Lunch at The Stable

 

Yesterday we had an absolute Mothers Day feast. (So unsure about the apostrophe rule with Mothers Day. Mother's Day? Mothers' Day? ARGH). My sisters both came home from uni to surprise my mum, so it was super nice to all be back together for the weekend. It was particularly nice to not be knocking around the house by myself all the time..

So on Sunday we went for lunch at The Stable, on Weymouth harbourside. I absolutely love it there, it's so rustic and I'm a sucker for their Lamb Roast pizza. You have never tasted a pizza this good; it's piled high with roast lamb, mint, roasted onions and roast sweet potato. It's a taste explosion. All they offer is pizza, pie and 57 different varieties of cider. I wasn't sure if my mum would like it, as I wouldn't exactly put her down as a cider kinda gal, but she completely fell for its rustic charm too. 

I had a Lyme Bay sparkling cider and I am SUCH a lightweight I had a hangover by 6pm. Which then developed into a full blown, terrible head cold. So now I'm completely blaming the cider for a cold I probably already had anyway. 

When we finished our meal we came outside and were confronted by this view.

As much as I miss London and really want to move back, I completely love Weymouth. I mean, look at that!

All in all, a quite wonderful day was had by all.

Hope you all had lovely weekends!

Confessions of a nail biter...

I absolutely love this time of year. The evenings are getting lighter, the sun is shining more and everyone just seems generally happier. Particularly myself. I swear I'm a nicer person in the warmer months. Put me in a hot, foreign country and I'm practically a saint.

However, I find I NEVER know what to wear at this time of year; I'm always too hot, too cold, too colourful, not colourful enough - NIGHTMARE. I always want a bit of a colour injection around about now, but definitely don't want the hefty price tag that comes with it. So now comes the vacuous, girly bit. That I LOVE. 

For nineteen of my twenty-years I've been a nail-biter. Although, pretty sure I wasn't biting them straight from the womb, so maybe slightly less. My impetus to stop was an intended lighthearted comment from my boyfriend, calling me man-hands. But man, that stings deep. So I just stopped! I can't even fathom why I ever bit my nails, they are so much nicer now and the thought of gnawing at them and putting them in. my. mouth, is totally disgusting. It's equivalent to picking up a nail clipping and putting it in your mouth. Sorry, that was gross, too gross.

ANYWAY. I've now become obsessed with nail varnish. I never really touched the stuff pre-non nibbling because, let's face it, nail varnish does not look good on a millimetre of fingernail.

I love these nail varnishes. I think Revlon nail varnish is so good, it's so shiny and full of colour and stays on for a really long time. Please excuse my somewhat basic terms, I don't know the nail varnish lingo. I think these are the perfect pop of colour to gently ease me into my spring and summer clothes, without spending a small fortune. Which I categorically do not have.

It goes against everything I believe in to like lilac nail varnish; I had a lilac bedroom when I was about twelve and ever since then I pretty much hated it. Oh, but there's change in the air. I just love this, it's so different and really makes me feel like spring is here. I'm really going all the way too - it's not just the nails, I adore these little beauties from M&S...

When I first saw these, I thought they were disgusting, but I literally cannot stop thinking about them. If worn correctly, I think these could be seriously cool. 

Think about it.

Clearing out the cupboards!

I currently have a surplus of days off on my hands. A blessing, some might say. A curse in disguise, I swiftly answer. I swear my mother goes out of her way to find jobs for me to do. Not that I mind one iota helping out around the house, I actually love cleaning and making rooms look pretty, but I hate uncomfortable jobs. And clearing out the kitchen cupboards required me to sit for hours of freezing cold floor tiles with my head shoved in a disintegrating cupboard.

Now this post is also fairly embarrassing, as my find will probably indicate just how long it's been since someone showed these cupboards any attention.. But, I found these!

Proper 70's throwback!

I absolutely adore these. The only thing that has crossed my mind, is that if one was to use these for their intended purpose, one would be required to write the recipe down before one started; they cleverly have the recipe written on the base of the dish, which would be covered with potato after Step 1. Given that my baking exploration has not gone well of late, I might just look at these a while longer and appreciate them without any food in them. It's probably safer.

I'm going to have a little browse and see if I can find anything to go with them!

Long time no blog!

I feel like I've neglected my blog a bit. I've discovered the hideously addictive world of YouTube beauty videos and I've been well and truly ensnared. The burning obsession seems to have now become but a glowing ember, but I've come out the other side with a weird desire to vlog. Not sure if this is a good idea. We'll see.

Now today is a very exciting day. Today I have left the Blackberry world and entered the iWorld. I just coined that phrase ALL BY MYSELF. Good, huh? I have a shiny white iPhone 4 that I think I love too much. I know that I've caught on about three years too late; I remember in the first year of uni being so in awe of all the 'cool kids' uploading their super hip Instagram photos. Yep, that was pretty much a recurrent theme right through to the third year. And subsequent graduation!

But today, I present to you, my new favourite piece of technology!

 

Wahhh, I love it so much! And I LOVE Instagram. I think this is going to make blogging so much easier and way less painless, so expect lots more pictures! 

The only thing I'm very slightly worried about is the white parts getting all make-uppy. Does anyone with a white phone have this problem?

Happy Friday everyone!

A week in the life... #2

It turns out that last week was fairly eventful too. Perhaps even more so than the week before! So here are a few pictures of my week.

On Saturday I went to Plymouth with my almost whole family. One of my sisters goes to uni there, so we drove down to see her and meet my uncle and cousins there, who live in Cornwall. My grandma had been staying for the week so we drove her down and swapped her with them to take her the rest of the way home! We had a lovely lunch and went to the aquarium. I love doing things like that, especially with my younger cousins; it gives me the perfect excuse to behave like a bit of a child. I absolutely LOVED this tank; it curved backwards behind you so it was almost like you were in the tank.Very cool. 

I went fabric shopping with my Grandma and picked up some adorable fabric for making all sorts of lovely things. Dog print, again. One thinks one may be obsessed. I've already whipped up a doorstop with some of it.

On Valentines Day, my boyfriend told me to expect an adventure. I literally had no idea where we were going or what we would be doing. All I knew was that I had to wear warm clothes and take a torch. My imagination was going mental. My surprise was a nighttime trip to Moors Valley Country Park, where The Electric Forest had taken over the treetops. It was basically a light, sound and art installation through a forest trail. It took about two hours to walk through it and it was absolutely AMAZING.

I finished both these books this week. Usually I hate reading more than one book at any one time, so I really don't know how this happened. I suddenly had four books on the go and my mind was very muddled! I love Dave Gorman books - he is so funny and has the best attitude to life ever. They always inspire me to do something I've never done before and to stop being such a wimp. I also finished 'The Four Hour Work Week'. I won't lie, it took me a while to trawl through this. It's about how to do less and achieve more, but not in a lazy way. I like non-fiction, but this was non-fiction at it's most extreme. It did help me relax a bit about what I am doing with my life though and now I have all sorts of exciting ideas!

I've done lots of scrapbooking this week. My room is a total mess and as I've gone through it I've found lots of scraps of things I wanted to keep that I never got round to putting in. I like to stick everything in a book because it appeals to my very organised, slightly OCD, nature. This way, it's much more difficult to absentmindedly put something important in the bin.

My red rose from Valentines Day that is absolutely towering over my chest of drawers. I put it in my mum's antique vase thing - it's green glass and very, very tall and thin. I love it. Then there is my card, simple and understated, just how I like it. 

And then the coolest thing, hearts projected onto the forest floor at The Electric Forest. 

Less hearts next week, promise.

Falling out of love with Delia.

Oh my. Oh my, oh my. After my recent discovery of Delia's Complete How To Cook, I tried to emulate my previous success and make a lemon meringue pie. Using, no less, my new pie dish. Which I love. HOWEVER. The lemon meringue pie was a bit fat fail of a pie. Granted, it does look ok and I really thought I'd done it. If only we could have just looked at it forever. 

 So the meringue could have been a little higher. The whisked egg whites were perfect right until I put the sugar in with them; I think maybe I used the wrong type and it was too heavy. It tasted yummy though. 

The pastry was a little blighter this time too. I just couldn't roll it out any wider, so I ended up stretching it a little to reach the rim of the dish. Bad idea. After about 5 minutes in the oven the pastry had slipped down the sides of the dish leaving little crusty bits along the top. YUM. 

And now we move onto the lemon filling. This is the first time I have ever used cornflour and I wasn't exactly au fait with what it does. The recipe tells you to boil the water with the lemon zest in it, add it to the cornflour and then transfer all of this back to the pan and bring to the boil while still stirring, so it doesn't stick. I didn't even get a chance to stop it sticking; it was like a big lump of lemony wallpaper paste before I could even think what was happening. But then I added the rest of the ingredients and all seemed to be well again. So I piled it all into the pastry case and popped it in the oven. 

As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So, Sunday evening, main courses polished off, out comes the pie. As soon as it got cut I could see something had gone drastically wrong. The meringue looked and tasted fine, but the filling was like cement?! I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be silky and melt in your mouth-y, whereas mine looked as set as it possibly could be and, put simply, lumpy. Which my dad will happily attest to; he had one bite and just couldn't go on. My grandma ate all of hers, but I think she was just being nice. So, the rest of the pie went in the bin.

After making the leek and goats cheese tart from this book, I mentioned that it was pretty difficult to follow in the heat of the moment, due to it being one huge chunk of prose. I'm not saying it's entirely the fault of the book, but that most definitely goes some way to explain why this went so wrong. I got all flappy and kept losing my place and splashing egg everywhere. Nightmare. So today I am making some Earl Grey cupcakes to remind myself I can bake a little bit well. 

Can anyone shed any light on what I might have done wrong?

A week in the life...

 I actually wrote this post last week, about the previous week, but have been so lazy with photos that it's taken me this long to finish it. But I thought I would post it anyway.

I've seen this sort of post on so many blogs, and I absolutely love reading them. I think it appeals to the nosiness of the human nature. Not in a bad way, it's just so interesting to read what other people love and what they do with their time. Some people are so creative and do the craziest things - I think that's what makes blogs so inspiring.

So, I thought I would just post a few photos of my week!

On Tuesday, my boyfriend picked me up from work and took me out to dinner! This doesn't happen every week, don't get too excited. We went to The Stable, a new restaurant that's just opened in Weymouth in what used to be the harbour master's store room. It was absolutely AMAZING. I want everyone to go there and appreciate the sheer joy. I will blog about it later and make everyone go there.

I bought this super cute Valentines Day card in M&S. I hate really cutesy or overly sentimental cards, and thought this was just the right side of cute. Ironic though, as my boyfriend and I both suffer horrendously from sea sickness. Thus, will never be on a boat together.

My mum went to a Jamie at Home party a while ago - I was invited but politely declined! She bought this gorgeous pie dish because that very same day I'd been complaining that we had barely anything we needed in the kitchen. Still in dire need of a pestle and mortar if anyone can point me in the direction of a nice and realistically priced one. There's only so much longer that I can use a ramequin and a rolling pin...

I've spent a fair amount of this week knitting. I'm using a super simple pattern from a  book that I've never used before, to make something heart shaped... I'm planning a whole post for it when it's finished, but until then this is all you're getting!

So, if I have an equally interesting week next week and then the week after that, this post might become a regular thing! One can only hope...

Hope you all have thoroughly exciting weekends!