinds for C's bedroom. I'm going to resist defining 'too long'!

Tarting Around

If I were ever to cook well enough to have a signature dish then this Bakewell tart from Jamie Oliver's book Jamie At Home would be it... it's quite a hassle to make - but when plums are in season it's de-lic-ious! Warning: it uses up a whole month of butter rations in one go.



I probably only make it once a year - this time I made it so that we could give some to H's work mate as a thank-you for lending me his sat-nav.
The rest of the year, we go to the 'Just Deserts' stall at the very intimate Chiswick Farmers Market... This guy really knows how to make a spectacular tart! Yesterday I went a bit over-board and bought three, one raspberry, one fig and one lemon.



You can see why I couldn't resist non? I forgot to take a pic of the tarts at home, too busy tasting! But this little piece of fig tart was saved for a few hours before it was devoured!