The Most Delicious DIY Ice Cream With Only One Ingredient!

Disclaimer:  This post is not health advice.  If you have any doubts about diet, allergies or any other health matters, please talk to your health care professional honeys. Hugs x 

Hi Honeys
I hope you're well and managing to stay out of the torrential rain we're suffering right now.  As I type this the rain is literally beating off our windows.

After yesterday's very long (but I hope fun too) post, I thought I'd write a short but (hopefully) smile filled post before dashing off to work in my heavy rain jacket and umbrella in the hope I make it there without getting drenched on the way ☂  It's not looking hopeful on the non-drenching listening to that rain outside though....

For the longest time I've been hearing that you can make your own ice cream without an ice cream maker. It's been all over Pinterest, all over the internet really honeys.  To be honest, I didn't think it could work.  I mean, actual ice cream, without all the usual time and trouble of making it such as churning etc?

Well, then I was chatting to a lovely lady at work and she told me she'd tried it for her kids and they loved it!  I was curious.  I resolved to try to make it and this happened... 

The most perfect, yummy "ice cream" I've had 😋  I asked Hubby to try it and he agreed 😍  I think we have it honeys!  A perfect, guilt free, good for you treat!

Why not grab a cuppa (and maybe a cookie) and meet me back here in a few minutes and I'll share all of the details...

It's Ikea Time! A Fun, Rainy Day Visit: Part One

Disclaimer:  I have not been paid to promote any products or stores, just wanted to share my smiles from our latest shopping trip x

Hello Honeys,
How are you today?  All well I hope and having a wonderful week 💙  I've been, with the assistance of our furbaby Jade of course, mostly doing laundry (to take advantage of the sunny days and warm temperatures by pegging it all outside) and a few little organising projects around our home. 

Yesterday I spent most of the day smiling while editing photos taken during our trip to Ikea last Wednesday on the rainiest but still far too warm day 😊  It really was a fun, albeit exhausting, day out and I wanted to share in the hope that they might make you smile too 💚

I discovered while editing the photos for this post just how many I'd taken (hint: too many!) so I've been forced to split this post into three parts.

Even after being quite ruthless with which photos to include, there were just too (too) many to force into a single post.  If I'd included all of the images in a single post it would be far too long to possibly scroll through, you'd need several huge pots of tea or coffee and not just a cuppa and it would drain your batteries too!

Even (massively) slimmed down (and divided between three posts) there are still quite a few photos in this post dear ones so why not go grab that cuppa (and maybe a couple of cookies) and meet me back here in a few minutes...

Super Easy, Super Yummy Cheesy Mashed Potato...

Hi Honeys,
How are you?  Well it's been quite a fortnight here 😊  Hubby and I have both been on hols from work and we've spent our "stay-cation" decluttering our home and working on little organising tasks.  It's been so much fun creating order in the bedrooms upstairs.  We're no where near finished but the bedrooms feel so much lighter and roomy already. 

We spent yesterday dashing between charity shops, five huge bags to our favourite local shop, a little bedside table to another (our local store doesn't accept furniture so it was off to their sorting centre) and off to Oxfam with a bag full of VHS movies and TV series we found. So much better than their going to landfill and it helps raise much needed funds too.

Well, the rest of a very rainy yesterday afternoon was spent on a trip to Ikea, my happy place 😃  There was so much to see because I hadn't been there in so long and I took so, so many photos, which I'll share honeys I promise.

Today though I thought I'd share one of our favourite side dishes 😋   

Oh my! Even seeing this photo makes me want to go make up a batch 😊  What can possibly be better than a huge pot full of the lightest, fluffiest, creamiest mashed potato?  Well, a huge pot full of the  lightest, fluffiest, creamiest mashed potato with lots of yummy cheese all "marbled" through it of course 😊  There's not enough yum in the world to sum up creamy, cheesy mash 😍

Why not go grab a cuppa (and maybe a cookie) and meet me back here in a few minutes and I'll share the quickest, easiest, cheesiest mashed potato you'll ever make 😊  See you in a few minutes...

Origami birds in flight... The perfect addition to our bedroom wall decor...

Disclaimer: I haven't been paid to promote any stores or products I just wanted to share my latest little home decor smile 💗

Hi Honeys
How are you today? I hope your week is off to a great start.  Hubby is on hols from work this week and we're making the most of our "stay-cation" by using it to have a huge declutter of the bedrooms upstairs.

We have so many bags waiting to be delivered to our local charity shop and another bunch of stuff waiting to go to the local council recycling centre too.  It feels so good to be able to downsize a little.  So much more to do but it's good to make even a little progress.

Hubby's done most of the work (thank you sweetheart x) but it's been great just to be able to spend some time together and have a laugh without being tired from work shifts.  We finished up work for today and I thought I'd share with you the latest little additions to my "calm wall"

If you've read any of my blog you'll know I have a much loved canvas print on our bedroom wall.  It really does mean a great deal to me because it's become my escape from the overwhelm I feel at times.

This beautiful little canvas print even helped me get through a CT scan in hospital. If you missed that post you can read it here honeys x

A few things have joined this lovely canvas over time and I now think of this wall in our master bedroom upstairs as my "calm wall."

When life gets a little overwhelming, I go upstairs, sit in the middle of the bed and stare at my canvas.  I've done it for so long now that I can almost step into it, walk down the sand covered steps and sit on the beach 💖

The framed print now sitting beneath the beach canvas on the picture rail in the image above was a gift from Hubby.  It's from a series called "Artistic Impressions" and is by an artist called Annabel Burton.  I'd seen it online as the Dunelm website and just fell in love with it 💗  I think I could live very happily in that darling little cottage honeys 💖 Look, it even has my laundry dancing in the breeze in the back garden 😍 💗

To the right hand side of the beautiful cottage print is my much loved Loki Lego figure shadowbox.  Loki was a gift from a dear friend and I adore him 💖

On the other side is a small white frame saying "Welcome!  Everything is fine."  Viewers of The Good Place will recognise this immediately and smile 😊  There are no words for how much I love this wonderful series and I feel so sad that they're not making any more episodes after season four 💔

Well, back to the reason for this post dear ones 😊  I've added the most adorable ceramic birds to my "calm wall" and I'm loving them so much I could just burst!  Here they are...

As you can see they have been designed to look like origami paper birds and they're just so sweet. I just knew they'd be perfect on the bedroom wall, flying towards the beach in my beloved canvas 💖

When I removed the birds from the packaging they were even lovelier than I thought honeys...

Up onto the wall they went dear ones and they looked just as I thought they would...

I seriously haven't been able to stop smiling every time I walk into the bedroom 😊 I just adore them.

I would happily have paid full price for them but imagine my shock when I discovered they had been dropped from their original price of £12 in the George at Home (Asda) sale to £7, then to £1.20!  I have no words honeys! I mean that's less than a cup of coffee!

They're just perfect and now when I escape into my beautiful canvas there will be birds in the sky too 😊

What do you think honeys?  Have you spotted any bargains recently or changed your decor?  Do you meditate?  How do you find your calm?

Til next time dear ones, smile lots and hug even more, hugs always x

A Beautiful Garden Guest 🐝

Hi Honeys
How are you today?  All well I hope and enjoying the last few weeks of summer 💖

It feels as if this week has flown past.  Hubby has this week (and next) off work and we're spending it trying to get through some organising projects we've been planning for a while and generally getting some work done around the house.

Yesterday the rain finally stopped (although it's back again today) and so I took the opportunity to peg out some laundry in the back garden.  Opening the back door,  I spotted the most beautiful garden guest 🐝 and went back inside to fetch my camera.

Well, luckily our little garden guest wasn't in a hurry to go anywhere because he was still outside when I came back to the doorway.  I snapped away while he buzzed and worked in the lavender by our back door and I was so happy when I looked at the photos because one of the images looked like this...   

Isn't he beautiful honeys?

I'm ridiculously excited by this photo because I've tried so hard to snap pics of these little guys in our garden over the years and although I have managed to persuade them to be in my photos... well the photos haven't been very good ones...

This has been a constant source of disappointment to me because I adore these busy little garden visitors and I really do try to do what I can to help encourage them to visit and make themselves at home.

We have three little "bee hotels" set up for them in the garden, they have a tiny drinking station under the blueberry shrub (shhhh! it's a secret... don't tell anyone) and I make sure they have lots of lovely plants to visit while they're here. They've always seemed especially fond of the lavender...

So, after all these years of snapping photos of our tiny, busy garden guests and wishing I didn't have to use little arrows to point out where they are in the photos when I excitedly shared them 😊 this happened...

I can't stop looking at him honeys and I'm so, so happy to finally have a clear photo of one of our gorgeous garden guests 🐝

The other photos I snapped weren't as clear but were all still better than any of the other photos I've taken.  In this image his body can't be seen clearly but I do love that we can see his little wings in motion...

In this photo he's a little clearer to see as he diligently goes about his work, oblivious to the odd lady standing at the back door snapping away with her camera...

While in this last photo we can, again, see his tiny wings...

The planter he's beside is home to our much loved peonies.  This large planter lives up on a wooden garden chair so that when they grow each year they get the best of the sunshine.  The lavender this year has been as tall as the peonies were in their planter, perched high up on their chair 💗

I'm always happy in our garden honeys.  Whether out feeding the tiny sparrows, squirrels or other garden visitors, checking on how many apples are growing on our tiny apple tree or pegging out laundry, I'm always happy out there 😊  What? I do, honestly adore doing laundry.  I love every little bit of it.  I even love the ironing and folding bits 😊

What's been making you happy this week honeys?  What's been making you smile?  Whatever it is, I hope you have a never-ending supply 💖

Till next time dear ones, have a wonderful weekend, smile lots and hug every single chance you get.  Nothing makes a day happier than a hug 💗  Huggles always x

Finding Smiles On A Rainy Day..

Hi Honeys
The rain is literally beating against the windows as I write this.  The sky is so dark outside and the rain so heavy that our little garden is eerily empty.  I'm missing what has become my daily ritual of standing at the kitchen window watching our tiny garden guests eating their food.

I have to go out in this torrential rain soon to go to work unfortunately.  According to the weather reports this rain is with us for most of the day too.  It might be good for the gardens, all of this lovely Scottish rainfall, but not so great if you have to be out in it. Or for our much loved little garden visitors who'll be hiding somewhere safe hopefully keeping out of this frightful downpour.

I need a smile before heading out to work honeys.  Something to help me get through my long, tiring shift so I went looking through my photos, taken this week, and sure enough... smiles 😄

It's a true saying that sometimes the brightest smiles can be found on your own doorstep, all we have to do is look for them 😊

Since there are a few photos in this post why not grab a cuppa (and maybe a cookie too) and meet me back here in a few minutes and maybe we can share some smiles with our cuppa 😘

An Early Harvest Of Beautiful Scottish Bramley Apples - How To Clean And Store Them Once Gathered...

Hi Honeys
How are you today?  All well I hope, and having a great week 💖 Well, it's that time of year again! It's Harvest time for the apples on our little apple tree 🍏

Yesterday was a really exciting day.  No shift at work so, helped by my beloved little assistant, our furbaby Jade, I went out into the garden and gathered the apples from our tiny tree.  Of course it helps that our tree isn't tall, there's no way you'll ever find me on a step ladder! It also helps that the apples were just falling off the tree 😊 

It does feel very early to harvest the apples, although it's only a week or so earlier than last year, but there really was no choice in the matter.  Over the past week or so we've been losing so many apples from our tiny apple tree because they're just setting out to prove Sir Issac Newton's theory by falling off the tree and bouncing off across the patio 🍎

Every spring I watch our tiny apple tree burst into gorgeous, delicate pastel shades of white, pink, green and yellow as the apple blossom appears.  The blossom eventually falls away leaving a blanket of petals on our patio looking as if we've had the prettiest wedding as it's scattered all over 💖

From this beautiful apple blossom lovely Bramley apples appear as if by magic.  We planted our much loved little tree in the back garden of our home in the spring of 2007 knowing it would take some years before we could expect apples for our kitchen.

The very first apple, a single perfect apple, appeared in 2014 and the following year, 2015, we had three apples 🍏

While the following year, 2016, in October, later than the now more usual earlier August harvests, we were blessed with only two apples again.  They might have taken longer to grow but they were the most perfect Bramley apples! Of course,  I immediately decided to make apple crumbles using these perfect apples grown in our own garden on our own tiny tree 💗

Last year we had our very first real crop of perfect apples and, by storing them properly we had apple crumbles all the way through till March this year!  To be fair though, they lasted that long (and were still perfect when I cooked the last of them) because there are only two of us and we don't have apple crumbles or turnovers or other yummy treats every single week, we're trying to live a healthier life after all 😊  When I did bake though, it was such a joy to know the apples I used were homegrown 🏡

So, why not grab a cuppa honeys and maybe a cookie, and meet me back here and I'll share our apple adventure yesterday and how you can store your apples if you too have a little apple tree...

Super Easy, Scrumptious Banana Bread - Don't Waste Those Ageing Bananas...

Hello Honeys
How are you today?  I'm trying to catch up on laundry and other little household tasks from the weekend, with the help of our furbaby Jade of course 💖

With the high temperature these past few weeks, even when it's been raining, we've been facing a too often annoying waste of fruit.  We always have fruit in our kitchen honeys, Hubby takes an apple and orange to work with him each day, along with a small "snack pot" containing nuts (right now that's dry roasted peanuts.)

The excessive heat in the kitchen seems to be really shortening the basket life of our fruit, especially the bananas.  I really dislike waste dear ones.  Everything, especially food it seems to me, is so expensive these days so binning wasted food just seems so wrong.

If we had room I'd store our fruit in the fridge but since we've gotten into meal prepping the fridge is always stocked with lovely fresh salads and glass pots of fresh yogurt and fruit.  We need a bigger fridge (and freezer) which we're working on right now, but that brings us back to lovely bananas just wilting away in the heat of our kitchen.

So, I had gone into the kitchen and spotted four little bananas that had to be used or binned and immediately thought of making some yummy banana muffins.  Having made up a (double) batch of muffin mixture (to use the four bananas) well this happened...

Yum! My banana muffin mixture actually became a loaf of banana bread and some yummy muffins too and they were wonderful!

Just like the banana muffins, this delicious loaf was so easy to make it practically made itself 😊  Why not grab a cuppa honeys and meet me back here in a few mins and I'll share how I made it 💖

Finding Smiles & Counting My Blessings...

Hi Honeys,
How are you today?  Well, here we are in August again!  How did that happen?  Summer seems to pass so fast now, I only wish winter would pass as quickly.  I know lots of people love the winter months but winter really does feel as if it goes on forever here.

We have less than six hours daylight each day in winter and I've said so many times that I'd like to hibernate like a grizzly bear every year 😊

Which season is your favourite dear ones?  Mine, without a doubt is spring.  The all too dark days of winter start to loosen their stranglehold, the temperatures begin to rise a little and our much loved garden starts to wake up from its long winter slumber.

Of course as the garden wakes up, mother nature does too.  The garden has been blessed with so many tiny visitors this year.  It's been such a joy standing at the kitchen window every day watching the birds (so many babies this year!) hopping about the lawn 💖

It's good that I'm an early riser too because they wake me around 5am with their singing, looking for their breakfast, bless them 💗  I'm sure the neighbours are used to seeing me shuffling down to the bottom of the garden very early every morning in my nightclothes to feed them, it's a wonderful way to start the day with the biggest smile 💖

I have to admit I (nearly) felt quite sorry for myself this morning honeys.  It was really difficult getting through last weekend's shifts.  By the time I finished on Saturday evening I had an awful headache and this whole week has felt like trying to run underwater.  Then to add to it all this morning I woke up with an ouchy sore throat.

Which brings us to the point of this post dear ones (and thank you for bearing with me.)  Whenever I start to feel as if I'm not coping very well, one of the ways that I can make myself feel better is by being in our garden.

Just feeding the birds can make me feel so much better, standing at the kitchen window watching them, I swear feels like it makes my whole heart smile 💗

Well, today I really needed to find my smile so I took myself out into the garden and sure enough what I found made me feel better 💗  Our tiny apple tree, which we planted the first full year we lived here, is so full of apples again this year that the branches all seem to be drooping really low with their weight. 

Our little tree produces Bramley apples, more commonly known as cooking apples and I can't wait to make some lovely apple turnovers, hubby likes those and I've promised our next door neighbours I'll make them a lovely apple crumble 💖

Like last year, the apples are all very large already.  Do you remember last year's apples honeys?

I wrapped and stored them and it took us months to work our way through them 😊

Of course when I'm looking for smiles I really only have to open our back door.  Just outside the back door, in a very large planter, we have lavender.  I adore lavender!  As do our other little garden visitors of course 🐝

I so wish I could have shown you the busy guest who was buzzing around as I was taking these photos earlier but she just didn't seem to want to be photographed 🐝  Maybe she just wasn't in the mood to stop for a chat  😊  Unlike recently when I had a buzzy friend come visit, rest a while and then fly off again 😃

I have to go get organised for work honeys, but I already feel a little better for sharing some smiles, thank you for sharing them with me 😘  I hope your day is chock full of smiles, hugs and sunshine dear ones.  Till next time, have a wonderful weekend honeys, hugs always x

 

Harry Potter Stationery Smiles...

Disclaimer:  I haven't been paid to promote any products or stores, just wanted to share a couple of little stationery smiles in the hope they'd make other stationery fans smile too 😊

Hi Honeys,
You might have heard me mention once or twice before that I'm a bit of a stationery fan... OK maybe more than a few times then 😄  I can't help it.  No matter where I am I'm drawn to all things stationery. 

Whether it be notebooks, pens, pencils or colouring pencils, they make me so happy I'm almost giddy 😊 I'm still loving my regular "me" time when the house is quiet and there's just me, a (usually) napping furbaby Jade on the sofa next to me and the sound of my pencils on the page.... joy!

If I'm in an actual, physical store (admittedly very rare these days since my limited mobility means I don't get out very much) I'm irresistibly drawn in the direction of the stationery aisle.  Almost as if it has a little homing beacon that my feet follow all on their own 😊 

If I'm online it would be a safe bet that at least two of the always-too-many-tabs I have open in my browser will be my favourite stationery stores 😊

Imagine my happiness then when Hubby brought me home a couple of surprise gifts he'd spotted in Primark (thank you sweetheart x)  Bless him, whenever he has time he quickly pops into Primark every few weeks or so to see if they have anything new in stock for me.  I'm a very lucky lady 💖 

If, like me, you're a Potter fan you'll have noticed that the packaging of Potter items is changing.  I like the older packaging, it looks... well, old 😊  The new packaging is lovely too though and I'm just grateful that there are official Potter items available to buy without the eye wateringly high price tags we've all seen online making them far more accessible. 

Why not grab a cuppa then honeys (and maybe a cookie too) and meet me back here in a few minutes and I'll share what Hubby found, including the most adorable pen and pencil set in the shape of wands 😊