Generally Gemma

Dear Mummy,

I've been a bad daughter. I forgot to send your card until the last minute and so it didn't get there in time for Mother's Day, it's the first time I've missed one and I feel terrible!

 

If you were here I'd have bought you these

 

and of course hundreds of daffodils!

This is the first time in twelve years that you have had a child at home for Mother's Day and I know that Bro is spoiling you and cooking you dinner, I just wish that I was there to help and spoil you too!

 

There is a teeny tiny present here waiting for you! Come and get it soon!  
 

Lots and lots of love

Your Little Girl
 xxxx

Necessary Cheer

There are times when you need bunches of cheerfulness.  

 

When I got my new job just before Christmas I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that the bad times were over and I suppose for me they were but sadly for others around me it seems the bad luck was just beginning. My Bro and his girlfriend split up just before Christmas which was not fab as you can imagine. So the after Christmas period mainly involved packing him up and moving him out of their shared house. Then in the midst of moving him out he left his job, which had been on the cards for a while. So he moved in with G and I and then last week he went over to Spain to say with M for a bit to get his head together. 

 

Then this evening I had a phone call that knocked me for six. An old friend who has been my "other Mummy" since I moved back to the UK phoned to tell me she has breast cancer. They think they have caught it very early and are very positive that it can all be sorted but phone calls like that are the worst. 

 

So all in all I am feeling in desperate need of my cheapo bunches of daffodils! Even more apt as today is St David's Day! You'd think we would make more of it at my house because G is Welsh, but somehow we never really do. To be honest I'm not all that sure what one is to supposed to do for St David's Day, I think perhaps a touch of research is needed before next year!

Fun on the Farm

I spent last weekend staying with my Aunt so that I could go and visit my cousin and her new baby. The recipient of this handmade bit of loveliness. (Which I think they liked so that went well!) I do of course have loads of pictures but given that he isn't actually mine to show off I'm afraid you are going to have to make do with this. A teeny tiny foot. I can't believe how small he is. He was just under three weeks and I don't think I've ever been that near a baby that small. I was so worried that I was going to drop or break him or do something silly. But he seemed to survive a visit from Auntie Cousin Gemma and hopefully it is going to be the first of many opportunities for cuddles.

But on to the bulk of the photos! They don't actually live on the farm but a house that the two of them built a few years ago on land that used to be part of it. The farm itself has since been sold but you are still pretty much in the middle of nowhere with fields as far as the eye can see.

 

There is a little bit of a woodland garden round the side. I was too late for daffodils, primroses, snow drops and lily of the valley and too early for poppies in that part of the country but the foxgloves were marvelous! I always forget how much I love them till I am up close and personal with one.

And cherry trees! Parts of the hedge all the way round are cherry trees and Sunday morning I picked my way through the dew to try and pick some breakfast before the crows got them all!

I spent time with the four legged creatures of the family. Their gorgeous black lab who reminds me so much of our beloved Ben. We had big cuddles on the floor when we got back from Saturday night. I love our little Flossie but there is nothing like a big dog I always think.

One of the new additions since my last visit was this gorgeous little family. Daisy and Petal. Petal is born every year at Easter and goes to a "new home" every Winter to reappear again the following year. Love the whimsy of it!

And hopefully next time I visit I will get to use this!

Granny and some of the other family have been up in the helicopter and I can't wait to have the opportunity myself! I may not stay up there for long or go very far but I think it certainly has to be done!

All in all a lovely weekend and one I plan to repeat far sooner than the three years it's taken this time!

Birth of a new quilt

The extended side of my family consists of my Granny, three aunts and six cousins and when you are all as loud as we are that is one large family gathering! (As G will tell you because he is quiet and can't handle the family "braying"!) However, at some point next week it is going to be one member bigger when the first one of my generation gives birth to the next. My cousin is due to any moment from Wednesday give birth to a little baby boy and all of us are tremendously excited.

And of course as a crafter what do you give but handmade goods and this is the first part of that little parcel that will most likely be winging it's way off next week. Please excuse the multitude of pictures that I am about to post! I couldn't pick just one or two!



This is the fabric that started it all off. The new baby is apparently having an elephant themed room and when I found this fabric on etsy I couldn't resist it spoke to me and we all know that that is something not to be ignored! Although Japanese linen is seriously not a cheap item! But what a delight to cut and sew with and how cute are the little tiny elephants!



I picked up some other fabrics here in there in blue, because obviously he is a boy and I tried really hard not to make it too pretty because G says that boys don't appreciate that sort of thing! So it is mainly dots, vines, leaves and a cloudy grey/blue fabric.

I wanted to keep it simple so I went with squares in a diagonal pattern as I really wanted the elephant/hippo fabric to be the main attraction of the quilt rather than the pattern that I used. And to be perfectly honest after the ongoing saga that is my large quilt I really needed something simple to convince myself that yes I could actually complete a project! (I hate taking pictures of the full size of them though, I didn't seem to be able to find a good way of doing it so I've just pinned it to the clothes line here.)

The back I am still a little bit on the fence about, I love the two fabrics that I've used but I'm not too sure if the bottom one is a little bit too girly. Lets face it though it is really too late to be worrying about that detail now! That was one of the reasons for carrying the navy leafy pattern on to the back in this way though, to try and balance out the delicate with something a little more masculine and I also like the idea of it have a turn down at the top.



You can see the back a little better in this one. I'm also think of maybe embroidering his name, when he gets one and the date on the back but I shall see how I feel to facing up to the challenges of tiny embroidery stitches when I find out how long his name might be!



And indulge me in just a few more please! Look at those corners! The bane of my life this binding and cornering was! I sewed the binding on the wrong way twice! Then I couldn't get the join right! I was convinced that after all that the corners were going to be a complete nightmare, but how wrong I was, they went together like a dream!

You still with me here folks? We are in the home stretch with just two more pictures to go! The quilt was machine stitched and hand quilted, which is the most relaxing thing ever! I did all the hand quilting whilst watching old Disney films last weekend an indulgence for me but I also like the idea that perhaps somehow the magic and happiness of those films has been stitched into the quilt too.

The only problem now is, I love it myself. I've never given away a project as big as this before, and I really don't know how some of you do it! I'm keeping my fingers crossed though that my cousin and her new little one love it as much as I do.

Now I just have to figure out how to wrestle it away from this fellow who has grown some what attached to it!

PS there is good news over here!

End of an Era

Gareth's beloved Cardiff City are leaving their ground that has been their home since 1928 for a brand spanking new stadium that has been built across the road. A few weeks ago he went to their last ever match that will be played there and whilst I wasn't there myself I have been assure that he wept a few manly nostalgic tears.

When they all got home from the match the talk of matches gone by continued and ended with the G and his brother collecting their various football shirts from around the house that they've been buying since they were little and continued the stroll down memory lane. Including such highlights as best game in this kit, most humiliating defeat in this one etc etc.

G had more than I would have thought possible! We certainly have quite a few at our house that didn't make it into the montage below but I'm thinking that over the Summer before the gates get torn down we might take all his shirts over there and have a bit of a photo shoot in front of them. I have an image in my head of a fast flickering slide show where the only thing that changes is the shirt that G is wearing in the pictures. Whether he fancies stripping his shirt of in public a multitude of times is of course another matter!

M's Day

Happy Mother's Day M. If we were together you would have had a day full of daffodils and tea and cake. I've sent you cake and a daffodil mug so that you can at least have that bit whilst we have a long chat on the webcam which is as close as we are going to get to Mother's Day together this year!

For those of you with your Mums today or with your children hug all of them extra tight. 

Love you M 

XxX

(For those who are interested I'm the rotund one with short hair on the left! And Bro still looks as gormless as he does in this picture! Love the 70's decor, orange carpet anyone!) 

Plancha

I promise this is the last of the Spanish food related posts! M and I have wanted one of these for a while but refused to pay the horrific prices for them so when this arrived at lidl she was beside herself.

It's basically an electric grill plate also known in Spain as a plancha.  And as you can see you can cook anything and everything on there. The pictures above are squid, salmon, steak, pepper and courgettes, but we also did hamburgers, fried eggs G thought a fried breakfast on there would be fab too!

It was also great because it meant you could plug it into the extension cord and cook outside and everyone could do their own thing, so sort of a fondue but with grilling! I wanted to bring one home but G has decreed that there is no more space in the kitchen for gadgetry. BOO HOO!

For anyone that might want to play along tomorrow is 12 on 12! Let me know if you are!

For Bro

If you are vegetarian this probably isn't the post for you however, my darling Brother has heard a lot about this restaurant and it's sheer quantity of food on the plate so this is for him to live vicariously through!

M has been to this restaurant a number of times for this exact meal and everytime she calls Bro and I to wax lyrical about the taste and the sheer volume of food so when G and I were there this was on the must do list. So, we ordered the lamb when we made our reservation because it cooks FOR HOURS!

They then bring the lamb and the bed of root vegetables it cooks on to your table and carve it there.

You then get a plate load of lamb, potatoes, carrot, turnip all of which have soaked in all the lamby goodness as it has been cooking. This picture is of M liberally dousing her plate in mint sauce.

Then they bring you a humongous jacket potato with sour cream and butter and a side dish of other vegetables!

G was beaten and that NEVER happens!

 

Girly Drinks

It seems that when G and I go away there is normally an overwhelming theme to the holiday. Normally centred around some sort of food or drink. This Summer was the Summer of Cocktails. Which for G was rather unusual as he is pretty a beer and wine man who doesn't dabble much in the evil zone of spirits or pink girly drinks. However, he flung himself into the proceedings this year with great gusto!

The first picture up there isn't so much a cocktail as the native drink of Spain, the tinto verano. Cheap red wine over ice topped up with the local lemonade, gaseosa, which is sort of like slightly sweetened soda water. When we first discovered these years ago I fell in love. As a teenager I used to be able to drink these all night without ever once falling down drunk and these days they are my Summer beverage of choice, although I am yet to find anywhere in England that sells the right sort of lemonade.

Normally they are served in ordinary glasses but this one place we went for dinner served them up in tall beauties with feet which brought a sense of elegance to what is normally a work mans mid-day drink.

Next on the list were mojitos! M can't stand these and G wasn't sure so really I was on my own with these. However they were terrible refreshing, I didn't stick strictly to the recipe and did top mine up with the ever present gaseosa to make them go a bit further.

These are mai tais which M has a thing for. Many many years ago when I was but a twinkle in my parents eye she and my Dad went to the Caribbean on holiday and drunk these by the pitcher full and she was determined this year to try and recreate them. So recreate them we did although as the days passed we did water them down more and more. She woke up the first morning after we had them with a hangover after only one! Which considering the amount of alcohol in them really wasn't all that surprising!

I don't have a close up of this but these were pina coladas. M and one of her sisters have a major thing for these. A few years ago when Aunt S came to visit she and M would make up huge jugs of these and sit on the terrace with the sun going down sipping away. So these are as much of a tradition as the tinto veranos are.

Semi Final Day

Please forgive this terribly image heavy post but I feel a need to populate it with as many pictures as possible. Yesterday was the FA Cup semi-final which here in the UK is quite a big deal. For G it was an even bigger deal as for the first time in something like eighty years, his boys, Cardiff City Football Club were in it, with a chance of going to the final. So when yesterday dawned with a more than faint covering of snow we were all rather horrified.

However, by the time the tube pulled out out of the darkness the clouds were on the way to clearing to a bright yet cold day.

I had never been to the old Wembley Stadium so I can't really compare but the new place is fantastic!Made even better if I do say so by the addition of a very large banner!

I'm not Welsh, I'm English and proud but even I felt a sense of pride when I saw this banner knowing that I was there to support the Bluebirds. Their fans are giving a rough reception at a lot of places due to their reputation for being somewhat unpleasant but yesterday there wasn't a sign of it to be seen.

I did feel the most incredible shiver of excitement when I saw this too. The inside of the stadium is quite dark and when you look through the doors to the pitch itself it seems even more vibrant!

We were on the ground level with amazing seats and an incredible view.

And when it started to fill up our side was a sea of blue.

G was beside himself with nerves and excitement.

I can't actually remember much of the match. Cardiff scored after nine minutes and there was much excitement and jumping about. I remember that. I remember the two semi nekid men in our row who really shouldn't have been. I remember singing, oh much singing! Other than that it is pretty much a blur. An ecstatic one that seem doesn't real due to this:

THEY DID IT! They won! They are in the finals! On the train on the way home, G, his Mum, Brother and I were all saying how it really didn't seem real. How after all this time of supporting quite a poorly performing team that causes them so much heartbreak that they actually produced the goods.

I'm thrilled and excited too obviously. But not so much for the same reasons as them. I've only been following City since I met G and even then I have a lukewarm relationship with them as they do seem to take over our lives at times. But to see this

was indescribable. He was so overjoyed that I had a tear in my eye. I love Cardiff City in spite of myself these days and it is because they do this to my boy.