Making Good Use

Choices

I just can't seem to leave a plain one-colour garment alone these days - I always think it'll look better with the judicious addition of a button or two.  Last week, at the car boot sale, I found myself a nice heavier-weight three-quarter sleeve top which was just perfect for cooler autumn days.  Trouble was it was totally plain, and a rather mustardy-yellow colour to boot.  I thought it would look a bit fancier if I added just one button to the centre of the neckline, and I had just the button in mind.

  A quick rummage in the button box gave me far more choices than I'd thought possible - and those in the photo are only the final short-listed ones.  My original idea was to use the rectangular brown button on the neckline but now I'm not so sure.

My current favourite is this quite chunky brown and cream button but, again, I'm not totally convinced it's the best of the bunch.  Anybody out there like to say which are their favourites from the photo.

Trees

Some considerable time and effort has been spent by me this afternoon trying to hack back some of the really tall branches of a large shrub / small tree in our garden.  We had it well trimmed back in the spring but during the summer all sorts of leggy branches have shot out of the top of it and are waving around looking very untidy and, more importantly, beginning to get in the way of the sun now that it's lower in the sky.  I did take some before and after photos but, really, there was so little discernible difference that it would be a waste of space to put them on the blog.  When I was going through the photos I'd uploaded I had a hard time working out which were the befores and which the afters - grrrr!  It's not been a total waste of an afternoon though as when I went into the shed to try and find the small saw we've got - yes, I'd become so desperate I was going to start sawing the damn branches down - I remembered the vintage Christmas tree I got a few weeks ago at the car boot sale.

It has about 60 separate branches that fit into a central trunk and as the sun was shining it seemed a good chance to try putting the thing together.

It is missing the original tripod stand but all the branches are there and although it's a bit of a faff slotting them all in it didn't really take too long.

I only paid £1.00 for it so took a bit of a gamble as to whether it was any good or not.  It really is quite pretty and will be being listed on ebay this week.  (I know, I know - keep Christmas in December and all that - but the market in vintage Christmas decorations seems pretty strong at the moment so I thought I'd strike while the iron's hot.)

Pink and Blue Thrifting

As the weather was really lovely this weekend I went off to the local car boot sale yet again.  With each week that passes I begin to wonder if this week will be the last time I manage to get to a car boot this season but, fingers crossed, the weather seems well settled at the moment with a large high pressure centred over the British Isles. 

I didn't buy much this week even though there were a lot of sellers - and hardly any of them were traders, thank goodnes - but a huge proportion of them seemed to be selling baby and toddler items.  Great if that is what you're looking for but not much use to me.

Pretty much everything I bought was colour co-ordinated, either pink or blue.  There was a very cheerful PVC passport holder in a bright cerise pink with owls all over it.  Not strictly a 'necessary' object but good fun nonetheless and it was only 20p.  Also 20p was a tube of Molton Brown Lipsheen - a sort of slightly-coloured lip balm - I had a look on the Molton Brown site and these things retail at £11.00 each!!!!  Who one earth would pay £11.00 for a lip balm!!  I have quite a collection of these types of things - one downstairs in the living room, one in the bedroom, one in the pocket of my shopping trolley and another in my handbag as I hate it when my lips feel all dry and cracked - yuk.  This new one will soon get taken into use.  I also found a bottle of Molton Brown body lotion which was a tad pricey at 70p but Molton Brown is a really nice brand and the scent to this one is lovely.

I also bought a 3 metre x 54 inch wide piece of Osborne and Little fabric for £1.50.  It's a good home dec. weight piece, pure cotton with a glazed finish to it.  It really is a lovely print - Candle Chestnut - in such beautiful sugared-almond colours although I've no idea what I'll do with it!

If anyone is interested the plum and apple crumble on Friday was delicious and the fact that I'd stewed up the fruit before putting it in the oven didn't seem to matter one little bit.  The roasted tomato sauce was fantastic too (I certainly won't bother to stand about skinning tomatoes in order to make tomato sauce ever again).  The whole meal was a great success and it was even sweeter knowing that most of the ingredients came from our own garden.

Squeezing Yet Another Meal from the Garden

I thought I was so over chopping up plums but a suggestion in this weeks Economy Gastronomy, about using up over-ripe plums in a plum crumble, sent me back out to the tree this morning.  I managed to find approx a colander full of really ripe plums and chopped those up and cooked them.  What I ended up with didn't look quite enough for a crumble so I went back out into the garden and picked in a few more apples - which were also stewed up - and added to a small bowl of stewed apple left over from earlier in the week.  Now all the stewed fruit has been mixed together I think there should be a good sized crumble in the offing.  Of course, when I read the recipe for making the crumble topping I realised that I shouldn't have pre-cooked the fruit!!  I'm pretty certain I made the same mistake last year - what a twerp!  Although somewhere in the back of my mind I remember last year's blackberry and apple crumble being highly tasty.  We'll see - the proof of the pudding and all that.

I also made a roasted tomato and garlic pasta sauce from the tomatoes I've been picking in over the past week.  It was my Mum who suggested making the sauce this way (she read the original recipe somewhere in the blogosphere) and it was so simple - just chop up the tomatoes and place cut-side down on a baking tray add a few cloves of garlic and slosh over a bit of olive oil.  Cook on a medium-ish heat (I cooked them at approx. 175 for approx. two hours) until the tomatoes are soft, let them cool a little, place in a saucepan and blitz with a hand-held mixer thingy.  No need to skin the tomatoes - just chop it all up into the sauce.  I haven't tried it yet but the resultant sauce looks very tasty and quite professional.  I've just added a good pinch of dried basil to it as well as I do like a bit of basil with tomatoes.  We'll be having it on some fancy pants pumpkin-and-ricotta-filled-pasta which was on a special half-price offer at Sainsbury's.  Roll on tea time.

A Chill Wind

I went off to the Thursday car boot sale again this morning, but somehow fear this may have been the last time I'll be going there this season.  There were an awful lot of traders - it was more like a market than a car boot sale - and there was a very chilly wind blowing.  I have to say I wouldn't have wanted to be standing around for a few hours in those temperatures - very nippy.

I managed to find a couple of nice tops for myself, which have now been washed and are out on the line blowing in the still fairly chilly wind.  As they were only £1.00 each and one of them is a three-quarter sleeve, heavier-weight cotton one which will be suitable for the cooler weather that seems to be the norm here now, I was very pleased.

I also got yet another bottle of Body Shop Shwer Gel - this time a rather yummy smelling pink grapefruit one.  A little of it has obviously been used but it's a 250 ml bottle and only cost me 30p (they're £5.85 to buy new - gosh, I hadn't realised quite how expensive Body Shop stuff is!) so that was a nice bargain too.  It's a good job the car boot season is drawing to a close as I'm running out of space to store all the shower gel, face wash, moisturiser etc etc that I've got at the moment.  Come next spring though it'll all have been used up.

Listing for England

I've managed to unearth so many bits and bobs to list on ebay that I'm having to do it in stages rather than, as I usually do it, all in one go on a Thursday afternoon. 

After a lot of trying things on and parading about in front of the mirror, I've had a good purge of my 'what was I thinking of when I bought that' autumn-weight clothes - and am now feeling slightly worried about exactly what I will be wearing when the colder weather comes in.  Probably the same favourite few items that got me through the last couple of winters.  I'm so picky when it comes to clothes and being not only rather rotund but also rather tall (I prefer to call it 'Amazonian'!!) finding clothes that not only fit well but that I actually like can be a bit tricky - to say the least.

I've also been digging around in the various piles of 'stuff' around the bedroom and have managed to unearth some rather nice vintage aprons which have gone on to ebay.

I love the retro prints on vintage pinnys so always pick them up when I come across them. 

I like the idea of wearing them too, but know that a) with my waistline they probably wouldn't even tie up properly and b) I need something much more utilitarian and which covers more of my clothes when I'm cooking.  If I was wearing one of these pristine vintage aprons I'd soon have it covered in all sorts of un-removable stains, tomato being the usual culprit with me.

Rain Stopped Play

Due to the fact that a small monsoon seemed to have parked itself over southern Essex this morning I gave up on the idea of blackberrying and contented myself with picking in a few apples from one of the trees in the garden instead.  I got quite wet enough just being outside the back door for a minute or two, I certainly wasn't going to venture any further in pursuit of fruit - free or otherwise.  The apples have now been stewed up and will no doubt be a tasty enough pudding with another dollop of clotted cream on top - although P may be very virtuous and have his 'au naturel.'  Perhaps I'll have another attempt at blackberrying tomorrow.

The British Heart Foundation were collecting house to house this morning and luckily they'd picked up the four bin bags of books I'd left out for them before the heavens opened.  Their information said to leave donations outside the house by 8.30 am but I had a feeling they tended to be on the early side so my bags went out at 7.45 am.  Sure enough, before ten past eight they were out there loading them into their van.  I'm very grateful that they agree to take books as so many other charity collections only want to take clothing, but I do wonder how many donations they missed out on by arriving earlier than people expect.  I'm just glad I've now got a LOT more space in the shed - although no doubt 'stuff' will quickly be deposited in there again.

I did donate some clothing as well and have also listed a few items I no longer wear on ebay.  I seem to have accumulated A LOT of 'stuff' (clothes and other things) these past few months - probably because of all the car boot sales I've been to recently, and I'm going to try and list as much as possible on ebay to a) clear a bit of space and b) make a bit of extra money.

I used to do a lot of second-hand book selling on Amazon but it gets harder and harder to find books to sell on at a decent price.  Even when things have been listed they often subsequently get taken off again when the prices drop so low it's no longer worth trying to sell them.  Hence why I'd managed to accumulate so many books to donate.  At one time I used to earn approx. £50 per week selling on Amazon, these days I'd be lucky to make £50 per month - and I've definitely noticed the drop in my income.  Ebay, for me, still seems to be a steady place to sell - some things fetch excellent prices, others not so - but one thing's for certain, if I don't list items for sale I sure as hell won't sell them.  Yup, time to get my 'ebay seller' hat on.

Plum Tuckered Out

That's it, I think I'm now officially 'over' making plum jam.  Saturday afternoon saw P, and his incredibly long arms, on a step ladder picking in all of the plums he could reach - and he can reach a very long way with his arms.  We ended up with a washing-up bowl and a carrier bag full of them.  So, having purchased yet more preserving sugar, today I set to and made yet another batch of plum jam.  I seriously don't think I want to cut up another plum for a very long time!!  The plum jam itself is lovely and we're managing to make good inroads into the jam I've already made but, for this year anyway, the jam-making element of the kitchen is closed. C-L-O-S-E-D.  Ferme, finito.

Unfortunately, we still have half a washing-up bowl full of plums and I know my next-door neighbours are also 'all plum-ed out' so I'm seriously considering putting them in a box out the front with a few carrier bags and asking people to help themselves.

The greengages I picked in last week were simply stewed up and proved to be absolutely delicious - especially as we had them with a generous dollop of clotted cream!!

Tomorrow I'm going to investigate the blackberries in the little lane that leads between our road and the next one.  This lane has become almost impassable this summer so I'm hoping I can still squeeze my bulk down there.  Last year I had some lovely blackberries from there and they're really safe to eat too as no vehicles, not even motorbikes, could get through the lane-way and I didn't pick any that were low enough for dogs to have pee'd on them.  The bungalow that lies along one side of the lane has recently been sold to a builder - judging by the amount of work going on, and he is busy ripping out all the overgrown shrubs in the garden so I fear if I don't get my act together quickly he'll have dug out all the blackberry bushes too.  I've got a real craving for blackberry and apple crumble (with clotted cream, of course) so I'm hoping I find at least enough to make one - or two.

Greengages

This is the fifth summer that we've lived in this house and have enjoyed the produce from the fruit trees in the garden.  I am somewhat ashamed to say that this is the first time that I've realised we've got a greengage tree.  I always assumed the thin, lanky tree that produced green fruit which never ripened was some sort of stunted plum tree.  And I'd have gone on thinking that if my next-door neighbour hadn't asked me how the greengages were coming along!!  Right enough, when I went to have a closer look the tree was laden with little green fruits which looked totally different to the lush purple plums.

Yesterday afternoon I braved the great height of tottering about on a wooden chair and managed to pretty much strip the tree of all its fruit.  It was a good colander-ful that I managed to pick in and they're gently simmering away on the stove now so that there'll be stewed greengages for pudding this evening.  I'm so glad my neighbour mentioned them or else, for the fifth year running, they'd have just dropped from the tree!  What an ignoramous.

Likewise the pear tree.  Most years it has produced some fruit (and yes, even I could recognise they were pears) but I've never actually managed to eat any.  This year the tree is laden with pears but I'd begun to notice that quite a few were just rotting on the branch.  After consulting Mum I decided to pick in those that were still good and see if they'll ripen off indoors.  Nothing ventured etc etc.  I think there are 18 pears now in the bowl.  Let's see what happens in the next week or two.

I also want to say thank you very much to Frugal Trenches for the Superior Scribbler award

and to Caroline from Whats Happening at My House for the Kreativ Blogger award.

They're both much appreciated and I'll try and get round to playing by the rules of these awards next week. 

I Like a Nice Cup of Tea in the Morning ....

I do like a nice cup of tea in the morning (Earl Grey preferably) and I'm absolutely no good to anyone until I've downed a really large mug of tea.  Sadly, my largest mug recently met with a tragic end and so I've had to make do with not-as-large-as-I-would-like mugs of tea first thing instead.  This morning at the car boot sale I found a nice large mug, still boxed, for £1.  Not only was it the right size for me but I rather liked the tag line on it too

'Chocolate - It's Like Men .... The Richer The Better!'  You can't argue with that really!!  I know its supposed to be a mug for hot chocolate but, as I don't like hot chocolate, I'll be using it for my morning Rosy Lee instead.  It came with a small grater (originally for grating chocolate but I'll be using it for grating nutmeg) and a small whisk (for whisking grated chocolate I presume which I'll no doubt find a use for when making salad dressing.)

Also found at the car boot this morning was a nice bottle of Body Shop Shower Gel - 50p and a small tub of Body Shop Body Butter - also 50p.  I do like me some Body Shop products in the bathroom.  I'm pretty well stocked now with shower gel, face wash, body butter etc etc but I keep on buying them when I see them as it'll be a long time before the car boot sales start up again and my stock of toiletries will have to keep me going until at least next March or April.  Heaven forbid I'd actually have to buy them from a shop!!  The Body Shop bits are on another rather cheerful vintage pillowcase I found for 20p.  I'm doing very well finding vintage pillowcases lately.