Word of the Week- Quiet

 

Craig and Matthew went to London for the day last week and had to be up at ridiculous o’clock to catch the train. Obviously, I was awake as well as it would have been impossible to stay asleep whilst they were getting ready. Once they had gone the house was still, quiet, and peaceful in a way that it isn’t normally. It was probably because it felt like the world was still asleep and I relished the calm and quietness.  Since then, I have been wanting to find ways in which to be quieter.

 That doesn’t mean that I am waking up earlier (5.15am is quite early enough thank you very much), but I am no longer putting the TV or radio on when I first go downstairs. When I am in the car driving to work I don’t have music or an audio book playing. The only noises are the sound of the engine and the road. At home, if the TV isn’t on then I don’t switch it on and I prepare dinner with only the sound of the food preparation as accompaniment.  As the weather has been good, I have taken to sitting outside for a short time with a cup of tea and just listening to the birds singing away and the distant hum of the motorway. I have also discovered a few ‘silent vlogs’ on Youtube which I am enjoying when I feel like watching something. I haven’t even put the radio on when I have been in my craft room so the only sounds have been the whirring of the sewing machine or overlocker.

 Since I have tried to make things quieter, I have found I am doing things more slowly but mindfully and have been feeling calmer and seem to have more patience. I have also found that when I have been in the car with other people and the radio has been on that I have felt more uptight.  I know it has only been just over a week since I have been doing this but I am enjoying the benefits of this quieter life. Maybe it is an age thing or maybe it is just me changing and wanting to focus on different priorities or maybe I have just had enough of the noise in the world. Whatever the reason I will enjoy it for as long as lasts.

Linking up with Anne, so why not hop over and take a look at other's words of the week.

What I have been doing in March.

 

March was a very mixed month. It started with a lot of socialising, I was ill in the middle and Craig caught Covid at the end.

 

Making

 I wasn’t really able to do much crafting this month due to various things but I did manage to make flower box frames for Mother’s Day gifts for my Mum and Craig’s Mum.

 I finally got around to making my own pair of pyjama bottoms from my Tilly and the Buttons book. I had made a pair for Emma last month as she wanted them for when she went away. I will be saving mine for when we go away in July. I had to learn how to thread my overlocker which caused a great deal of stress as I am very long sighted and struggled to see where some of the thread needed to pass through the machine. Thankfully a purchase of a pair of glasses that magnified and had built in lights solved the problem.

 I did go to the W.I craft clubs. The crafts were very quick to make and we ended up spending more time talking than making.

 

Watching.

Being ill in bed meant that I was able to binge watch Season 6 of Downton Abbey which I could watch constantly and Season 4 of Agatha Raisin. I had seen the episode at Christmas but missed the rest of the series. Agatha’s outfits are looking more and more eccentric and I would love the confidence to make bolder outfit choices.

 Craig and I started watching Death in Paradise from the beginning and got through the episodes with Ben Millar as D.I Richard Poole. It was a complete shock when he left as I expected it at the end of a season, not the beginning. I won’t give any spoilers in case anyone wants to watch them. I really liked the characters and the relationships they had. If only the police over here were so efficient and effective. You do have to suspend belief with how quick the results for everything come through and how the murderer is caught so quickly but it is enjoyable to watch and the scenery is beautiful.

 As a family we watched ‘The Adam Project’ on Netflix with Ryan Reynolds. The young boy who played the younger Adam was absolutely brilliant and could have easily passed as Ryan Reynold’s son, both in looks and character. It was an interesting story where Adam, a time traveller, accidentally crashes in 2022 and has to team up with his 12 year old self to save the world.

 

Reading

The Crafternoon Sewcial Club by J. Williams

 The Blurb

It's not that single mum Charlotte Newman is completely and utterly obsessed with crafting, necessarily.

Sure, she has balls of wool stashed everywhere like a squirrel stores nuts and more needles than a tattoo parlour. But that doesn't mean she has a problem, right?

Finding herself between jobs, Charlotte fills her time teaching crafting skills at the local nursing home. Encouraged by how positively the residents respond, the possibility of a career doing what she adores fills her mind.

The first step towards that ambition is creating a crafting hub for the community – The Crafternoon Sewcial Club.

When a local charity announces a major knitting-themed fundraiser, Charlotte sees the ideal stage to put her new club firmly on the crafting map and drum up new members in the process.

Unfortunately, not everybody is on board with her vision for a crafting club, as it turns out. Indeed, some are even hoping to see Charlotte's dream come crashing down around her.

Still, she won't let a minor issue like that derail her plans…

To ensure victory, then, she'll need to rally her new members and ask her friends from the nursing home to get those needles clicking faster than a hummingbird's wings!

 It was a light and thoroughly enjoyable read. Every character was lovely (even Charlotte’s nemesis in the end). I would love to live in a community where everybody helps each other and the right thing is always done. It is a definite chick-lit kind of book and I wanted to read it because of the crafting element. I don’t think I would rush to read it again, but it is the perfect book for when you are on holiday or ill in bed.

 

If You Could See Me Now – Cecelia Ahern

 The Blurb

What if love was right there in front of you – you just couldn't see it?

Elizabeth Egan is too busy for friends. As a reluctant mother to her sister Saoirse's young son Luke and with her own business to run, every precious moment is made to count.

But with Saoirse crashing in and out of their lives, leaving both her sister and her son reeling, Luke and Elizabeth are desperately in need of some magic.

Enter Ivan. Wild, spontaneous and always looking for adventure, in no time at all Ivan has changed Elizabeth in ways she could never have imagined. But is Ivan too good to be true? Has Elizabeth opened her heart only to risk it being broken again?

 

Not the kind of book I would choose myself, it was the W.I book club choice. I thought it was an original concept for a romance and though it ended as I expected I found I still had some questions about some of the other characters.

 

What else.

 

The first weekend we were away for the weekend at a Masonic Ladies Weekend at St Anne’s near Blackpool. It was a very enjoyable weekend and it was good to catch up with everyone after a couple of years. I won a rather nice handbag on the tombola so I was very happy. There was plenty to eat and drink and it was nice that for the first time it was just Craig and I. As it is a family event the kids normally come along with us, but this year Emma was working and Matthew did not want to come along. I did not mind at all, though they did miss out on the suite that we ended up being allocated which was bigger than some flats/apartments and had a terrace that was as big as the back garden we had in our first house. It is normally given to the Worshipful Master and his partner, but it is at the back of the hotel and the Worshipful Master wanted a sea view. It would be lovely if we could get it again next year. I did drop a hint to the Lodge secretary 😊

 

Happy Homemaker Monday / Menu Plan 4th April 2022

 

I haven’t really menu planned properly for a few weeks as I had a really bad cold that put me in bed for a few days and then Craig caught Covid. He wasn’t ill but he has been stuck at home and suffered from cabin fever. One of the ways that came out was becoming really fussy about what he wanted to eat, so I left the meal ideas to him because he never wanted what I suggested.

 As Craig couldn’t go out, he missed going to see ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ which we had booked last minute. One of Matthew’s friends came along instead. I enjoyed the show, it was a very different performance than the last time I went to see it. Hat’s off the Alexandra Burke who at 6 or 7 months pregnant was still giving it her all during the dance routines she had to do.  I wasn’t overly impressed with Jason Donovan though.

 Anyway, looking to this week

 The Weather

Not the best, but hopefully will improve next week for the long Easter Weekend.

 

Watching on TV.

Craig and I watched an episode of Death in Paradise at Christmas and over the last few weeks we have been binge watching all of the seasons. We are currently up to Season 4. Loved Ben Millar and was shocked at his exit. I am getting used to Kris Marshal who is obviously playing a very different character. We keep trying to guess who the murderer is each episode. We have about a 60% success rate.

 Looking around the house

It is getting to that time of year again when I want to get everything organised and decluttered. Over the weekend I cleaned out and organised my kitchen drawers, cleaned out my wardrobe and tidied the garage. There are a couple of kitchen cupboards that I want to tackle and a cupboard in the living room for me to do this week. I also want to finally donate my CD’s as I have no way of playing them. Craig has copied the ones I want to keep and put them onto a USB for me so I can listen to them in the car. I am hoping to tackle the garden when the weather improves next week.

 On the Menu

As the weather isn’t brilliant then I feel like eating comfort food.

 Monday- YOYO (You’re on your own)

Tuesday -Lasagne

Wednesday – Meatzza

Thursday – Dirty Fries

Friday- Meatball sub

Saturday- Chicken Fajitas

Sunday- Roast Dinner

 To relax this week.

Normally I would have a craft project or two on the go to help me relax but I seem to have lost my crafting mojo, so this week I am going to watch ‘Death on the Nile’ and re-watch ‘Fantastic Beasts, The Crimes of Grindelwald’ to remind myself of what happened before going to see the new one.

Linking up with Karen at Cats, Kids, Chaos and Sandra at Diary of a Stay at Home Mom to see what everyone else is planning this week.

Have a good week.

Deborah

Word of the Week -Apathy

 

In contrast to my last word of the week,I have felt rather disinterested in doing anything this half of the month but sitting watching Youtube or Netflix. It is not normally like me as I like to feel like I am being productive most of the time. I haven’t read for pleasure and I have only completed one craft project and that was only because it is a gift for Mother’s Day. I have had ideas for blog posts and then not written them. The only thing I have managed to do consistently is cleaning. This is normally pushed down the list of priorities when I am in a creative frame of mind so I suppose it isn’t a bad thing.

 I have also had a really bad cold that floored me for a week including spending a day in bed and a day lying on the sofa. It wasn’t Covid as all the tests I did came back negative. I have never had a cold that bad. Normally I can just push through it and get things done and although I tried this time I just couldn’t. I had to have three days off work because I felt so ill.

 I know this feeling is only temporary and I will soon be back to my normal self. It is only because at the moment things have been quiet in work and I have had to drag some of my tasks out to fill the day. I like to be busy in work, not to the point where I am snowed under with work but enough to keep me ticking over and the day is filled. I like to be under a certain amount of pressure as I get more done both at home and at work. When I am quiet in work I find that I do less at home because I feel more tired due to a bit of boredom. That is going to change in the next couple of weeks once I get a new project to work on.

 I can already feel that things are starting to improve with the fact that I have written and published this post. I have also completed a scrapbook /journaling project that was outstanding from the end of last year and I am looking to make a pair of pyjama bottoms this weekend.

Linking up with Anne at Raisie Bay

Word of the Week-Busy

 

Despite wanting to live a slower and simpler life, this week I have been busier than I have been so far this year. Craig and I were away last weekend for a Masonic Ladies Weekend. Although we had a thoroughly enjoyable time and it was something we both needed, it meant that the jobs I do at weekend did not get done. I got dates mixed up and almost forgot that a W.I meeting was this week so I have been out 3 nights this week with various W.I commitments. Wednesday was the only evening I had at home apart from today and that was spent catching up with ironing.  I have not gone to the gym this week in an attempt to get some cleaning done. Craig has also been out 4 evenings with his Masonic meetings and practises and on Saturday he is going to be out helping a friend build a new shed. Emma works in the evenings and has spent her days applying for  ‘9 to 5’ jobs and Matthew has been doing revision for his second round of ‘mocks’.  

 Craig and I are out again Saturday evening at another Masonic Ladies Evening.  The Ladies Evenings/Weekends are the Lodges way of saying ‘thank you’ to the wives and partners of the Masons for as I say ‘ letting them go out and play’. There is a meal, entertainment and all the Ladies receive a gift. The evening is also a way of raising money for Charity as there is always some form of raffle or game. For example the Ladies weekend raised over £1200 from a tombola, a rolling raffle for a pamper hamper and a raffle for a weekend stay at the hotel.

 It isn’t helped by the fact that now the worst of the winter is hopefully over my mind has turned to spring cleaning and wanting to get everywhere decluttered and organised. I know this is self-imposed and the cleaning police are not going to come and lock me up for having cluttered cupboards. Does anyone else get that feeling at this time of year? It means that I am going to have to juggle doing all the crafts that I had planned (including 2 Mothers Day gifts) with the Spring cleaning on top of my normal weekly cleaning because I know it will just play on my mind until things are done.

 It is at times like this when I wish I didn’t work full time and I could spend my days decluttering, cleaning, reading, taking Penny out for long walks, crafting and enjoying the cooking process.  I had a taste of this life when I was furloughed and loved every minute of it. I felt like I was leading a slower life even though there were still the W.I meetings via Zoom. It was probably because I had the extra time when I would normally be working so wasn’t having to cram everything into the few hours between finishing dinner and going to bed.

 Does anyone else feel like now Spring is on its way that they are getting busier?

Check out Anne at Raisie Bay to see other peoples Word of the Week.

Happy Homemaker Monday / Menu plan 28th February 2022

 

It is immensely sad what is going on in the Ukraine and I absolutely respect those Ukrainians who are staying to defend their homes. Like the rest of the world it was with sadness and disbelief when I heard that Russia had actually invaded and I am proud of the way the world has reacted and condemned these actions. Even the majority of Russians did not want this to happen. Hoping and praying that it does not escalate and it is over quickly.

 When Covid started I purposely decided to stop listening and reading to the news all the time. I found that I was starting to feel anxious and worried which are not feelings I was used to. I catch headlines so I am aware of what is going on, but I don’t want to dwell on matters that are out of my control. So, I am not going to go write too much about what is going on for my own sanity.

 Weather

We had a glorious weekend weather wise, much needed after the storms of the last few weeks. Today, however it is back to grey and dull. It does look like it is getting brighter towards the end of the week however.

 Menu plan

It is a nice, simple menu plan this week with Pancake Day and Ash Wednesday taking care of two days. Craig and I are at a Masonic Ladies Weekend in Lytham St Anne’s which we are both looking forward to. Emma is going to be cooking for her and Matthew as neither wanted to come along.

Monday – Chicken Caesar Salad

Tuesday – Pancakes

Wednesday – Tatty Ash

Thursday – Ikea meatballs (need to take a trip to Ikea)

Friday, Saturday, Sunday- Away for the weekend

 Craft basket

Starting on the Dumbo element of the Disney Cross Stitch this week once I have purchased a smaller hoop. There are also got some needle felted love birds to finish off and  I have cast on a new dishcloth pattern.

 On the TV.

A couple of months ago Craig and I caught an episode of ‘Death in Paradise’ on TV and we both enjoyed it, so this week we have started watching the programme from the first episode with Ben Millar. 

 On my reading pile

I have about halfway through ‘The Crafternoon Sewcial Club’ by  J Williams which is an easy read. The book club choice this month is ‘If you could see me now’ by Cecilia Aherne. I have also got ‘The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting’ by Evanna Lynch (Luna from Harry Potter) where she retells her life with anorexia when she was a child.

 

Wishing you all a peaceful week.

Linking up with Karen and Sandra as usual.

Making Lattes in a Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser vs Nespresso Vertuo

 We bought Emma a Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser for Christmas as she drinks a lot of hot chocolate and had wanted one for a while. She loves it and it is used at least once a day. I am not a great fan of hot chocolate as I now find it a bit too sweet for my liking.

I am more of a coffee drinker and I have a Nespresso machine which I have had for several years (I took out a subscription so the machine only cost £1). When I found out that you could now get flavoured lattes to make in the Velvetiser I thought I would give them a go and see how they compare to the Nespresso.

I went for the Everyday Selection 10 pack which included 3x Caffe Latte, 3 x Chocolate Latte, 2 x Salted Caramel Latte and 2x Hazelnut Latte for £14. The flavoured coffees at Nespresso cost between £5.20 -£6.20 for 10 Vertuo pods and you only get the one flavour in the pack.

Making the lattes 

In the Velvetiser you simply pour the milk and the contents of the latte sachet into the Velvetiser and press the on button. It takes a couple of minutes to make the latte.

In my Nespresso I have to warm /froth the milk in the aeroccino and put the coffee pod into the Nespresso machine and press the button for the coffee to dispense into the mug. Once the aeroccino has finished you then pour  the milk on top of the coffee and stir.

Taste.

With the Nespresso machine the flavour is quite subtle and sometimes needs a bit of sugar added to really bring it out. That is the same for all the flavours.

With the Velvetiser I found that the Chocolate Latte was very rich and still a bit to chocolately sweet for my taste.

The Caffe Latte again was very rich and despite it only supposed to be coffee flavoured I still felt like there was a hint of a chocolate taste to it.

For both the Caramel latte and the Hazelnut latte I added extra milk once the Velvetiser had finished. This made it less rich which was more palatable for me. However with both there still seemed to be the chocolate undertone.

The Winner.

Although the Velvetiser, according to Emma, makes fantastic hot chocolate I will still to my Nespresso for making Lattes. I find that the Velvetiser is too rich a flavour and is quite thick and creamy for a coffee which is not what I want from a coffee. I found all the Velvetiser lattes a bit sickly and there is no way you would want to drink more than one a day.

The Nespresso is more of the coffee taste and consistency you expect from a latte. I also think that it is better value for money especially if you take out the subscription.

 

I have not been paid nor have received either machine as a gift to undertake this review. This is my own opinion based on products that I paid for myself.