2010 = me turning 29

It was my birthday on Friday. It didn’t start out so well (police ringing doorbell at 1.30am), but that’s another story, that I’m going to steer clear of for the time being, because I will not be able to stop myself ranting, and that’s never pretty!

Being a Friday morning, I had a Weightwatchers meeting. I went hoping that I’d not gained any weight, and the scales told me I’d lost 2Ibs!!!!! That was a fantastic birthday “present” to myself! A bit later in the day I realised that in total (since May last year when I started WW) I’ve lost 29Ibs. So 29Ibs on my 29th – how cool! So I’ve lost 2 stones, 1Ib! I had set my target weight at 9 stone, which is the top of the “OK” BMI, but I’m not thinking I should loose a bit more. I’m close to dropping another clothing size – I can fit in stretchy size 12, but that is a BIT of a cheat. However my size 14’s all need a belt with them, otherwise they start working their way down if I was to jog down the hill/run for a bus!

Andy had taken the day off work, so we had lunch at my parents, and then went to the cinema to see Alice in Wonderland – which I highly recommend – in 3D.

We returned home and relaxed, then Anna and Dan arrived. That evening we went to The Living Room for a meal and drinks with friends. During the evening Laura asked me if I would be one of her bridesmaids September next year – yay…which I of course said yes to!! I just need to bare in mind the wedding in relation to when we want to start a family – I’d prefer not to have a huge bump at her wedding!

It was a good day on the whole. I’ve had some lovely presents, including a parent-child lamp for my side of the bed (now that I don’t have room for a bedside table), a Power Plant and herbs to go in it, flowers, DS games, DVD… Andy got a dog version of the Me to You Bears, and but it in a larger box with bedding and holes!! It was sweet!

Well next year I turn 30, all I say is: Bring it on!

This evening at Trinity Youth Club (TYC) we decided to do pancakes. I know tonight is not Shrove Tuesday but next week is half term, so no youth group.

We split the whole group into three groups (5 in each) and while two groups played games in the hall. The first groups pancake making over ran a bit, so we ended up having the talk between the second and third groups pancake making, instead of at the end. During the second group I opened the door to let the heat/smoke escape, one of the children made the comment about the fire alarm going off. After the talk the third group were making pancakes, and during the talk we’d closed the door (it’s cold out, and not very safe to leave it open when not in that area). We’d forgotten to open it again, and hadn’t been aware of the smoke building up – alas the alarm went off! I was in the middle of washing up, and there was children still making pancakes. We knew exactly what the reason was, so we didn’t evacuate. This was at 8.45 and the club finishes are 9pm! So the alarm was going, and it was a big control box system, so once the alarm was set off it needed to be reset at the panel.

Normally the caretaker is about around this time, but he was away and someone else had come in to lock up. This poor man arrives to find the alarm going off! He didn’t know what to do. Since I’ve had experience with fire panels through work, I went and had a look, and worked out how to silence it. We weren’t quite sure how to reset it though, because it wasn’t quite clear and there was no instructions near it. The stand in caretaker was really nice, and making a joke of it which was nice – probably more lighthearted than the normal man. I suggested he phoned the number starred in the panel, and this seemed to be helpful as a man said he’d come out and sort it out!

Big DOH! It was a bit bad with the alarm going off, because the children took this as a great chance to try to be just as loud as the alarm! I am so glad that I managed to silence it before any parents arrived to collect their child!! That was a my main concern really!! It was all quite surreal!

I came across this page for doing experiments in 2 litre drinks bottles. It got my interest, and I’ve been trying to get my head around which I could do. I like the idea of doing a fun project/experiment at home, and a bottle is small. Initially I was planning to go for the Decomposition one or the TerrAqua one, but then I realised they caused a few problems:-

• They are more complicated
• Require more bottles
• They need holes in the side of the bottles

I’ve decided to make the a bottle fermentation chamber, and make either kimchee or sauerkraut – pickled cabbage. It’s a simple experiment just involving the food ingredients:

• cabbage (chinese one for Kimchee or round headed green one for sauerkraut),
• salt (plus garlic and chilli if making kimchee),
• and PH paper (but you can make your own with the liquid from a red cabbage and some paper).

Sounds good to me, just means I need to buy some cabbage. At the end of it (up to 3 weeks) I will have something that I can eat or keep.

Then I might go onto one of the others. I’d love to do a hanging plant or compost one. We have hanging basket brackets outside, so I could hang them from there, so they won’t have to live in the flat.

Sorry I’m only popping by here every so often. I just made and ate a yummy healthy salad, and thought I’d share it on here:

Ingredients:

Spinach leaves (you could use any kind of salad type leaves, but I only had spinach)
Cucumber
Small tomatoes (I used the small plum tomatoes)
Grated carrot
Chopped up crab stick

I dressed it with a sprinkling of lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. I’m not sure if they were a good idea, but it seemed to work.

It tasted good, and the great thing is that it’s really healthy and VERY low in “points” (Weightwatchers).

Now that Christmas has come and gone, and the truffles have been received (and probably eaten), I can post about my truffles.

Let me first say a HUGE thank you to The Pioneer Woman, who told me the recipe on her blog – have a look here, there’s a pictorial step by step guide, unlike mine I’m afraid! I took her recipe, removed the Sea salt (I’m sure it’s lovely, but wasn’t what I was aiming for), compared her measurements to other webpages, to check how the American measurements compared to the British ones.

I ended up doing two batches of truffles, one with Green and Blacks chocolate, and one with Sainsburys Belgian dark chocolate

Here’s the ingredients:

150g melted, with all of this   stirred in. Add a teaspoon of (mmm vanilla!)

Cover withor

OR

150g melted, with all of this   stirred in. Add a teaspoon of (mmm vanilla!)

Cover withor

(Just don’t pay any attention to the red sections of the pie chart, or you’ll never make this!)

OK, a bit more detail hey?!

You need 150g of a dark chocolate, the better the chocolate and higher cocoa content the better. You need to melt the chocolate, the easiest method I find is to break the chocolate up and put it in a glass bowl, which is over a saucepan of water (preferably the bowl is big enough not to touch the pan or water, but fits inside the pan a bit). Heat up the water, and keep an eye on the chocolate, stiring it once it starts to melt, and turning the heat off soon after – even if there are a few lumps, they’ll melt, it’s more important not to overheat (and ruin) the chocolate.

Add the whole of a 397g tin of condensed milk to the melted chocolate and stir. I see it’s possible to get light condensed milk, but really not sure what that would do, so stayed with the unhealthy treat angle!

Leave the yummy gooey mixture to cool down, you want to put it into the fridge, without heating up your fridge! It needs to cool in the fridge for a few hours.

Now comes the messy part. Now I tried two methods. The first, and most messy was to scoop out some mixture and roll it in the palm of my hands to make it into balls, then lay on a tray/greaseproof paper. This works, but is very messy, sticky and cold! The second method was to scoop up the mixture into the right amount, pull it off spoons and straight onto a tray. The balls need to go into the freezer, and if your freezer is anything like ours (a fridge freezer, with not a lot of flat space available), finding space for that many balls is not easy. I did quite a few batches! I ended up finding the easiest thing to use was a large casserole lid (and cover it with greaseproof). They need to sit in the freezer for at least 15mins, so that they are hard and no longer sticky.

I then melted some chocolate to cover the truffles. I decided to cover some with milk chocolate and some with white. Having melted the chocolate, take the container off the heat (so it can cool a little). Lay some greaseproof paper across a worktop, find a spoon, a fork and either some cocktail sticks or wooden skewers (I used the later, as they were easier to find). Take the truffles out of the freezer, roll them between your palms if needed (if you made lumps, you will be able to turn them into balls at this stage without too much mess). Drop a truffle into the melted chocolate, and use the spoon to cover it with chocolate. Pick up the truffle with the fork, and allow the excess chocolate to pour off (helps to give it a gentle tap too). Put the truffle onto the greaseproof paper, using the stick/skewer to remove it. See Pioneer Womans post for a great pic of this. You can also use the stick to scratch a line in the run off chocolate.

If you are adding something on top, now is the time – before the chocolate hardens, be quick! I put some chocolate curls (which I got from Morrisons) on top.

Another idea, which I considered, but never did in the end, would be to drizzle a different type of chocolate over the top – so white over milk, or milk over white. Once the chocolate is hardened, I found that I needed to check the bottoms of the truffles, and covering any areas not covered in chocolate.

Once finished, put them in the fridge to keep them at their best. Then the most important part: eat and enjoy!!

I’ve just been having a browse on Ebay, looking for nice writing paper (since it’s hard to buy fun/good stuff in shops these days). I came across this for 50 plastic money/coin bags!! For 50p plus £2 (or £2.50 if you choose the wrong posting – he’s got 9 lots) for postage and packaging you can own 50 plastic bags.  They are useful bags, but as far as I was aware (unless the banks are being stingey these days), you can get them for free from your bank! They are very useful for getting rid of a small change, like 1ps and 2ps – fill up a bag with £1’s worth of each and take it to a bank where you have an account. The only things to remember are: it needs to the correct amount (although they’ll weigh it to check), no mixed coins, don’t go to the bank when it’s busy or at least do another transaction (at the counter) at the same time – they have to put the money into your account, they can’t just swap it for a larger coin.

Or you could just stick your spare change in a charities collecting tin, saving yourself the hassle and time and helping them gain a bit of money…even if they have to them fill up the bags!

This morning, I decided to have a go at posting on my blog from my Ipod Touch…it didn’t work. When I tried on the safari browser I could add in the title, but I couldn’t seem to get it to write in the main text box!! Not very helpful! So I looked through the apps on the Ipod – I knew there would be something, because the Ipod was Andy’s and he would have set it up so that he could blog from it. I found a Wordpress app, so started adding my blog login details to it, but no that wouldn’t work! It seems that I need to update the version of Wordpress that my blog uses. This is where I’m glad that I have married my own geek, who I can flutter my eye lashes at (or threaten not to make cakes/truffles) (I didn’t know about more truffles – geek) and get him to sort it out for me – therefore saving me stuffing it up!

This is my last post before he sorted it…once he’s off the Wii fit plus! He wants to watch an old Dr Who (Deadly Assassin) this afternoon, so I said that was fine as long as he sorted out my blog first!!

60 years ago today, my Grandparents got married!! Now that is something to celebrate! This is therefore their Diamond wedding anniversary. Sorry Granny and Grandad, I can’t afford diamonds, but instead you get me journeying up to visit you!

It’s very unlikely that they will read this, but my Uncle might see it.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen my Grandparents, because the travel down is not so easy for them now, and although my parents have popped in to see them on various occasions, I haven’t been near to their neck of the woods to pop in.

Wow, after this morning I feel old. Andy and I had a meeting about setting up a Will! We’ve just set the ball in motion for a joint (“mirror”) will, set up Executors and also people to have Power of Attorney if the need should arise in the future!!

Scary stuff!

We’d been meaning to write a will since we bought our flat last year – because we’ve now got property, we just never got round to actually getting one sorted.