Jane and Tim's Wedding

Jane and Tim's Wedding

Such a gorgeous wedding at the stunning Peckforton Castle near Chester. They had done a brilliant job considering the arson related fire they had there in June.

Everyone had the most wonderful day, and night and set up many many memories for the future.

Road Trip!

So we are off to a wedding!!

We have hired a nice car (well it is an astra estate but it is brand new which can only be good) and just set off into the sunshine for our lovely friends, Jane and Tim's wedding. The wedding is at a gorgeous castle called Peckforton Castle near Chester. Its stunning!

Tonight we are staying at lovely Bexy's mum's place, the one and only Penster! I suspect we might share a couple of beverages tonight while we are there... Dangerous as the guys who are already there spent last night drinking too much wine, eating dog biscuits and then one fell asleep under the table with a dog (that would be Bex!).

I am currently being subjected to ganster rap in the car from my husband's iphone... This is bloody silly as he is driving an estate car in a barbour. You can't imagine how stupid I feel...

I have pulled out all the stops for this wedding. I borrowed a fantastic emerald green dress from my dear friend Sam, who has more dresses than I can possibly count! I have my Manolo Blahniks for the reception or as long as I can keep them on for before I have to change into equally high, but less killer, heels. I have a fab fascinator and some awesome matching nail varnish so I am hoping I will look nice... Major pressure to look good as the other ladies will be looking stunning at this wedding, plus the bride will be looking awesome I am sure.

I shall obviously post up a picture or two tomorrow. For now, I shall go and try and stop my husband embarrassing us too much with his gangster tunes or running over any cyclists.

Oh, I hate road trips by the way!

Everyday I'm shuffling...

The best advert of this year? Quite possibly...

This is reinforced by the fact that my mates Beej and Lev love this song and every party has a shuffle off on the dance floor! I have yet to capture the awesomeness of this on video yet but here is the hamster version for now!

Brilliant use of cultural relevancy in advertising - which is usually done very very badly!

God I love this advert... I wish Toys R Us would run it all the time...

They should just do an updated version of it!

I love, and loathe, public transport!

I am currently stuck on the platform at victoria station. This happens 4 days out of 5, victoria tube will be shut, over crowded, delayed or some other dreadful excuse that makes me late for work, hot and cross.

I have had to wait for 3 trains to go past as they are too full to get any more people on. I am not even on a train yet and I've been trying to get to one for 15 minutes!

Its a shame as I genuinely like public transport, unlike my husband who hates tfl, bob crow and everything about it with a passion that borders on obsession! I think it could be very convenient, it can be very pleasant and should work better than it does.

I don't have the answers (but I don't think paying tube drivers over £40k helps - they don't do anything!) but I do hope that it can keep going, get better and not get so expensive that ordinary people are priced off it as has happened with the overground trains into London.

I don't care about ticket offices (I buy my oyster season ticket from my local newsagent) or drivers. I would prefer drivers to convert into more platform staff to help people find their way about and keep the flow of the station moving. More staff actually helping people, rather than standing in ticket offices or cabs would make people feel safer and more comfortable. Especially in the run up to the olympics when thousands of people every hour will be trying to find their way from one platform or tube line to another - tourists don't want drivers, they need help and instructions.

The same with buses, when I first moved to London, I didn't get the bus anywhere as it was far too bloody confusing to figure out where to catch it from, to get where, what number etc. I will admit that the annoying shouty messages DO make it easier to know where you are and therefore where to get off but only because I can follow the bus route on google maps on my phone. Surely tfl or lovely Boris (best mayor EVER) could find a way to simplify and demystify the bus network. I have friends who have lived in london a decade and still can't get on a bus as they aren't sure how it works! And if they can't, how the hell do we expect tourists and olympic visitors to negotiate their way about?

I have finally got to the office. Its taken a long time. I still love public transport but god knows other countries do it so so much better than us. I wonder if london will ever catch up! We claim we are one of the greatest cities in the world. We aren't, not by a long shot, but its got so much potential - if only someone could figure out how to get us from a to b properly, that would be a good start.

Time for work!

GU chocolate souffles

We just got some chocolate souffles given to us in the office from GU. It says to oven cook them but I microwaved mine and it turned out fine.

Yum! A pretty fine afternoon snack!

A

Spreadsheets will eat your brains...

I swear spreadsheets are like Zombies and eat your brains. They completely suck the will to live out of me and I have a strong urge to blast their heads off with a shotgun in an I am Legend style...

Right... back to work on the dreaded spreadsheet then...

Store Cupboard Shopping

Today I am doing my monthly shop for my store cupboard essentials...

My friends always laugh that I can knock up a meal from anything, and that is pretty much true. Whether it is born of laziness as I hate going to the shops, or necessity from when I was a student, I can pretty much take a look in the cupboard and make dinner for people from what is there (and maybe the freezer as well but that is technically a cupboard).

I don't put this down to any particular cleverness on my part, merely a decently stocked pantry. My mum has the most awesome pantry & larder that is always a host of treasures so it is no great surprise that I tend to have the same sort of things in order to make last minute meals.

Included in my stocks today are tins of tuna, pulses, herbs, cake mix and pizza bases. From just a few small ingredients, we can make an awesome meal.

For example: Super fast pizza
1 pizza base (frozen or from cupboard pack - do not defrost the pizza base if you have frozen them or it will go soggy)
1/2 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp of pesto
2 cloves of garlic (optional)
oregano or basil (dried)
grated or crumbled cheese of any sort

The it is simply a matter of mixing the tomato and pesto together, spreading it over the pizza base, sprinkle with your chosen cheese, sliced garlic (if you like it), some herbs, black pepper and then put in hot oven (200 degrees) until cooked. If you have any other spare veg etc you want to pop on the top with the cheese, so much the better!

Voila - a delicious pizza, without a trip to the shops, in about 10 minutes. Perfect for when you want junk food but don't want to fork out for a take away.

Anyway, this is just one example of why I need a huge amount of storage space in my kitchen, I can feed an army from the cupboards alone. I love thinking up things to do with what I have, rather than running out and buying specific items for a recipe. It lets me be more creative, to think on my feet and try new things. It doesn't always work I will admit (some truly awful lemon flavoured cous cous springs to mind) but it saves a fortune and means that, no matter who drops in, I can always find something to make them to snack on!

All this talk of food is making me hungry... time for a cup of tea!

Negative Space art - and why I wish my job was reading blogs

I could spend hours reading blogs. Seriously, I could while away whole days just reading, clicking and being fascinated by all the stuff people put online.

Billions of photos are uploaded every day, thousands of blog posts are published every minute and it would take hundreds of years to read all the blogs on the internet.

I love finding interesting things on blogs. I just read a gorgeous article on negative space art and here is my favourite example.

I really need to concentrate but the rest of that blog looks so interesting! Perhaps just one more page...

How to eat a guinea pig... and why you shouldn't

A long time ago in a restaurant far, far away, I felt the need to order the guinea pig...

I was in Bolivia, we were in a funny little restaurant, about 15 of us, with a huge bread basket shaped like a reed boat from Lake Titicaca which we later took and tied to the front of our truck - but that is another story...

Guinea pig (Cuy in Bolivian Spanish) - the chicken of the Andes - as our waiter told us. Turned out all those "chicken" stews we had eaten on the islands in Lake Titicaca weren't chicken at all. They were guinea pig.

So I decided that I would order a whole one. My friend was horrified, she used to have a pet guinea pig. I never did, I had hamsters so was pretty relaxed about ordering a rodent for dinner. I have mentioned before that I will eat anything and that is pretty much true so I took great delight in tormenting people with the concept of the dish that was winging its way to my plate.

So dinner is served. It came with chips and rice (everything in Bolivia pretty much comes with chips and rice). It looked like it had been run over and then sent sky diving. It was kind of flat... but ok, there was no need to be Cuy about it (sorry) - my friend moved chairs she was so repulsed by my dinner. So I tried chopping it up with my knife and fork... surprisingly little meat on it... I always thought guinea pigs were kind of fat.

Well fat is one thing they have, the meat was greasy, and hard to get off the bone. I ended up having to virtually dismember the beast and eat it like it was chicken wings. I felt somewhat repulsed.

After putting that much thought and effort into my meal, I was very disappointed by the result. I also ended up being sick, which I firmly accused the guinea pig of, but my friend put down to tequila and cuba libres.

I still blame the little beast for a batch of food poisoning, but it also made some great memories!

It's Official... I am obsessed with food

I love food - pretty much any type of food. Today I had some delicious homemade chicken stew with wilted spinach and new potatoes. It was delicious, fresh with tarragon, creamy, with a hint of tomato and the chicken was perfectly cooked.

Then I discovered Joy the Baker's blog (see image for her spinach breakfast has - YUM) and I am now entirely hungry all over again. It is weird - I can literally eat double what most men would eat and will try pretty much anything. My only conclusion is that... yes, I am obsessed with food.

I really need to make more of an effort

I am struck today with an inherent realisation that I have been a pretty lazy cow of late...

I haven't been blogging, I haven't been keeping in touch with my mates as much as I should, I haven't been concentrating properly.

I put this down to 2 things:
1 - I have a baby and a husband. This leaves pretty much bog all time or money to do anything else. By the time I have got home from work, put the baby to bed, cleaned up all the toys, made dinner and put on some laundry, I have pretty much lost the will to live and want to go to bed.
2 - I read too much. When I am not flapping around the house like an anally retentive idiot, I sit and read. A lot. I read very very quickly and get massively sucked into books. I therefore tend to stop paying attention to what is going on around me.

Recently this has been the fault of a series of books recommended to me by my mother by Diana Gabaldon. So far there are 7 books, I am on number 5. They are not that big, maybe 600 pages each but as I only read after I have done everything else, I am getting frustrated that it has taken me over 3 weeks to read the first 4 books. Before my son was born, I would happily spend hours on a Saturday just sat on the sofa, drinking tea and reading my latest book. However, playing with him and taking him for walks is a lot more fun, but I do miss my reading time!

A further reason I get bugger all done is that I spend far too much time on the internet. As this post would show, rather than having the realisation that I have been a lazy cow about certain things lately, having a word with myself and cracking on with things, I chose to blog about it.

Yep - of all the things I SHOULD be doing, I decided the most pressing thing to do was to reinstate my blog. I have a poor sense of priorities sometimes. But writing about doing nothing is preferable to actually having to do things...