Carrots and Kids

What January Needs is Mars Bar Vodka

 I don't really mind January. After all it's the month that saw the birth of one of our children so it's one of my favourites. Then there's all that obligatory snuggling under blankets on the sofa and eating of stew and steamed puddings...

Spring, however, does seem a bit of a way off, although I have been pretending that it was very imminent when we had a spell of mild weather last week.

Obviously the snow and cold has put paid to that little fantasy. Apparently we are due for a large snowfall on Friday, although I am in complete denial about this. I am not a fan of snow. I know, it's akin to saying you hate babies and think kittens are ugly. Just not done. But there you have it, I prefer it not to snow.

At the risk of sounding like either me or this blog has a drink problem, I think what this month needs is Mars Bar vodka. I know I've mentioned making home-made drinks a couple of times before, but I honestly hardly ever drink. Anyway, forget all that denying yourself food but enforcing exercise. Who thought that was a good idea? In the depths of winter, staring at a few extra pounds on your hips and a few less in your bank account what is needed is MORE not LESS.

I actually made this for a friend's 21st but there is a small bit that wouldn't fit in the bottle so am going to taste test it tonight.

There are loads of recipes online but I just went with what I had which was a 35cl bottle of vodka. I chopped up three Mars Bars, melted them in a bowl over boiling water and then added the vodka, mixing well as I went. Then back into the bottle it went and into the freezer for 24 hours.

I think this is just the ticket when it's snowing and, oh no, you have to sit in front of the fire. Diets can wait, just like spring has to.

Shiny and New

 

Well, that was a funny old Christmas. Lovely. But over so quickly. There was a fair bit of illness but I'm glad, in a way, that it happened over the festive hols when we had no obligation to be anywhere (well, we did but cancelled).

All of the children go back next week and, without sounding like a sad sap, I'm not really looking forward to it. Usually, I get annoyed with mothers who blog how much they will miss their kids - like somehow they're relationship is extra special - but this time I'm one of them. Fickle is my middle name. And Hypocrite.

I am also returning to college and have that Sunday night feeling already. I don't, if I am honest, want to go. At all. Although that feeling brooks no argument with anyone here. It's just so stressful, fitting it in. And hard. The work is hard. Whine. Whine.

Obviously, with my goldfish-like memory I forget how bored I became at home. How my life felt like it shrunk. How I forget that a career, money and a pension of my own would be really rather fabulous.

So, in the spirit of forgetting, here's what I would like to do in the home and garden this year (studying allowing):

• De-clutter. I can't do any of this until the building work is done. But I am yearning for a good old tidy up
• Fix the greenhouse. Stupid, plastic thing
  
• Sow my tomato seeds this month
• Do more gardening. Just like I used to. I don't think I did any, really, last year. I miss it
• Bake really good bread regularly
  
• Get to grips with my sewing machine
• Add more design to the front garden
• Plant roses. Lots and lots and lots
• Visit the Chelsea Flower Show this year
• Visit the allotment little and often

This aren't new year resolutions but it is good to have goals. Perhaps I should add 'blog a bit more' to the list but I am a Lazy Blogger so perhaps not. Thank you for all your lovely comments on my last post though, I really was surprised anyone was still out there!

Do you have any plans for this year?

goodness

It has been a long time. So long, I daren't look at the blog itself and see when I last posted. I'm not entirely sure what happened there. I have, really, sort of weaned myself off the internet. Well, off putting myself out there. I try and visit Twitter but I kind of forget. And I only read a handful of blogs now.

Thing is I have missed this blog. Or rather missed the creative outlet it's given me. So I'm here. I am sure no one else is but that's ok. Really. I'm not chasing ads, watching statistics or trying to build a career through the screen.

I cannot wait until the end of term. I'm looking forward to constructing houses out of cake, lounging around in pyjamas and watching Charlie Brown's Christmas.

 

{It's Time}

It's been very hectic round here and I'm not very good at hectic.

So while a poorly little one napped on the sofa (the joy of large families means illness works its slow way around everyone for what feels like ever) I hot footed it to the garden.

There is so much to do, here, inside, at the allotment and I am so woefully behind.

But I squashed my feelings of overwhelm and just got out there. It was time, time for baby steps.

Change

I am going to be predictably boring and lament the fact that it's now July. JULY! The speed that time whizzes by never ceases to amaze me.

Of course, I had to check the calendar (word of the day one - today's word? Wormhole) because looking outside you wouldn't know it was midsummer. It feels like we had a very short spring and then have fast forwarded to autumn.

I have managed to waste a whole morning doing not very much when in fact I should be doing Lots of Important Things. So it goes. There is much physical stuff to sort out here as we emptied our entire loft at the weekend in preparation for building work.

Yes, that sentence does strike fear in my heart. Being surrounded by boxes upon boxes (containing things pertaining to camping, Christmas and memories) has had a bit of an unsettling effect on me.

I don't work well amid chaos. Some order is essential for sanity. Plus, rifling through lots of old things (who knew me and Hubby had exchanged SO MANY love letters) is a bit like waving your hand into a crystal clear rock pool. There are some gems to be had but mostly you can't see clearly because everything's been muddied.

There is a lot of detris floating around, mostly centering around lost opportunities and people. I'm sure things will settle down soon. I just never imagined getting rid of stuff would really have such an effect.

It's funny, I've been thinking, how life changing events seem quite innocuous at the time but it's only on looking back that you realise their impact on your life, of roads taken as a result of that small event.

And so it happened with me back in March. Around the time, I think, that I stopped blogging here and generally fell out of love with the whole shebang.

Now here I am plotting the next five or six years of my life, something that is so alien to me. I am hoping my future will include university. Which one and doing what has still to be decided but it's exciting and scary in equal measure.

Firsts

It has been another lousy year in the garden. Partly my fault and partly the weather. And there appears to be an all-you-can-eat evening cafe for rabbits that has set up business at the allotment.

But let's not focus on the negatives.

Let's celebrate the positives. There is much to be grateful for but I admit I am struggling a bit at the moment. I am in the doldrums and I haven't a clue why (so unlike me).

I aim to combat that with knitting and baking bread. I had a book token (I know, how quaint!) so treated myself to Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf. I like his Short and Sweet which I received for Christmas so I'm hoping this will be just as good.

It was published a while ago and should be just the ticket for making fancy pants bread. It's subtitled Contemporary European Recipes for the Home Baker.

I've also been enjoying the first strawberries from the plot and the first sweet peas from the garden. Everything seems so much later this year but all the more sweeter for it.

Lunch

Lunch is my favourite meal of the day. It's important that wherever you are at lunchtime, you make time to show show yourself some love by having a lovely meal.

And I'm not talking about a sandwich.

Huge salads, home-made soup, noodles with veg and home-made peanut dressing, wraps with roasted peppers, onions finished with ham and feta cheese - all of them are lipsmackingly lovely.

Today it was the turn of Broccoli Gribiche from one of my favourite cookbooks, Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson (she of 101 Cookbooks fame).

It was delicious. Roasted potatoes and broccoli together with a dressing and hard boiled eggs. Really, what's not to love? Except the portion size. I had reduced it as the recipe was for six. Next time I shall just halve it. I mean, eating one for three people isn't too piggy...

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Thank you all for your lovely welcome back comments. I was really touched, not expecting anyone to still be visiting here, so your comments in my inbox were a lovely surprise.

gently

It's been a while since I've written here. There's no great reason why, except that when you stop it is so much harder, the longer the break, to start posting again.

I've been thinking about how I blog and why. Belonging to a particular community, by default, drained every scrap of blogging love from me.

So a complete break, cut off from the old Carrots and Kids, means I can totally start again. Probably with no readers but that's ok. It feels freer somehow.

Beginning to blog again here feels like starting afresh. I don't care for competitions, being in a room full of other bloggers telling me about their 90,000 readers, wonderful newsletters or generally how great they are, nor do I care for what I do here to be measured or compared to others.

I like gentle writers and blogs. I like people documenting their days just because. I like great photographs. I like peeking into the world they want to show me.

And that's how I shall blog. How I used to. If I talk about a product here it's because I bought it and really like it. I'm not interested in receiving goods for free to write a review (much less read them. Yawn). This blog is totally uncommercialised. That feels refreshing.

I'm not here to receive validation from anyone through my writing or pictures and I find it draining (and very easy to spot) when others do. Yeah, I know, each to their own. Blah. Blah. Blah. I just don't want to read it.

But I do want to share what I love to read. On a screen and in that endearingly old fashioned way, on paper.

There will still be gardening too. Rather weirdly, I have done loads. It's as if knowing that it was just for me, with no interest for anyone else, freed me up to do it just like I used to.

I'll still write about it here. But I'm also going to include stuff that interests me. I did start another blog but life's too short to maintain two, so it'll all be on here.

The breadmaking, green cleaning, the slow (oh, so slow) knitting, wholefood cooking, routines and rhythms, simpler living. It will all be here.

And so shall I.

Make a Bird Nest Building Buffet

Things have been extraordinarily stressful at Carrots Cottage this last week and a bit, but one of the most soothing things I've found is watching birds in the garden.

I stand at the kitchen window sipping coffee, thumbing through a very old copy of The Hamlyn Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe. It's old, priced at £1.75, but we got it in a charity shop.

There's not as many feathered visitors as I'd like but we've had dunnocks, great tits, chaffinches and bullfinches as well as the usual robin, blue tits (currently building a nest in the box as they do every year), blackbirds, sparrows and the ever present pigeons who, I know, are just waiting for me to sow some peas.

Nest building is going on aplenty. Every time I see a bird in the garden they either have something in their mouths or are eating at a feeder.

So I thought I'd help them. We collected some moss, clipped the hairy dog and cut up some wool. I wondered how to make this tip top material available for the birds.

The garden's currently in disarray thanks to a major patio building project so I wouldn't have any where to place yoghurt pots or dishes of wool. Plus, they'd blow away. Oh, I know there are doubtless countless posts and tutorials on making such a thing but y'know, I couldn't be bothered to look. Sometimes you just want to get on and do it your way.

So I fudged my own idea.

If you fancy having a go here's what you need:

• a small piece of wood
• a drill
• hook for hanging it up
• nesting materials
• pieces of wood or nails for the birds to perch on

We (well, Hubby, I was deemed too accident prone) drilled holes all the way through the wood then the seven-year-old stuffed them. Our holes could have been bigger I reckon but they're full of material.

I've hung it up near the most popular feeders but have yet to see a bird visiting their buffet. "It's not like it's been posted on Facebook love, the birds aren't telling each other there's a load of dog hair for nests at number xx," commented Hubby.

Hmm, well I hope they're not going to be fussy. This is prime nest building material here.

:: Today on Birdoosh I'm talking about Monday mornings and routines ::

Book Review: Garden Crafts for Children

When I was very kindly asked by the publishers if I would like to review Garden Crafts for Children by Dawn I was a little trepedatious. My bookshelves groan with children's gardening activity books. I even have a beloved favourite. Could this latest addition add anything new?

While I did come across the dreaded planting in a welly boot activity (a pet hate of mine), I was also pleased to see some new to me crafts too.

What I liked:

• the alpine wreath. Never mind the children, I'm making this for me
• tyrannosaurus garden. This is something my five-year-old will love. Just need to source a tyre
• stop-motion bean pot. I loved this new take on growing a bean down the side of a glass. This will be gracing our kitchen table very soon
• I liked the design of the book. It's aimed at children and I could happily give it to my seven-year-old knowing she'd be able to follow it thanks to the clear instructions and pictures

What I wasn't so keen on:

• Generally I liked it but the above mentioned welly boot craft could have been omitted I reckon (but that's probably just me)
• If you already do some gardening with your children you may find that you're familiar with some of the activities such as miniature gardens, pine cone feeders or growing cress but I think you'll find a few gems that are new to you as I did.

It is a lovely book and would make a great present for a beginner gardener (or family) or perhaps for a grandparent eager to do more with their little ones than feed them cake during visits. You could even team it with some of the materials to make one of the activities - now that would be a lovely present. And don't worry that you haven't got a large garden, or any garden at all, as there is plenty to offer mini would-be balcony gardeners too.

:: I was very kindly given a copy of this book for free ::