Week 6 of 365

The last week before half term break!
39/365 - Monday
Got the ironing out ready but too tired...

40/365 - Tuesday
still there...

41/365 - Wednesday
Desperate measures. I ironed a few things to wear, to keep me clean and tidy at work these next few days. 3 outfits and 3 more sleeps to go.

42/365 - Thursday
Bin night. My re-cycling challenge.
The bin men have nicked 2 of my glass recycling bags. Now I have no recycling bag.
I put my empty glasses in my own bag with a friendly note.... Let's see what happens...

43/365 - Friday
My delivery challenge. I left my shopping purchases behind in the store. They tried to deliver it today whilst I was at work.

Oh, and the bin men... took my bag... and didn't leave me anything in return.
Nothing.
Bag Nickers.
44/365 - Saturday
Admitted defeat and put the ironing away. It is half term next week and have a new pile of ironing now to add to the pile.

45/365 - Sunday
Happy Valentines Day!

A Relaxing New Years Eve!

A bit of tidying up and cleaning and re-cycling, relaxing, TV, sorting through the lovely Christmas cards, catching up with emails, updating address books and my new calendar and diary for 2010.
I put away all the Christmas decorations and chopped up the Christmas tree for re-cycling!Tudur watched the proceedings, carefully. I usually throw the tree into the back of the car and take it to a park where they chop it up to re-cycle. After I did it last year, I heard that they had apparently stopped it. Oops. So this year, I am attempting to re-cycle it with our usual re-cyling scheme with all the weekly rubbish collection. I hope that my tree counts as "twigs and small branch" for the re-cycling criteria!
I have also been chasing the air in my radiators around the house. I tried to bleed them the other day and obviously didn't do it right as this morning was woken by monsters making lots of noise in the boiler and the radiators. It scared Tudur!
I am writing down thoughts and reflections of this last year 2009 and some hopes and dreams for 2010 in my journal and praying about some things too as I go. It is all good, which I will share in 2010!
Which is very soon!
It is proving to be a fab pyjama day to watch Murder on the Orient Express and Madagascar... and now there might be time to watch a few more classics! I love movies to relax to. don't you?Tudur is really enjoying time to relax too.
I wonder how you will be reflecting and celebrating the end of one year and the start of a New one?

Remember to be thankful for a gift!

When Rachel, one of my girly cake chick friends, had her birthday this week we decided to encourage her with a card expressing either the qualities we see and enjoy in her or a verse from the Bible. We decided that we would give her a gift that could be bought or handmade or something we already have that we wanted to give her, preferably connected in some way to the encouraging words we had for her!
Choosing the gift for her was the easy part,for me.
Bread. I would make bread.
Rachel recently and generously gave me her bread maker and I just love it. Everyone did laugh, however, when I made my first loaf: chocolate bread!
So I made chocolate bread for Rachel, with chocolate chips! Yummy. (Her 2 year old son thinks I am very clever to make chocolate bread!)
Simple: I followed a recipe!
There are loads of bread recipes to find on the Internet, just follow your own manufacturers guidelines for the order you put the ingredients in the pan.
Here is the basic recipe I use... and then a Luci adaptation for chocolate Mocha bread that is also proving popular.
chocolate bread recipe for 1 1/2 lb loaf:
1 cup water
1 egg beaten
1 tbsp skimmed milk powder
1 tbsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
2 1/8 cups strong white flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp dry yeast
add 1/4 cup chocolate chips, part way through the cycle - my machine goes beep!!!

For the creative Luci adaptation.... Chocolate Mocha bread:
replace strong coffee for water. I use strong coffee from my cafetiere.
Enjoy!

I wrapped the bread once cool, in parchment/greaseproof paper and then brown paper, tied it up with string and put it in a used gift bag I had. The gift bag had the name of the store on it, so I tore 2 strips of gift wrap and stuck it on the 2 edges of the bag. a great way to re-cycle those lovely paper gift bags from shopping trips!