Sunday Singles # 2

Photo Via

Okay, so I am little bit biased - my cousin is the guitarist (the chap on the left) and my boy (the one grinning away) plays one of the saxophones - but these guys are still totally worth a whole playlist all by themselves.

Happy Sunday x

Sunday Singles # 1

I love putting together playlists, there is something real satisfying about combining songs and feeling sneakily, just for a moment, like you could really be a DJ (I am very tone-deaf, let me have my moment).

So please share with me, where ever in the world you might be, a mini-dance on a Sunday morning whilst still in your PJs.

An old adventure - Nepal dreaming.

Life round here the last couple days has been a little essay filled and lacking general excitement.  Don't get me wrong, things are good; stew is cooking in the oven, James is making an apple crumble in the kitchen and the Christmas lights are twinkling, but things have been a little unphotogenic.  So I thought instead today I would share some old adventures.  The ones that these cold, quiet nights make me nostalgic for.  

These pictures are all taken on my old Nikon point-and-shoot, so the quality isn't always great and I can't size them the same as other photos on this blog (which is driving me a little mental) without making them all pixely, but I love each and everyone of them and I feel they deserve their moment.

Disclaimer: I really don't want to become one of those people who endlessly discuss their worldly experiences as - firstly they annoy the hell out of me and secondly I still have a long way to go before I can feel worldly.  For the most part I just wanted to share these photographs.

 

From endless leeches and monsoon rain to washing elephants and climbing mountains, Nepal is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  We outran landslides and ate more bananas than I ever thought possible, befriended stray cats and got mugged by a monkey and had the best adventures.

 

We were fortunate enough to stay with the most wonderful family in the Himalayas, three days walk from civilisation whilst we helped teach English in the local school.  The family lived in one tiny room and cooked all their meals on a small woodburning stove, they ate nothing that they couldn't grow or trade (think pumpkin curry three meals a day) and maybe once every couple of days, for thirty minutes they would have electricity.  

In celebration of our arrival they had traded rice for dried yak meat (if you're curious - try chewing on the oldest pair of leather boots you own) and from that moment on we spent long, dark evenings sat around the log stove talking in broken English and our even more damaged Tamang.  

There is one moment especially I treasure.  Within minutes of our arrival, Maya asked us endless questions about how big our ovens were, how many rooms our house had, how many clothes we owned and how many 'technologies' we owned.  Eventually (using the small English-Tamang dictionary we all coveted at such occasions) I managed to ask Maya why she shook her head at each of our answers.

She responded that we would die young because of all our worries and stresses.  If you have less you need less choices and become happier.  

 

Nothing like being direct I suppose..

 

 

Ten Pound Date Day // Cardiff Museum

It is possible that Ten Pound Date Day is now one of my favourite days.  I love trying to think of new and innovative ways to spend time together that doesn't just involve us crossing the road to sit in the pub garden!  For the last five years, James and I have never lived more than a mile from Cardiff Museum and yet, until last weekend, we had never set foot inside the establishment.  Last weekend we decided to follow the suggestion given on my last Ten Pound Date Day post and we finally got on with it!  

And what perfect timing, I wait five years to visit and I manage to time it for the Anthony Browne exhibition. Anthony Browne illustrates the most beautiful children's books, his characters are usually gorillas or chimpanzees who have the most incredibly expressive faces and his pictures feel like a treasure hunt with hundreds hidden details in each drawing.  As a child my mother used to read me 'Gorilla' and we spent hours looking for the hidden gorillas in his drawings, some crept into the patterns of the wallpaper, others were drawings within the drawing placed on the mantelpiece and more could be discovered in the strange shadows of his slightly sinister houses.  If you live in the vicinity of Cardiff it is really worth a visit.

Once we had exhausted the exhibition we mosied round the slightly moth-eaten Natural History exhibits and spent ages doing our basking shark impressions!  Eventually closing time arrived, just as we had reached the taxidermied badgers (it is a funny ol' museum), so we went for Cake and Smoothies at a little coffee shop that has recently opened on our road and people watched until it was time to come home.

  

Museum: £0 

Postcards of 'Gorilla' at the gift shop: £1.20 

Drinks and a cake to share: £6.40

Total Spend: £7.60

It was a really really lovely date - certainly helped by the fact that it was only over the road.  This also ticks off no 24 from my summer plans list!

Five years at a glance.

I recently read this post by Meredith in which she referred to her five year diary as 'analogue blogging'.  However I must confess that this blog feels a little more like digital journalling.  I don't suppose it matters but it tickled me!  I digress.

I have kept my five year diary for a whole year and am now entering my second year.  This is where it gets good.  It is incredible reading words I wrote a whole year ago, some feel as though they were written a life time ago and others only yesterday.  The sense of progress feels good.  I am a year further, I live with my wonderful boyfriend in a perfect little flat, I now volunteer with a charity I feel passionate about, I have a windowsill of pot plants and I have finally learnt to crochet.  A lot has happened in a year.

That said, this day last year I was here..

The very edge of Dondet Island in Laos.  The sun was setting as I sat with James and one of my closest friends watching the boats go past.  I tried to stop ants climbing into my sweet tea as we counted the lizards scattered on the ceiling and discussed trivial happenings of the day.  It was a quiet moment, one that could easily have been missed or forgotten, but in it's own way it was momentous.
I sense the entry this year might be a little less exciting to read back in another year's time.

The smell of basil.

For me the summer is pretty much defined by its food.  Sure the weather is better, but I also love the beach in the rain and the park in the snow and my windows are open year round.  Sure I like wearing pretty dresses but to be honest, my summer wardrobe is just my winter wardrobe without tights.  And sure I love the long, romantically lit evenings, but give it another few months and I will be craving snuggly socks and red wine by the fire.  I'm pretty easy going.

But oh my gosh the food of summer.  I love the smell of tomatoes especially when they are sun-warmed and I get to pick them straight from the plant.  I love the fruit trees, from the blossom to the three figs we grow every year to feed to the caterpillars and blackbirds.  I love eating cold quiche in the garden and I love strawberries by the tonne.

Most of all, the smell of basil means summer has happened.  During the summer months I have basil with strawberries, with tomatoes, with mozzarella, on pasta and on pizza or just on its own whilst walking past the plant.  All food is made more summery with basil don't you think?

The photo above was a quick lunch I had on Friday.  One beef tomato sliced up and served on a slice of sour dough rye bread (baked by James the night before) with basil torn over and drowned in balsamic and olive oil and seasoned with rock salt and black pepper.  Pretty good for a two minute lunch I'd say.

My-oh-my, Shepherdless Pie.

This is a bit of a take on a fairly ancient recipe, foolishly however, I do not have a photo of the end result as it got eaten pretty prompty.  And mostly, in my gluttony, I just forgot.

I love this recipe far more than all the meaty versions I have tried, it is heart warming and filling but without feeling greasy and heavy.  I started to write up the recipe I supposedly used (from The Bean Book by Rose Elliot - 1985!) but realised I have made it so many times it has evolved into its own new creation.  So here is my version:

What you need:

350g black-eyed beans (or if you seem to have misplaced them somewhere in the cupboard, a tin of Canellini beans seems to work just as well)

1 large onion (or if when you chop into the onion, it has gone a bit weird, 2 leeks)

1-2 cloves of garlic

Roughly 50-100g chopped mushrooms, depending on how much you like mushrooms (I like them a lot, so use handfuls of the beauties)

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp tomato puree

1 tbsp parsley

1 tsp mixed herbs or thyme or rosemary, whatever you have

salt and pepper

700g creamy mashed spuds

Grated cheese to go on top

The joy of a recipe like this, a bit like stew, is that you can kinda bung in anything else you need to use up.  So I added:

1 slightly old, finely chopped, carrot.

So, if you are using dried beans, you need to soak them a while first, if your lazy and using a tin, no worries!

First fry the onions (or leeks) and the garlic in olive oil for a few minutes, then when soft and sizzly chuck in the mushrooms.  After another 5ish minutes add the tomatoes and the tomato puree, the beans, the parsley and the herbage and cook for 10 minutes over a gentle heat.  Season it as you so desire. 

Now, if this is not an oven proof dish, transfer it quickly to one that is, cover it with the mashed potato, grate as much cheese as you feel you can get away with, then add a little more cheese and cook it in the oven for 35-40mins at 200C.

Smother in gravy and eat with Purple Sprouting Broccoli or some other seasonal green.  Yum!

The start of my most beautiful collection yet.

 

After sitting in my Amazon Wishlist for about 6 months, I felt revision was finally reason enough to treat myself.  The Cloud Collectors Handbook (by Gavin Pretor-Pinney) is a publication from the Cloud Appreciation Society.  I mean who doesn't appreciate clouds, right?  The concept of this little book is simple, go out, pay attention and collect clouds to earn points (kind of like low maintenance pokemon).  I may have also bought a copy for James.  We may or may not be getting a little competitive about out respective collections.

Here is the start of my collection, I hope you start your own.

Mostly though, I love knowing what I am looking at; the descriptions of how they form, what classifies them and even on occasion what weather they predict, is fascinating.  It is a good way of making the time in the library pass a little quicker!

Magic.

 

I don't know its name, so I call it Magic.  Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing.  Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people.  So it must be all around us.

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

I finished re-reading this book again.  Every time I finish it, I feel like I have been stolen from a magical world and have forgotten my way back in.  Perhaps I need a robin to help me find the key?  I keep trying to find more magic in my world since I cannot share the garden of Mary, Collin and Dickon.  Pretentious?  A little.  A good drive in life?  Undoubtedly.

What to do with all those Instax?

So, as can probably be imagined from my last post, I have a lot of Instax photographs knocking around my flat and whilst I am always on the hunt for ways to display them, most of them simply reside in a box on my bookshelf.  However, after my noticeboard in the bedroom fell off the wall yet again leaving an exhilarating trail of little pins over the floor and nestled snuggly in the rug, I realised things needed to change.  Whilst realising that what my toes require is a magnet board, it occured to me that Instax photos are the perfect size for turning into magnets!

So without further ado, here is another revision procrastination project:

 

I bought the sticky magnets from eBay but most craft shops seem to stock them.  The left is made from a reel of 'Magnet Tape' so it is quite narrow but works fine.  I prefer the right one, I just traced the Instax photo and cut out the magnet shape from an A4 sheet of sticky 'Magnet Paper', it feels nicer and looks smarter, but is slightly more expensive.  I guess which option you choose depends whether you're making magnets for yourself or for someone else!

 

Whilst at it I magnetised a few of my buttons, don't they make the best magnets imagineable!

All it remains for me to do is actually buy a magnet board so I can move these little fellas off of the radiator (although I secretly quite like them there)!

an instant addiction

I cannot sing the praises of my little Instax Mini enough but as it appears that everyone else in the blog world also loves this little plasticky lump of fun as much as I do I won't add another gushy review into the blogosphere!

What I will say, however, is that taking my Instax Mini backpacking around South-East Asia was a most excellent idea!  It endured a whole two months of heat, monsoon, mosquitoes and sweaty hands without a single glitch (or change in batteries)!  I love journalling whilst travelling, a book filled with memories, tickets and sketches makes the best memento and once you add in the instax photos to that mix, well, I'm pretty darn pleased with it!  Admittedly, I took about 150 photos, my backpack on departure was almost entirely filled with packs of film and colouring pencils, but here are a couple of my favourites.

They have to be in cheesy montage format as, being such dinky little photos, they don't blow-up all that good. 

If you're planning a trip, I'd start stocking up.

April's Collection

I love looking at people's collections.  Flickr is filled with beach combing collections; soft glass and shells, or mirrors, or Pyrex tupperware or vintage match boxes.  I find it facinating the different kinds of things that people feel inspired to hoard.  So I thought I would give my meagre collections a small chance to shine.  Some of the things I collect are for a weeks long whim, others have been curated lovingly over many years.  My buttons are one of those collections.  When I was about 10 or 11 we visited the Mulberry Outlet near my home.  I was not happy to be dragged along, once again, to look at fabric samples.  But under the heavy rolls of floral tapestries was a ripped cardboard box scrawled on with black marker saying 'damaged buttons'.

These are beautiful buttons, pearl grey with fault lines down their face.  I fit five across the length of my palm and convinced my mother to buy them for me, 20p each.  I still have two of the five in my tub of buttons and ever since my collection has continued to grow.

St. David's Day

A little after the event now, but St. David's Day in Cardiff is worth bringing up however late!  There were innumerable daffodills, dragons and leeks at every turn.  I had foolishly arrived not wearing a single item of green or red, so felt quite out of place until a concerned Welshman gave me a mini flag to wave enthusiastically.  Cardiff knows how to do patriotism with style (and a curious number of bagpipes).