Wakehurst Place

We are very fortunate to live within striking distance of Wakehurst Place, which is "Kew in the country".  The children have been loving their "Adventurous Journeys"; we have been twice this week! Wakehurst has put a lot of effort into conserving meadowland, which is a great natural habitat for flowers and insects. They also have hives to pollinate all those wild flowers. The results were obvious today; the butterflies, grasshoppers and bees were out in force!

Tea Bread

I have had a bag of currants lurking in the back of the cupboard since I made Christmas pudding last year. It kept leaking its contents so I finally decided to use it up in some tea bread. My Mother-in-Law passed this recipe on to me when I was first married and I have baked it many times since. There are lots of variations out there on the web but this one is really simple.

Ingredients

8oz/225g dried fruit (You can use any fruit you have hanging around)
8oz/225g self raising flour
6oz/170g soft brown sugar (dark or light)
6fl oz/190ml cold black tea
1 tsp mixed spice
1 egg
1 level tbsp marmalade or honey (I prefer marmalade!)

Method

You have to start the evening before by putting all the fruit and sugar in a large bowl, adding the tea, giving it a quick mix around and leaving it to soak overnight.

The next day simply add the rest of the ingredients and give it a thorough mixing.

Put the mixture into a greased and lined 2lb loaf tin. After quite a few failed cakes, I realised that lining the tin made the cake a whole lot easier to remove.

 Bake it at 180C, (160C for a fan oven), or at Gas Mark 4. The recipe says to bake it for 1 hour 15 minutes, but I normally find it takes less time than that, so keep half an eye on it!

Tea bread is lovely eaten by itself, but is also very nice buttered.

Passing on the baton.....

or the needle!

DD has just finished her first cross-stitch. It took her a little while, but she really persevered and I am very proud of her. The little cheeky penguin is a Mouseloft design. They do a great range of tiny kits which are excellent for beginners.

 

 

What a happy chap!

DD has already started on her next project. She is thinking ahead and working on a Christmassy theme!

Cosy teapot!

 

I have finished the tea cosy which was originally designed by Frankie Brown. I am very happy with it and smile every time I see it. It didn't take as long as I thought it would, despite the tiresome amount of ribbing. I don't like ribbing, too much moving of yarn around to get a decent rhythm going. I found the buttons reasonably cheaply as well and I am pleased with the effect. My teapot is quite chubby, so in the end the larger size fitted perfectly. Now I just need to make some fairy cakes to go with it!

DD enjoyed getting creative with the camera!

Fudging it!

This year we decided to make fudge as a thank you gift for DS's teacher. The recipe I use is from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "River Cottage Everyday".

I was given this as a gift a few years ago and it is one of my favourites. Hugh's recipe uses butter and cream but there are lots of ways to make fudge and Google will throw up a load of different choices.

Morgan from "Growing in the Fens" makes her's using condensed milk, and I have made it using marshmallows, but that was a bit weird! Some recipes use a microwave, but not owning one we stuck to the traditional stove top method with a sugar thermometer. This is the one part of the recipe that DS didn't do!

For some reason the fudge looked a bit anaemic but it still tasted delicious. Not all of it made it as far as the school...

Cross stitch wedding card

Some friends of mine are getting married on Saturday. I am so excited; I haven't been to a wedding in ages! I found the May/June issue of Cross Stitch Card Shop magazine when I visited my local craft shop a while ago.

As you can see, my copy is getting very dog-eared! It has some lovely quirky designs for wedding cards:

I found the cross stitch itself pretty straightforward. It took slightly longer than the recommended time, but I think I am a pretty slow stitcher. However, the outlining was a bit different. Don't look too hard at the groom's tie; he hasn't got it on straight at all!

I couldn't get the recommended aperture cards and had to make do with slightly smaller ones. I fiddled around with double-sided sticky tape and added a bit of bling to come up with a finished product:

I very much enjoyed making it. There are a few other designs in the magazine that I am itching to have a go at, but I have a backlog of Guide badges to sew on to a camp blanket first!

Olympic torch comes to town!

Having followed the progress of the Olympic torch around the country, the kids and I were very excited when it finally arrived in our neck of the woods today! We were at the assigned spot in plenty of time, complete with flags and cameras. We were in the schools area, so there were lots of excited children, a lot of enthusiastic flag-waving and whistle-blowing, even some drum-banging. After what felt like an age random cars started to go past:

 

This one had an unusual passenger!  Cheering could be heard in the distance, and finally the torch itself arrived:

I'm not exactly sure who this torchbearer is - but he was certainly popular today.