Problem Beverage?

Is it just me or do you people have Beverage Problems?

Not as in problems discerning a beverage: if it slops its a beverage.
And not as in construction of a beverage: there's a reason companies generally label their products before they decorate the supermarket shelves, but then again, if you keep buttons and trims in a tea-caddy you deserve all you get (guilty!).
Mind you, there's the story of someone who kept their grandfather's ashes in a cocoa tin marked 'gravy'...(no offence intended)

No, I'm talking of the sort of problem where you create your desired beverage and then misuse it accidentally.

Tea, mainly. Although there have been problems with ink. Luckily turps, white vinegar and white spirit each have very distinctive aromas...but hot cocoa  and left-over gravy sauce have interchanged themselves in the past...

Back to the beverage problem at hand- literally...

I'm working on dolls at present since I've managed to convince M. that I am a competent enough doll maker to give an Autumn workshop at her place. (Faith is the key: Amen, sister!) I don't like white dolls and love working with tea-dyed calico, regular readers will no doubt recall previous accidents?

I guess regular readers can also see where this is going...

So as I am working very hard I make myself a nice cuppa tea. Oh look there's hot water left in the kettle, two more tea bags into the wide necked plastic water jug, add hot water, stir to a nice dyeing colour, gather the snippets of calico needing attention and... very carefully.... drop the lot... into... my lovely fresh cuppa cha.

AAAAAAGH! GRRRR!

Now I have to wash the soya milk out of the calico and start again.

Nothin' easy, I'm tellin' ya!

Like I say: grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

Tea and Bliss

Its the middle of the night, I woke and can't sleep again so FREEDOM! up I got to make tea and catch up on emails, blogging, and...ahem...tomorrow's Music teaching preparation...

The flat is warm and I can boil the kettle as many times as I like without being in bother. Bliss!!

Still wrestling the bug I went down with Christmas Eve, real pig this one, and children who were unwell last term are still not at their full health either. Hopefully the present cold snap will bump off a few germs, would be good....did you ever read the E. Nesbit book 'The Wouldbegoods'? Lovely writing and wicked fun, especially for an Edwardian lady novelist.

Last week I bought a purple duvet cover, five feather butterflies and a frying pan!
Weird combination I know, the lady at the checkout was laughing at me. The butterflies are nifty- they have double magnets so attach to curtains, and as the living room curtains are plain dark brown its so pretty. The lack of a frying pan was really annoying me, and the purple duvet cover? It was half price and I've stuffed all my oddments of blankets and old bed covers into it so hey presto! bienvenu dans le boudoir d'Heckety!

Now I had better decide where to begin with 5th and 6th Class Music tomorrow...at the beginning perhaps?!
I thought we would study Ballads this term as it would be good for their memory and also introduce the concept of telling stories through song. I'll have to be careful not to teach any Rebel or political ones though as that would go down like a lead balloon!!

Ho hum...another day in paradise!

Tea Time! Ooh-Ouch!

How many of you tea-drinkers have had mishaps in the course of your tea drinking...or even because of your tea drinking?

In the past I've absent-mindedly filled my fountain pen with tea instead of ink, and even dunked a biscuit in the ink bottle,but I reckon those are fairly common errors.

Several friends have ruined their mobile phones by dunking them in their tea, or dropping them in completely, also common enough I'd guess.

But the mishap which takes the biscuit, as far as I'm concerned, happened last week:


Picture this:- a quiet moment, lovely cup of tea in one hand, new Quilt magazine just through the letter-box spread open on the kitchen table ready for a lovely half-hour (or so...!) of reading and thinking...

...mobile bleeps, Middlest wanting info...

...answer text, delete message, return to magazine, pick up lovely hot cup of tea and take that first perfect slurp...

...followed by...a bite of the phone!!!!!!!


Aaaagh!

What was I thinking?
I don't even eat biscuits any more!
Talk about wits gone a-begging!
And boy did it hurt!


(Note to viewers: no mobile phones were injured in the making of this blog post.)

All Kinds of Everything

Colletta is having a Valentine's Book Giveaway:
Of course I'd much rather you didn't enter it, but since one of the rules to enter is posting about it- here's the post...and here's the ace review...sigh...now you'll all want it and I definitely won't win...

I've been playing:

'Well m'dear,' sez yez, 'and when are you not?'

But you see I got these great vintage postcard scans from Tricia at French Kissed, Au Bon Marché and Hotel de l'Opéra (I love the appearance of the written word) and I thought I could use them to make shop tags:

Don't laugh, but I fished the pack of little blank cards out of the paper bin in school a few years ago. I printed off the scans, but as the printer is misbehaving they came out greenish so then I tried printing them in black and white. The size of the cards meant I had to cut up the individual printouts, but I think that gives the old handwriting more impact, in some ways.

Then I wrote 'Heckety Beckety Crafts' with silver or gold or green gel pens,

added a bit of glitter on some but not sure if I like that idea

and am adding fabric scraps and teeny buttons on them to embellish them.

I know its only a tag but how often do you keep a pretty tag as a book mark? I do, and thought it might be a nice 'touch'?

Anyhow I'm having great fun! I love cutting and sticking...the child in me I guess! (which is why I still read Winnie-the-Pooh, Dr Seuss, Richard Scarry, Brian Wildsmith, Maurice Sendak- doncha LOVE 'Chicken Soup With Rice'?)

Don't know if you remember but awhile back I ordered online a DIY Desk Calendar for my Dad using his photography (see next door for his photos).
Due to the snow in Britain and the postal system being disrupted it took longer to arrive, but it has turned out beautifully. The photos look even more impressive than on the computer screen as the printing paper is of a very high quality, and Dad is delighted with it.

If you are curious here's the link to the company, I'll certainly be using them again as my sisters enjoy photography too.

After dropping B off at school (she's in the middle of mock Inter. Cert. Exams poor thing) I had to buy dog food and treated myself to a new tea!

I'm Irish amn't I? Besides talking, tea drinking is the National Pastime you know! Although Earl Grey would be my usual treat I really like this tea too. Rooibos I drink all the day, but sometimes I need a change!

Oh, I nearly forgot- Check out here for several new freebie ETSY Banner Designs! As you know I like playing with banners, and I think these are rather delectable!

Apologies for sending you all over the shop today, but I hope you each find at least one useful thing!

Oh one last thing (Proud Mommy Moment here); B got into the second round of a local singing Competition Wednesday night, ma baba!

Thankful Thursday!

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more- a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be
Thy praise.

George Herbert.

Herewith this week's 'Thankfuls'!

1. The ubiquitous 'they' resurfaced our lane yesterday- hurrah! hurrah! No more rappelling down gorges, leaping crevasses, tumbling into pits, paragliding across trackless wastes, swimming through rushing torrents, or stalling in mudslides just to get the half-mile to the main road! 2. Today at 3.oo I am going into town to a coffee shop to meet a friend for tea, and if you think that's mundane you don't read my posts very often! Its REALLY exciting! Both of us have organised to be childless and we are so looking forward to a conversation in which we can each FINISH our SENTENCES! We chose a coffee shop with good cakes and fruit eats too so I'm telling you that this is one MEGA-event!

3.Look what I found along the lane this morning:

I thought the diggers and machines laying the water pipes over the last six months had destroyed all the blackberry bushes as they've bashed the hedges round pretty badly, but I'm delighted to report that there's enough blackberries for at least one crumble and possibly a pan of blackberry sauce to go with Sunday lunch's ice-cream!

4. You can laugh at this 'thankful' if you want, but this morning I thought I'd go to the Farmers' depot and get bedding plants for the window boxes to beautify the outside window sills before my mother-in-law arrives on Saturday. I LOVE the Farmers' depot/warehouse place down on the Quays! Its got hardware, paints, fencing, pet food, plants, hedging, farm implements, gardening tools, thick socks and gloves, turf bales, gumboots, buckets, horse food, fertilizer, coal scuttles, compost, bins, lambing supplements, fence wire, oh you name it all mixed up in the most unruly manner. The girls love it too as you just never know what you'll find next. Two months ago they moved into a huge new purpose-built warehouse and extended their yard, but all they've done really is to give themselves more space and appear to be more organised! It smells of earth and plants and hardware, there's generally dirt on the floor and the farmers all go in in their wellies and dirt and you can wait ages to be served if the guy in front is taking forever to explain just what he needs. The people who work there are all country folks and there's never a hurry nor a bother on them, and there's generally one or two tractors and trailers in the carpark. It drives some people mad I know but I really love it; for all its new appearance it is still stuck in the 19C and with the values to boot!
Anyhow, apart from the treat of spending a while there this morning I got several plants- 6 pansies, 6 cyclamen (Mum calls them 'sickly men'!),4 cultivated primroses, 6 button daisies, and a lovely pyracantha. The man in the nursery section picked out a pyracantha with lots of berries ready to ripen. I've got several little plants of variegated ivy so I think they'll make a nice group of window boxes. Well, not the pyracantha, I'll put that in a big pot by the door for now, and then see if it would prefer the ground next summer perhaps.

5. When I was coming out of the Bookshop this morning (and f.y.i. -Diana Gabaldon's new book 'An Echo in the Bone' hasn't yet been released here) the river was looking lovely and there was a beautiful rowan near the bridge. Luckily I had my camera so here you are:

...looking upstream...

...looking downstream... ...and the rowan.
The Garavogue River goes right through the middle of town, and the estuary and quays begin the other side of this bridge. There is one more bridge, beyond which the ocean going yachts and ships moor, but basically Sligo squeezes itself into a space between the sea and Lough Gill, which is why hockey-, tennis-,rugby and foot-balls, can sometimes be seen floating through town along with ducks and swans, the school Canoe Club and fishermen on every bridge. Just your average Irish town really but I love living back here. The Autumn colours are becoming more pronounced now but as I'm always driving its difficult to catch them on camera for you. Still, they are lovely and I'm thankful for the beauty of it all!

And there they are, this week's 'thankfuls'!