The Relaxed One

It was one of those weekends where I'd made a few loose plans but then when I woke up, didn't feel in the mood for clothes shopping or going into Nottingham.  Instead after a quick drive to the local supermarket I decided it was a day to make things and to use some of the presents I'd had given me.   Cue home made strawberry ice cream, using the ice-cream maker I had for my birthday in November, only to find out that I had to leave the bowl in the freezer for at least eight hours!  I managed around seven hours and then struggled to get it to set, so note to self, read the instructions first!  However, I put it together with some left over meringue and Mr M didn't say no to the Eton Mess I created!

I also made some madeleine cakes, but instead of the lemon, I used vanilla, as Mr M is not partial to anything citrus based in cakes.  I thought I'd overfilled them at first but they seemed to turn out alright and tasted really good!  I used this recipe, in case you are thinking of making any of your own (the madeleine tray came care of Santa!)

Craft Weekend

The weekend before Christmas and time was a little scarce, as you can imagine.   I spent the Friday afternoon (I'm counting this is as a weekend as I was working all day Saturday!) crafting with my little Sister and made the Christmas decorations.  We were a great team; I sewed whilst C did the fiddly bits and not a bad result for our first attempt!

Sunday, I fancied doing a bit of a baking and I had my eye on this recipe from the Good Food website.  A little rustic and thankfully the icing hid a lot of the bits where it stuck to the paper, but hey, first attempt and all that, although I was a little unprepared and should have had a silver board and decorations to finish it off!

It's Behind You

One of the bad habits I've fallen into whenever I work at the weekend, is just doing that, work and then complaining that I feel too tired or can't be bothered to do anything else.  I'm determined that's going to change.

I've heard so much about the pantomime at Nottingham Playhouse and as this was Kenneth Alan Taylor's last pantomime after thirty years, I was determined that we would go at some point.  We had the In Laws over this weekend, so Mr M kindly bought us tickets for the Saturday performance.  I wasn't disappointed.  The costumes and scenery where amazing and so where the dancing rabbits and Buttercup the cow.   The ad libbing was incredibly funny especially when Kenneth took a new member of the cast aside to let her know of the time he once did a whole Frankie Howard routine.

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a visit to the pantomime and certainly a visit to Nottingham Playhouse was well worth it.  Our seats where in the upper circle yet we still had a fantastic view of everything and thankfully we weren't in line to get involved in any of the water hi-jinks.

Such a great way of relaxing after a hard day's work and really put us in the mood for Christmas!

Food Glorious Food!

I went through a stage a few years ago, perhaps when I decided to teach myself to cook, of being a real foodie.  I bought the magazines, the cookbooks and even visited the Good Food Show a few times.  Unfortunately I lost interest a long the way, perhaps due to pressure of time and now it's more about how quick I can throw a meal together, than improving my skills.

Whilst I maintain that there is still an interest in improving my cooking skills, one of the things that I want to make more time for at the weekend is cooking, so I jumped at the chance of going with my friend, Phil to the Castle Donington Festival Of Food And Drink on Saturday.  What an amazing event!  I was blown away with the array of stalls, selling everything that you could wish for in the food and drink line, from meats, to fine wines, cakes to olives.  I purchased some vintage straws from Retro Heart And Home and also a jar filled with brownie mix from Crazy Moose Jars.  One of the things that I should have done, which I will save for next time is plan a meal based on items purchased from here, there was so much to choose from, you could easily dine like royalty!

I loved the fact that the event was held in one of the halls which was ample big enough to house all the stalls and all the many visitors that came through and my favourite part was spotting the various vintage vehicles dotted around, my favourite being the Citroën pizza van that took 6 weeks to renovate and the pizza was equally as lush as well!

After we had circled the hall several times, we then  went on a bit of a road trip to the Ferrers Centre , a lovely vintage courtyard of arts and crafts and of course it would have been rude not to indulge in a bit of cake and hot chocolate.  So all in all, a very foodie day and I've already got my eyes on more food festivals next year!

An Arvon Weekend

One luxury I never seem to have is time to write, or more specifically time to write my novel.  I've been on so many writing courses it's untrue but one that I haven't sampled is an Arvon course.  Arvon is considered to be the top writing course in the UK and one that any serious writers should go on.   The courses are traditionally a week's residential  in a unique surrounding but unfortunately come at a premium, cue an advert for an Arvon City course offering a three day non residential in Derby, a city not too far from myself.

So this weekend was spent in the company of fellow writers on the Arvon City course learning the tools of trade in order to write a novel.  Mornings were spent in workshops varying from dialogue, getting to know your character and building a scene and afternoons were spent using those skills to improve your own writing.  We also had the privilege of having both of our course tutors, Ross Raison and C J Flood give a reading from their own books and a Q&A session each evening.   One to one tutorials were also given on a set piece of work submitted at the start of the course and we got the chance to read our own work and listen to others do the same.  It was heaven.

I thought at first that it would just do as other courses had, in the fact that I'd completed so many that they tend to repeat themselves and you end up covering old ground. But I'm further on than I was before and I found that the workshops helped push me further in what I wanted to achieve and made me look at my writing in a more advanced aspect.

So all in all, I totally agree with the many before me, that can only say how fantastic these courses are and would thoroughly recommend anyone that is serious about writing to apply to go on these.

A Vintage Weekend

 

One of the many things I hope to do with this project is to find more time to indulge my interests.  I love anything vintage inspired and about a year ago, I decided to start collecting various items together with a view of starting a pop up business.  As I worked all day Saturday, Sunday became my first day of this weekend and one that I spent selling my wares at my pop up Vintage stall at the Kimberley Christmas Market.

 

A millionaire it will never make me, but I love the atmosphere at these fairs, made better this time by entertainment from Harmony Handsworth and I was quite happy to just let people look, chat and reminisce about past times.

 

 

 

 

My weekend extended into Monday this week and as I'm still stressing about Christmas presents, I ventured into Nottingham to get the last few.  Not wanting to miss an opportunity, I arranged to meet my bestie and fellow blogger Phil, for a spot of lunch at La Tasca.  I definitely don't eat out enough and made a mental note to try and do this more often.

 

Then after a mooch around Fopp and the purchase of a few books, we went for a sneaky hot chocolate at my now favourite place Delilah - can't quite believe that I've never been in here before and I love it when I find somewhere new to go in town!

Romeo And Waffles, Oh My!

So the first weekend I get to document and I come down with a lousy stomach bug, typical!  I was determined to still do the things I'd planned, albeit at half speed!

For me, the weekend starts on a Friday, at least that's what I try to tell myself, although it doesn't always go as planned especially if I'm working over the weekend!   One of the things I love to do whenever I get the chance is go the cinema.  I'm a complete film buff and one of my favourite directors is Shane Meadows, so I leapt at the chance at starting my weekend with a trip to The Broadway to see A Room For Romeo Brass with cast commentary that included Andrew Shim and Vicky McClure.    The Broadway Media Centre is one of the those places that feels just right and I love going there just sometimes to sit in the bar and soak up the ambience.   This particular showing, formed part of the Carlton Childrens TV workshop anniversary celebrations and the cinema was packed with former pupils.  As well as commentary, there was also on the spot reinactment of scenes which where just hilarious.  A fantastic night and I managed to get a couple more signatures for my signed box set.

I decided that I was going to go to more local fetes and events and one I'd  planned was a trip to the Fabulous Places Christmas Market at The Roundhouse  in Derby on Sunday. I've long been a fan of the Fabulous Places website and have wanted to come to this for a couple of years and was determined to find time this year to go!  

The stalls were an amazing selection of vintage style, delicious food and handmade goodies. It was incredibly busy but we still managed to get round everywhere

I also managed to fall in love with this vintage caravan outside.  Pity I felt so lousy that I couldn't sample any of the goodies they had on offer!

Hello and Welcome!

For years I had a mental list of all the things I wanted to do and places I wanted to visit, that I never seemed to find the time to do.  Every year the list got longer and weekends passed in a blur, never having accomplished anything.  Then one day I had an epiphany, why not try and get back the concept of weekends that seemed to have been lost; that element of free time that can be spent visiting places or doing things I wanted to do.  So here is my project to at least reclaim some 'me' time every weekend.  Enjoy!