View of My Table

Anyone who has ever been in my house will have seen that the kitchen table is always covered with painting or food or glasses or yesterday’s dinner plates and therefore not a place I can sit and sew at all. The girls do create there and when the table is laid for dinner they always whinge about having to clear their stuff away which results in the bit of the table closest to the wall having things ‘stored’ on it instead of being put away.

I am only confessing this as Minnado has suggested a ‘View of My Table’ project for 2013. One photo per week is not too much for me to remember so I’ve joined the Flickr group and uploaded a picture of my sewing cabinet as it looked on Sunday evening. One down, fifty one to go!

As Minnado says of her table ” The table has so many functions that I though  it could be a fun series of photos which in a sideways manner would reflect life and crafting over the year.  Let’s see if I can keep this up for a year!”

Will you join in? Any table will do: bedside table, kitchen table, crafting table, coffee table….. just a way to see what you do in that space as the seasons turn and life changes.

My sewing cabinet came from Dorset and was collected en route to a  small adventure a few years ago. You can read about that here. I rarely fold the machine down into the base and pull the lid up from the back to cover it so it is always theoretically sewing-ready! That doesn’t stop anyone putting things in front of the machine or piling books up to the left of the machine though and at times it takes me five minutes to get everything off it and put away to be able to sew.

Here’s my picture for this week. It’s mitten time again and it only took me five minutes to clear the top and re-thread the machine to start sewing replacement mittens for Miss Froo as hers were wet after playing in the snow. It turns out that her hands re now the same size as Miss Amoo’s were two years ago so i didn’t need to trace her hand to get a good fit. My sewing fleece mitten tutorial is here

 

 

‘Home’ Education

Yesterday was the first day this week that we hadn’t been out and about doing something rather than being at home.

On Monday we were at our indoor/outdoor get together meeting new home edders and hanging out with old friends. Then Miss Amoo went home with a friend leaving Miss Froo and I to do a bit of urgent food shopping before going to her drama thing called Dreamweavers.

On Tuesday the morning was quiet-ish then it was time for music lessons and art class in the afternoon.

On Wednesday we had a mad morning clearing out our living room in search of the digibox remote control which we didn’t find despite pulling out the sofa, computer desk thing, chair and sewing machine cabinet. We did however put a lot of paper in the green box an I parted with nearly a whole bin bag of fabric scraps and stuff that we just can’t reuse in a timely fashion or reuse at all.

3.50 arrived sooner than I expected and it wasn’t dark but it was was really, really cold when Miss Froo and I walked to Rainbows – yes, she’s finally got a place at Rainbows and she was beyond exited about it. Fortunately they start at 4.15 and finish at 5.15 then Miss Amoo doesn’t go to Brownies til 6.00 so it’s all sort of ok but we need to make sure to put something in the slow cooker for dinner!

On Thursday we went ice skating in the morning then to a friend’s for lunch where the girls staged an ice sculpture exhibition in the garden. Ice had formed in so many pots and buckets and garden toys that they had an amazing collection of different smooth and patterned ice shapes with pebbles and leaves trapped inside.

Thursday was also Mr G’s birthday so we had one of his favourite dinners and a tasty coffee and walnut cake.

My Mum gave me a huge pile of Good Housekeeping magazines last week so we’ve been perusing the recipes for some new inspiration. The sesame sausages looked good so we had those to assuage our hunger whilst waiting for the dinner to cook. Here’s the recipe I added a little bit of honey too and they were very yummy.

So, Friday came and the world was white so the girls were out in the garden and up and down the road several times with drying and warming bits inbetween. Then a quick pop out to a friend’s for a cup tea and more playing in the snow after school had finished for the day and the week was at an end.

We’ve been so cold this week that we’ve drunk lots of atole to warm up and if you fancy a hot chocolate with a bit more substance to it, try this:

Atole de Chocolate

Click to hear how to say it! (A-toh-leh   deh   choh-koh-lah-teh)

For every cup of atole required, put one very heaped teaspoon of cornflour to the saucepan and cream with a little milk til smooth.

Add however many cups of milk to the cornflour mixture and stir very well. Bring to a boil gently, stirring all the time. You can add a cinnamon stick at this point if you like, or some vanilla essence.

Once the milk feels nice and thick like a white sauce,  take it off the heat.

Put a teaspoon of cocoa or drinking chocolate into each cup, with brown sugar if desired, and pour the milk into each cup slowly, stirring all the time.

Now sit on the sofa with a blanket or two and drink it slowly!