Friday

Good morning, gentle readers, and welcome to a mild, damp and misty-moisty morning after a fairly wet yesterday and overnight.  We had a bit of thunder, etc, yesterday but if we had any overnight it didn't bother me!  On the BBC weather page, the little storm symbols have gone as have many of the rain symbols so today looks a bit better than it did yesterday but - well, we will see!  The flower beds are nicely soaked and it's all looking healthy except that the tomatoes would ripen faster if the sun started shining and that's something I don't really expect to see today.  Did you have storms where you are?

Beth was round yesterday and we had a much easier day making Christmas bunting.  No challenge really but we needed it easy after the struggles of the day before.  We're very lucky as now we have two sewing machines.  A friend of Beth's has very kindly handed on her machine that she no longer wants.  I understood that it wasn't particularly good so was expecting a bit of a wreck but, actually, it's a jolly nice little basic machine.  I gather it doesn't take too kindly to much thickness but it stitched through four layers of fabric without any trouble.
This means that Beth and I don't have to wait for each other when we are sewing together so we're extremely grateful for this generosity.  I doubt the person concerns reads this but, just in case, THANK YOU!

The weather was so miserable leading up to lunch time yesterday that I changed my plans and made a quick soup, one of those bung-it-all-in-together-and-see soups.  This one had onion, mixed root veg (from the freezer) chopped tomato, lentils, stock, seasoning, a bit of sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar and it was delicious and just the ticket!  There's a bit left over for today which is helpful.  I suppose we're not so far away from Autumn now but it felt a bit odd having hot soup and feeling that it was the right thing to have!  It's been a funny old summer on and off, hasn't it?

The soup was nice and frugal.  A while ago, I found a soup pack reduced to 19p in Morrisons.  Not needing it there and then, I peeled and chopped it all up, open froze it and then bagged it.  Well, I used some of that which dropped the cost considerably.  It can't have been more than 50p for the whole lot which made three portions.
It's nice to be thinking frugal again.

I have a new drink of choice and it's very simple.  Just mix some diet lemonade (17p per bottle in Aldi) with a good splash of lime or lemon juice (from a bottle) and add some ice.  Very refreshing and very delicious although we will forget about the additives, OK?

No Beth today.  Alex has been away all week, camping with some sort of young people's challenge thingy and we both felt very sorry for him yesterday as the rain came down so hard.  He's home today and I am sure he will appreciate motherly fussing and home comforts all the more for having roughed it for a few days which can't be bad.

Well, I'm not totally sure what I will be doing today which is not so good.  Maybe some more clearing and tidying as I haven't done much this week.  I have a little quilt to finish off that I am making for a friend and I have the fabric for the backing now so I could do that or I am making some doll's bedding which also needs quilting, wadding and finishing off.  There's a bit of washing and ironing too

But before I start any of that, it is breakfast time!



Food
Breakfast:  toast and jam/marmalade, melon slices
Lunch:  soup (left over from yesterday) and a ham sarnie, fruit or yogurt
Dinner:  Savoury mince with a crumble topping, some sort of veg, fruit or yogurt