Lost my blogging mojo for a while there....

.... so to get me back into the swing of things, another 3 beautiful things post...

1. I'm having a lie-in, alternately dozing and reading my book. Downstairs I can hear the Lovely Husband washing dishes and doing laundry. Just at the point at which my guilt overwhelms me and I decide to get up and help, he arrives in the bedroom with a cup of tea and tacit permission to laze a while longer.

2. My dad, with whom I have a complicated and painful relationship and who is now bedridden and dying of cancer, holds my hand and squeezes it whenever his strength allows. The things I thought I needed to say - and hear - turn out to be unnecessary.

3. Prawns in a crispy, chilli-laden tempura batter.

Mothering Sunday

I just wanted to share this beautiful, glitter-festooned clay heart that the Beautiful Girl made for me at her Saturday morning art class for Mother's Day. I received other presents too; a new Persephone, series one of Downton Abbey on DVD and a set of vintage teaspoons with pretty enamelled handles. (I detect the work of the Lovely Husband there). But when she asks me which present I love the most, we both know it's her handprint that makes my heart skip with joy.

Little luxuries

My favourite part of Desert Island Discs is the last minute or so, when Kirsty Young asks the guest which book they'd take to their desert island and which luxury. In moments of idleness I often wonder which book and luxury I would choose. I realise that sounds like an exaggeration, a clumsy way to introduce this post, but sadly no, I really do ponder this question quite often.

Sometimes I think for my luxury I'd have to choose a Roberts Radio (one of those gorgeously floral Cath Kidston ones, naturally), tuned to Radio 4. Radio 4 provides the soundtrack to my life. Switching on the Today programme is the second thing I do every morning and the radio often stays on all day. I listen to all sorts of programmes and learn all sorts of things, from the plight of native British songbirds to the effects of public spending cuts on partially sighted people in the North. I love Radio 4.

Sometimes I think I'd have to take my crochet basket. My goodness, I might actually make some real progress on the Heirloom Blanket with no distractions and nothing else to do, stuck on a desert island. Then again....

Ultimately though I come to one of two choices for my Desert Island luxury. Firstly, lavender oil. I use lavender oil all the time. I sprinkle it in my bath and on my pillow before bed. I use it as a perfume. I blend it with sweet almond oil and smear it on my face. I use it for first aid, for burns and insect bites.

My other option would have to be tea. Oh, how I love my cups of tea. Switching the kettle on is the first thing I do in the morning and cups of tea punctuate my day. There's the big mug of builders first thing, the scalding, got-to-drink-it-in-the-five-minutes-I've-managed-to-grab-for-lunch at school and the tucked-up-in-bed-with-a-good-book-and-cup-of-Earl-Grey. I just can't imagine a day without tea.

So I was intrigued, on a recent trip to the farmers' market to find a way to combine my two favourite luxuries - lavender tea. I bought some and was really looking forward to trying it. Trouble was, I just couldn't find the right time. I'm a creature of habit and forgoing any of the aforementioned cuppas was just unthinkable. And then, the perfect opportunity arose - a sunny afternoon, a snatched solitary half hour and a favourite magazine. Perfect.

As seen on my living room floor

Don't you just hate it when you get stuck behind a unicorn in the queue at the bakers? You just know they're going to buy the last croissants...

Spring sunshine

It was a glorious weekend, here in the second city. The sun was warm and bright, the sky a beautiful blue and the birds sang like they were - well - full of the joys of Spring. Most of the weekend was spent in the garden here. Consequently, all is spick and span. There was a trip to our favourite garden centre on Sunday too, which means there is a new nesting box waiting to be hung and a small collection of plants (a peony bush, another hollyhock and 6 different varieties of sweet pea) waiting to be rehomed in our tiny garden. Best of all though, there are also a couple of large wicker vegetable planters, this being (so the Lovely Husband and I have decided) the year we finally get to grips with growing our own. I have this vision of us eating something we've grown ourselves every day throughout the summer. Watch this space....

I wish I had the time to blog more frequently...

... I really do. It seems like I'm always thinking of things that I'd like to mention, pictures I'd like to capture and share but I just never seem to find the time to actually write those posts. Real-life gets in the way, other things have to take priority and whatever moment in time that I wanted to mark, well, it passes.

This weekend though I carved out an hour or so to sit with the laptop and catch up on some of the wonderful blogs out there. I'm loving everyone's "Spring is in the air" posts, although I'm struggling to match the vitality and energy that accompanies them. Instead I've begun to celebrate the imminent arrival of Spring in my own small, quiet way. Like having the windows open at every opportunity and hanging the washing on the line even though it's still damp hours later. Eating lemon shortbread, planting violas into vintage tea cups, filling the house with daffodils, snowdrops, hyacinths and early tulips. Splurging on pretty new bed linen. All signs in my own personal calender that Spring's definitely on it's way!

A delicious disaster.............

I find myself agreeing to host a family lunch for 15. What I was thinking of I don't know - I don't have 15 unchipped plates, never mind 15 chairs and the space to arrange them in. Never mind, it'll be lovely to all be together and I'll enjoy feeding everyone, goes my thinking. On Sunday morning I'm up at 6 to start cooking. I bake a ham in Coca-Cola and cover it with a sweet, mustardy glaze. I make a caramelised onion, goats' cheese and thyme tart. There's roasted pepper salad, cheeses, nuts, fruit and crusty bread. Different salads, olives and those posh vegetable crisps. A batch of the gungy brownies that went down so well at school. And for the piece de resistance I decide on a lemon meringue cake - a gorgeous concoction of lemon sponge, crisp yet chewy meringue, lemon curd and whipped cream, covered with another layer of the same. Perfect, I decide, looks impressively beautiful, tastes amazing and is fail-safely easy. Then.... disaster strikes. Halfway through whipping egg whites, my whisk breaks. It is 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I try and produce the glossy, stiff peaks by hand but as I pour the meringue onto the sponge I know it's not going to work. I was right. It doesn't. The thing collapses in the oven, then utterly falls apart when I try and remove it from it's tin. It looks like a car crash of a cake. I cover the entire thing with a mound of whipped cream to try and disguise it's ugliness. That doesn't work either. I offer it to the family anyway and my glorious disaster of a cake becomes the source of much hilarity. After much teasing I offer it around. Everyone tries it. Every plate is licked clean and the cake pronounced delicious.