Sunny shiny weekend

Now I know I normally do informative, researched home keeping posts, but this weekend, the sun was out and so beautiful, that I hope you will forgive me for doing a 'what I've been up to' post - it's just been too lovely not to share.

I've been ill with a cold for the past few days, and I decided some sunshine will do my cold well so me and my quilt (and occasionally the dog) has taken to lying outside most of the weekend. It's my favourite thing to do - lying in the garden with a bit of sun shining on my back and reading or napping. But doing that all day is not my style either, so I have been keeping busy too. Here is a photo of our dog taking up most of the quilt (I made this quilt a couple of years ago and we use it all the time).


Home keeping is never done, and with this amount of sunshine, I've been hanging up as much laundry as my pegs would allow and finally took some photos for you. For those of who read my 'drying clothes' post, here you can see how I've adapted my own way of having laundry since writing that post. I love that along with doing my blog I am learning so much. I'd still prefer to get a long laundry line instead of the rotary drier, but for now this will do.


This is not normally how I hang trousers, but these are my husband's painting trousers, so I hang them upside down by the cuffs to weigh them down so I don't have to iron them.




Here in Oxfordshire it's the peak of the blackberry season, so every time we walk the dog I take a plastic bag with me to collect some on the way. My first attempt at making blackberry jelly failed miserably after I ended up with blackberry toffee - eek, I boiled it too long. So this weekend I tried again with a different recipe kindly passed on to me by a friend. Hurrah! It worked, and now I have two jars of blackberry jelly - my first time ever successfully making any sort of jam or jelly.

But I was not going to use ALL my blackberries for jam, so the rest went into an Apple, pear and blackberry pie... Mmmm, delicious. Although I must admit that I didn't make my own pastry because we still had some frozen pastry in the freezer, and the apples could have been softer. But still, it was yummy. (Naughty Mrs Laundrybasketcase, look at that dirty stove top - I see another post topic in the making there)


Lastly, I've just found out that my mum has started her own blog. My mum is an exceptionally good cook. She can cook anything from complicated traditional meals, to exotic salads thrown together at the last minute, so I'm so pleased that she will be sharing her recipes on a blog. On her first post she is sharing her South African 'Souskluitjies' recipe. It's a delicious and comforting sweet dumpling dessert flavoured with cinnamon. If you love food, please pop by her blog MAMMA LALLA. She's also hoping to post pictures along with her recipes in future posts, but this is a great recipe to get started with, and one that I requested from her - thanks Ma!

I hope you have all had a lovely weekend. What did you get up to?