Sculptures and scones

The month of March has come at last, alas not bringing Springtime weather with her just yet. The days keep getting off to a frosty start, but if we are in luck and the sun deigns to make an appearance, it does warm up a bit by midday. Those sunny spells are mostly short-lived, though, the sun's absence making Winter drag its feet, leaving us with leaden skies and an unwelcome biting wind blowing straight from the East.

At  least the days are getting longer in leaps and bounds, so that I'm no longer leaving the house and returning home in the dark!

But wait, I haven't finished telling you about the rest of February yet, so let's get this post moving shall we?

Arriving back home from our Bruges escapade on Saturday 18 February, we both felt a bit gloomy. Our maudlin moods, however, were swiftly lifted by being reunited with Bess. She was clearly overjoyed to have us back and demanded that we make up for lost time and missed cuddles!

The rest of the weekend was spent with, in no particular order, getting in some food, unpacking, doing a load of washing, uploading 300+ photos, catching up with blogland and mentally preparing myself for the ordeal of going back to work on Monday. The latter, I hasten to add, wasn't nearly as stressful as I'd expected. In fact, the rest of the week was quite uneventful, the days dismal and grey, with moderate highs of 8-10°C. Apart from a lunch break visit to my hairdresser on Wednesday, there was nothing worthy of a journal entry to break up the monotony of a February working week.

Still, I breathed a sigh of relief when Friday 24 February - the start of another three-day weekend - rolled along. However, the weather gods were once again adamant to spoil the fun by throwing in some rain in the afternoon. Without even a smidgen of sunshine, it felt quite a bit cooler than the 8°C shown on the thermometer.

I spent some time playing around with my wardrobe, taking out a handful of dresses which still remain unworn this season. My final choice was this vintage frock with its groovilicious green, orange and brown pattern. Although lined, going it alone was no option, so I layered a long-sleeved brown t-shirt underneath. 

The dress is a tiny bit baggy if worn unbelted, so I added a chocolate brown belt with a chunky buckle to define my waist. 

I picked up the orange in the dress's pattern with my cardigan (charity shopped King Louie), opaques (retail) and beaded necklace (found in a Welsh antiques centre). The orange flower brooch was a gift from Kezzie, and a very welcome one as my collection was seriously lacking in interesting orange brooches.

My tall green boots were one of my best charity shop finds ever, in December 2019.

And speaking of charity shops, that's exactly what was on our agenda that day. It was Friday after all, and we hadn't been for a rummage for weeks.

As usual, we visited two shops, this time opting for the two-storey one in Mechelen and the three-storey one near the park in Duffel, which are about 8 kilometers apart. No such thing as a string of smaller town centre shops here, our charity shops are all of the large, edge-of-town variety!

The first shop yielded the red ankle boots and the flowy floral skirt (below, top left and right) and while the latter was a random find, I had been looking for a pair of red ankle boots in my size for absolutely ages!

The second shop's booty included a vintage red tartan coat (my star find!), a prairie-style blouse and a purple and brown tartan midi skirt. 

Fast forward to Saturday, when the sun kept playing hide and seek with the clouds which were propelled along by a strong wind and carried random showers.

With the temperature stuck at around 7°C I needed the warmth of this knit dress of many colours, charity shopped almost exactly a year ago to the date. 

Again, I layered a long-sleeved t-shirt underneath. I've got a whole stash of these in a rainbow of colours, which I'm keeping mainly for this purpose. It's been many a year since I last wore a plain t-shirt on its own. 

Although I didn't have one which matched any of the dress's colours exactly, I decided that the yellow one made the grade, particularly when paired with the suede belt I picked up from an outlet shop back in October.

Mustard beads, burnt orange opaques and a green enamelled brooch with a posy of multi-coloured pansies were my dress's other companions. I'm pretty sure I wore a cardigan on top, my chunky knit long-line orange one if my memory serves me right, but in our haste we forgot to include it in the outfit photos.

As we were adamant to go for a walk, we kept one eye on the weather, which was as fickle as an April day's. In fact, even while we were picking up our car and driving towards our destination, we'd been treated to one or two sunny spells and a brief shower.

Our destination, of course, was our beloved Middelheim, the sculpture park. No surprises there! Although on second thought, there were several of them, as they are doing a major reshuffle and some of our favourites seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Nevertheless, the sculpture named Grosse Badende (Great Bather), dating from 1971 and by German sculptor, artist and writer Wieland Förster (Dresden, 1930), was still voluptuously sunbathing at the edge of the lake, unperturbed by the resident geese which were making quite a racket behind her.

Taking a shortcut through the leaf-strewn lawn, we soon came face to face with Winged Form (1964). This artwork is by yet another German sculptor, Friederich Werthmann (1927-2018), who created his first abstract sculptures in wood and stone in 1950. He became a member of Gruppe 53, pioneers of avant-garde art in Germany. From 1957 onwards he worked exclusively with steel. His sculptures consist of hundreds of parts, which appear to have been thrown into the air and become frozen in time.

The poor thing seemed to have lost some of its feathers, though ... And look at that patch of blue sky which had suddenly appeared out of nowhere!

On and on we walked towards our final goal, the open-air depot at the edge of the park. 

We met a girl carrying a rather scruffy handbag, but I forgot to ask her name. No chance of searching the online collection either, as sadly the site has been down for weeks.

Before crossing the Bridge Without a Name by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, we came across a garden inspired installation (below, top right and bottom left and right).  Again, I'll have to take note of its name and creator on our next visit.

Upon reaching the open-air depot, I made a beeline for one of my all-time favourites, the column shaped house of mirrors, Kolom (above, top left), created by Belgian artist Felix Roulin (Dinant, 1931) in 1975. It's not displayed at its advantage here, but then again it - together with many others - is only being stored here temporarily while the sculpture park is undergoing its metamorphosis.

I couldn't place the guy on the bottom centre, so I'm not sure of his former location, but the art installation called Beam Drop Antwerp (above, top centre) by US performance artist Chris Burden (1946-2015) has been there since its creation in 2009.

And then there are the open-air depot habitués, side-lined and retired sculptures which, in their prime, used to grace the city's squares and parks. Seemingly thrown together willy-nilly, they have become permanent residents here. Some of them rest on rickety pallets and there is a definite air of unease among them as they await their fate. 

I always linger the longest in this atmospheric corner of the park, and here I was taking one more photograph before backing away and beating a hasty retreat to our car. We had barely made it when the dark and foreboding clouds started pelting us with big fat raindrops.

We finally woke up to some sunshine on Sunday, but with an overnight frost and highs of barely 5°C, not to mention an icy wind, it was pretty cold outside. 

As we would be spending the day indoors, I took a chance and plucked this black Diolen blouse patterned with tan and teal flowers from my wardrobe's shelves. Again, a long-sleeved t-shirt, this time in a matching teal, was worn underneath. When I repeated the outfit on Monday, I replaced the t-shirt with a polo neck in the same colour, which was infinitely more suitable to combat the cold.

The wool knit skirt with its gorgeous green, blue and turquoise jacquard pattern is by the sustainable German Hess Natur label and was a Think Twice sales bargain in November 2019. 

The mock croc belt and matching boots were both retail buys, as was the faux fur cropped gilet, a fast fashion find which has been gracing my wardrobe for an absolute eternity. The aqua beads are H&M by way of a charity shop, while the faux Lea Stein cat brooch was a flea market find.

We were having a get-together with our neighbour Karin, who lives a couple of houses away. We've been passing the time of day with her for years, but only got to know each other properly when she looked after Bess for a week last June. She absolutely loves animals, and Bess clearly loved her too, as we got photos of her sitting on Karin's lap while we were on holiday.

We had originally planned our get-together during the Christmas holidays, but had to cancel due to that pesky flu I was plagued with.  

Although we'd been invited to her place, we had promised her we'd make scones, which we did that morning. Helped by paws-on Bess, obviously, so that we couldn't vouch for the absence of itinerant cat hair. Anyway, they were declared delicious, and we'd even got our hands on some clotted cream to go with them.

Just what the doctor ordered

Birthday celebrations aren't everybody's cup of tea. Some people go all out year after year, having parties or at least a get-together with loved ones involving cake, perhaps, and oodles of presents, while others ... don't. Personally, I am in the latter category, preferring to treat it as just another day, especially when it falls on a weekday and I have to work, at most doing something with just the two of us.

Now, milestone birthdays are something else entirely. But what if they occur in pandemic times? And I'm not talking about my own birthday which, although a milestone one, will only be in September. 

No, this birthday in question belongs to my lovely blogging friend, Kezzie, who is celebrating her 40th birthday end of this month. And as her options are quite limited, she has asked us for assistance in organizing an online fancy dress party based on the characters of Dr. Who. She is a great fan of the series and engages in cosplay based on the iconic TV series on a weekly basis, published as TARDIS Tuesday on her blog.

Not knowing the first thing about Dr. Who, apart from the fact that it involves a time-travelling space ship called the TARDIS, a lot of head-scratching ensued from my side.  Turning to Kezzie's blog was therefore the obvious starting point and, as she often cosplays Clara Oswald, who was a companion of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, I thought I might as well have a look at her outfits. Thus Dr. Google was consulted and when my eye was caught by Clara wearing a tartan dress, I knew I could do something similar. It's from an episode called The Name of the Doctor.

Source

Now my dress, which is vintage and has been in my wardrobe forever, isn't quite the same as Clara's. The colours of the tartan are different, it has a bow at its neckline, and it has long sleeves rather than short. Initially, it had a collar and cuffs which at one point must have been white but had slightly yellowed with age. When I removed them (one of the cuffs had a rather unsightly and persistent stain), I discovered that they weren't original to the dress anyway.

Like Clara, I wore the dress with a pair of black opaques and I added a chain necklace from my collection. Seeing Clara's rather covetable shoes, I racked my brain until I remembered this posh pair of Italian made vintage loafers, which were a lucky charity shop find back in October 2017.

Obviously, I'm not Clara's younger self, but a future Clara she meets on her travels with the doctor to a strange time when the world is in the grip of a pandemic, the virus having wiped out all hairdressers. Pure Science Fiction!

Happy Birthday, Kezzie!

Phew, I'm pretty exhausted by all that time travelling, so I think I'll stay here for a while, at the end of February's second week. 

We had reached Friday, the 12th of February by now, and we were still in the throws of our cold wave, the sub-zero temperatures now joined by a fierce and icy wind, with the brightly shining sun our only salvation. 

I had shunned my few remaining polo necks for many years, as the mere thought of wearing them made menopausal me break out in a sweat. But when I spied this green one in the bag of cold weather clothes living inside our linen chest, I decided to give it another go. 

The grey and pink floral velvet skirt was a charity shop find from the other week which apparently I forgot to tell you about. This was such a joy to wear!

I wore a pink tie-neck cardigan on top, accented my waist with one of my favourite zig-zag belts, and accessorized the polo neck with a pink seascape brooch and a 1960s style silver tone necklace.

Friday has replaced our pre-Covid Saturday charity shopping day, and that day, we visited not one but two shops, which yielded quite a few finds.

Pickings were meagre but still more than worthwhile in the first shop, where I found a scrap tote bag with bamboo covered handles, a pair of blush pink retro style shoes and a heavy carved bangle which is possibly Bakelite.

The two cardigans came from the second shop, the floral one being yet another King Louie one.

This is one of the smaller shops - but still bigger than the average UK charity shop by comparison - and can be a bit hit or miss. I can list lots of fabulous things found here over the year (the shoes I wore to cosplay Clara, and the Astrakhan jacket I'm wearing later in this post, are prime examples), but we often come away from the shop empty handed as well.

Their jewellery cabinet has more than once been the source of some lovely additions to my brooch collection. In fact, the majority of my charity shopped brooches were picked up here, so it's always worth having a look. This time, there were no less than four which tickled my fancy.

Isn't that green pearly fan adorable? I suspect that the tiny Queen's Guard wearing his bearskin hat must be a London souvenir brooch. Vintage souvenir brooches are a particular weakness of mine.

Our final find of the day was this gorgeous rug. We were on the lookout for one, never expecting to find something suitable so soon in our search. 

Initially it was meant for our spare room where, due to Phoebe's bladder problem about 7 years ago, our vet advised us to install a second litter box. With space at a premium, we managed to wedge it in a rather awkward space just beyond Jos's wardrobe. Now that we got rid of the box, we thought it would be nice to have a rug in front of the wardrobe. 

We had a change of plan when we got it home, however, replacing the rug in the dining area of our kitchen with this one and putting the old kitchen rag rug upstairs.

After a particularly frosty night, it was still -6°C when we were having our final fruit and yoghurt breakfast of the week on Saturday morning.

The sun was still out in full force, so we’d planned a walk for the afternoon.

The continued deep freeze temperatures prompted the wearing of yet another jumper, this time a blue vintage one which has three rows of ajour flowers caught between two rows of tiny red hearted daisies.

As I was planning to wear my butterscotch Astrakhan jacket for our walk, keeping my bottom half warm and toasty as well was a priority. So, out came this wool knit skirt with its gorgeous blue and green jacquard pattern, found at Think Twice back in November 2019.

Touches of burgundy were added in the form of my belt, necklace and beret. I was wearing 120 den bottle green opaques, on top of which I put on a pair of thick grey knee socks when we got ready for our walk.

At that time, I also replaced my furry waistcoat with a chunky knit cardigan and my ankle boots (with which I'm joining Beate's and Vix's sisterhood of the fake snakeskin ankle boots) with my hard-working snow boots.

Trying to avoid crowded places as much as possible, it isn't often that we go for a ramble during the weekends, as walking seems to have become a favourite national pastime during the pandemic.

However, as this would be our last chance of trampling through snow, we thought long and hard and decided to go to Jos's old stamping ground, the nature reserve established on the clay pit which was still very much a hive of activity when he was growing up.

Muddy and quite impassable after weeks of rain, the sticky mud was now blanketed with a generous layer of snow and most of the treacherous puddles were frozen solid. Still, toppled trees and half-sunken creek crossings did our best  - but did not succeed - to waylay us.

Again, we initially only met a handful of people, and were in fact quite surprised there were hardly any children adventurous enough to make use of the reserve's sledge-worthy inclines.

It was only on our way back that we met several small groups of people approaching us from the opposite direction. They were generally well behaved, even if it was yet again mostly up to us to step aside until they'd passed. 

The sun was a bright orb in an almost cloudless blue sky, casting a sparkling glow upon the carpet of rock solid snow.

Thaw set in, slowly but surely, on Sunday, when the mercury climbed to +5°C by mid-afternoon. Decidedly balmy after a week's worth of sub-zero temperatures, I was able to go out into the garden in just my dress without freezing to death.

My 1960s red and grey floral shift dress is lightweight and unlined, and thus required a full slip worn underneath.  I combined it with a pair of 120 den slate grey opaques, the grey echoed in my chunky wooden necklace. My oval floral brooch acted as a cameo pinned at my dress's collar.

The low-heeled tall red boots were a flea market find in October 2018.

That afternoon, we were in the mood for a spot of baking. Nothing to elaborate though, but a tried and tested recipe for what the booklet is calling a scone cake.

The original recipe features apples, orange zest and blackberries, although we replaced the latter by blueberries this time. In fact, you can use any soft fruit you fancy.

We were a bit lazy, so instead of making the dough by hand, we used the food processor we inherited from my Dad. In fact, it was only the second time we used it since we brought it home back in 2018, so the poor thing must have felt a bit neglected, and kept looking at us reproachfully from its perch at the end of our kitchen table cum worktop.

I'm not even sure my Dad ever made use of it, even though he had made quite a bit of an effort to get hold of one.

 After having had a newspaper subscription for many years, he was outraged by an ad in said paper offering the food processor to new subscribers for next to nothing. Dismayed, he phoned the newspaper and stated his case. He must have been very convincing, as they agreed to let him to make use of the offer. He was quite a character, my Dad!

We couldn't wait for the cake to cool down, and had a piece each almost straight from the oven!

We would be moving from harsh Winter conditions to temperatures reminiscent of early Summer in just a matter of days. But that, my dears, will be for a next post.

One thing is for sure, Spring is well and truly on its way. Do stay safe, sane and sensational!

Sparkle and spice

Yesterday was my first day back at the office and although this wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to, it turned out not to be too bad in the end. After eleven days at home, we were both starting to lose track of time, so that I was actually glad to be able to have some kind of routine again. I didn't relish the early start, but once I'd dragged myself out of bed, I was good to go.

Outside, the day couldn't have been more dismal, one of those wet midwinter days which finds it hard to let go of its cloak of darkness.

Although it was the first day of the January sales, the awful weather seemed to have put off at least some of the bargain hunting zombies. From the lofty heights of the office windows, I could only spy a handful of umbrella wielding people carrying soggy shopping bags.

Work itself was reasonably quiet, with only a small amount of emails trickling in during the day, so that I was able to catch up and ease myself back into office rhythm at a leisurely pace. 

Talking of catching up, I've still got quite a bit of this to do before my blog reaches the end of December so, without further ado, let's go back in time once more.

It was the Sunday before Christmas, cloudy but with the temperature still hovering around a quite un-Christmassy 10°C. 

In order to immerse myself into the festive season, I was wearing a dress with a bit of sparkle, even if it  was nigh on impossible to catch any of it on camera.

My dark olive green dress, with its off-white, pink and lilac print and dropped waist, was a Think Twice sales bargain from December 2019. 

I accessorized it with a pink flower corsage and mottled green and white beaded necklace, while lime green opaques and a fuchsia long-line cardigan kept it company. 

With the garden slowly but surely going into Winter mode, I was thankful for any bit of colour, be it provided by the frilly variegated leaves of Heuchera 'Can Can' (left), some cheery-faced purple pansies or the last hurrah of the tuberous Begonia leaves (bottom right).

Most of the day was spent inside the house, doing nothing more strenuous than some gentle pottering, reading and catching up with blogland. 

Meanwhile, Jos was in the mood for some baking! As we'd picked up a package of Speculaas mix from the garden centre's baking department, as well as a wooden mould with three different biscuit shapes, it was about time we tried these out. 

We'd also recently come across some additional moulds in the charity shops, including the intricately carved one shown above. This one, however, turned out to be unsuitable due to its varnish finish, and was presumably meant for decoration purposes rather than biscuit making. It's already displayed among the rest of our kitchenalia collection in the meantime.

The other charity shopped wooden mould is the one on the left. It is double sided, with the lady's male counterpart on the other side.

Jos used my Dad's food processor to make the dough, and then the fun of making the actual biscuits could begin. We had been warned that it might take several attempts to get the hang of getting the biscuits out of the moulds in one piece, but we were able to churn out several near perfect ones from the word go. After about 15 minutes in the oven, they came out a wonderful golden brown and left our kitchen smelling heavenly of spices in the process.

These crunchy, caramelized spiced biscuits are typically associated with the feast of Saint Nicholas - the original Santa Claus! - which is celebrated on 5 or 6 December, depending on whether you're in the Netherlands or in Belgium. Speculaas dates from medieval times, and its original spices include cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom, and white pepper.

The mercury climbed to an almost Springlike 14°C on Monday and Tuesday, alas accompanied by at times heavy rains, particularly on Tuesday.

While Jos went on a mission to stock up on drinks, I vacuumed the whole of the downstairs, with Phoebe fleeing to the spare room once she caught sight of her arch enemy, the vacuum cleaner.

After our success with the Speculaas biscuits, we then decided to get some more of this seasonal mix now that it was still available, so off to the garden centre we went.

My outfit that day was built around the floral Wow To Go blouse I'd found at Oxfam, which I paired with my pinkish-red polyester and mohair blend skirt. I wore a contrasting ochre yellow belt with it as well as my charity shopped H&M batwing cardigan in the same colour.

Same as the blouse, the necklace was a recent charity shop find. 

My outerwear consisted of my ancient cream, tan and blue plaid coat and my tan Burberry beret, the latter worn to hide my unruly hair rather than for warmth.

Due to the ongoing restrictions, shopping is still a solo activity here in Belgium, so I waited in the car for Jos to come back with his purchases, which included four types of our favourite bread mix.

He reported that not only were things very quiet and relaxed inside the garden centre, he had also spotted several couples shopping together. Nevertheless, we'd better set an example and stick to the rules, however bothersome they may be.

Wednesday was my last working day of the year 2020, and it was with a sigh of relief that I got into our car when Jos drove up to our pick-up point. Antwerp's streets were thronging with shoppers, same as every year in the final days before Christmas, the only difference being that the majority were wearing their masks, if not all correctly. I couldn't get out of there fast enough!

Thursday was another grey and wet all-dayer, and with an overnight drop in temperature to about 7°C, we hid from the hostile world outside. Thankfully, Jos had already done all our food shopping on Wednesday, so that we didn't have to brave the last-minute shoppers.

Time to wear a bit of sparkle again, this time in the form of this vintage dress - once more from Think Twice - its groovy lilac and purple on grey pattern threaded with Lurex. Again, you'll have to use your imagination as the camera failed miserably in picking it up.

It was so dark that we didn't even attempt to take outfit photos outside, trying out our chandelier lighted bedroom instead. Not ideal, but at least I didn't die of hypothermia. The plum coloured lacquered leather belt was an old charity shop find, while the painted wooden brooch was a recent one. A pair of aubergine opaques completed my Christmas Eve outfit.

I spent most of the day on the couch with my latest read, the engrossing and beautifully written Catching The Tide by Judith Lennox. Having previously enjoyed her novels The Winter House and All My Sisters, I was as good as guaranteed a great read when I plucked this one from the shelves at Oxfam.

We finished the day by watching some mindless feel-good television accompanied by a background soundtrack of snoring supplied by our little black monster.

How we spent Christmas itself and what I was wearing will be the subject of my next post.

Until then, please do stay safe, sane and fabulous. Sending an extra virtual hug to my friends and readers in the UK, who are at the dawn of another strict lockdown.

Taking a rain check

The mini-heatwave of the last week of June has come and gone and left much cooler weather in its wake, with no shortage of showers and a tempestuous wind.

By Tuesday before last, Summer had done a disappearing act and, quite worryingly, had taken along a good chunk of my positivity, leaving me with a bit of a wobble. Monday's office day had been rather hectic and, in spite of a good night's sleep, I was still feeling tired in the morning. On top of that, the merest thing seemed to cause tiny tears to flow.

I'm happy to say that my mood improved greatly during the day. Still, I ended up looking red-eyed and puffy-faced in most of the outfit photos we took, so it isn't a coincidence that I'm not facing the camera in the photos I selected for this post.

My Diolen frock might have been a great help in cheering me up that day, with its joyful red, lime green and sky blue floral print. I bought it several years ago from a delightful shop in Antwerp called Vintage Styling, which sadly stopped trading in 2016. Incidentally, the beads I'm wearing came from another shop which closed down around the same time. Losing those two shops within only a couple of months was a real blow to the system back then!

Both the C&A polka dot cardigan and the sky blue double-pronged belt were charity shopped while the dragonfly brooch was a flea market find. 

The grey and rainy day was briefly interrupted by a sunny episode. Still not much in the mood for anything at all, I walked into the garden and spotted a flash of orange on one of the Echinacea flowers. Intrigued, I tiptoed closer and was met with the sight of a beautiful spotty butterfly with exquisitely scalloped wings. I turned heel and ran inside for my camera, fully expecting it to be gone upon my return. But it wasn't, and what's more, it willingly posed for a series of snaps, even allowing me to come really close.

Not knowing the first thing about butterflies, I found an online butterfly identification guide which told me it was a Comma (Polygonia c-album).

The encounter with the Comma had made me feel somewhat better, but unfortunately any further garden explorations were cut short by the arrival of more rain.

After lunch, I pottered around upstairs, reorganizing some of my stuff and trying to come up with better storage solutions. Apart from my wardrobes (note the plural!) and a chest of drawers, I have several vintage suitcases, beauty cases and baskets which hold smaller items like socks, tights, belts and underwear. My vintage slips and half slips live in a small suitcase, but as I wanted easier access to the ones I'm using the most, I was looking for a handy bag or basket, some of which are stored in yet another suitcase.

I soon found a suitable bag, a tapestry one with cats, which I forgot to photograph, but here are some of the others I came across, some of which I'm ashamed to admit I'd completely forgotten about.

These are just part of my collection of baskets. All but one were charity shopped (the top left one from a shop in Bridgnorth, Shropshire). The vintage basket on the bottom right came from one of the shops which closed down in 2016.

These bags and purses were all from Think Twice, except for the red one with the raffia flowers on the bottom right, which was a fairly recent charity shop find from just before lockdown.

Again, three of these beauties are Think Twice finds. The one on the bottom right, however, is rather special, as it was a gift from Vix. 

I think it's high time I give it another outing. In fact, all but a handful of baskets, totes and handbags are in current use, as I simply don't have that many places to take them to.

If my memory serves me right, the blue and pink bamboo-handled bag was also from one of those long-gone vintage shops. The elongated wicker handbag on the top right was a charity shop find. We picked up the green, pink and cream raffia bag from one of our favourite flea market sellers, while the small black crocheted bag was yet again from Think Twice.

Wednesday's office day was a veritable washout of a day, with non-stop rain from dawn until late afternoon. I was at my desk at 7.30 as I needed to take time off around lunch break to go to the hairdresser's. It's such a relief to be able to go for regular cuts again. 

A sunny start of the day on Thursday and I'm happy say I was in a much sunnier frame of mind by now.

Browsing through my dresses, I was drawn to the gorgeous blue colour of this Diolen dress with its sprinkling of yellow, orange and white flowers. I have its twin in 

I was debating whether to add a belt or not, in the end opting for a zebra print one, a retail bargain back in November last year. Trawling through my blog, I was quite amazed at how many time it has been worn already.

The vintage daisy brooch was from the Brooch Lady, while the bangle and bracelet were both charity shop finds. I can't remember where the beads, which always remind me of bubble gum balls, came from, but it might again be from one those closed down vintage shops.

The morning was spent doing some well-needed deadheading and tidying up in the garden. 

I'd been eyeing the Nasturtium seeds I'd sown in empty loo rolls back in May, as a safety net in case the ones I'd sown directly into the garden didn't materialize.They had all come up so it was about time I did something with the poor loo roll plants. Casting around for a suitable receptacle I hit upon the idea of planting them in a leaking watering can which was wasting away in the passageway. As the bottom had split, drainage was assured!

I hardly had time to finish the job before it starting pelting down again.

When I mentioned Jos's gooseberry jam in a blog post the other week, Suzy commented that she thought it would be yummy on scones. Never known to dismiss a good idea, we added self-raising flour to Jos's shopping list for that day, as the bag lurking a the back of our store cupboard turned out to be well past its use-by date. We should really make an effort to do more baking, as we actually both love it.

Although we are in possession of a food processor, inherited from my Dad, we opted to make the dough by hand. We've been using the same tried and tested recipe for years and it has never once let us down. They might look what we call a bit "rustic" but I can assure you they're delicious.

We had a lovely tea-time treat two days running, putting generous dollops of cream on top of the jam. As we always make far too many, we put the rest of the scones in the freezer for a rainy day.

The weather continued to thwart our gardening plans for the rest of the weekend.

If you've got proper Summer weather where you are, please do send some our way!

I'll be back in a couple of days as usual, but in the meantime, do stay safe and sane!