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.