Heart Iced Cookies

Continuing the iced cookies trying to master it, simple shapes like hearts and enjoying experimenting with the design.

These were fun, I managed to get the flow of the icing how I wanted it.

Much less lumpy and a better consistency.

Roses Leaves and dots made pretty cookies.

The trick was to work quickly before the icing started to set.

Pretty patterns by piping lines and dragging a needle through the piping.

Iced Cookies

I’ve watching in awa of some of the iced cookies that I have seen, at Christmas I made the Christmas cake  and decided to use a cookie mould, this was a Karen Davies mould, and I iced with royal icing to decorate, I loved how it turned out.

Obviously it is a learning curve but it was fun and we enjoyed snacking on the cookies before cutting into the cake.

Maybe it was a bit adventurous for my first but I enjoyed the process.

Full Moon Sea Swim

 It was a full moon Sunday the 22nd August and myself and my Daughter headed off down to our beach for an open water swim with loads of the people that regularly swim there as it was a full moon evening.

We have a wonderful secluded part of the beach between two piers that we swim in, it’s quite sheltered from high waves.

In the above video you can see that there was quite a few of us in the water and yes…. It was very cold tonight, I swam in a rash suite but note to self I need to use my wetsuit on an evening.

It was a beautiful evening and the conversations were flowing, made some new friends too which is always nice.

It’s so pretty, as you can see.

Below is my daughter enjoying the moment

The moon didn’t make its appearance until we were ready to come out but as you can see it was a spectacular picture when it did arrive.

Thankfully we had a cup of hot tea when we were getting dried and changed and it was needed, my teeth were chattering with the cold, all in all a beautiful evening.

Open Water Swimming

I’ve started sea swimming again, it was a regular occurrence when I was a child and living near to the sea has always been a privilege to me.

Now the North Sea is far from the temperatures that you get when holidaying in the Mediterranean but if you manage to get in to the North Sea you will find it invigorating.

Safety first, never do it alone, don’t stay in too long, build it up, take a warm set of dry clothes, a hot drink and a snack if you want it.

My partner in crime is my daughter Lauren, as soon as she said she would like to do it I was buying all the gear, shorty wetsuits, shoes, waterproof bags for our phones, changing gowns etc…

This was our first try.

It was gorgeous.

We take a big bucket with us to put or wet gear into for travelling home.

I wont lie, changing into dry clothes was challenging to say the least. I may have flashed once or twice getting changed haha!

I have since invested in a front zipped wetsuit jacket and shorts, much easier to get out of as I have a frozen shoulder. No more flashy me haha!

Adding Vinyl to Towels

I was sceptical whether or not this would work but using stretch HTV (heat transfer vinyl) it worked beautifully.

Picture the scene, the bride and groom coming home to spend the rest of their lives together and on the towel rack a little reminder of being newly weds.

One each although I'm guessing the brides will end up make up and mascara stained befor she moves on to using the groom towel.

I think they are rather sweet and although they may get many towels from guests personalising them is made easy with G.M.Crafts

Products Used

G.M.Crafts Rosegold Stretch Metallic Vinyl

1 pair of white hand towels.

Pain..... it's a pain.

Some days it's a struggle, some days it's good and some days it knocks you sideways.

I think managing pain has to be one of the hardest things to do.

When I was young I thought it was only old people that got daily pain, as you grow into the world you soon realise it can hit anyone at any time.

It even gives you a sense of humour, I have found many people who suffer pain have the biggest sense of humour. The phrase "if I didn't laugh I'd cry" comes to mind.

I decided to write this after suffering a real flair up in my own condition, I suffer from Psoriatic Arthritis and Fibromyalgia. Normally I have it under control and manageable.

I won't talk meds as everyone is different but I do take a cocktail of injections and tablets to keep me right.

So what has happened to give me the flair up that has knocked me sideways... who knows?

I recently had to do an increase on meds to try to get everything back the way is was and manageable again, I get sick of hearing myself moan about the pain and yes sometimes I cry when no one can see me but I try to steer clear of the self pity route but let me tell you it is damned hard when you are hurting.

So double the meds and the feeling of walking through a dream until your body adjusts, wanting to fall asleep every time you sit down, frightened to drive because of the fatigue.

Hearing phrases like "you look well" and thinking if you only knew the half of it.

Oh and to top it all off my gorgeous Daughter gets married in two weeks and I have the favours to make.

So for now I am putting on the happy face and doing the things I can do and leaving the things I can't.

Jak x

Dinners - My weight loss journey

As promised I thought I would show you some of our tried and tested dinners.

Both Chris and I are creatures of habit, our weeks dinners are as follows, the say if it works don't fix it so we stick to the plan and go with what works.

Sunday - full roast dinner, either pork or chicken, we pile it up with baby potatoes, swede or Turnip depending on what part of the country you live in we use the orange one and call it turnip, broccoli, cauliflower and green beans. We leave out the Yorkshire Puddings.

Monday - Curry night, classic slimming world curry, loads of spices and it tastes as good as a takeaway from our favourite Indian restaurant.

This was it cooking

Tuesday - Beef Stir Fry, marinated in garlic, oyster sauce and ginger

Finished with fish sauce and a twist of lime, I never thought I would like fish sauce but it's lovely.

Wednesday - Prawn Salad, something we both look forward to, quite funny really as when we were first married Chris would now no way eat salad, I think the only salad he had had was side salad with no dressing, I converted him as I always do a tossed salad, loads of boiled eggs, I even chop up crab sticks and toss it with the salad in a low fat dressing mixed with a little cider vinigar.

Thursday - Roast Dinner, just like Sunday's.

Saturday - Steak night, we have always had this, the steak is ribeye and normally around a 15oz steak however the steak that Chris had tonight was a beast and was 18.5 oz. We stopped the unhealthy spicey frozen wedged and now make our own sweet potato spicey wedges and loads of roast onion, peppers and mushroom.

So that is our weekly menu in a nutshell.

However I did make a Slimming World Pizza for a taster event and we were thrilled at how it tasted, the base is made from cauliflower rice and egg and baked blind until crispy.

We would definitely have it again.

 

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Low Fat Meals, My weight loss journey

13 weeks ago after problems with my back again I knew I had to do something, the last straw was I kept collapsing in a heap with pain.

Luckily I have the most supportive husband that anyone could ask for and he came along to A Slimming world group with me.

Of course the weight dropped of Chris and he has now reached his target but he is still coming to group each week to support me.

Some of the meals we have had has been gorgeous.

Starting with my breakfast, I try to have porridge most days, I top it with fruits banana, strawberry and raspberry, alternating.

 

Chris however does a poached egg on whole meal bread.

Lunch has always been my struggle, I try to keep off bread as apart from loving uncut bread that I cut into doorstep size slices, I also tend to add and inch of butter.

So trying to eat different things that will keep me satisfied.

One of my favourites is muffin quiche, 6 eggs, large or 2 small fat free tubs of cottage cheese, extra lean bacon, chopped spring onions, mushrooms and salt and pepper to taste, cook on about 190'c until golden brown.

Jacket potato is another favourite go to.

I use Pease Pudding and lots of salad.

I also tried smoked salmon baby spinach and tomatoes tossed in a low fat dressing

I'll post some of our dinner meals later.

 

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Crochet cushion cover

I finally found some time to crochet a cushion cover, I bought the pattern months ago but it took me a long time to find the shade of Aran wool at an affordable price to make it.

I'm really pleased how it turned out, more so that it doesn't itch my face when I sneak in a Grannie nap.

I think at some point I may need to make a dark coloured inner liner for the cushion but for now I am just pleased that it is finished.

 

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Wedding cards

It's been a busy old time getting ready for my daughters wedding day in August, we got the day time invites all out ages ago and then I realised that I had forgotten to take a picture of them to show you all, luckily I had ours to show you.

I love the pebble embossed satin paper that we used, we also used parchment paper printed and used as a wrap with a beautiful heart to finish.

Tonight we finished the evening cards

Next we will have to sit down and make the favours.

Exciting times.

 

 

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A Blast from the Past

Going for walks is still quite a novel thing for both myself and Chris, because Chris was a retained Firefighter he was always on call, so we are making up for that now that he is retired from it.

Both Chris and I grew up in the same mining village and one of our favourite playing areas was called The Blast, not the easiest places to get to although easier now than when we were children.

This poster gives a brief outline of what it was.

Basically the sea has cleansed the land and it now looks close to a seaside beach.

Stunning scenery from afar.

 

So we found a pathway down but boy was it steep, I managed to get down but thought I may need to crawl on my knees to get back to the top.

Below you can see the steep pathway from the cliff top.

A small covering of grass, that was once an orange pool of muddy water.

The iron gate in the cliff face would have been covered in waste from the mine and this wouldn't have been visible at all.

 

Now what is worrying is that in the above picture, there used to be a pathway that locals called the nanny goats path so as you can imagine it was a skinny rickety thing and at one point we had to walk a plank to get across it. No health and safety back then.

If all of that isn't incredible enough there were men that took old bicycles and sacks across this and down onto the blast to collect the coal that escaped with the waste. Once they had filled the sacks they had to get them back up to the top of the cliff and they only way to do this was back up the nanny goats path these men were all called Blasties by the local folk.

Look we found coal amongst the pebbles, infact there is still quite a bit of it left, a memory of Dawdon Pit that closed its gates in 1991 the year my youngest daughter was born.

 

We also found patches of the grey slate like pebbles that the Blast was covered in.

What is quite exciting for us is that the sea is claiming back the land, we even have sand now.

You can see this difference in the next photo of where the sea has cleansed the land.

 

I will leave it there for now but there is so much more to show you, I'll keep the rest for another day.

 

 

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