Scrumptious Breakfast

Breakfast is probably my favourite meal of the day. It never takes long to make, and I can have just what I fancy, as in the week, at least, I have my breakfast alone.

Whatever I have must always be accompanied by a nice, hot cup of tea. I have been enjoying greek yoghurt with berry compote recently, but as autumn creeps a little closer, I find myself wanting to start the day with something warming and cheering.

So now it is the time for toast that makes a crunch that echoes the scuffling through the leaves that I will do on the walk to work; for porridge with a swirl of golden syrup; for a boiled egg with soldiers; and maybe for a treat at weekends, smoked salmon scrambled eggs, or apple pancakes with rosehip syrup.

But this week, I have been revisiting an old fall favourite- it uses the apples that are becoming abundant, is quick and easy, but tastes like a real treat!

Take a pretty little bowl, and shake into it slightly less museli than you would normally have. (And please choose a good museli, not the kind that is like dust)! If you feel like it, stir through an extra sprinkle of raisins, and then stir in enough apple juice that it is nice and moist, but not so much that it is swimming. Grate half an apple, and muddle through. Top with a dollop of plain yoghurt, and dust with a whisper of cinnamon.

Take yourself off with your breakfast and a cup of tea, sit somewhere peaceful to enjoy, and as you eat, think of all the lovely things to come today...

Autumn

Imagine my delight when I walked to work this morning, and felt a teeny, tiny, but utterly scrumptious nip in the air! On the walk in, there were fallen leaves to scrunch through, and I had in my bag some greengages! My toes are postiviely srunched up with excitement- because Autumn is coming!

I was going to write about how fantastic September is, but look! Midori has beaten me to it! Visit her at http://prettylittleblog.blogspot.com and read her delightful post, 'September'. All she says is what I feel. I love the back-to-school feeling, the contradictory starting-anew-but-starting-to-hibernate-too feeling. After nearly a month off, I went back to work on Monday, and it felt like a new school term. I wore my new pumpkin orange dress (from Sainsburys) with thick black tights, and took with me a brand new fountain pen to write out dewey numbers with. And what is going back to school, without homework?

But now I am a grownup (!) what fantastic homework I shall have! I want to knit hot water bottles, bake myself jacket potatoes, eat plums and greengages, perfect my hot chocolate recipe, and make a 'welcome autumn' wreath for the front door. I want to eat porridge for breakfast, and carve pumpkins and make sloe gin, and spiced plum butter. I want to find the perfect hot chocolate nail polish for my fingers, and deep inky purple for my toes. I want to start making Christmas cards (I design and make about 150 each year, so it is ok to start this early, I promise!), and to knit coathanger covers that I found in a 1940's craft booklet. I want to make pasta, and go to apple day, and scrunch my way through a great many leafy walks. I want to finish stitching my halloween bell pull for the front door, and to curl up and watch black and white films in the afternoon, and so much more!

Much more pleasing than the homework I used to have at school! I shall also visit lovely Alison at www.brocantehome.typepad.com to look at her Autumn puttery treats and get some more ideas for lovely Autumn projects.....vanilla coffee and shortbread, anyone?

Turning Out The Airing Cupboard

I am still very tired from the flight home...it has affected me more than I thought, so in between lots of cups of tea, I decided to do some puttering while dear Carl was back at work.

So, I turned to the airing cupboard. We have been so spoiled by our family and friends, we have a great many new towels and sheets and pillowcases, so I made a pile of old things to give away, and sorted everything else into neat piles, layered them with lavender bags, and put them back. I found a new space in there for my pink feather dusters, and lined up all our shoes neatly at the bottom.

Then, the best treat, I got out all my vintage pillowcases, doilies, tablecloths and little bits of pretties, and smoothed them out, then packed them into a sweet little cardboard suitcase I had bought to keep my wedding shoes in.

It is such bliss now, to open my airing cupboard door, and see all these piles of lovely fresh things waiting for me. Can there be a happier way to putter away an hour or two?

And can any of you answer my tea conundrum? While we were in Barbados, we still drank tea, despite the heat! And we had the most delicious Yellow Label Lipton Tea. I was going to bring some back with me, but ran out of space in my luggage, and now I am told that it cannot be purchased in this country! Can it be true? Do any of you know of a secret source of this yellow labeled bliss in a cup?

What is your favourite tea to sip?

Have a lovely weekend!

Hello From Mrs Mimi!

Well, we did it! We got ourselves good and married, and although it was exhausting, and a little bit stressful (just wait for the teaspoon incident that had me tearing my hair out the night before the wedding!) it was utterly wonderful, and I just love being a wife!

So, if you will, make yourself a cup of tea in your favourite cup, and I will tell you all about it. I just wish that I could give you all a slice of my wedding cake to go with it! I will tell you about the day first, and then the night before...

We (me, my Mum and sister, and Carl's sisters and Mum) got ready at Carl's parents house. I stayed the night before with my Mum and Dad, and woke up at 5.30am full of butterflies and excitement! It felt like we had a lot of time before the 1.00pm wedding, but when I was getting my hair dried, it suddenly felt like time was just rushing by. The next thing I knew, my sisters best friend was doing my makeup, then I was in my dress, and suddenly I was having my photograph taken in the back garden! Before I knew it, we were in the darling, darling vintage car (google ivy wedding cars, and ours was Ivy 2....so sweet!) and pulling up at the church on the sunniest Saturday I can remember this year. I could see some friends scurrying into the church, and it felt like I had barely paused for breath before the organ started, and I was walking up the aisle.

It was an amazing feeling, everywhere I looked were friends and family, and dear Carl looked so handsome waiting at the front for me. When I got to the front, we held hands, and he was just shaking with excitement which was a special feeling. When we started saying our vows, I felt like it was too early on in the service, and before I knew it, we were pronounced husband and wife! One of the best parts was standing at the front of the church for the last hymn (Lord of All Hopefullness, which is one of my favourites, written by the author of Mrs Miniver) and hearing everyone singing. It wasn't until we were walking back up the aisle that I noticed our beautiful hydrangea pew ends. Hydrangeas were the flowers for the day- my girls carried white hydrangeas, and my bouquet was blue hydrangeas with white and pink roses.

The dear little car took us off to our reception, where we met our guests on the lawn and had some Pimms, then they went up to the room for the restaurant, and we waited for them to be seated, We then joined them, and had the most delicious afternoon tea. We offered pink champagne and tea to have with the tiny sandwiches, and then the cake stands were cleared and scones were bought round, handed out with cake tongs from silver trays. Then the cake stands were bought back out filled with tiny cakes, and we finished with toasts and little pieces of wedding cake.

I really couldn't believe where the time had gone, because we barely had time to say hello to everyone before it was time to throw my bouquet and leave for a quite dinner for two..

Oh, but there are so many things I have left out. That the room was decorated with bunting made by my Mum, from fabric including the same that she used to make me clothes out of as a baby; she also made little fabric hearts to hang from ribbon from the backs of all the chairs. I must have mentioned that we hired mismatched beautiful vintage china for everyone? We filled the sugar bowls with those crumbly rocky squares of brown and white sugar, and scattered over crystallized violets. Oh, and we had little luggage labels tied to teaspoons to tell people where to sit on the tables, and at the end our bridesmaids gave out tiny jars of Wilkinson jam (we live near the village that makes it) with little gingham hats tied on. It was so pretty....I have asked my husband to work his magic and put some pictures on the computer so I can post some here...

So, the day was lovely, and we had a blissful fortnight away. But the night before, was stressful indeed. The morning was lovely- all the girls spent the morning making buttonholes, bouquets, all these little things. And in the evening we went to set up the reception room. And oh, what a mess! There were too many tables out, no cake stand, and I couldn't see how the room was ever going to come together. But after several hours and a lot of work, suddenly, the whole room just came together, and it was worth it. But there were tears and tiredness before it happened! Particularly when we went to find the teaspoons to tie the name tags on, and they were not there. So I phoned the lovely lady we had hired the china from, to be told that our reception site had sent the teaspoons away! It sounds so trivial now, but I was so cross! And it meant we had to scurry round finding every spare teaspoon that we could find!

Well this has been quite a long post, and I have a great many of your lovely blogs to catch up on....I have had a great time, but I missed you all!

The End of Miss Mimi!

Well, this is the last time I will be posting as Miss Mimi! When I am back (probably some time in September, although I am very tempted to blog from honeymoon, maybe just once!) I will be Mrs Mimi instead!

We have been busy this week, making our own order of service booklets, making little fabric hats for the miniature jars of jam we are giving our guests as a reminder of our day, and lot of other little things like that.

Today is my last day at work, and I have full to do lists for every day until Saturday.....make buttonholes! Help with bouquets! Put up bunting!

love to you all, have a scrumptious August!

Lucky Girl

Gosh, it is so busy at the moment! Chelmsford, in case you didn't know, is hosting a huge Scout Jamboree, which means we have a lot of Scouts joining the library to use our free internet service. We are also running a summer reading scheme for the children, and we have all of our usual customers in as well, so this week it feels like I have been run off of my feet!

Add to that the fact that I have only 11 more sleeps to go until I get married, and perhaps you will all forgive the somewhat sporadic nature of my blogging recently!

I am resolved that when I am back from honeymoon to be a more regular blogger, and to post a little more about my cooking and crafting adventures.

We had the wedding rehearsal on Saturday, and, miraculously, it cured my butterflies. I have not been nervous about the wedding exactly, more really excited and aware of how much there is to do, and hopeing it will be a lovely day. I was waking up in the night with them, and taking ages to go to sleep because of them!

Last night my friend Lisa came to visit. We always have lovely chats on a Monday night, planning hedgerow adventures (such as Elderflower Cordial and Blackberry Brandy), clothes we want to make, and our appreciation of Mr Darcy and so on. Last night was even nicer than usual, as Lisa brought me a bunch of sweet peas picked from her garden. They are now sitting on my coffee table; they are so exuberantly cheerful and smell so sweet that I am quite determined that when I have my own garden I shall grow them, and bestow them as gifts.

I had another lovely surprise today- I arrived at work and found a box with a ribbon on my desk with a note saying 'open me' so I did. Nestled amongst scrumptious pink tissue paper was the most thoughtful thing in the world. A scrapbook of photographs from my hen party, and photographs of me as a little girl. There are also messages from friends, and memories of me from my sister and mum. Things I had half forgotten, or thought I had dreamed.

Like, for example a conversation when I was tiny, in the bath with my sister. Mum always insisted that we use proper words, always yes, never yeah. Always you, never yer. So, in the bath we were, when I noticed the condensation on the wall. Mum told me that it could also be called 'moisture' and, according to my sister, I frowned very hard at her and said 'Moist-YOU not Moist-YER Mum!'

Although I am loving organizing my wedding, there is a little tiny bit of me that is looking forward very much to being married, and being able to do crafts that are not wedding crafts, and read books, and cook, and do so much that I don't seem to have time for now!

Introducing Mimi

Well, here I am! It was my hen party this weekend, and I had some pictures emailed to me, so I decided to share one. We went to the Gardens of Easton Lodge, (which is one of the most peaceful places I know) and shared a picnic and champagne while a jazz band played! By the time this picture was taken, I had danced quite a lot, and drank quite a lot! I am a little hesitant to show it. For all sorts of reasons, but the biggest is vanity, I think. No I do not usually have a double chin, I think! No I do not have arms that big, I think! No, I do not normally grin so madly, I think! It is that thing of the person you see in your mind not quite matching the person you see in a photograph of yourself. But yes, this is me- I am on the left, wearing the tiara, and glasses, and am with my lovely sister, who organized the evening for me. (That is not a bandana she has got on, it is a 20's style headband!) It's a good job you can't see a photograph of me right now, as I have rather baggy eyes. We went to see the vicar last night to talk about our wedding service, and didn't leave until 10:00pm!