Beautiful Peony Roses Begin To Appear...

Hi Honeys,
How are you today?  I'm sorry I've been missing for so long.  I'm struggling dear ones.  I have eight blog posts in various stages of completion and I just can't sit down to work on them because of the almost constant pain I've been in for weeks now.  I can't sleep, getting to sleep isn't a problem because I'm so drained all the time, it's staying asleep.  I wake up in pain and mostly I'm still sitting there watching TV or reading when Hubby's alarm goes off around 5.30am. 

This little blog means the world to me and it's awful that it's suffering because of a bunch of aches and pains.  I'm sorry honeys, I really am.  I'll try to do better 💋

Today I went to the back door to let our furbaby Jade out into the garden and was surprised and happy by what met me 😊 Other than helping my arthritic joints to torture me, it looks like the almost constant rain recently is working wonders in our Garden 😊  Look what's happening to our much loved peony roses...

So many leaves! All of that foliage feels as if it's just appeared out of nowhere.  As if I looked away, turned back and.... there it is!  So beautiful as always.  I do wish peonies stayed in bloom longer.  They'll be here and gone again so fast but I still look forward to seeing them each year 😊 

Do you remember honeys, back in January, I got so excited to see these little buds begin to push their way through the earth in search of the sun to warm them...

Well, it wasn't terribly warm but still they kept growing.  By late January they were under snow but by the time late February arrived the snow was gone again and it looked as though we were on the right track for spring.....

The sun was warm, we had blue skies with the occasional fluffy white cloud bobbing along and just as I was starting to look forward to warm soft breezes, sunny spring days and laundry pegging in the back garden... well this happened...

Beginnings And Endings: Farewell To Polyvore And New Rose Shrub Planted!

Hi Honeys,
How are you today?  I've spent most of this week hanging onto the walls to get around our home because of the worst pain in my spine.  You know, I've decided dear ones that I'm fed up of arthritis now.  I'm fed up of not knowing what, if anything, I'll be able to do each day.  I haven't been able to sleep more than an hour or two each night this week and it's all getting to be a little too much is all so just ignore my complaints honeys.  Regular happy-Rosie will be resumed in no time. Even the worst pain can't keep me down for long.  I'm too stubborn 😊   

So, arthritis aside, having longed for and counted down to Spring for months and in spite of having reached almost the middle of April, it's raining here.  Not just a little either.  It's literally "chucking down" outside, which is fine because as the old saying goes "April showers bring May flowers" and I do adore our garden 💮⚘😊

Now usually, when I'm feeling this awful one of the ways I cope is to hide away from the world and distract myself by creating my dream closet on the Polyvore site.  Do you remember my singing the praises of Polyvore honeys?  I even shared some of my sets here and also here.

Polyvore was a little like having access to every fashion piece, and household items too since Polyvore wasn't only for fashion fans but also would-be interior designers too.  Did you notice just then I said was honeys? 

It's true.  Polyvore is gone.  Without any notice the site was sold to a clothing supplier and all of our collections, sets, the friends we'd all made there, all of it has disappeared.
 

As you can imagine honeys, there has been quite an outcry of disbelief and unhappiness on social media over the way the closing of the Polyvore site has been handled.  No one knew it was going to happen, there was no email sent out to warn members. 

I checked and up until the day before it happened I still only received the usual marketing email from Polyvore with no mention that the site was being sold and our sanctuary from world overwhelm closed with the loss of everything created over the years.

All is not lost!

Well honeys, they seem to have heard because they've set up a link to request a download of your sets & collections. You can request a download by going here logging in, using the email address you joined with and the password for your polyvore account. 

Important: You only have until May 15th to request a download of your sets & collections!  At this page you can also opt out of your information being passed to the company who have taken over the Polyvore site. 

When you request your data download it will take a day or two to prepare and then when you go back to the above address there will be a link to download a zip file containing all of your sets etc.  

It's beyond sad to lose Polyvore honeys, it was a little oasis of calm for me on less than calm days and I'l miss it terribly but I'm also so grateful to Polyvore for providing this wonderful little platform for all of us for so many years.  It was provided free after all and meant a great deal to those of us who relied on it. Thank you Polyvore, it's been awesome 💖💖💖💖

On then to happier thoughts honeys...

Let's Make Some Marvellous Mini Hasselback Potatoes

Hi Honeys
How was your Easter? I hope you had fun, found lots of eggs and even more smiles and hugs 😊  Working in retail as I do, you can imagine I had very busy shifts to get through but they were so much fun too 😊

On Saturday we had a "dress down" day where instead of our uniforms we were to wear something "spring like."  Of course that meant pastels for me and I wore the prettiest baby blue blouse I had forgotten I even had!  I found it while searching through my cupboard, having bought it on sale who-knows-how-long-ago 😊

As part of Sunday dinner I decided to experiment with one of Hubby's favourite potato dishes, the wonderful, versatile and incredibly yummy Swedish Hasselback potatoes.  Till now I've always used medium to large baking potatoes, my favourite being King Edwards but I've used lots of different types of potato including sweet potatoes.  All of them have been scrumptious! You just can't go wrong with these fabulous roasted potatoes honeys 😋

So, what did I do differently then?  Well since I'd bought some Scottish baby potatoes for our Sunday dinner I thought I'd try the Hasselback method of cooking them, thinking it might be interesting since they're much smaller than the more usual baking potatoes.

Don't they look amazing?  There are just no words for how delicious these smaller version of one of Hubby's favourites were and I'll definitely be making them again.  Let's see how I made them shall we?