Something happened today that has left us all a bit speechless.
More next time xx

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Wordless Wednesday

We’re glad you got home safely. Until next time xxx

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as See you again soon!

We waved goodbye to Granma and Grampa just a few hours ago. Soon they will be on a plane on their way home, looking forward to their next time they can see their little grandbaby which will hopefully be in just a couple of short months. Except at the rate he’s growing at the moment he might not be that little for that much longer. Up to now we’ve been using a washing up bowl to keep him fresh and clean, but I think we might have to graduate to a proper baby bath in the next couple of weeks.

Now back to real life… laundry, vacuuming and getting the house back together. All after a cup of tea, of course. Hopefully it won’t take more than a couple of hours and then the fun can begin- DrMrNin is out this evening and it happens to be a particularly good telly night, so I’m going to have a date with the remote control and a big bowl of curry, squippee.

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as All good visits must come to an end

Granma and Grampa go home on Wednesday. We’re going to miss them, it’s been a lovely visit. Two lovely weeks together went slowly in some respects, but rather fast in others. Hopefully they will come back to visit us again soon. But before they go we will have a rather nice one more day.

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as One more day

Crocs are like little buoyancy aids for your feet! Well, it was interesting to me

Little update:
39 weeks today, but still no *news* to speak of. Apparently his head is nicely engaged though. Surely it can’t be that much longer…

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Interesting discovery

With frost thicker than the thickest frost I’ve ever EVER seen!

And me bundled up in my warmest hat and scarf, and some big thick gloves that I borrowed from my daddy xo

It was time once again for my favourite routine from home- the big charity sale that’s held in the grounds of one of the local country houses every month. I hasten to use the term ‘jumble sale’ as only one small section of it is designated to jumble. The rest of it is all sectioned up like a department store, from handbags, to books, ladies’ nearly new, shoes, sports and outdoors, curtains and drapery, menswear, kitchenware, haberdashery, toys…. you name it, there’s nothing you can’t buy (seriously)! Here are some people in the art section, choosing some new prints and paintings for their homes (lots of people donate their own artwork some of which isn’t bad). The nicer ones are kept inside the outbuilding, the lesser value stuff is all outside (just as well really, given the British weather).

And here’s the haberdashary section (albeit a smaller one than usual because of the weather) where I picked up some little knitting patterns (20p each) and two rather nice Debbie Bliss books (40p each). This is where I bought my bargain Rowan Kidsilk Haze a few months back.

In the summer months you can barely see the stand from here as the place is so crawling with people. I think the cold temperatures made a lot of people stay at home this time.

At this point I stopped taking pictures as my fingers had literally frozen solid from the cold and not even my daddy’s gloves could warm them up again. And the tea cabin was closed as the pipes had frozen up which meant that a coffee and gingernut were out of the question, so we all decided that it was time for us to head back too. So we huddled our prized purchases into our chests and shuffled back through the mist for warm cups of tea at home.

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as MINUS THREE!

First we had tea at the farm shop owned by The Queen, on the Windsor Farm Estate, just outside the walls of the castle (in the out in the countryside bit toward Windsor Great Park, not in the actual town).

We discovered this place last summer and it’s become a firm favourite ever since. Ever since emigrating to California last September, I’ve been thoroughly looking forward to coming back here in the winter to see how it was going to look all dressed up for Christmas. In actual fact it wasn’t really dressed up at all but they had put a huge marquee up in the courtyard to house all the extra things. It was still very nice though. The shop itself always feels very cosy and British, and is the sort of place that makes me want to wear my Barbour jacket. I’ll probably want to come here each time I visit home, I think. It’s that sort of place.

Practically everything in there is produced on home soil, much of which comes from the various Royal Estates like the apple juice which is from Sandringham, and they try to source things as locally as possible too. This is by no means a new thing, contrary to much opinion the Royals have always been impressively forward thinking.

A couple of days later we went round for afternoon tea with some old university friends of mine. Clotted cream scones, cakes, biscuits and hot buttered teacakes. Perfect.

It was a particularly exciting occasion as in addition to being able to share our news with a couple of people who didn’t yet know, we also got to meet two new additions to the group. This lovely three-and-a-half week old chap belongs to the lovely lady above- who would blame her for not looking at the camera when she has a nice baby to look at instead It seems that practically ALL of my friends are having babies at the moment- it must be that time in life!

I also got to see a long lost friend from Indonesia for the the first time in 10 years which was just the icing on the cake.

And then came the start of a new Sister’s Tradition in our household. Because over the last couple of years we have so much enjoyed getting together for afternoon tea, firstly at The Ritz for my wedding and then at The Lanesborough for my sister’s, we decided that we should make a habit of it but not have to wait for a special excuse. So as a treat to ourselves, and to take advantage of us all being in the same country at the same time, we took ourselves off to Brown’s in London for afternoon tea there and had a thoroughly nice sisterly time. It was delightfully genteel and the perfect setting to spend some rare quality time with just the three of us. We already can’t wait until the next occasion. Ultimately we want to ‘do’ tea all over London and come up with our own definitive guide at the end of it. We think Claridge’s might be the place where we get our next hit, whenever that might be.

Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures during the tea itself, but I did manage to get a snapshot of the Christmas lights on Bond Street.

Here’s getting 2009 off to a very good start so far. I have another couple of weeks left here in England before I head back toward San Francisco. DrMrNin flew back yesterday leaving me to indulge in a bit more time on my own with my family as next time I’m back in the country, I might have another little person tagging along keeping me even more busy than I am now!

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Kicking the year off to a busy start

I got a lovely pair of Dubarry boots from Father Christmas this year (squee, I have wanted these for over three whole years now):

With their waterproof, weatherproof leather and insulated gore-tex lining they might be a little overqualified for dealing with the Californian climate, but I’m planning to get a lot of use out of them nonetheless.

And from The Lovely DrMrNin, I got a 2009 subscription to Hello! Magazine, EEEPS!

I am *very* excited about this as it’s one of my favourite magazines by far. And it’ll help me stay in tune with my British roots whilst I’m away

Thankfully my jetlag seems to have sorted itself out over the past couple of days in that I’m no longer waking up fully at 4am, 5am, 6am….. but by 10pm each night I still very much resemble a geriatric on a nursing room chair. I just cannot manage to keep my eyes open, but I think this has something to do with growing another human in me. Friends take much pleasure in informing me that I’ll probably feel very tired for quite some time to come now and probably won’t feel fully awake again until around 2029. *sigh*.

Speaking of friends and loved ones, it’s been a complete hilight of the trip getting to see everyone again. New Year’s Eve was spent around at a friend’s house with a group of old chums from school whom I’ve known now for 21 years. I will never again make friendships like these and I value them even more now that I live so far away. 2009 got off to a good  healthy start with  a hearty cooked English breakfast followed by some hoops.

What made it even more special this year was that in addition to all the husbands who came along too (and are also now dear friends) we were also joined by all the babies! Four in total, with two more coming in the late Spring- one of my friends is about five weeks ahead of me. Seeing how happy their lives were with their new arrivals, and being able to share our news with them too has now made me ever so even more excited. 2009 looks set to be a momentous year, I can’t wait to get on with it!

Happy New 2009 everyone!

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Hello 2009!

(I love mint sauce with roast potatoes, yummy)

I hope you all had good Christmases!

PS I’m already getting a bit of a poochy tummy…

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Christmas in pictures

FINALLY a bit of time to catch up with some blogging…but not for long. The apartment is almost unpacked now and there looks to be just one more carload of *stuff* to get from the old place, so hopefully within the next week I will be able to sit down and settle into some form of routine. I’m one of those people who needs some form of structure to my daily life in order to remain sane, so this will be more of a relief than you can imagine. In the meantime I managed to spend a couple of hours this afternoon catching up with some photo editing and general blog organisation- the photos are all in wordpress now, all I need to do now is write the posts to accompany them!!

Perhaps the biggest change in routine that I’ll have to work out is my blogging schedule. Back home in England, days were spent having fun with my loved ones and by the time the evening came it was time to sit down, relax and play on my computer. Here, the lifestyle is completely reversed: my days are spent alone and thus far I have filled them with Getting Things Done, but come the evening when DrMrNin and our friendly neighbours have come home from work it’s a positive EXPLOSION of social activity. And so my blogging gets pushed to the wayside.  And my knitting too for that matter. And my crochet. And scrapbooking. AND PLAYING WITH MY GIRLS *shock*. I have let it slide for the past couple of weeks whilst we settle in, but I’ve not been comfortable with the sudden disappearance of my little personal routines. I’m sure like everything else it will all settle into place once I feel more at home here. So yes, this little couple of hours spent at my computer was like diving back into my little sanctuary again, complete with a hot cup of tea and some precious English biscuits that managed to find room in my suitcase.

As for the slogan on the mug…. it was a freebie from a geology conference a couple of years ago, something to do with improved precision in radiocarbon dating. Geeky humour I’m afraid We geologists, we’re just so darned funny….

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as WHERE IS ALL THE TIME GOING? (Day 192)

All of this reminded me of the time that we went out a few weeks ago to have a try at taking some as-nice-as-we-could-get publicity photos for her little web shop. We had such a lovely time, driving all over the local English countryside finding nice backdrops. We ended up on a little village high up on the Berkshire Downs where we played around in a pretty farmyard complete with tractors, geese and even the odd donkey or two. We had such a nice time and the great thing about it being a photo day was that I have all the nice pictures to remember it by.

Here are some of the photos we managed to take (during the rain-free moments). If you’re interested to see more of her things, you can visit her shop (in GB £) or click on any of the pictures to be taken directly to her Etsy store (in US $). She also ships worldwide Shameless plug, I know, but what are sisters with blogs for?

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Fun with my sister a few weeks ago

The wedding was just over a week ago now and it was absolutely lovely with the weather managing to hold out all afternoon until about 5 o’clock when dooooooown it came. Unfortunately this was just around the same time that we were getting our portraits taken and I was the one standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when the pool of water collecting on the canopy roof decided to make its escape, but luckily it went all down my back so my front still looked fine for the pictures.

Congratulations Jeeyet and Toshi, may you have many happy years ahead!

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Of course I should also mention…

We started the afternoon all meeting up at Harrods and going inside to stroke the luxury handbags (swoooon) before making our way up toward Piccadilly and the hotel. However this was not before we made my sister close her eyes, only allowing her to open them again after we’d finished ‘decorating’ her with nasty, tacky hen night paraphernalia. What’s a hen party without all of that?!

She looked absolutely dreadful. We also showered her with pink heart confetti and we felt so guilty afterwards for making a mess in the street that we actually got down on our hands and knees and started trying to clear it all up again.  Let it go on record that confetti isn’t the easiest thing to pick up, neither is it very hygienic. Eeuuw, my hands came into contact with a London road    We couldn’t manage to get it all, but it was biodegradable so we don’t feel entirely bad.

My poor sister looked so chavvy and awful that we actually only allowed her to wear the sash for about 10 minutes before we confiscated it from her and hid it from sight. She was allowed to wear the veil though, and although the badge was in equally poor taste as the sash it was a bit more subtle and we weren’t ashamed to be seen walking next to her when she wore it. Obviously she removed everything when we went into The Lanesborough.

We chose our venue on the basis that it was this year’s winner of the highest accolade in the afternoon tea industry -  The Tea Guild’s Top London Afternoon Tea 2008 Award. Here’s what they say about it:

This prestigious event is the ‘Michelin Star’ of the tea world and is a much sought after honour with most of London’s world famous London hotels competing for the title … Judges inspecting The Lanesborough were impressed by the exceptional service and the warm welcome guests receiving from the staff. The Afternoon Tea experience should be one of style, comfort and fun, and this coupled with The Lanesborough’s winning combination of elegant ambience, excellent variety of wonderful teas brewed and served with perfection, plus a delicious selection of food including the hotel’s ‘signature dish’ of lemon curd, left the judges in no doubt that The Lanesborough was the ultimate.

After reading this, it had a LOT to live up to.

Tea was served inside in the restaurant that had a glass roof, and we had an excellent table on a raised platform in the corner from which we could look out and survey all of the other tea-drinkers.

We chose the ‘Belgravia Tea’ which started with strawberries and cream and a flute of Tattinger champagne.

And then came the sandwiches, petit fours and pastries, and then hot buttered toasted teacakes and warm scones. Afternoon tea is not afternoon tea without scones, jam and clotted cream. They also gave us their signature lemon curd, which was nice except we all agreed that mine is much better. I’ll maybe get around to putting the recipe on here one day.

The tea was lovely, but what really made it were the comedy errors, hee hee! First our server managed to topple a whole glass of champagne down herself and the corner of the table as she was serving us, and then she somehow managed to bring us completely the wrong tea. We found it all rather amusing, but nevertheless we were served the rest of the afternoon tea personally by the tea sommelier who was a little embarrassed by the whole thing. Oops!

This is what I wore. It was my third outfit of the day. I’d originally gone to London in one outfit (skinny white jeans and a blue sweater) and changed into a pretty flowery short sleeved version of the Verity Hope Dress that my sister had given me (worn on top of my white jeans), but at the last minute decided that I wanted to wear a pink gingham party dress that I’d picked up that morning at a vintage shop in Portobello Road, near Notting Hill. It seemed like the perfect occasion for it! So I did a quick change in the Harrods loo.

I’m glad I wore it. And I’m glad I bought it too.

After tea, we all went off to Selfridges to stroke more luxury handbags. In addition to Blythes and shoes, they’re the other thing I lust after Oh yes, here’s another thing that made it special- we saw a gentleman on his way back from the office wearing a bowler hat. That’s not something you see every day, well not since the 1950s anywhoo.

The dress, the tea and all the handbag stroking all made for an excellent daytrip in their own right, but the bowler hat really put the cherry on the cake for a traditionally english afternoon out in London.

PS there are a couple more photos in the gallery below….

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Afternoon tea with my sisters

Squee! A DOLLY

We then jumped in the car and drove to Highclere Castle in Hampshire. Of course I had to take the new girl with me please meet Avril LaBean.

It was a wet day for the most part, but I think that added to the atmosphere of the place. I think this is the best weather that Summer can muster this year. Here’s how Highclere looked for most of the afternoon. Grey skied, but rather nice in an imposing sort of way.

It might remind you of the Houses of Parliament in London (where Big Ben is), but that’s because it was designed by the same person. Highclere is the ancestral country home of the Earls of Carnarvon, the 5th Earl being the same Earl of Carnarvon who purloined unearthed the contents of Tutankamun’s tomb, and various other ancient Egyptian artefacts (that’s the british spelling, btw).

There’s actually a small museum in the basement ‘proudly’ displaying various relics from other shrines and lesser tombs including a sarcophagus that was discovered by the man, having been undisturbed for thousands of years complete with wreaths of cornflowers surrounding it in situ in the tomb in Egypt. Not only does the specially built tomb now lie empty, with the cornflower wreaths no longer there either, but the coffin was opened, and the poor mummy inside was unwrapped completely and the bands of cloth that carefully wrapped her up for all that time are now draped next to the coffin. As for the poor girl herself, there was a photograph of her next to  the sarcophagus and she’s now probably in a drawer somewhere. So much for a ritual burial.

Outside the weather cleared for a bit and we were able to enjoy the pretty gardens. The lavendar was out. I love lavendar, it’s one of my favourites, I’m going to plant it all around the garden when DrMr and I have a place of our own. I like how when you brush past it it manages to fill the air.

All the pretty summer flowers were out too….dripping in the rain, alas, but again it added to the charm.

But then the rain came down and we had to run under a tree for shelter. It was a good opportunity to all squeeze together for a family portrait though. This is definitely one for the memory album.

All in all, a lovely day out. And my birthday girl enjoyed herself too. We actually timed our journey home well, as the rain got heavier as we drove back. By the end of the trip it was POURING outside.

And my poor little bean *really* didn’t want to get out of the car.

But I managed to talk her around in the end. Besides, she wanted to meet the contents of the other birthday parcels.

More dollies   Meet Clemency and Winona.

And then we had cake. Following the ‘events‘ of my girly pink cake with fluffy pink buttercream frosting, I decided to avoid doing a sandwich, so I played it safe and made a traybake instead, a yummy wholemeal cake with fluffy yellow vanilla buttercream frosting and white chocolate buttons on the top.

Why wholemeal? Well it’s healthy of course, and when something is healthy, it means that you can eat LOTS of it without feeling guilty

I’m actually rather partial to wholemeal cake in general, as it has a lot more substance and bite to it, and isn’t so sweet. It really is delicious. It’s possibly one of my favourite cakes. Wholemeal flour is great for coffee cake too. A real savoury treat.

All in all a very lovely and delicious birthday celebration:D

(Hopefully tomorrow night there will be another cause for celebration too – it’s already too late, so I’ll catch up with my 365 then too…)

*******

PS A lot of people come to Peachy Hollow looking for a buttercream frosting recipe, so here is how I make it, it is actually very simple to make, with very simple ingredients:

Take 6 oz soft butter and 12 oz icing sugar (that’s about enough for a single layer 8-9″ round cake, so adjust accordingly in those proportions), and beat together with a hand mixer until very light and fluffy. The longer you whip it, the fluffier it becomes, and the fluffier it gets, the less sickly sweet it tastes. You can also add a splash of vanilla essence or lemon juice to zazzle it up a bit too if you like.

See? Easy! Enjoy, and happy baking!!
xo

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as A special day

My reasons for wanting it to be nice tomorrow are twofold: In the morning I’m going out hacking for the first time since spring. I cannot tell you how excited I am as galloping through the countryside on horseback is incomparible to any other feeling.

The other reason I want it to be nice is that my sister has recently applied for and has been accepted to feature on Not On The High Street which is an online marketplace for unique handmade items, kind of like a more professional version of Etsy. They are apparently very discerning about who they will accept, and claim to turn down 95% of applicants. So this is quite a big deal *ESPECIALLY* because they also act as agents and send out PR to all the big magazines like Marie Claire and Country Living and all that sort of thing.

Anyway, one of the things they’ve asked for in order to do the PR is a portfolio of nice ultra-high quality photographs (they actually said that that the pictures in her application were what made her stand out), so that’s what tomorrow afternoon is about. Even though my mum usually takes most of the pics for her, Malph asked if this time I’d mind taking them as the resolution on my camera is a lot bigger than hers and the NOTHS people are quite strict on the formatting. I’ve been searching through my hard drives to see if there is anything that we might have already, but she’s been so busy making new things these past few months that my pictures are all a bit out of date. The last time I took pictures for her was last November, which is ages ago. She didn’t have a shop then, just her blog on which she’d post pictures of all the things she’d made. I remember that day well, and it was also the time that I think I took one of my all time favourite pictures (above)- it was just before the coming of a big storm that we could see coming over the hills in the distance and we were increasingly fighting the ever-buffeting wind. And then it got too dark for any more camera fun, so we picked some blackberries and got in the car to go back home. I think we still have some of the berries left in the freezer, ooh I should bake a pie this weekend!

The NOTHS “photoshoot” (hehe) is “scheduled” (hehehe) for tomorrow afternoon so we have until then to decide where we’re going to do it. We’ve been trying to think all day where might be a good spot as we want it to pick up the same rustic theme of her sewing (barley field? in front of the old barn??), but looking at that November photo again, I think that’s actually quite a nice spot. We so desperately want everything to turn out ok, as if we can get some really nice photos there might be just a very small chance that they might get featured in a magazine, and how exciting would that be??!! I can’t bear thinking about it.

Oh, by the way, my sister’s “rustic chic” shop is also open too and can be found over at MalphiStyle.com. She’s worked really hard at setting it up, and I hope you like it. Please wander over and see what you think, we’d appreciate your feedback 

On that note I should get to bed so I’m actually awake for all that needs to be done tomorrow

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Please let the weather be nice tomorrow…