5 foot 3
Saturday 25 May 2013
Since I lasted posted anything, I see that the rest of the world has caught up with my love of all things homemade. What with Great British Bake Offs, Great British Sewing Bees and the Great Triple Dip Recession, everyone is busting a proverbial to have some home spun fun.
I have made some good stuff in the last wee while, but really do want to get a bit more dress making done. I am a new comer to Burda Style magazine, and made rather a nice blouse tunic top, but it took me a long time. I did learn some good dress making tips, eg how to put in an invisible zip (hmmm, I thought before that you just did it carefully, but grace à the Coleterie tutorial I have discovered it is a little more complicated than that).
I have however, had some homespun fun by having a baby, so that might explain some of the dearth of posts....
Saturday 9 April 2011
Belfast Telegraph's "Society" section new comedy hit of 2011
Sunday 6 March 2011
festival du livre culinaire
Tuesday 22 February 2011
Roses, singing and suchlike
Wednesday 16 February 2011
Brussels Sprouts
SO, purpose of this post...we went to Brussels at the weekend!
Hervé's adventures of Tintin being one of them, beer being the other. We briefly spotted Tintin and Snowy on the side of a building, but took it upon ourselves to find out a bit more about the beer of Belgium. Happily, you can get a Dégustation menu of beer! I particularly liked the cherry beer. Slightly sweet but not too like alcoholic cherry aid. Second from the left, I think!
We had a good wander around, and benefitted from catching up on lots of sleep in our lovely B&B. Run by a gay couple, when I asked for a map he told us that he only had the Gay Map of Brussels. I am still not too sure what the main sites in Brussels are, or indeed where they are, but I do know where to get a good sauna and some lubes.
Some of my favourite people in the world were in Brussels at the weekend...the Scouts. I have a very fond affection for the Scouts, I think because I enjoyed being a guide, read the guide handbook a lot and am overly influenced by the writings of Enid Blyton. I think there must have been some sort of rally - or jamboree, prompting the following pic! Incidentally, the crazy French pronounce scouts as "scoots", with a very tight oooo sound. Nut jobs.
Sunday 23 January 2011
Day 85 (or thereabouts)
We went out tonight to Al Taglio, a nice little pizza place in the 11th arronidissement. We had 3 slices of pizza each, individually cut and weighed and heated up. It was a nice, neighbourly kind of place, with quite a lot of coming and going of people coming in, buying their slices and heading out.
We set out to go to a bar in the 5th arr round the corner from our flat, and were in the early stages of a slight arguement / discussion about the best way to go home when we saw a bus go past that would serve our purposes very well. We started running for it in a halfhearted kind of way, thinking we would miss it, but then we gathered speed when we saw we might be in with a chance. P started hitting the side of the bus, but coming at the bus from the opposite direction was a small French dwarf. Well, he was about my height, but about twice as wide, who had managaed to flag the bus down as it was pulling off, and then in a beautiful act of chivarly, insidted we get on first. He may well have just been getting his breath back as his physiognomy was not that of an olympic athelete, but I like to think it was good old politesse.
I know, my avid readership, that I have abandoned you over the past few weeks. However, I can promise you a new and improved blog over the coming months. Honest. Hopefully, our new fancy pants camera will be arriving soon to replace the features-obliterator that we have been toting for the past 12 weeks. The pictures it has taken have been so crap it is not even funny. Paris is too beautiful a city for it to be documented over the next 9 months through photographs with either bleached out details or orange fuzz. Hopefully I can embellish future posts with a little glimpse of Paris- fewer words, more pics, that's the way ahead.
Sunday 24 October 2010
day -5
I am finishing off my corrections tonight (MD tantalisingly nearing completion) and also packing up our possessions. P has sorted out all his clothes, I have done only a little of this. We also need to do things like go to Ikea and lie on mattresses to decide which one to buy from ikea.fr who actually will deliver a bed to central Paris.
You have to pay them, obviously.
I still wonder how one has a visitor to the appartement. ie, if someone were at the door for you, how would you know, because there is no door bell. This is relevant because if Pierre and Claude are at the front door with my 4'6" mattress, I would rather hope they would be able to get in.
I had a minor melt down last night and it was all brought on by Bruce Forsyth. I was watching Strictly, sitting on the sofa, all comfy and cosy and luxuriating in space around me, and it jsut hit me that in one week I would be in Paris, no BBC, no comfy sofa on which to luxuriate, no familiarity. I just had a slight wobble. I am back on track now though I think.
Saturday 29 May 2010
Carrot Cake
solvent induced spreadsheet filling
Friday 28 May 2010
Digging In
So, here are a few pics of things in progress. For those of you who will be visiting Chez Nous over the summer months, hopefully you will be able to get your laughing gear around some of this produce...
Next up, strawberries "Marshmellow", which I bought as bare root plants last year. 2 of the plants have taken root against the house and P is slightly worried that we are going to become the first people ever whose house subsided on account of a strawberry.
So these are truely All My Own Work, as I planted the (free with a mag) tomato seeds myself and the (free with the BBC Dig In campaign) salad leaves seeds myself too. The tomatoes are bush plants rather then cordons, just in case one of my imaginary readers was going to leave a post suggesting that they look crap on account of being 6 inches tall. There are 7 stocky, sturdy little plants and I am pleased with them.Finally, some pretty flowers. These peonies were in the garden already, but I dont' recall them looking so good last year. Probably because Roddy had put a heap of scaffolding on top of them they didn't have the same opportunity to photsynthesise. There were peony roses in my bouquet and I thought they wer just lovely. These are a really deep red, and mine were a much softer pink, so I am going to get some pink peonies to grow seeing as they seem to like our soil.