Fruits of my labours!!!

I'm really starting to see the rewards of my hard work in the garden and greenhouse this year.

I've posted some pictures up so you can see what's going on so far!

My first tomatoes staring to form on the plants. They might be small so far, but I'm hoping that they will be really flavoursome tomatoes later in the season.
Alpine strawberries, these were grown from seed last year and overwintered in the greenhouse. They are small but have so much flavour. I'm hoping to get runners from them for new plants next season.

3 cucumbers forming on the greenhouse plant. I lost one cucumber earlier this year. It went all squashy at one end so I thought it best to remove it to prevent damage to the plant. It seems to have worked ok with no ill effects.
Plenty of pea pods forming on the garden plants. I've sown these in succession this year so hopefully I'll have a continuous supply rather than a glut.My first ever raspberry! There are plenty of berries forming on the cane but this one for some reason is ripening quicker than the rest. I'll have to dig out my netting to prevent the birds from snacking on them before I do. I also have a new cane coming up on this plant, so I'll split that off next year.



Also on my agenda today, I've strained off the elderflower concoction into demi-johns to ferment out. I've also just bottled one without any added yeast to see what it does. It will be an interesting experiment. If it ends up undrinkable, I'm sure my composter will enjoy it!


Next on my to do list this evening is to haul out my material stash and get cracking on some bags, now that I have my gorgeous labels to sew into them. I really could do with gardening too this evening but I don't think there's going to be enough hours today :0)

Elderflower Champagne

I'm having a go at making Elderflower Champagne. My little one discovered that we had elderflowers growing in a lane near our house. We've been here for 4 years and didn't realise until now!!

So here's a shot of the brew in progress:The reipe I used came from the BBC website and it appears to be pretty easy to make. I'll let you know in a few days how it's going. Currently it smells very fragrant, time will tell!

I wasn't sure what was classed as a head of elderflower, so I have loads in, what's the bet I have too many, or can you have too many in something like this???

Last day of my staycation

*sniff* it's all over, I'm now on the last few hours before I return to real life and the horrible four letter word that is work.

We spent the last day of our staycation at the medieval and game fair at Shanes Castle.







We had a very wet start to the day, but by early morning the weather had settled down to be a dry day. There were plenty of things to see and do at the game fair. One of the activities we tried was archery. I really enjoyed this but have a bruised arm for my trouble!

Do you sense a recurring theme for my staycation this week? We've beento a fair few castles and monuments! Very educational I have to admit, but equally as enjoyable!




This is a picture of an old torpedo testing platform, which lies just off the Antrim lough shore on Lough Neagh.
The old platform is now a protected breeding ground for wildlife.

So thta's it for now. I'll be back to normal next week with all my usual boring bits!

I'm all personalised!

My personalised labels for my sewing have arrived!! I'm so excited, I'm like a dog with two tails :0)


So here it is,
Finally I managed to get a decent shot of my labels to show you!

Just have to get my bum in gear now and start making lots of lovely things to sew my labels into!

More staycation photos

So off we went this morning with no idea where we were going or what we were going to do. Not the ideal start to
a day out you might think, but we've had some of our best days out this way!

So here's where we ended up





Dunluce Castle, another location that hubby and I have been past many times over the years but never visited. We had an absolutely glorious day, blazing sunshine and very little breeze.

We also ventured into Portstewart where we had lunch, before doubling back round the coast road to end up in Ballycastle before returning home.


The picture below is one of my favourite ones taken today:


The picture doesn't do the scene much justice, if you looked at the water today it was so blue and clear that you'd have been forgiven for thinking you were in the Mediterranean!






This picture was taken from the mainland, its of Rathlin Island. Another place on my list that I have yet to visit.


And this last picture was taken almost half a mile away from the Carrick A Rede rope bridge!

Not bad for my wee camera!

So that's it, all my summer holidays are over, *sniff* back to work next week. Ah well, it was nice while it lasted.

Staycation!!

Well I'm on holidays this week and we are being eco friendly and holidaying at home!
So off we trotted on our travels today and after lunch, this is the view I had......

I visited Scrabo Tower today and this is the view from the top of Scrabo Hill, BEFORE you climb up the tower!! The houses in the picture are in a relatively large housing estate, so it gives you an idea of the trot up we had.


This is the view from the top of the tower. The viewing area is reached by climbing 122 stone steps in a spiral staircase. It's not too bad as there are some rooms on the way up to break the climb. These house exhibits relating to the tower and its history.

The black line to the 11 o'clock in the photo above is in fact a small airstrip in Newtownards. At one point today there was a small aircraft which took off and we were higher than it was, that gives you an idea of the height.
A view of Scrabo golf course from the top of the tower.
And lastly the tower itself.

During our visit, we discovered that the tower actually had some residents until 1966. The McKay family were caretakers of the tower from it was built and the first caretaker, Mr McKay worked in Scrabo quarry, which used to be alongside the tower site.

Mr Millen brought up a family of 8 while he lived here and the last of the family, his 3 grand-daughters, finally handed back the keys to the Tower in 1966 to the Londonderry Estate.

I have lived in Northern Ireland all my life and have driven past this wonderful monument many times, but I had never visited until today. As my husband remarked "many tourists come here and see more in a week of holidays than we do living here for a lifetime" How true that is!

There's actually very little historical information about the tower, which I think is a real shame. However I managed to find this article online which you might like to read further if you're interested.

New Toy

I blog this evening from my new toy. I bought myself a sleek, shiny new laptop yesterday! Yay me :0)


I hope to have many happy hours on my new laptop, and it will take me a while to transfer all my files from the desktop to the laptop so I think I will be busy for a while. The down side is that I tried to transfer all my music from the desktop itunes to my laptop version and I managed to lose the whole lot, boo!

Ah well, I'll just have to re-do the whole lot, although that will take a bit of time.

Sold!

I went to my copmputer class tonight with 3 bags that I had made. I managed to sell 2 of them!!!

Whoop whoop :0)

I also have a request to make another one. I think I will be busy next week.

Bag order and a dilemma!

I recently started a computer class to upgrade my qualifications. In the class last week one of the ladies was admiring my tote bag. She asked where I had bought it and when I replied that I'd made it myself, she asked if I'd make her one too and that she'd pay me for it. Now I have loads of fabric in the house from making the bags for myself, but my problem is I don't know what to charge for making it?

How do you work out what to charge when you're selling handmade items?

Someone help please, I need an answer by tomorrow evening!!

Back online

Finally I'm back online. We had to format the hard drive completely to resolve the issues we've been having. All that remains now is to get all our info that we backed up, onto the drive again. I may be rather busy for the next few days!

Computers!

My computer is behaving rather badly, it died last night and we lost everything. I may not be around to blog very much as a result. Me thinks it might be time to go PC shopping!

Hope to see you soon

ab
x

Scrapstore!!

I found a scrapstore today, one downside is that you have to be a member to use it and it would cost me £50 to join as an individular member. :0(

I felt like I was in aladdins cave today while I was there and I would have loved to be able to get some bits and bob to take home. *sniff*

Ah well, maybe it's just as well cos hubs would have been up in arms about more craft thing appearing and causing clutter as he calls it!!!

I'm enjoying the sun!

As the title says, I'm enjoying our sunny weather. I'm making the most of it as it could very well be our summer here! So please accept my apologies for not wanting to be inside updating my blog :0)

Roll on tomorrow afternoon, I finish work for a week, yippee!!! I'm hoping the weather will hold so I can get a lot more planting and weeding done in the garden. The sun might be nice and helping the plants, but the weeds aren't slow to shoot up either.

Hope it's sunny and warm wherever you are!!