greetings card making, pop-up cards

I thought I'd discuss some card stock I bought ages ago, to create some Christmas cards. Don't throw up your hands in horror like that! It's less than six months away, and if you're making your cards, you really should be thinking about it now - really!

I made some pop-up cards from some kits that I'd bought, which I thought you might enjoy seeing. The actual principle is very simple, but until I had the kit in front of me, I didn't realise just how simple to replicate they would be.

Once you've folded your basic card shape, to the size you need to fit your envelope, then the fun begins. To get the effect of these cards, all that you need to do is to get your craft knife, or scissors, and make four cuts in the folded edge of your card. I usually take a piece of scrap paper from the recycling box to try out my ideas, rather than risk wasting my good card!!! That way I can play about with my ideas, and use the successful ones as templates.

Decide how far in to the card you want your first pop-out to be, then make two cuts, about an inch apart, it's really not necessary to be precise. Then repeat from the other side at the point you want your next pop-out to be. Open up the card, and pull the small projections you've just created to the inside of the card. You attach your topper to the front of these, and when the card is folded, they lay flat inside.

Alternatively, you might decide to have just one, single pop-out, or three - it's your card, you decide. You could have one central "statement" decoration, or off-set it and place a greeting tag to the side.

You might decide to have a small forest of Christmas trees, so make a few small projections for them to stand on, but make differing depths to your pairs of cuts, so that when the projections are in the card, they are at different positions, to give more perspective to the card.

If you have a large topper to support, you might find it useful to make a projection that is a couple of inches wide, or place it over two of the smaller projections, just to help it to stand, rather than flop!

Obviously, you can use the technique for cards at other times of the year, I'm just starting to think about Christmas!!

On the outside of the card, the cuts will be obvious to the recipeint of the greeting, and this would spoil the effect. To hide the cuts, simply cut some suitable backing paper deep enough to cover the incisions, both on the front and the back of the card, and stick it down. Then use a matching topper to the insert that you've made, to decorate the front of the card.

Voila - a miniature work of art to delight a friend or family member :-)

colour, flowers, garden, lazy

I'm a lazy gardener when it comes to flowers. I'll happily spend the time sowing vegetable seeds, but when it comes to flowers, it has to be bulbs, perennials or flowering shrubs.

I was looking at what was flowering in the garden, with no effort, and was quite pleased. The Golden Rod is

giving me plumes of rich yellow frothiness, and it was a freebie! I do love it when you get something for nothing, and this was a hidden bonus.





Many of the large stores have skips outside the rear of their premises, and David and I have asked a few times if we could help ourselves to things in there - lengths of wood and ailing plants being the favourite. On this occasion, it was a poor dwarf Rhododendron, looking very sorry for itself, its leaves curling and yellowing. It was in dire need of a little tlc, not throwing in a skip.



So, we brought it home, lavished some free love on it, and planted in the semi shady front garden. The following year it rewarded us with delicate pink flowers.



In mid-summer, however, the bonus arrived, the Golden Rod burst into bloom, growing up through the low-lying leaves of the Rhododendron. Beautiful - a splash of false sunlight in the essentially shady north-facing garden.



The other colourful note out there is the delightful lace-cap Hydrangea. There are two of them, both a gift from a green-fingered friend who had rooted some cuttings, and they have the most delicate shades in their blossom. Again, no effort involved - hurray!!!

snowball turnip, harvesting, food

Today I harvested my first, sweet, peppery Snowball Turnip. Doesn't it look cute? You can see why it was so imaginatively named, can't you? A globe varying in size between a golf ball and a tennis ball, white, and ball shaped. Yes, you can see the struggle they had to name it!

Look at all that greenery to produce such a small ball of flavour. The beds that David has built me are full of greenery now, and much of it is of these little treasures. They are a quick crop, and so verdant that they help to suppress the weeds which would otherwise try to muscle in on the act.

These little gems are delicious in salads, if finely sliced, or, of course, you can cook them in the way you would any root vegetable. But don't over-cook them. They are largely comprised of water, so don't boil them until they are positively soggy.

Try steaming them lightly to retain some of the crispness, then just drizzle with a little cold-pressed oil. Balsamic vinegar, just a little, also works well, as they are quite sweet, and there's that lovely contrast of colours.

It's so wonderful, the pleasure I get from the first harvesting of a particular vegetable or fruit. The novelty of that fist taste of the year of MY organic produce.

I'm so lucky that I had a mum who grew up in a village in a small house with a huge garden, where her father grew vegetables. As I was growing up we always had a small compost heap, and some sort of vegetable growing. Thanks to her, I think of it as natural to grow my own. From my very first house back in 1975 I have always grown something. I'll never be self-sufficient, but I can't imagine a day when I don't grow some sort of food.

potatoes, flowers, baking, microwaves, free food

One of the tastiest, cheapest, and simplest meals has to be an oven baked potato in its jacket. Jacket baked potatoes have been one of my favourites for as long as I can remember.



I remember years ago, probably about 25 or so, Peter bought me a cookery book by Clement Freud, a comedian we were both very fond of. He seemed to quite enjoy his food, and I was enjoying the book until I reached the part on potatoes.



He plummeted in my estimation when I read that he considered that the potato baked in a microwave oven was just as good as a "real" oven-baked specimen.



Don't get me wrong, I'm not against microwave ovens. I had one of the first turntable models about 30+ years ago, a Belling, that, apart from the light failing, is still being used to sterilise compost for the garden!!!



However, although they speedily cook a potato in its skin, there is none of the depth of flavour that develops with the exposure of the skin to the heating elements, or gas generated external heat of a regular oven. A microwave jacket potato is fine if it's going to be served split and covered in a tasty sauce, where its purpose is to provide bulk, but not flavour.



But when the potato is the star of the meal, and an oven-baked jacket potato deserves this status, then only the real deal will do. That golden to almost charred exterior, with the slightly firmer amber layer beneath, then the creamy, fluffy centre, just waiting for a little salt and a drizzle of olive oil, or, yummy, toasted sesame oil. Oh, yes, it's a star. There's no contest.



That said, I have discovered a cheat's method of achieving pretty near the perfection of the real thing, but using the microwave. Here's how you do it.



Microwave your jacket potatoes as usual until just done. Heat the grill while they are cooking, then grill both sides of the hot potatoes for about seven minutes each side, until they are well toasted. The moisture inside the potatoes saved them from actually toasting, and they really do taste very good indeed.



Since there's usually just me, or David and me here when I'm cooking, this is the way I often do them. It's not economical to have the big oven on to bake a few potatoes.



Did you know that potatoes have beautiful flowers? No? Well, they do. Just look at these. They are a beautiful, pale pink. When the flowers have died back, then I know there will be a lovely crop of tubers ready to dig up.



One of the best bits is - they are free!! Yes, really, free. They have cost me nothing. If your potatoes have been too long in your vegetable basket, and are growing arms and legs, or shoots, as we call them, cut off the shoots, plant the bit of potato in the ground attached to the shoot, water and wait, and you will almost undoubtedly grow your very own free crop of potatoes.

Isn't nature wonderful?????

runner beans, flowers, beauty

Today I want to share with you the magic and beauty of runner bean plants.

Remember Jack and the Beanstalk? He traded a cow for 5 beans, much to his mother's disgust. She tossed the beans on the ground, and next day there was this fantastic tree of a plant.

Well, I'm not claiming that for my beans. But, they start out as beans about an inch long. A beautiful pinky red, with black blotches - the Dalmation of the beans, I suppose you could say. After planting them a couple of inches deep in soil, they relatively quickly push their shoots through the soil, and soon grow into plants ready to plant out in the garden when the roots are pushing through the base of the pot.

Within a couple of weeks they'll be climbing up the support you've given them. I use a couple of arches. How clever is that, to be able to climb up a metal frame with nobody to show you how? OK, I know the science of it, but it's still pretty amazing to see.

Then there are the flowers. Boy, do they produce flowers. My arches are aflame - it's easy to see why they were brought into this country purely for their flowers - the edible beans were a bonus. The plants have climbed to the top of the arches, and are now reaching for the sky. I've had to stop them by breaking off the top shoot, they are so vigorous.

The magic is, each of those gorgeous flowers has the potential to be transformed into a runner bean with the aid of the visiting insects, or me with a tiny brush if there aren't any about!

Some of the beans are now a couple of inches long. Tiny miracles of nature. In just a short time from now, I'll be harvesting them. It's one of life's greatest pleasures to pick your own vegetables, then either eat them raw, or cook them gently and eat them really fresh. They don't need much to accompany them, the flavour speaks for itself. Yummy.

Pavers, driveway, 22 tons

I was told they could be delivered any time from 0730 to 1600, but that the driver would phone when he was leaving the drop off before me.

So that was Wednesday written off, so to speak. Isn't it funny how you just feel today is the perfect day to visit that friend you've been meaning to call on, or go to the sale in town that starts today, so that's when all the bargains are to be had?

So I made good use of the time. I wrote the first draft of a new short story before lunch, which I'm quite pleased with, and it will go towards my 'Writing for Children' module in September. It will undergo countless revisions before anyone reads it, but at least the kernel of the story is written - and I like it :-)

The phone call came just as I was preparing lunch "I'll be with you inside an hour, traffic permitting.' Great, time to eat my avocado salad, drizzled with the hoummous I made a couple of days ago. The leaves in the garden are a welcom addition to the shop bought lettuce and tomatoes.

I felt the rumble of the 44 ton lorry before I actually heard it. I'd been sitting on the bed strumming the guitar so that I would see it arrive, but, I felt it first. It was a monster lorry, boy, was it big!!

The driver got down from his high throne, and we discussed where to put the 22.42 tons of pavers he had brought me. The crane fitted on his lorry didn't have the reach of the one that delivered the bricks for the porch and conservatory, but he was confident he could just squeeze them in.

David and I watched as the lorry bed was lowered slightly, and the generator growled into life. Then the lifting began. 20 pallets of buff (well, that's what they call it, really they're quite yellow - it'll be a bit like Dorothy following the yellow brick road when it's done!!) pavers, the 80cm deep ones suitable for a driveway. Each pallet weighs just over a ton each, all securely bound in metal bands.

Poor man, it took him ages to manouvre the crane through the curtain of holly and spotted laurel branches. Not to mention the lower branches of the sycamore with a preservation order on it, and the telephone cable for the house next door.

But he managed it, and even kept a smile on his face.

Now David and I have the task of moving many of them into the back garden, as some of them will be used on the patio, interspersed with the red and heathery pavers that I've been buying locally in dribs and drabs.

I can see me carrying one in each hand, while David carries rather more at a time in the wheelbarrow. We'll get it done ... eventually. Fortunately, we can do it in our own time. And it will be worth it when it's done. Honest:-)

electricity, gas, money saving

Talking of electricity reminds me to mention that I've finally taken notice of the money saving e-mails that I subscribe to, and have taken action to save myself some money on my gas and electricity charges.

I currently have dual fuel supplied by Atlantic, and pay quarterly by direct debit. As with everyone else in the UK, my bills have risen due to the increase in the price of oil.

I took out my bills for the last year, totted them up and decided now was the time to seek a way to save some money. I'd swapped to Atlantic about 3 years ago for the same reason, and saved some then.

I used a couple of comparison sites, and found that if I switched to Eon for the dual fuel, and paid monthly direct debits, I could save, on their guesstimate, based on the yearly amounts I'd paid to Atlantic, about £140+ per annum!!!

Presumably they are very confident about this, as the direct debits they will be taking will result in me paying considerably less over the year than I paid last year. Fingers crossed their calculations are correct!

I've also, just this last week, had cavity wall insulation installed. The whole process took about two hours, for the drilling and pumping, and wasn't nearly as noisy as I had feared it would be. The boys who did it were very polite, and cleaned up after themselves pretty well. They even used my hosepipe to wash down all the windows and window sills where the brick dust had settled! The whole bungalow was done for £149, which I consider to be a bargain. That should help cut down the bills too : )