Life: The good, the bad and the ugly bits!
The nice weather over the last few days has meant we have spent plenty of time down the allotment. O loved helping me dig holes for our corn plants, he learnt to be “berry gentle” with the gwreiddiau (roots in Welsh and yes he can say gwreiddiau better than very!) although a toddlers version of gentle involves tossing the plant in the vague direction of the hole they are being planted in!
November is here, bringing with it plenty of cold, rain and foggy weather. But just a few weeks ago we were enjoying some beautifully sunny days. With the evening drawing in these brighter, drier, days gave me some much needed extra time to prepare the allotment for the winter and get some ground dug before it freezes solid till spring!
Even O enjoyed getting his gloves on and helping me, luckily he is quite happy to get mucky and wet although we did have to limit our time there as it was quite chilly with the wind that whips around the corner of the mountain we are on.
Here is a little allotment update video that shows you everything we have achieved up until the beginning of October and explaining some of our plans for going forward to next year.
In the weeks since making this video we have also had our first mini harvest! I pulled up a few of the winter radishes. The outside looks a bit scabby, probably due to the lack of rain, and it looks like they have been chewed a little by the slugs but the inside is perfectly crisp and watery just how they should be. This variety is quite large, about the size of a golf ball, and can be eaten raw in salads although they are a bit hot for my liking.
They can also be eaten cooked in stirfries or even in stews in place of turnip, the heat disappears when cooked. I diced them up into really small cubes and added them to a sausage and bean casserole by browning them with the onions first to soften them a little before adding the rest of the ingredients. My kids love this casserole and it’s a really frugal recipe, I can share it with you all if you’d like.
It’s amazing how much plenty of sun, rain and a few weeks patience can do to really bring on plants. Even the onions are starting to shoot up now. We are still awaiting the garlic though.
It’s so satisfying to see the luscious greenery and thinking “I grew that”! Although after the horrendous weather we’ve had this week, I’m dreading going down over the weekend just in case none of it has survived. But if they have managed to stand up to this weeks battering winds and rain I’m sure they will cope against anything the rest of the winter will be able to throw at us!
How are you coping with the weather Storm Abigail is throwing at us?
Our heating has only been on once since about March, and that was only because I didn’t wash uniforms early enough and the school jumpers, which shrink just waving them in front of the tumble drier, were still wet one Sunday night. Yes it was lovely to wake up in a toasty warm house, but we were all groggy and too snuggly to even want to get out of bed, so counter-productive in my eyes!
Some friends, and family, are always bemused to hear that our heating is rarely on even in the middle of winter, unless we have a small baby in the house, and can’t understand how we haven’t all frozen to death yet. But with rising energy costs, doubled with the cutting of tax credits and benefits I know a lot of people will start to feel the pinch soon so I thought I would share some of my simple, yet effective tips to staying warm.
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Here are my radishes, pointy spring cabbages and spring onions growing strong down on the allotment. I’ll be giving a full update on the allotment later in the week.
If you have popped by my little blog before you will probably know that we have been on a mission to do our house up for a long time now. It has been well over a year and things are moving along slowly but surely.
The boys are now happily settled into their room. There are a few bits or furniture we still need to get, but nothing that can’t wait for now, and the girls are still up in the attic but can’t wait to be sleeping on real beds in their own room soon, instead of air beds!
We had planned to put the girls in the back bedroom, which was originally theirs as babies, then ours, then theirs again, but after some issues with ceiling heights (don’t ask!) we are going to have to go back in there. Trying to figure out what needs to be done in what order to keep everything moving along smoothly is turning out to be a bit of logistical nightmare to say the least!
We were quite lucky that the back room managed to survive unscathed when our roof leaked last winter unlike the rest of the rooms upstairs so there’s no damp. So apart from a lick of paint, the only major thing that needs doing is the floor. It currently has a horrid, pale beech, glue together laminate flooring that we put down about 15 years ago. It was the cheapest one available at the time and it was quite obvious why after just a few short months. So you can imagine how bad it is after 15 years. Personally I can’t wait to see the back of it!
Lee and I have been chatting for a while now weighing up what type of bedroom flooring we would like to have in our room over what type of flooring would be most practical with 5 kids. So it was quite a coincidence when Carpetright asked me to discuss this very subject with you! So we had a nosey around the website and was surprised at how reasonable some of the prices are.
We would both love a nice soft carpet, it’s been a long time since we’ve woken up and put our feet down onto a warm snuggly surface. Of course with Lee being a mechanic and our lot traipsing around it would have to be a dark carpet. Something along these lines.
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Welcome back to the Summer Days Linky with myself and Karen from Stopping at Two. You can link your summery posts at the bottom of this post or read more about the linky HERE.
Last week I shared some pictures of our garden. Obviously it isn’t the type of garden you can just sit out in and enjoy, unless you like the jungle come junk yard look of course!
But we are quite lucky that my parents live less than a mile away and have a lovely big garden that we can enjoy (especially as they both work full time so don’t have to worry about disturbing them!)
They also have raspberry bushes that I was given a few years ago from one of LM’s friends grandfather who has a massive raspberry patch, but obviously I had nowhere of my own to plant them. So as usual Mam and Dad’s garden came to the rescue.
Welcome back to the Summer Days Linky with myself and Karen from Stopping at Two. You can link your summery posts at the bottom of this post or read more about the linky HERE.
This week has been a bit of a bust as far as summery activities go I’m afraid. What with the horrendous weather and O being completely out of sorts, amongst other things.
I did manage to get back out in the garden on the weekend and finish pulling up all the Japanese Knotweed before the rain rolled in though. I often say that my garden looks like the side of a mountain (well it literally is) but I think this photo really shows I’m not exaggerating!
As you may know we are currently in the middle of a big shake up in our house. We’ve had our attic done and started work in the kids bedrooms as well as painted and carpeted our landing and stairs. It is taking us much longer to complete than we had originally hoped, purely because everything costs so much money!
One of the rooms that was started two years ago, was our bedroom. Not much needed doing to it really apart from a clear out, a lick of paint (it used to be the girls room so was bright pink!) and a new bed as we were sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
The room is looking a little tired now, but hopefully with just a small amount of cash we can spruce it up and turn it back into a real grown up bedroom again. Our rooms are all quite small and we were advised not to paint them dark as it will make them feel even smaller, but actually we have found that the darker the room, the better everyone sleeps, so far now at least we are sticking to it!
Here are some of things I want to upgrade in our room, all for less than £100:
Apologies if the blog has seemed to have lacked much substance recently but I’ve been a busy bee trying to get the attic finished before the new carpet comes (and we still have to paint the landing and stairs yet!) Here is just a sneak preview of what I’ve been doing this week. It’s still a work in progress but it’s slowly getting there 🙂
This weeks post isn’t quite a captured moment, more like a captured place. A place that I hold dear to my heart, the place I call home.
When you walk along the two villages that make up our valley, you can be forgiven for thinking its quite a big place, two miles from first house to last is quite big isn’t it? There’s a maze of side streets and a busy main road, village busy not city busy of course. All you can see is terraces of grey stone houses, grey streets and LOTS of cars.
Of course you can see the mountains all around. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a single house in this valley that you can’t see part of the mountains from at least one window. But it’s easy to forget just how tiny our little crop of houses are compared to the surrounding area. It’s easy to take the green for granted, to forget just how beautiful our valley truly is.
The village I grew up in.