A Room With a View

As is probably obvious from my severe lack of posts recently, I just haven't had the time to post, and when the time has presented itself, in the evenings, I generally find I'm too braindead from looking after a toddler all day to compose anything. Harsh as it may sound, looking after a toddler all day, every day, does sap your brain power. I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about what projects I'd love to be working on, whilst sitting on the floor with Noah and being handed pieces of toddler sized puzzle (or whilst trying to have a peaceful breakfast!) with accompanying "uh, uh" sound. We frequently refer to Noah as a seal at the moment, due to said sound.

This post is being written whilst I wait for dinner to be ready, with the laptop plugged in on the kitchen worktop. I took these photos a couple of weeks ago, when the cherry blossoms which line our street came into full bloom. April must be my favourite time of year in our home, and the view from our bedroom window is of the cherry blossom tree immediately outside our house. The pink complements our bedroom decor perfectly, most conveniently!

As you can see, I've been messing around with the camera effects. The fifth and sixth are vivid and the last is toy camera effect. I love how you can create instant atmosphere, especially if you're not a fantastic photographer - I'm not!

I have so many posts to write, and I really am going to try harder to make time to post more often. I can't believe I'm not even making once a week. I've decided to expand my content repertoire to include a bit of cooking and baking as well. I cook every night, so have plenty to say about that, and have been really getting into baking recently. I have a plethora of cake photos just waiting patiently to be recalled from the depths of my blog photos folder. I'm hoping to have a finished Apres Surf very soon as well; just the neckband to knit now. It's Wonderwool Wales next weekend, so I've been planning on what projects to buy for. I also ripped out my pathetic attempt at the Spring Forward sock this evening, ready to recommence with renewed focus sometime soon. I have a couple of small projects I have yarn for already, and I'm definitely ready for a small one considering how long I've been slaving working on Apres Surf.

Have a fantastic and restful (if you need it) weekend :)

x Sam

Baking stuff

I've been doing some baking experimentation recently. I love cooking, and have no problem working from different recipies and am confident that they will work and be tasty. Baking however, is another story. Last year at my baby shower, my friend Ruth and I tried to bake. I made muffins which were supposed to to contain half fresh blueberries and half dried fruit. I thought how much nicer it would be to have fresh raspberries with the blueberries rather than the dried fruit. Being such an inexperienced baker (though perhaps common sense should have told me), I ended up with a batch of muffins that were so soggy they would not come out of the cases, and were co collapsed that they were inedible! As a joke, my friend bought me a book entitled Easy Muffins. Surely I could not go wrong... Well I didn't actually get round to baking anything from Easy Muffins until a couple of weeks ago, when I had a sudden desire to bake, and bake, and bake. I decided on muffins which contained apple (we have a huge Bramley apple tree in the garden, and a huge surplus of apples), and something else, I forget what. Anyway, I didn't have the right type of sugar, so I did a little substitution... and once again ended up with a batch of inedible muffins which would not come out of their cases and had to be binned. How ironic!

I have had a few successes though. I baked a Cinnamon Nutella cake for Noah's birthday...

... and an Apple and Walnut cake for Marno's birthday...

... making good use of those apples again! I have bags of them in the freezer, all chopped up and waiting to go in a crumble. Here is a fabulous crumble as it happens (I don't usually have a problem with puddings!) As you can see, I'm not one of those mums who can make a space rocket or a beautiful princess cake.

I also decided it was time to bake bread. I've wanted to for ages, and I have a loaf tin sitting folornly in the cupboard. I was excited to give the dough a good knead, like a buxom cook from a period drama, but with less of the buxomness! Goodness, does kneading give your arms a workout. I think I only gave it three minutes for the first knead, for the first loaf, but on the second (yes, I have baked bread twice now!), I followed what someone suggested in the comments from the brilliant BBCGoodFood website from which I got the recipe, and kneaded it once, left to rise for half an hour, then kneaded it again and left for another hour. I found the second loaf was slightly less thick, and rose a little higher.

 

Mmmm... freshly baked granary bread straight from the oven, buttered and served with slightly spicy butternut squash and chilli soup, the nicest soup I've ever made.

 

I think I should be some kind of agent for BBCGoodFood. I use the website nearly every evening and am constantly recommending it to people. 

I made these Mocha Muffins the other day...

...which did actually work, but they weren't the best muffins I've ever tasted. They included raisins, which I wasn't really sure about when I read the recipe, but added them anyway, and I don't think rainins and mocha are the best pairing. 

Anyway, I was going to write about curtains before I was overtaken by cakes, so that will be for next time. Now its time for the little boy to have his milk,

Byeee xxx