Friday Smiles Happy Easter Honeys

Hi Honeys
I hope you've had a fabulous week, in spite of the dismal weather all week long.  It's been miserable in Scotland, I hope it's been better where you are.  Just wanted to wish you a wonderful weekend and a very happy Easter before dashing off to work and share a couple of silly smiles :)

Hubby made me all kinds of fan girl happy when he gave me this...

 It's the cutest little R2D2 :) I'm not too proud to admit I actually squealed quite loudly :) Inside is this....

How To Grate Mozzarella Cheese For Perfect Pizza Topping

Disclaimer:  I haven't been paid to promote any products or stores, just sharing a little kitchen hack I've been using for a lot of years to avoid getting my hands icky when making our much loved homemade pizza :)

Hi Honeys
It's almost time to change our clocks here in the UK to roll over from our dark, dismal winter to a bright (please Mother Nature, I'm begging here!) cheery Spring and I am ridiculously excited!  It's been chucking down with rain for the past two days, the skies are dark and grey and the wind is so chilly it could slice & dice a person at our back door!

The clocks go forward one hour this weekend and surely then we'll see some sunshine and (oh my!) actually feel some warmth!  I'm not kidding here honeys, I've so had it with winter, feeling cold, grey, rainy skies and cardigans! I wanna wear t shirts & peg out laundry in lovely sunshine :)

Enough of my moans though :) After the recent surrealness surrounding my OXO post, I thought I'd share another of my "anything to avoid getting my hands icky" habits :)

Seriously, I cannot stress enough how much I dislike even the idea of my hands getting icky! Can't do it.  Nope. Not even a wee bit.... I know, I'm odd but I like to think I'm odd in a nice way :)

Thing is, I adore mozzarella cheese. It's my second favourite cheese (after perfect Scottish cheddar of course) but it's also packaged in a small bag floating in fluid which means you open the package and it's already in a ready-to-make-your-hands-icky state!

Mozzarella is also the only cheese (sorry Cheddar) to top homemade pizza and I (if I say so myself) make a pretty mean pizza, using homemade dough, fresh basil, tomatoes and lashings of... grated mozzarella :)

How then to get that icky (but delicious) cheese grated and onto my pizza?

How A Hanging Planter Became A Home For Bananas...

Hi honeys,
Ever seen an idea for your home and wanted to try it? Like every one who loves Pinterest I keep seeing images of those wall hanging flower baskets, the ones you hang outside your front door and fill with pretty plants, being used as wall storage in the home.

 Interesting idea, I thought.  Well, while shopping in Asda recently I saw this...

I liked the look of it (how adorable is the little heart design on the front honeys?) it's made from plastic coated metal, so it's easy to clean, and it only cost £2!

So, having taken it home, I asked Hubby if he'd put it up in the kitchen over the weekend.  Hubby didn't even question why I wanted to hang an outdoors flower planter up in the kitchen, bless him! All he asked me was "where do you want it put?"

Easiest Ever Knitted Blanket Pattern - Update & Completed Plan To Download

Hi honeys
It's Friday and we're almost at Easter already! How did that happen?  This year, like last, is rushing past again.  I can't help wish it would get warmer though. In spite of some beautifully sunny days recently the wind is so chilly it stings my face and hands.

Do you remember the blanket I've been knitting? If you missed it you can see the post here :) In that post I promised an updated, usable graphic of the completed blanket plan and you'll find it in this post :)

It's been a couple of weeks since I've properly worked on my little blanket.  I have four joints in my fingers where the osteoarthritis is currently active and it's been making knitting very painful.

I'm a determined wee Rosie though so while it might have taken me a few weeks I've managed to complete eight of my little squares and sew them into place on the blanket. Let's see how it looks now...

Free St Patrick's Day Menu Printable & Why Our Wee Scots Furbaby Has The Luck o' The Irish :)

Hi Honeys,
I hope you're having a wonderful day! We still have sunshine (sort of) in the west of Scotland, birds are singing and I'm happily doing laundry... a lot :)

Since we have St Patrick's Day this week, in two days time to be precise, I thought I'd tell you how our darling furbaby Jade got her birthday, since her (official) birthday falls on St Patrick's Day itself, and also share a wee printable St Patrick's day menu I've made for you :)

Picture Perfect Project - Spring In The Garden

Hi Honeys
Prepare for lots of smiles in today's post :) We're in the garden and we're welcoming Spring :)

Have you heard of the wonderful Picture Perfect Project link up?  It's a lovely link up that encourages bloggers to snap more photographs, develop their photography skills and along the way make their blogs completely fabulous :) It's also such fun!!

The link up is run every second Thursday of each month throughout the year.  It's Monday and due to life (and work) schedules being a little hectic my post for March is a couple of days late but here it is dear ones, go grab a cuppa and settle down for some garden fun and smiles...

 Yesterday I spent a fun day in the garden with Hubby and our furbaby Jade. Spring has arrived, the ground frost has gone and there are so many exciting, beautiful things happening in the garden.  Do you remember our shopping trip last Sunday honeys? If not you can see it here.

Let's take a look and see what we did with the lavender and the beautiful rose bush we bought last weekend and maybe have a look at what's in store in the next few months too...

Friday Smiles: Deer At The Doorstep & Furbaby Smiles :)

Hi Honeys
I hope you've had a wonderful week and that you're looking forward to a fun weekend :) It's mid March, there are two weeks till the clocks go forward in the UK, the garden is starting to wake up from it's long winter nap, the sun has started appearing to say hello again and this is my three hundredth blog post :)

Wow! I mean. three hundred posts! How did that happen? It feels like yesterday (well maybe the day before) that I decided to try to dip my toe into the blogging world and here we are two years and a lot of words and photos later :) Thank you so much for keeping me company honeys, it means more to me than I can ever say xx

On to this weeks smiles then :)

About That OXO post...

Hi honeys,
Well, what an exciting morning I've had!  To think it all started with a blog post I'd written last June in an effort to find out whether I was the only person who hated getting her hands icky when cooking in general and when using OXO cubes in particular.

I had also wanted to share a silly little hack I had used for years now to avoid getting most of that delicious but potentially messy stock cube all over my hands instead of in the pot.  You know the scene, you're working in the kitchen, your hands are a little damp (does everyone else wash things as they go along to avoid the mountain of dishes after dinner?) you try to crumble an OXO and end up with about three grains in the pot and your hands looking like you're wearing OXO mittens :)

Imagine my surprise then, when that little post from almost a year ago started attracting quite a lot of traffic.  My usual daily traffic doubled and then kept going.

I do have a few posts which tend to be pinned or shared regularly and now and again I'll see them appear on my daily stats but until now the little OXO wrapper hack hadn't really been one of them.

I didn't really give it another thought apart from feeling happy that maybe it was helping others, like me, who don't like icky hands while cooking.  Then yesterday afternoon I received first a tweet and then an email from a lovely lady called Alice at the BBC.

Shopping With Rosie Part Two

Disclaimer: I haven't been paid to promote any products or stores. I'm just sharing our shopping trip, some pretty items we saw and some smiles. Thank you for keeping me company honeys x

Hi Honeys
Back again with part two of a shopping trip with I went on with Hubby on a bitterly cold Sunday.  If you missed part one yesterday, with all of those gorgeous canvas prints, you can find it here.

I mention that Sunday was bitterly cold because it really did affect our shopping trip.  Had it not been so cold we might have gone for a wander into Pets at Home to pick up some chews, treats or a toy for our furbaby Jade or we might have wandered over to the huge Sainsburys and had a wander around there.  As it was so cold though honeys, we went to B&Q to complete our mission of finding the perfect rose bush in memory of Mum, which was our principle reason for going out, and then went to B&M.

This was the first time Hubby and I had visited B&M together and it really was an eye opening experience.  I've no idea how long this store has existed but we've been completely unaware of it.  In fact we only found out about it because the store is in the same retail park as the garden centre we use and seeing it's bright exterior, we got curious as to what kind of store it was.

Wanna Join Me On A Shopping Trip Honeys?

Disclaimer: I haven't been paid to write this post or to recommend any products.  Hubby & I went shopping and I thought you'd like to tag along with us and share some smiles x

Hi Honeys
It was sunny today! Yaaaay! It's been such a busy weekend dear ones. As anyone who works in retail will tell you, this past weekend is one of the busiest of the year.  Yesterday was Mothering Sunday in the UK, a day (quite rightly) set aside each year to celebrate Mums and how much they do for everyone.

I worked till late Friday and Saturday (and oh my was it busy!) but I was lucky enough to have yesterday off work.  Sundays are the only day of the week both Hubby and I are off work together, so it's a special day for us.  Hubby, bless him, is out the door before 7am every day to work and doesn't get home much before 6pm so our Sundays are a day to catch up about what we've done during the week, and also to chat online with my dear Brother in Law too.

Yesterday honeys, the sun appeared :) It was such a beautiful day outside, still cold (especially in the icy wind) but other than the temperature, just a perfect Spring day :)  We decided to go on a (very rare) joint shopping trip and I took my camera along so that you could join us too :)

I'm going to have to split this post into two parts because of the sheer number of photos I took yesterday. There were so many lovely things and I found myself snapping away happily :)

Shall we get started then honeys?

Friday Smile: All Kinds Of Smiles Going On :)

Hi Honeys
I hope you're well and seeing the sunshine where you are.  Mother Nature is certainly taking her time but slowly, little by little, Spring is arriving :)

The UK seems to be split, weather wise, right now.  On BBC breakfast this morning they showed lots of photos, submitted by viewers, of snow in so many places up and down the Country but (so far) no snow here in the West of Scotland.  Instead we have a bright, sunny day with the prettiest blue skies and fluffy clouds, as you can see...  

 My goodness though, it's bitterly cold!  It's apparently six degrees outside right now but the wind chill cuts that to a temperature fit to chill the bones.  It's march honeys! I'm so tired of being cold. I'm a Summer baby so I'm just not made for chattering teeth and wearing thermals on a sunny day.  We need a smile then to banish the chilly weather blues :)

Looking for smiles to share I wandered off into the garden this morning and boy did I smile! Look what's happening in the garden honeys...

How Hubby & A Little Penguin Solved My Photography Problem...

Hi Honeys
I hope you're staying warm and maybe even seeing some sunshine :) I woke up this morning, a little before 5am, to the BBC telling me we have a local weather warning for snow! Snow! Honey's it's March!  Spring or not,  it's certainly cold enough... brrr!

OK, so today I'm going to share how incredibly stupid I can be without even trying :)

Writing this, I really do feel spectacularly silly.  I had a huge "doh" moment which made me feel at first ridiculously daft but then almost immediately I felt incredibly relieved too, and then spectacularly silly all over again :)  I should explain....