Hot stuff, a Treasury appearance and a little shopping.

We popped into Manchester this morning to brave the shops.  I wanted some jeans and shoes and ended up with jeans and a nice long, sloppy aubergine coloured Merino wool cardigan from Gap.  Not exactly thrilling stuff, but I'll be able to chuck out some similar but dead items of clothing.  The shoes are altogether more of a nightmare, I have fairly big feet which are a strange shape so for me shoe shopping is a dreary experience with shops full of things which I love which either don't exist in my size or they never have it in stock.  I have the worst shoe wardrobe of anyone I know. 

Then we met some chums for lunch, our first plan of Yo Sushi in Selfridges didn't happen as the queue was epic and they'd never have got us four seats together, so we regrouped in Tampopo.  Peter and I had to queue for a while there, but it wasn't too bad and finally we had a very tasty lunch from their excellent value Express Menu which is £6.95 and is actually quite a substantial amount of food.

Pad Krapow Chicken breast quick-fried with red chillies, fresh Asian basil & red pepper.
Served with steamed jasmine rice.
Very tasty and seriously hot!  Washed down with copious quantities of green tea.


Yasai Gyoza Three griddled dumplings of water chestnut, bamboo shoot & carrot, with a soy dip.
A bit of a non event really, but nice enough.

Also, here's another Treasury - many thanks for including my Path Through Moss Print.

Peter Pan

by Masaoms (Inspired by this song)

Chinese Feast.

Tea Anyone

By Fffflowers

I love this Treasury from Fffflowers who's based just up the road from me in Wirral, there are some great items here;  I'm particularly fond of the clothes brush, it's such a lovely old fashioned piece.

We've had another epic meal today, which, thank goodness, I wasn't cooking.  There were 30 of us, all Peter's family plus my parents, for a massive Chinese feast at Glamorous a huge Hong Kong style restaurant in Manchester, all neon, fiber optics and gold.  They have dim sum trolleys circulating and a seemingly never ending range of little steamed and fried morsels.  We were there for hours and finished up with a little light shopping the Wing Yip supermarket below (choi sum, pandan leaves, jasmine tea, chillies for the freezer and sweet chilli sauce).  Then all back to ours for tea and my Christmas day chocolate and chestnut terrine which has almost gone now.  Now we're in front of the telly and I have a stiff g&t in my hand.

Treasury Appearance!

Here's a very pretty calming Treasury after the rush of the Xmas season.  All for a good cause too!  The Etsy Project Embrace Team is a Universal Coalition of Artists whose main purpose is to create awareness and support for people who have been diagnosed with Cancer, whatever kind it may be.  If you want to find out more about them, just click the link below for plenty of info on their good works.

Thank you for including my card in your lovely selection!

Silence

by Moon Over Maize from the Etsy Project Embrace

This was lunch on Xmas Day...

Christmas lunch was totally untraditional this year, I've never cooked a turkey (my mother always does on one of the holiday days, in fact, this year today is turkey day).  I cooked the beef and the pudding on Xmas Eve and had the ingredients for the nibbles all ready to go on Xmas day and just sort of made them up at the appropriate time.

Here's what we ate to start with nibbles to go with out fizz:

Prawns in my special made up marinade (coriander, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, red chilli, sugar), smoked salmon with horseradish creme fraiche on blinis, smoked salmon pate also on blinis, Dolcelate and Blackstick's Blue on chickory leaves.

 

For our main - shin of beef casserole with herby mustard dumplings, sprouts with bacon, cabbage and cavolo nero and squashed new potatoes.

Pudding - Chocolate and chestnut terrine - seriously rich and rather nice!

White Xmas?

I came across this on my way to the post office the other day!

Snowed in and Two Treasuries

Well, not really snowed in, just not really wanting to go out at the moment.  I shall have to eventually as we've people coming for supper and although I have the rather too large shoulder of lamb which I shall slow roast for about six hours, I don't have the lashings of herbs for my cous cous or my green beans to cook with fresh tomato and garlic.  We were going to meet Adam in town, but we've not heard from him, so I suspect he's staying in nice and warm too.....the localish Indian shops will have all I need so I can keep on putting off the visit to a proper supermarket to do the 'big shop'.

After an unreasonably long time Treasury free, here are two which coincidentally feature prints from my Have a Seat series.

I'd like to stay right here in front of the fire drinking mead....

by Nemeton

Xoloata

by Masaoms

Thanks to both curators for including my pictures!

Lunch at The Knustford Wine Bar

The Knutsford Wine Bar is one of those local, small town restaurants which seems to have been there forever but never seems to change, which in this case is a good thing. I've been eating there on and off for fifteen years, less in recent times, but it's always been a good bet for a good meal and nice atmosphere. The building was a Century Chapel in the 14th and then a Parish Church, and is full of atmosphere with a lovely big open fire. The ambient temperature is always a bit odd in there as you can get the most awful drafts if you sit just on the edge of the balcony on the ground floor or you can be baked by the fire, but in my experience, if you take a range of clothing. We were sitting sort of behind the door, sort of near the fire and sort of in the vicious updraft area near the end of the balcony, so it was hot/cold/hot/cold.....

Anyway, we were to meet four friends who we don't see nearly enough of for a catch up on the last six months' goings one and they chose the venue.

Our oven and hob had packed up on the Tuesday before and I was very fed up of eating out and eating cold bought stuff from the supermarkets, so I was really looking forward to some good hot food and plenty of crisp green veg.

Here's what I had.

King Prawn Cocktail with crayfish, avocado, sweet peppers and lemon £7.95

This certainly looked the part with the two nicely sized prawns which tasted of pretty much nothing and had the texture of defrosted seafood, you know, that sort of soft slightly spongy mouth feel. The avocado guacamole thing was tasty if messy and the sweet peppers were okay, if nothing special. There was tons of chilled and crisp iceberg lettuce but all the dressing had dribbled down to the bottom of the glass so there was a vague essence of Marie-rose sauce throughout, but a puddle of it below. With some careful salad tossing, I was able to distribute it a bit better. Marie-rose sauce really should be thick and have a bit of cling. Some nice soft but crusty French bread to dip would have been good. But despite my complaints (here, not there), I did enjoy it.

 
Gressingham duck breast with braised lentils, creamed haricot beans, baby onions and orange gremolata - £15.50

This was much more successful. I did ask for the duck to be pink and it wasn't but it was very tender and tasty, so I restrained myself from sending it back. I was too hungry to fuss. The creamed beans were delicious and really creamy, I'm assuming that there was cream added to them and it made a nice change from potato. I always love Puy style lentils and these were good, rich and meaty and the carrots and onions were nice but not particularly exciting. A very nice Sunday lunch main course.
 

 
Chocolate Fondue (perfect for sharing!) - chocolate chip cookies, warm sugared doughnuts, honeycomb, fruit skewers and chocolate brownie and warm chocolate dipping sauce - £9.75

This was Peter's idea......It sort of worked, the chocolate was nice, but far too shallow in it's pot to really dip into, there were no spoons for extra greedy spooning, the honeycomb was so sticky as to be almost inedible, the brownies were yummy, the chocolate chip cookies were shortbread and the fruit skewers were feeble - orange and grape - who wants to dip orange and grape into chocolate? Where were the lovely big strawberries and pineapple? So a sort of fun pudding, but we'd have been better off with some cheese I suspect.

 I've moaned about the food a bit, but there weren't any major horrors, just my normal low level complaints. I didn't get my crisp green veg, just some rather over steamed broccoli as a side dish. Despite this, we had a very enjoyable time with our friends and I'm sure we'll be back again.

A Splendid Afternoon's Noshing!

Yummy food from Back's Deli in Manchester

We had Peter's Xmas works do yesterday. For the first time we decided to have it catered at home because in the past we've been to various nice restaurants and had their set meal things which is usually okay, but it does cost at about £25 each plus the wine, you end up on a long table so you can't talk to everyone and you have the noise of a restaurant full of other people and the hassle of attracting the staffs' attention. So if we were going to pay for the event we wanted it to be a bit more relaxed and a few weeks ago we'd been to a friend's birthday do and they had great food so I found out who the caterer was and we were set to go.

The food was cooked by Back's Deli in Manchester and it was excellent, they have a very extensive menu of very tempting things, but I wanted to keep it simple and ordered for the main, Moroccan Spiced Lamb with Apricots, served with CousCous with Garlic Green Bean Salad, and for nibbles they marinaded some stone in green olives in some Moroccan(ish) flavours. All of the food was delicious, especially the green beans which were seriously garlicky. All of the hot food arrived in chafing dishes, the cold things I decanted into my own bowls, all the crockery and cutlery was provided even small plates for the pudding which I didn't buy from them, which I thought was very nice. Everybody ate their fill and then all the empties and dirties were taken away as if by magic at the end of the afternoon. Perfect!

We'll be eating the leftover lamb for ages....which isn't such a bad thing. I think it will make a fantastic spicy pasta sauce.

The hob man came yesterday as well, just before the food arrived, and now we have half a working hob which is an awful lot better than the no working hob we've had for almost two weeks. There's a little bit of rewiring to be done next week and then hopefully the whole thing will work. Fingers crossed...

Cooking, but not cooking

On Tuesday I had a super busy day with a shoot in Oldham which meant me rising from my bed at a very unpleasant and dark 6am. The car was thick with ice and the sky was black all the way to our initial meeting at the Sainsbury's cafe at 8am where I had a surprisingly tasty and welcomingly warm bowl of porridge. Then it was out in the cold to shoot (in a photographic sense) a gang of architects, designers and other clever folk outside the Art Gallery and then a few more locations which took us up to a still chilly 3pm. On the way home I was mentally planning a delicious tomato and onion based seafood pasta dish - nice and quick, nice and satisfying, and after recovering from the day's exertions, the cooking began. Then it stopped very quickly as all the electricity went out and we were plunged into darkness and silence. After some detective work, it turned out that our oven and hob or the oven or the hob had died a death and taken all of our electricity with it. That was Tuesday, today is Friday and we have no means to cook and we have a friend coming for supper. The obvious thing, I appreciate is to go out for supper, but after the abandoned seafood pasta we popped to the excellent Persia Grill, the next day we had a splendid and surprisingly un-greedy take away from the excellent Great Khatmandu and last nights disappointing first time visit to Green Tea (Chinese), I really didn't want to eat out again. So after much consideration I took myself off to a brand new and literally very shiny Waitrose to carefully choose my ingredients for my no cook supper.

To start:
Salmon and smoked salmon terrine served with rocket and brown toast - yes I know that I could have made this very easily myself, but it was reduced and I could't resist!)

Main:
Spicy couscous (only a kettle needed) with lots of coriander and mint.
Coronation flavoured cold roast chicken (I say flavoured because there will be more chicken than sauce), using a cold roasted organic chicken to be shredded and mixed with pots of Waitrose coronation chicken as I couldn't cook onions and garlic to go in my own, I plan to loosen it a bit with yoghourt and tart up the zing a bit with some mango chutney and extra spices.
Delicious little green French olives.

Pudding:
Gu chocolate mouses - any excuse for a Gu.

I think it sounds yummy - I hope it will be enough.

(Edited to add)

Yes, it was enough, there's loads left. The chicken and cous cous were delicious and we were all very happy!


This is the first picture on the blog from my new camera which I really haven't used yet - I must get back in to the habit of photographing my food like I used to. The restaurants we've been to recently have had such appalling lighting that the photos have been utterly unusable.

The weekend will remain a hot food free zone. We're out with chums for lunch on Sunday at the Knutsford Wine Bar where we haven't been for a million years since we were very friendly with the former owners and I used to work for them for five minutes.

I miss my porridge and boiled eggs for breakfast!

The engineer is coming on Tuesday or hopefully on Monday and will poke the hob and no doubt tell us that it's not mendable and we'll have to spend a small fortune on a new one. Apparently the oven is okay as the first engineer came on Thursday and poke and prodded it and plugged it into things and proclaimed it good.

Mini Picture is here!!

Mini Picture has arrived in Knutsford!

Mini Pictures are 12cm square white PVC resin blocks which are 25mm (1") thick, they are scratch and water resistant and printed with Eco Solvent inks which will not fade in UV light.

Best of all, every single one has one of my photographs on it - there are pretty images, urban, themed, multiple and every combination you can think of.

At the moment they are for sale at the Canvas Lounge Gallery in Knutsford, Cheshire for just £9 for a single block - surely an ideal gift for the festive season! The shop is up and running, so if you are in the area, or know someone who is, why not pop in and have a look?

Hopefully I'll be adding the blocks to my Etsy shop soon.

Have a Seat

I photographed this beauty when I was out working with mum in deepest flattest Lincolnshire, we'd just visited a charming man in a filthy recycling depot and on the way out through the thick mud on the endless bumpy drive I spotted this poor abandoned seat - I like to imagine that some of the staff there would take a seat, have a breather and watch the landscape and that it isn't destined for the skip too soon.....

I've made a new Blurb Book!

I was suddenly and unexpectedly inspired this afternoon to make a new book on Blurb.

The title of my new opus is 'Abandoned Christmas Trees', I've quite a nice little collection which I shot mainly at the start of 2009 with a couple as recently as August so I've worked on them a little and I can proudly present my new book:

Abandoned Chri...

By Sarah Franklin

Book Preview

It's 56 pages long, with an image wrap hard cover and on Blurb's special Premium Paper, I've just ordered my own copy with Express Delivery using a 50% off promotion so I'll definitely have it by the 24th.

I think it looks great and if you click on the image above, you'll go straight to my Blurb Bookstore where you can view a full preview and (hopefully) treat yourself to an alternative Christmas book.

Revisiting Morocco for Getty

Time for a quick blog post with this lovely Treasury from Masaoms who bought one of my 2010 Calendars last week, so a double thanks to her in lovely Barcelona! I have no idea which song she's referring to which could inspire a picture of a bicycle, a chalk board and a beautiful big green ring, so I'd better do a bit of research.

Inspired by Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johanssen Song
by Masaoms

I'm causing all sorts of glitches on my computer by uploading massive scanned Holga images to the Flickr/Getty site. Out of my latest sumbissions from September and October they are interested in 48 of the pictures which is great. I've no idea what sort of numbers others are having accepted, but I'm very pleased. There are a few which require property releases which I'm never going to be able to acquire now, which is a shame as they're nice images, but there are plenty which don't need anything other than some details and in the case of the Holgas I feel that my 3mb images aren't big enough (they were fine for Flickr which is where Getty found them) so I've had to go back to my scanned TIFFS which are rather meaty, the Volubilis Triumphial Arch was a massive size at 14,0000 px square and I couldn't export it so I reduced it to a more sensible 7,000 px square and re-tweaked it and cleaned it up a bit more.

The Essaouira Fishing Boats needed to be flipped as the film rebate and the numbers on the boats were reading back to front (oops!) so I need to change my print template and listing details too.



The upload process is slooooow for these big pics so here I am having a minor blog moment.

Dr Who Treasury and New Camera.

It's been one of those fallow Treasury phases for a while now, so I was very relieved to see this nice nerdy number this morning with my Dalek print along with more cool Dr Who stuff. We watched the watery episode the other night and it has whetted my appetite for the Christmas special where David Tennant's Dr will disappear forever......

Dr WhoooOOooo..HEY! Dr Who.
By K C Burk

I'm off to the gym in a minute and I've decided to have my first 'run' for months, I hope I survive it. I'll only be on the treadmill where I can be suitably cautious and I'm quite looking forward to it as I have missed it, the crosstrainer, while being fun and a great calorie burner just doesn't have the same satisfaction value.

I finally got my act together and bought my happy-snappy camera and here it is - the Panasonic Lumix FX60, it's a cute little thing with a lovely satin finish, far too many daft pre-set scene options (with a rather cool pin-hole one), and all sorts of bits and pieces I'm sure I won't use, but it's spec is good and I'll be looking forward to having a camera on hand at all times again as I've missed many opportunites in the recent past. My Birthday Banners collection has particularly suffered and I'm pleased that the next time I see one somewhere vaguely accessable, I'll be able to get a snap of it.

What a happy sight!

....A pile of five desk calenders in cases all printed, cut, made up, wrapped and ready to go!

I've sold one to Barcelona, one to Finland and four to my mum (which still counts!).

When I started to make them I realised that I had really messed up the sizes - precision never was my strong point! I faffed around trying to make it better, but it just got worse and worse and trimming each individual page by hand just wasn't fun. So I did what I should have done in the first place and set up a proper Master Page and started from scratch. Then it worked perfectly and I was happy and my printer was churning out sheets of Super A3 as fast as it could and my super sharp scalpel skimmed over my crop marks and we were done. Wrapped, packed and two posted.

The flat is, yet again, resembling a bomb site as loads of stuff which we'd been storing at mum's has now come back here to torment us. It's everywhere, boxes and boxes of stuff, my old school trunk, clothes which I don't wear but don't want to chuck out (Ebay is calling), my long ignored violin and even my lacrosse stick. And we have people coming for supper and here I am blogging with about 40 minutes to arrival. The Chinese red braised lamb shanks are slowly turning suculent and sticky in the oven and smelling divine, the spuds are in a big pot of water waiting to be turned to smooth and creamy mash, there's a pile of green veg to be plunged into a pan of boiling water, then we're ready to go. To start we've a spicy prawn cocktail with a coconut dressing and to finish, I'm admitting to a cheat and serving a Gu Torte, which is far better than anything I could have managed in my super busy day today, so I shall not feel guilty.

It's the Etsy Made in Manchester meeting tomorrow morning, there will only be three of us but we have decided to go ahead and have a gossip and lots of tea, it's always nice to have a catch up. Then there's a lunch at Al Faisal's with various friends and then I have every intention to get to Jacobs to purchase a new happy-snappy camera as I really don't like not having one on me all the time and I am convinced that I have missed hundreds of shots in my happy-snappyless time.

Then there's a birthday party in the evening, then on Sunday lunch at mum's for the first time in her temporary for six months flat. I hope she's worked out how to use the oven, dad's up for a few days too.

Print your own 2010 Eyeshoot Calendar.

After much faffing and putting aside of the whole thing, I've finally finished and listed the Print Your Own version of my 2010 calendar. I've still not sold one yet, which is slightly offputting, but there you go. Hopefully this will change all of that!

I've made the layout so that it can be printed on both A4 and nice and conveniently on US Letter for my lovely American customers. I wonder what the standard paper size is across Europe, I've never thought about it.

The images are exactly the same as for the main calendar which comes in the case and I really hope that someone likes it.....

Print your own Eyeshoot 2010 Calendar - A bargain $10

Click here to buy without going to Etsy.

Up Periscope - Vintage Banksy Graffiti Made into a Print

I've had this lovely Banksy snap knocking around in my archives for a while but hadn't really done anything with it up to a few days ago when I cropped and re-sized it for my secret new project which is in the pipeline. As I'd tweaked it to look much better than it had previously I decided to add it to my little shop. I wonder if it actually exists on the streets of London any more, I know these things don't last forever and I did shoot it some time ago.

Up Periscope - From Eyeshoot $35

This deserves to be on Etsy's Front Page!

Here's a stunning Treasury which features my Path Through Moss print, and many other beautiful items:

Ode to Oscar the Grouch
by Haut Totes

Lincoln Cathedral and some new kit.

After much reading on websites about remote shutter release devices for my D300 and getting very confused, I decided to phone Calumet who have always advised me well in the past. I settled on a very reasonably priced own label set up which has a radio trigger kit and an adapter for my Nikon camera. One half of the trigger kit is attached to the camera by Velcro or a metal clip (I was hoping for a hot shoe fitting which would be nice and neat, but that wasn't to be.) and the other half if a little do-dah with a button which fires off the shutter. I had a very quick play yesterday and it works which is a good start, but I'll have to have a proper session with the camera on the tripod and set up in Live View Mode which is how I'll be using this new arrangement on my next shoot for Balfour Beatty.

I also got around to sorting through my pictures from Lincoln Cathedral and here's a taster:

Now available as coasters!

In an exciting new development, a selection of my photographs are being made into waterproof ceramic coasters by Bill at House of Six Cats, he's using a range of images from members of the Photographers of Etsy Team of which he is one of the co-leaders.

The coasters are printed using an Epson R2880 Exhibition quality printer, on a state of the art material that is water-proof, smudge-proof, and stain resistant. The material is also self adhesive so it creates a permanent bond with the tile, and this means there is virtually no transitional lip from print to tile. Each tile measures 4.25” x 4.25" and is backed with black foam that ensure against table abrasion and sliding. They can also be used as back-splashes in the kitchen or bathroom which could look rather amazing!

Here's a shot of the four finished tiles, I think they look rather lovely.

Four Ceramic Coasters - $20 with free postage

One set has already sold out of Bill's shop which is great for both of us, and they are also available from my shop. He has artwork for two more sets using my images, one set of four different graffiti pictures and one using my Crosby Steps photo which will be printed over all four so that they fit together to make one big image. They're not available yet, but hopefully it won't be long.

I've made another sale on RedBubble which is one of those selling sites that I tend to forget about as it runs so smoothly and doesn't bombard me with messages and newsletters that I don't really bother with it, but with the notification that someone has bought a framed print of The Ministry of Silly Walks I remembered that they also offer calenders. As I have made my own calendar I thought I may as well offer a similar range of images there, so this morning, I have made one brand new one with a few clicks of the mouse and it's there in my shop looking lovely. If fact it was so simple that I totally edited and redesigned one which I had made ages ago.

I've got a meeting this morning about some exciting new goings on which I'll write about in more detail when I know for sure what's happening......

And to finish off and to add another picture, here's a Treasury:

Simply Morocco
by Vintage Bess

Featured twice and multitasking.

I've been very good this morning and have had a good session at the gym with my new iTrain workout which I do on the cross trainer. It's only for thirty mins which isn't as long as some of the others which I do regularly, but it gives me plenty of time to do my weights, abs and stretches and leave after an hour feeling very virtuous. Today I destroyed 750 of the calories I scoffed during our four hour Chinese lunch yesterday!

I've also been working on the photos from the Balfour Beatty shoot on Friday. They all look good but my Sigma wide lens is seriously filthy and I'm spending most of my time removing the splodges which is irritating to say the least. Also some are looking a bit soft so I think that if I am going to get more work like this (fingers crossed) I may have to look into getting a remote shutter release which should solve that little problem.

I've also almost finished booking my surveys in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire for tomorrow and Wednesday amidst all of this fevered activity have managed to find that my work is featured in two more Treasuries today - how nice!

All Together
by PDX Craft

Chestnut
By The Brick Kiln

Many thanks to both curators for including my work in your lovely Treasuries!

Look at these three lovely Treasuries!

I'm featured in three gorgeous Treasuries today - how wonderful and many thanks to the three clever curators for taking the time to find my work!

A Woodland Walk
by Paisley Chainsaw
Hurrah - made it to the Front Page!!

Black and White
by Mr Yen

We are all Human Beings....fragile as eggs
By Heidi Burton

Despite my lack of posts, I have been busy, or perhaps that's why there's been a lack of posts....
I have had some major software glitches and was without CS4 for some time and only got it all back if full working order yesterday and have been busy making the print your own version of my 2010 calendar which should be in my shops very soon.

I've been busy working with my mother, we spent a day in the Lake District which was totally stunning, the autumn colours were perfect - we didn't do much work, but somehow managed to be in the car for 12 hours which isn't great, but at least it was pretty!

Then I did a proper shoot for Balfour Beatty at a school on Friday afternoon which went well and will hopefully lead to plenty more similar work in the future. I'll be getting on with the post production for that on Monday.

Tuesday and Wednesday mum and I are off on our travels again to Yorkshire and then over to Lincoln where we will stay overnight. I don't think I've ever been before, but I do have a major soft spot for cathedrals and must make the effort to get to see it properly before we get on with our work, and take my camera.

Then we're off on Friday to London for a family Bar Mitvah on Saturday which will take us through to Sunday. It will be good to see family I haven't seen for ages.

Off shortly for Dim Sum at Glamorous with friends, and I'm looking forward to indecent amounts of steamed prawn dumplings and choi sum with garlic, yummy!

Eyeshoot's First Calendar has been born!

I've finally finished my 2010 calendar - for the last couple of years I've wanted to do one but just haven't got around to it, but this year I seem to have got my act together! I think it looks great - I especially like the clear cd style cases, they're so simple and effective. I plan to make a 'print it yourself' version as well and possibly a version all on one page like a poster as I've seen other that sell well on that layout and now I've got the artwork sorted out I can tweak it to my heart's content!

The images are a collection of my favourites all of which have been for sale in my Etsy shop, some are very good sellers, others undiscovered gems!

You can find it here.





I've been very busy lately which shows in the scarcity of posts here.....I've had plenty to say and show, but haven't quite got around to it. I was working in London for three days with mum last week which was hard work, but it's always nice to be there for a while. We had a terrible journey home, arriving back late on Thursday and then the next morning, Peter and I drove for seven hours to start our long weekend in Dartmouth for a family wedding. I took photos as a freebie, I haven't even looked at them yet & we have the happy couple staying with us on Wednesday this week so I'd better get my skates on and at least do a first edit. On Thursday we're off to stay with our friends in Henley and in the evening going to The Young Vic to see one of Peter's sons in a play called Lub You at the Young Vic. The short play was in the 24:7 theatre festival in Manchester this summer and was voted as one of the three most popular plays which let to a short run at the Bolton Octagon and then to London. There's a great website designed by Peter and built by anther of his sons.

I've been planning and cooking a supper tonight for seven for what seems like forever. We're just having a swift g&t while we wait for our guests to arrive. On the menu:
Smoked Mackerel Mousse with capers and salad leaves.
Boeuf Bourguignon with new pototoes and green veg.
Pears poached in spiced vanilla syrup with chocolate sauce.
Brie with garnishes.

I need a holiday.

Chocolate Pavlova

Here's the yummy pudding I made for supper last Sunday, if you want to read all the detail, just click and it should pop up in another window large enough to read.

It was very delicious!

Julie Julie Julie 50 Today

Julie Julie Julie 50 Today, originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

I like this one - it somehow seems to be a spontaneous sort of design.

Shot on the same old roundabout as usual.