A, B, Sea

Ah, Whitstable.

Sea air, oysters, vintage shops and salty chips.

Perfect n'est-ce pas?

My workmates and I met in our local coffee shop before setting off to Whitstable for a day out. I haven't mentioned my collegues before but they are lovely and I'm lucky to have made so many firm friends at work.

We started off our day of F-U-N with another cuppa and some oysters, well some of us had them

(the brave ones!)

Whitstable, for those that don't know, is a seaside town in Kent, Southeast England. It's a fantastic place to go if you like quirky and vintage and, in my opinion, shows the British seaside in its best possible light.

The shop keepers have all done a fantastic job on their shop fronts and the town is very picturesque and picture-perfect.

There are vintage clothing shops, art galleries, cupcake shops and tearooms.

 Not to mention street art in the form of knitted bicycles! It was entertaining to watch people go past the bikes and look in wonder as they realised they were knitted!

'Plllllllleeeeeease can I move to Whitstable' my mind was saying after it had dreamed about decorating a cottage like the one in the picture above.

For now I guess I'm going to have to make do with daytrips!

Home Sweet Home

There's something special about walking through your front door after being away on holiday...the familiar, comforting sights and smells after your senses have been bombarded with new, foreign stimuli.  As soon as we touched down at Gatwick it was like I had a whole new appreciation of how beautiful our country is, how green and luscious and mild.

We have spent the last week cocktail drinking, snoozing, reclining, reading, sunset gazing, sight seeing, star gazing, swimming, scuba diving and food munching in sunny Cyprus.  It has been a lovely holiday but so HOT! My word, it has been up to 42 degrees during the day and 25 degrees at night. I've practically thrown myself into the pool/sea at every given opportunity!

Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Well, here are a few of my favourite snapshots of Cyprus.

We had a lovely time but I'm also glad to be home, back to the place where I belong.

L is for...

Lindy Hop!
Ouch! My legs were like jelly.  I booked my Hubbie and I on a 'learn to lindy hop in a day' course a while ago and last Saturday was The Day! I was so excited as it was one of my new year resolutions and  I was amazed that I managed to convince Mr C to come! I love swing music and the whole day was so much fun from start to finish (5 hours of dancing - woah!).

We started the day with 6 beat lindy hop, followed by 8 beat lindy hop and then the Charleston to finish the day.  Both Mr C and I loved dancing the Charleston best, although our attempt to recreate the dance at home in front of family was 'interesting!' and not entirely representative of the fabulous teaching! There was alot of 'your foot should be here' and 'you moved too early' in our front room performance.

I'm definitely going to try to go to more lessons as it's a great style of dance. If you fancy learning then you can find information here. Maybe this workshop should come with a health warning as, a whole week later, my feet are STILL dancing all by themselves; it's seriously addictive.

Blissful moments

Moment 1) Sewing my first quilt, yes, MY Quilt! I haven't quite got the required patience when the sewing machine goes a bit bonkers and starts to chew my work up but luckily my Fab Mum does.  I'm starting to piece it all together and the colours are B-E-A-Utiful together. I can't claim that the whole experience has been blissful but the standing back and seeing something you have created is!

2)  Looking at my sunflowers. Aren't they just so cheerful?

3) De-podding my home grown broad beans.  I love that the pods are all furry and squidgy.

4) BBQs! The smoky smell is divine as it wafts past. Mmmmm.

5) The sight of locally foraged cherry plums. They grow by our train station and the colours are incredible.

So many lovely moments. Summer is wonderful.

Happy Days!

Gosh, I didn't realise I'd been away from my blog for quite so long.  It has been busy round these parts, infact I'd almost go as far as manic.  We've barely been in our house for more than an hour before we've been out and about again (inevitably arriving late as usual...).  We've been enjoying BBQs, coffees, dinners with friends, superhero fancy dress parties, birthday events, weddings, food festivals and, of course, time down on the allotment. Phew! I feel exhausted just recounting the events :-).

This photo is from Ben and Jerry's ice cream festival where you could eat unlimited amounts of ice cream for free.  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

This photo is from Foodies Festival in Battersea Park where I tasted and discovered elderflower liquor. It has now become my tipple du jour.  This creation made me smile!

I thought you might like to see how the allotment is doing.  Lots of crops are in season and we could practically live off the produce! We've managed to produce 15 courgettes (well, they look more like marrows really don't they?!) a week.

I've had to get creative with my use of courgettes in the kitchen to keep things interesting.  We've had them stuffed, fried, made into fritters, raw in salads....you get the picture! I even tried a courgette cake and it was delish.

If you also are at a loose end with courgettes coming out of your ears then here's the link to Nigel Slater's courgette cake. YUM!

The lavender is just so beautiful and seeing the bees so happy makes me feel content. I heart bees.

We've had a LOT of runner beans and broad beans too.  Runner bean cake anyone? Hmmm that's going too far I feel.....:-)

This is my runner bean living arch.  I had this idea of creating it as a feature and it actually worked.

Blackberries already nearly ready! Hasn't anyone told them they're too early this year?! Wait til autumn fellas.

Corn on the cob soon! Whoo!
 I hope you enjoyed your browse through my allotment.

I've never seen these before...

The allotment plots are looking so cheerful at the moment.  I'm in love with these flowers (Californian Poppies I'm told). I've never seen them anywhere before, have you? They have grown wild and the different shades across the plots look sooo beautiful. I'm drying some pods out so that I can keep the seeds and scatter them in my garden one day.  My fingers are crossed for my own garden as we've been living in a flat with a shared one for the last five years.  My dream garden definitely includes these beauties!

Isn't nature just wonderful?
*Sign of contentment*

Bursting into life

I've been a busy bee of late and am enjoying my first evening in a week at home, chilling. Soooo nice to put my feet up and have a cuppa. The allotment is looking F-A-B and it's getting exciting now that there is produce to eat and more on the way.  Here are some pics so you can see how it's all coming along.
(Ignore the weeds...!!!)

Eat your heart out Mr McGregor!

Where's the Green Giant?

Raspberries are making their way into my morning cereal.

Lavender pouches as pressies for friends this year!

Wow!

My sunflowers are almost ready. Woop!

So proud of my runner beans.  They didn't grow last year but are making up for it now!

Can't wait to cook something using the gooseberries! Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Last week Mr C was away on business so I spent the week catching up with friends. Lovely it was too! One of the jobs I wanted to do was to find elderflowers to make cordial.  It was on my to do list and when I saw Rebecca's post on the cordial I knew I had to do it.  I'd been looking for weeks for the tree but, knowing me, I was worried I'd end up making cowslip cordial.  BLEUGH!

Well.......eventually I FOUND THE FLOWERS! OK, that's a lie.  My friend Han found the tree.....right outside my back door!!! *Can you believe it was there all the time whilst I was googling pictures of the flowers?!*

There are lots of recipes out there on the web and I followed a pretty standard one.  I decided to freeze the cordial in ice cube bags so each time I want a drink all I have to do is pop one cube in and add fizzy water.  It will last for at least a year in the freezer and makes your drinks lovely and chilled. Mmmmm.

The last flowers are still on the trees so there's still time to make cordial!