Smug As a Bug With a Brand New Rug

I've been casually on the look out for a new rug for DC's bedroom for a while; I've scouted around the t'interweb, I've looked on eBay, and I've looked in various shops (mostly John Lewis, truth by told.) But I've not found one that's been what I would say was a reasonable price (ie about £50-75) and which met with the 'vision' I had in my head - ie a wool rug with a nice thick pile so it feels good when you step on it, in a suitable colour or assortment of colours, and in a suitable style/pattern. I have seen rugs I've liked on the internet, but with rugs I like to have a good old feel of what I'm getting, which makes buying online a bit tricky, unless you are happy to deal with returning a rug or rugs that don't quite come up to scratch (and, personally, I can't really be bothered with the hassle - I'd rather pay a bit more and buy certain things face-to face, so to speak.)

This is the rug that DC has had in his room for about the past year. Prior to that he had a cream one. Practical, not. We've owned this striped rug for quite some time, so it's a hand-me-down piece that was simply being used because DC needed a rug and we happened to already own this. In itself, it's a nice enough rug; it's from the Pier (when they still existed), and it's a lovely, soft chenille fabric in muted shades of red, purple, brown and cream. 

As you can see it doesn't really 'go' in DC's room, which is predominantly accessorised in stereotypical blue. If it weren't for the blue, the rug would probably work quite well, since the colours tie in with the wood tones of the furniture - bed, wardrobe, toy cupboard, etc.

But, alas and alack, I am bringing my boy up along all those stereotypical lines that insist boys have blue bedrooms and girls have pink. Actually, that's not strictly true, it just seems to have turned out that way. And so, rug of muted colours, you are not a fit.

So, what luck then that when I was in Yeovil on Wednesday I decided to pop in to Laura Ashley as they were having a sale. When aren't they, really? And I even decided to slog up the stairs to look at their home department. And, there, all rolled up in a little basket towards the back was a potentially perfect rug for DC's room. A very good squishyness of pile and all the right colours as far as I could see in its rolled-up state (shades of blue, with some red and white/cream for good measure); I checked the photo in the LA catalogue to see if the rug was as good unrolled as it suggested it was rolled and, yes, it looked to be pretty much spot on. And, best of all? The 40% off label that took the rug from £65 to £39. Sold, to the anxious lady getting all clammy with the fear that someone else would snaffle the rug before she got back to the basket to claim it as her own.

Ta dah!

It's not quite as big as I'd like it to be, but then that would probably involve spending many more £s. But at least the colours now suit the room. It feels like the rug pulls the room together more, with the duvet cover, curtains and chair all sharing colours that are in the rug. 

My plan is to paint the wall against which the head of the bed and chest of drawers rest; probably blue, because I'm all about the boy-room. And also to add a shelf or two for DC to keep some of his clutter toys on (perhaps the still-to be painted nic-nac shelf that I found back in August at Shepton Mallet Flea will finally get an airing); I've also been eyeing up the IKEA spice racks that are supposed to make great book shelves, so a trip to Bristol might be in order. Don't tell hubby...

Book Review No. 21: Theft on Thursday (a cozy mystery)

This is the fourth in the Lois Meade mystery series that began with Murder on Monday. I've read all of the series up to here in chronological order, and have the rest of the 'days of the week' series in my unread bookcase, along with a couple from the following set.

Lois Meade runs a cleaning business in the small town of Frensham; this affords her plenty of opportunities to find out what's going on in the local area. In this particular book, there's a new vicar in town along with his godson who's a bit of a cad, to put it nicely. The local bad boys rear their ugly heads in the shape of a Klu Klux Klan-style group and the vicarage ends up being burnt to the ground with someone inside. There's also a death from poisoning. I did find this slightly slow going, and the first death doesn't occur until a fair way in to the book, but it's still an enjoyable read. The ongoing background story to the series has jumped forward quite a few years (six, I think) since the last book, with two of Lois's three children having grown up and flown the nest (did the author think they weren't really adding to the story, or does the fact that they are away from the family home offer the chance for them to become involved in mysteries that can be set further afield? Perhaps we'll find out in the next book...) I suppose it does make sense to jump the series forward though, since murders and mysterious deaths wouldn't occur quite as often as a continual series might have us believe.

The books in this series are cozy in the British sense, which I find tend to be darker than their US counterparts. Definitely more of a 'mystery' than a 'cozy', and very enjoyable because of that. I would happily recommend this series to readers who enjoy cozies, especially those with a little more grit and reality.

Book Review No. 20: All That I Am

This book was the first of our 2013-14 Book Club choices. It's not a book I would ever have chosen to read otherwise because it's (mostly) set during an era and in a country about which I don't tend to enjoy reading, namely the 1920s and 1930s in Germany. I have a tendency to avoid any books on the Second World War (or any war really) after spending a great many Fridays working on a project that involved visiting an archive in London and poring over photos of the destruction and desecration that occurred in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, and reading eye witness accounts of displaced persons and concentration camp survivors. It's turned me into a wuss and I do my best to avoid being reminded of what I saw and read.

However, I was determined not to fall at the first Book Club hurdle of the year, so I got on with it. For the first 100 or so pages I struggled; I found the book turgid (although well-written), not to mention confusing, and the characters uninspiring. But then, bam, something happened in the story and from there on in it was a rollercoaster ride where I just wanted to keep on reading.

The book is a work of fiction based on real people and real events, which makes it all the more intense. There are four main characters: Ruth Becker (one of the narrators), her husband Hans Wesemann, her cousin Dora Fabian and the left-wing playwright Ernst Toller (the other narrator), all of whom play a determined part in attempting to keep Hitler from coming to power. When their resistance efforts fail they are forced to flee Germany, and all but Ernst travel to London where they continue their opposition, despite the danger of being sent back to Germany and certain death, if they are found out. I was very interested to read of the ways in which Hitler and his regime sought to prevent any opponents from speaking out, and also about the possibility that the supposed arson attack on the Reichstag building (the German Parliament) in Berlin might actually have been started by the Hitler regime and falsely blamed on the Communists as a way of ensuring the passing of an emergency decree which suspended the right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press and other constitutional protections. It was interesting, too, to read how Britain and its government reacted to political and other exiles forced to flee Germany and seek refuge in the UK.

The story is told from the points of view of Ruth and Ernst in alternating chapters. Ruth's chapters are written with the hindsight of 60 years and from her new home in Australia, while Ernst's are written in the inter-war years from the hotel in New York where he lived. I think the fact that the narrators are both 'looking back' does make the characters and events seem slightly more remote at times, and it also took some getting used to at first but, despite some flaws, I would still recommend this book if you are interested in the history of that period, but don't want to read a book that is solely about 'the war.' Even if, like me, you tend to avoid books on this era, you might still want to give it a go.

Front Garden Progress

The front garden is a work in progress, and will continue to be until such time as a large(ish) pot of money falls into our hands so that we can have it properly landscaped. The long-term plan is to have the front wall knocked down and rebuilt - there are some very large cracks and it is bowing out in some places where large tree stumps/roots have pushed against it. It's not at the stage where it's likely to fall over, but it's certainly unsightly. When it is rebuilt, we will have a larger driveway and some more hard-standing for cars. At the moment we can park three cars easily, four at a push; it's not that we need room for more (we have two cars and there's enough room for visitors) but a little reconfiguring wouldn't go amiss, and a wider entrance to the drive would be VERY handy. Neither of us has clipped the wall yet (or cars parked on the road opposite), but it would be very easy to do.

In the meantime we have been busy removing overgrown flower beds, large shrubs and hedges in order to get back to a very 'basic' garden so that when the time comes for us to properly re-landscape, there (hopefully) won't be too much that needs doing in terms of removal and prepping.

This is what the front garden looked like just when the building work was starting back in April 2012.

It then went through various stages of tidiness and overgrown-ness after we'd moved in in October 2012.

Until, finally, over the course of the past few months, everything has been removed.

And some grass seed put down. 

Apart from doing something with the dreadful hedge on the boundary (it's our boundary but the hedge seems to be made up of a variety of different shrubs/trees with some roots in our garden and some in our neighbours', which makes it rather difficult to deal with, hence why we haven't bothered grassing all the way up to it yet), we're pretty much in our 'neutral' state. I'm sure lots of people would prefer the 'before' garden with the shrubs and flowers, but one of the problems we had was that some of the shrubs were very well established and had extremely large trunks and roots; there were also several VERY large stumps left behind from large trees which must have been felled when the house was built. These large old stumps and the ever-growing shrubs were putting a strain on the front wall, which is cracked in several places; if we'd left the shrubs and stumps in and rebuilt the wall, chances are the same thing would happen in the future. Hence going back to the drawing board.

Here's a view of the beds under the windows when we first viewed the house back in the summer of 2011.

A little light hacking to this bed after we'd moved in.

Followed by some more severe hacking.

And now it looks like this:

Hopefully the new grass will blend in, one day... 

And maybe we'll even decide what to do with that lonesome shrub.

Whereas the bed on this side of the house has gone from this in 2011:

To this in 2012:

To this in 2013:

It looked much nicer in the height of summer.

And finally, the other part of the front garden has gone from this in late 2012:

To this:

To this:

And, now it looks like this (apologies for reflection on photo):

It's slow progress, but things are starting to look a lot tidier.

It's possible that further down the line, once the hard landscaping has been done (although there's no knowing when that might actually happen), we may re-introduce flowers and shrubs, but for now we're happy with our 'minimal' front garden. And it's certainly a lot easier to maintain.

Retirement Bucket List: Strike Two

I finally got round to making some fudge; something I had listed as the number one thing to do on my Retirement Bucket List (see here for the full [such as it is] list.)

I had a little Google on the old iPad and came up with what seemed to be one of the easiest recipes with the fewest ingredients - four to be precise, five if you count the oil for greasing the pan. The recipe is from the Good Food Channel website, here. Although once you've read this blog post you may not want to follow that particular link...

Ingredients and 'oiled' pan at the ready.

Basically, you weigh everything out, put it all in the saucepan and keep stirring.

And keep stirring.

And keep stirring.

Keep stirring to make sure all those burnt bits from the bottom of the saucepan are nicely distributed through the entire mixture.

And after 15-20 mins you can stop stirring.

By that time your mixture should have reached the 'soft ball' stage on the thermometer (115 degrees.)

Mine appeared to have reached 'centre of the sun, hard as a rock' stage by then.

And then I read the recipe again and noticed that only now should I be adding the vanilla extract, rather than at the beginning with all the other ingredients. Oops. Not sure how much of a difference that made to the outcome.

But I definitely did not make fudge.

I'm not sure if I can now strike this off the Bucket List. I didn't say that I had to 'successfully' make fudge, did I? But will the OCD part of my brain allow this failure to count? Oh dear.

I posted something on FaceBook about making fudge and a friend responded that fudge with chocolate in the ingredients can be easier to make. I may give that a go next time, although currently I am a little bit scarred by this first attempt. My arms are aching from all that stirring and my teeth are aching from the sugar (because, of course, I've still been eating the hot mess that is my hard-as-a-rock-toffee-crumble-stuff.)

Anyone else ever made fudge? Do you have a foolproof recipe you could share? 

An Apple (or Crate-load Thereof) a Day...

Sunday morning was deemed 'apple picking morning', so hubby had a root about in the garage and pulled out the apple crates and apple picker.

Along with our suitably dressed trusty helper we set about harvesting from the five trees that have produced LOTS of fruit this year. The other three apple trees haven't done much since they were only planted at the beginning of the year; lucky really.

Please don't report us to Social Services, he is wearing a hard hat after all...

Two crates full of cookers from Tree No. 1

Nearly a crate full of eaters from Tree No. 2 (plus  a half-eaten apple, and an egg from the chicken run.)

The final tally was three and a bit crates from Tree No. 1 (cookers)

Nearly a full crate from Tree No. 2 (eaters)

Nearly a full crate from Tree No. 3 (eaters)

A full crate from Tree No. 4 (undecided whether they are eaters or cookers)

A full crate from Tree No. 5 (cookers)

A large flower pot full of windfalls/other damaged cookers.

All in all, a lot of apples to deal with.

They are now stacked in the garage while we summon up the energy to peel, core, slice, freeze, and eat them.

And after all that excitement, we put our gladrags on and headed to a 1950s-style tea party. 

Hope you had a lovely Sunday too!