September saw so many beautiful things including a Mandala

Hello lovely readers, it seems that I have been a little quiet here lately, but I intend to make up for it in buckets today as I have heaps to share with you. September has been a beautiful month here in the North of England as we were blessed with beautiful clear skies and warm autumnal sunshine. This meant that far too much time was spent on my yoga mat outside and far too little time holding my crochet hook, logging into my computer or let alone mention the old sewer that seems to be gathering a great deal of dust of late. I did however manage to turn my September Monthly Mandala, that I wrote about here, into a cushion and I must say that I am rather pleased with the outcome. It has been my intention for a while to make a ripple blanket, but seeing that I still haven't managed to get around to it, this seems to at least satisfy a small part of that chevron urge, for now anyway. 

 Sadly the light at this time of year is not particularly good in this little space of ours and to be honest the photo doesn't really do it justice. I don't know about the rest of you in the Northern hemisphere, but there has definitely been a shift in light and rooms are feeling much darker (and colder). I have started lighting candles again and there is no doubt that autumn has finally kicked his cold toes under my blanket. For me this change most certainly became most noticeable after the appearance of the Harvest moon this month, did you see it? Oh my it was really spectacular! They say that it tends to be larger and more colourful than other moons due to the tilt of the earth and the reflection from the atmosphere and I have to say that it looked so very big and colourful from the bedroom window.

September has been a month of harvest here too, with runner beans, cucumber, beets, and lots and lots of kale making it into our kitchen. Fortunately it also seems that we may even have enough Kale for another month or two, which is a blessing as we do love a bit of Kale in our house. Have any of you tried making kale chips, if not you must, its so easy (kale + olive oil+ salt+oven=delicious!). I also enjoyed the last of our delicious apples and am currently thinking of ways in which we can squeeze in another apple or pear tree in the garden, but I am faced with the slight dilemma that the little wendy play house is in the exact spot I would like to plant it, so I might have to wait a few years for the kids to outgrow their little space. 

September has been a month of struggle with my health, but it hasn't stopped me from becoming even more obsessed with yoga than I already was (not that I thought that was possible!). I was also incredibly lucky to enjoy two days of being taught by the very talented yogini, Kino MacGregor. Lets just keep this short and say that it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, I really enjoyed every minute of it even though my batteries were a little flat at times, it definitely is a memory I will always cherish. Here is a little memento of my weekend with Kino.

September has been a month of slowly getting back to warmer foods and soups. I have experimented with Vegetable Soup, Tomato and Basil soup and made my all time favourite Carrot and Coriander Soup. For those of you who follow me on instagram @Scrummytritious, some of the recipes are there. For the rest of you, here is the recipe for my vegetable soup.

So basically to make the vegetable soup, you are going to need:
Tablespoon of Coconut oil
7 Large Carrots
3 Large Courgettes
3 Onions
2 Stalks Celery
A generous bunch of fresh Coriander
2 Cubes of gluten free vegetable stock (I use Kallo Organic)
1.5L of water
Some Himalayan Rock salt & pepper to taste

Method
Chop all your vegetables (medium size chunks). Gentle fry the onions and carrots for around 5 minutes, then add the celery and cook for around 5 minutes before adding the stock and water. Bring to boil and then reduce to a simmer and then add the courgette. Cook for around 10 minutes max and then add the coriander before blending it partly with a hand blender, leaving some chunks of vegetables in there. Enjoy!

Septemeber also saw the return of a loaf of bread to our lives. We have now been Paleo gosh for around seven to eight months and even though I wasn't having much bread before I was still enjoying the odd bit of grains, like rice and things baked with brown rice flour every now and then. This recipe for this delicious Sun Dried Tomato & Basil Bread is completely Paleo and made with ground almonds. I use ground almonds often, but have never thought of making a savoury bread with it and I must say it was delicious and I will definitely be making it again very soon. 

September saw our gigantic sunflower come into bloom. For some reason we NEVER succeed in planting sunflowers and even though we planted over seven establish seedlings, I think the Raven's and Jackdaws must have been too quick to dig out the seeds still attached to the plant. Does anyone else experience this? Fortunately for us, this beauty was overlooked and how very special for us. 

 September also finally saw the final touches going on to our stairs that has been a WIP for many many months. Earlier this year I had this massive urge to remove the rather tired looking carpet from our stairs. To be honest it is something I have been meaning to do ever since I since I received this beautiful book from a friend for Christmas 2012. The problem you see is that I never thought I would have the guts to pull and see what mess lies beneath an old tattered carpet. Well it seems that one very cold and frosty January morning, those worries and concerns where very far from my mind, instead I felt brave and ready to conquer all (I must have had a mild does of brain freeze one thinks). I must add here that it has taken me a little longer than anticipated, but I got there in the end and wow, what a transformation. I love this idea and it has made such a difference to the light and feel of our very narrow staircase. Thank you Sarah Moore for your wonderful inspiration, it seems collecting old wallpaper does come in handy after all. I used an eclectic mix of mostly old, but a few modern prints are hiding in here too as I really like the combination of old and new. 

Last, but not least, September has also been a month for yet another monthly mandala and this month it was the rather sweet little mandala pattern by Zooty Owl as mentioned here. This fun little Granny Mini Mandala pattern is super quick to work and as I have also come to realise, it offers some rather fun alternative possibilities, but more on that another day. For now though it is show and tell time. 

So for any of you who have joined in the yarn mandala fun, please add your mandala below. For next month I thought it might be fun to try Marinke Slump's 12-round mandala. For anyone interested you can find the pattern on Ravelry. 

Wishing you all a beautiful October.

Warm Wishes

Hannapat

xoxo

An InLinkz Link-up

Ciao

We are back and we had the most wonderful two and a bit weeks away in Italy. I feel so lucky that we spent time with my folks in one of the most beautiful parts of the world and my heart yearns to go back and also to be with my parents again. Why is it that when you get older there is this great need to have time with your parents, am I alone on this? For me, I would love to have mum around the corner so we can natter over cups of tea and whilst creating and also for our kids to spend time with their grandparents, it is such a special relationship. Fortunately I did have these two very special weeks and Ma & Pa (I know you read this!) you are both very special and I love you!

 

I generally embrace the idea of coming home, there is something special about being in your own space and bed, but this time, I could have happily stayed in Italy forever, a girl can but dream. The first sight that greeted us were our newly painted doors and windows and yes it made me smile, it's finally done and I am so pleased with the end result. This was followed by a very overgrown garden that's in dying need of some loving hands. The pesky weeds have been having regular parties here in our absence, as to be expected, and it most certainly looks like they've been having far too much fun.

 

 

 

 

There is something special about walking through your front door when you get back and once I was inside, it felt good to be home and although I was faced with washing and unpacking and a zillion other jobs, there is always a little part of me that wants to hold on to that relaxed feeling that somehow only holidays can bring. The reality, it didn't last past a couple of minutes, but we are slowly getting back in the swing of things. I have made some progress with catching up on blog reading, with a little more to go, so sorry if I haven't gotten around to all of your lovely blogs as yet. It was my intention to do a little blog reading whilst away, but the internet connection was just a little temperamental and after the first couple of days, I decided to take a break from it all and it was the best decision. It was truly relaxing and there was a very big part of me that loved it more than I would like to admit to myself. It did bring up many questions about how much time we spend on and with technology every day, but I kinda like it and it has been great to catch up on what you have all been up to, you are such an inspiration to me.

 

I intend to do a couple of posts to cover the holiday, really as a record for us, but also for the rest of my family to share. In the meantime, I am going to make the very most of the last couple of days with my little lovelies as school starts the middle of next week and yes my baby is starting school, so big changes ahead, not sure I am really ready for them to be honest.

 

 

We have done a little baking and little Es helped me to work through the jungle to pull up some lovely looking garlic, carrots and beans. We also indulged in one of our apples, which are a great deal tastier than anticipated, I love this element of surprise.

 

 

 

One of the first things I love to do is to fill the house with flowers from the garden. There is something very special about having flowers in the house and I so love this beautiful red rose of ours, its fragrance is beyond heavenly and there is something so magical about Angel's Blush, I love the way these beautiful clumps are shaped out of delicate white flowers. I fortunately managed to get a small posy of sweet peas for the house, but the next step is to get all the seeds for next year's planting.

The first photo was taken shortly after we arrived in  Fauglia, Tuscany and was taken from the car. I absolutely love Sunflowers and have failed miserably this year with the ones we have planted, but even though the sunflower season was drawing to an end in Italy, we were fortunate enough to find this one field with perfect sunflowers dancing to sun, such a delight.

 

 

I will be back soon with a some goodies from our trip, and also to share the crafty bits that made the holiday even more enjoyable. A very big and warm welcome to my new followers, it is so lovely of you to stop by and I look forward to getting to know you a little better.

 

Wishing you all a very happy Thursday.

Warm wishes

Hannapat

xoxo

 

 

 

 

 

Summer and Garden Love

Last week was incomprehensibly busy, I think it always feels the same towards the last couple of weeks of term and, but at least I know that very soon we can all BREATHE again with lazy mornings and more relaxed days, which I am so looking forward to. Somehow throughout all the chaos I found so many things that made me smile and my little garden didn't fail to ground me.

My little veg patch is making some kinda magic at the moment and I am like a little child waiting with bated breath on its every move. Every morning I can't wait to get outside to see what magic the wonderful hands of mother nature has performed overnight. My first sweet peas have started to flower and I simply can't wait for the rest to follow suit. I always admire peoples sweet peas and now it feels so wonderfully grown-up to have planted more than just a handful for once. I have however already learnt that it might be worth attaching some netting against the trellis to offer a little more gripping options for both the sweet peas and sugar snaps, but that's the beauty of gardening, its very much a case of trial and error. Now these cheeky sugar snap peas appeared out of nowhere and its great to see little E's excitement every time she pops outside to see what's happening to them.

 

 

 

Cabbages are growing, but they have been under attack from the pesky (I mean lovely!) caterpillars and it seems that the Cabbage white butterflies has been really busy. So far we have already lost quite a few cabbages and this morning the next one seems to be under attack, and even though we are all for attracting butterflies and bees, says she whilst muttering under her breath, pesky little flutterby's! I have now removed all the eggs from the cabbages and also moved all the 'catties' as little Es calls them, to another piece of green, so we will see how it all pans out. Has any of you had any experience with this?

 

 

 

 

  

 

Loving the vibrant colour of the courgette flower, it certainly adds a bit of colour to the rather green looking veg patch. My very late planted sorrel seems to be coming to life, I love the taste of sorrel in salad, it just adds that lemon zing to it for me. In Jamaica they use sorrel with rum, sugar, water and ginger to make an alcoholic drink, which apparently is quite yummy, and for those wanting to give it a whirl you can find the recipe here. The pumpkins are slowly popping out and it must be really strange as a child to try and get your head around the fact that these tiny little yellow balls will grow into big pumpkins (well we hope anyway) in time for Halloween. Surely that's got to be magic, right?!

Loving all the beautiful succulents around the rockeries at the moment, not because they are a bit phallic (not saying more :-)), not because of their beautiful and very sweet flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

I am so excited to see my new David Austen's Strawberry Hill rose in bloom. After several years of rose envy, I finally purchased one this year and I am as pleased as punch! The second rose, is a climbing rose called Rosa Albertine, which I planted two years ago and last week it gave us our very first beautiful pink rose. I propagated this rose last year and amazingly it worked and it is now growing in a little pot already showing us its first bud. For any of you interested in propagating roses, you can read more about it here. I will add that I didn't leave mine outside, I put it in a small plastic bag to act as a little greenhouse for a week or two and then took it outside.

 

   

This glorious weather makes such a difference to lifestyle and we are making the very most of it by enjoying leisurely meals outside, it is amazing how a little sun can bring some calm to busy days.

 

 

 

 

We finally got around to clearing the majority of the wood away from this corner so we could get a tree swing up for the kids. Andrew collected this lovely piece of wood when they went for a walk and a couple of hours later there was a brilliant new swing for the kids to enjoy.

 

 

 

 

All things British, some flapjacks baked especially for the doh race on Saturday and will add here that he did really well, thank you for all your kind wishes. Not only did he finish the 30 mile fell race, he also managed to come 26th out of 90 odd people, so I am so proud of him for achieving this on the hottest day of the year. Moments of croquet in the garden with the kids.

 

 

No, not a sock tan, but my doh's legs when he came back from his 7 hour run, you can imagine what he would have looked like if it was wet and muddy!!

 

 

 

Last week I managed to do a little more on my first quilt by sewing my strips together and then cutting them up again, just so I can sew them together again, oh such fun. I am really enjoying the process and I am starting to appreciate just how long this is going to take me, with fingers and toes crossed I might have some warm snugly toes  by next winter.

 

I hope that you have all had a lovely weekend and that you were able to enjoy some sunshine where you are, even if it is a little winter sun. This week I am working on our contribution to the annual village scarecrow festival and fingers crossed I will get it done to get it up in time for the fete. This is such a strange, but lovely English tradition and I am not sure where or how it originated, but I love the effort people make. We are only doing something small, which I will share with you very soon.

 

 

 

In the meantime I am going to take a leaf out of Sinbad's book to do a little snoozing in the shade. Wishing you all a very happy and creative week.

 

Warm wishes

Hannapat

xoxo