I am still here! Quick update...

Hi everyone,

I am so sorry its been so long. I have had some trouble with my computer as we changed our Internet provider, I have lost all my emails and contacts and the web has not been working correctly. I have recently bought a laptop! yippee so I will be working from that in the future but have yet to set it up to the web, I cant wait to use the laptop instead of the pc, I have wanted one for a long time........... I am reading all your messages now and wanted to say thank you very much for the lovely comments on the flowers in my previous post, I hope to update soon on how the new seeds are doing, many already come through, so hope to post pics soon. I just wanted to let you know I havnt disappeared! When I get a new email address I will send it to my friends in blog land, as I am not receiving emails on the old address, although they said I would for the first week! I am going to try and visit you all now while I can and the pc is behaving itself!

See you again very soon

Priscilla xxx

'In an English Country Garden' and Easter Basket Swap

Hi All, What a lovely spring day it is here at Priscilla's Cottage! Today I was able to get out into the sunshine and plant some of the flower seeds I have been wanting to sow as soon as the weather would let me. I am a beginner gardener and mainly concentrate on seeds and plug plants, with quite surprising happy results! Cottage gardens inspire me and that is the look I am trying to create. This year I am in a new home and have started to think about what I can do to decorate the front, I thought some nice containers and window boxes would do just fine ........ here is the front of the house so you can see how it looks at the moment...
Now not all of this is my house! The end cottage nearest to the camera is mine, The old plant pot was the previous owners which I have removed ready for my new ones..... Can you see how much more colourful it would look with some beautiful flowers? I don't think my neighbours are into much gardening!


Cottage flowers are so beautiful arnt they? very peaceful looking.....Today I planted Stocks, Candy Tuft, Larkspur, Cornflower, Chinese-forget-me-not, I also hope to plant Lupins, Hollyhocks and any others that I have........ here are some inspiring cottage gardens........

Last year I tried my hand at gardening on my parents front lawn, the flowers were grown from seed and went a bit wild, I was really surprised they all came through. I left the garden to itself......... here is what it looked like towards the end of summer. A lot of the flower heads were gone at this stage, I really wish I had taken the picture earlier! There were marigolds, Asters, Dahlia, Stocks, Larkspur, Cosmos(those were huge!!!! they are most of the green you can see, which had large Pink daisy head flowers! and many others I squashed in, ha,ha


This is my parents lawn before the plants really took off! I grew most of them on windowsills then transferred them to the garden..... I had no idea how much they would grow and they grew and grew and grew.....

I'll keep you posted how the recent seeds are doing.....

Now onto something different, my Easter Basket Swap

I am so pleased to tell you my parcel did arrive on the 27th of March, but oh how it was worth the wait! I can not believe the amazing things Lisa had put into the package, I am so thrilled, many of the items she sent I can not even get where I live.....craft items, material (cupcakes) how perfect is that! Chocolate, a Scrap book album, Scrapbook/craft papers, cupcake items/liners and lots more, also a beautiful hand made banner Lisa made herself, here are some photos!

All these craft goodies were contained within a beautiful tin with my initial on the front, Isn't it sweet, I love the cupcake tickets, thank you Lisa for such a wonderful basket....... I am really looking forward to making something with the materials, maybe some pillows, hearts, or an apron, I am not sure yet but I will be having a great time !



And finally I did want to add my literary Tea post, although I am very behind schedule for it. I think it would make this post way too long though so I hope to post soon, also with the next topic which I think is Tea as part of home Decoration

Have a great week and see you again soon

Priscilla x

Gracious Hospital-i-Tea Blog-a-thon

I am taking part in the Tea-blog-a-thon over at Gracious Hospitality, every week has a new tea theme to post about, I am a bit late in posting for week ones topic but I wanted to start at the beginning!

Teacup-a-Story
'Share a picture of your favorite teacup and saucer; describe it and tell it's history (or make up a story about it's past). Why is it meaningful to you? This would be a good place to share about the details of your teacup collection if you have one'.
King Echnaton Tea Cup - I bought this Tea cup in Luxor Egypt 2 year ago, I have been to Luxor 5 times and adore it, everytime I go I buy a cup or mug as I collect them. This is one of my favourites, outlined in gold with the face of King Echnaton, it makes a really elegent cup of tea....




When you arrive in Egypt you are greeted with a hot sweet Red Tea usually in a small glass, it is a very well know and loved tea called - Hibiscus or Karkade we loved it so much we bought a bag full! It comes as shown above, the dried petals of the Hibiscus flower, luxor souk has every spice you can think of including baskets of tea, you can also buy Tea Bags and I brought home both. In our hotel room in the evening we make ourselves a glass of tea whilst we sit on our balcony and watch Egyptian life go by, the tea is very good for a good nights sleep. We always buy our cups when we get there rather than taking the weight in the case and this was the cup I bought that year to enjoy my Egyptian red Tea.........

Below is a photo of my mum and dad drinking Hibiscus Tea with our good friend Salah (the left of the photo) on this day we had just returned from horse riding along the banks of the nile, such a beautiful day!

I hope you have been able to get a picture of our time in Luxor and how Tea is featured so strongly, we love our time there and this little tea cup is a part of the story.......

Until next time

Priscilla xx

Easter Basket Swap

Easter Basket Swap


Easter is finally here and this is the Easter basket I sent to my swap partner in Bella Enchanted's Easter Swap, my partner is Lisa over at Lisa Laughs http://laughlisalaugh.blogspot.com/ Lisa has received her parcel which she has let me know she is pleased with, I visited lisa today and saw my parcel goodies on her blog!!!! So I can not wait to receive mine, although I did not look at the photos in detail as I don't want to spoil the surprise, I am looking forward to receiving it........


Lisa is very fond of crafting so I tried to find items that I thought she would like and could use, she loves polka dots and I found dotted feathers too! ha,ha No Easter basket would be complete without candy which I found many themed on Beatrix potter which is so cute, the other items I thought suited Easter wonderfully and that lisa hopefully can enjoy. Close up of the chicks in baskets! I hope you all have a lovely Easter and don't make yourself ill eating chocolate eggs, which I guess sometimes too much chocolate in the space of 3 days is a bad thing! ha,ha

I will share my goodies from lisa when the nice post man delivers them.......so see you again very soon!

Bye for now

Priscilla xx

Getting Ready for Easter?

Easter has been on my mind the last few week, taking part in Bella Enchanted's Easter Basket Swap gave me a chance to enjoy looking around all the Easter goodies out there! Yesterday was spent gathering family's chocolate eggs and I sent off my partners swap parcel.Which I thoroughly enjoyed gathering items for! With Easter on the brain I thought I would share a recipe I found for a traditional Easter Simnel cake with a twist.

Simnel Muffins

250g mixed dried fruits
grated zest and juice 1 medium orange
175g softened butter
175g golden caster sugar
3 eggs, beaten
300g self-raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
freshly grated nutmeg
5 tbsp milk
175g marzipan
200g icing sugar
2 tbsp orange juice for mixing
or mini eggs

1. Tip the fruit into a bowl, add the zest and juice and microwave on medium for 2 minutes (or leave to soak for 1 hour). Line 12 deep muffin tins with paper muffin cases.

2. Preheat the oven to fan 180C/ 160C/gas 4. Beat together the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, spices and milk until light and fluffy (about 3-5 minutes) - use a wooden spoon or hand held mixer. Stir the fruit in well.

3. Half fill the muffin cases with the mixture. Divide the marzipan into 12 equal pieces, roll into balls, then flatten with your thumb to the size of the muffin cases. Put one into each muffin case and spoon the rest of the mixture over it. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until risen, golden and firm to the touch. Leave to cool.

4. Beat together the icing sugar and orange juice to make icing thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Drizzle over the muffins and top with a cluster of eggs. Leave to set. Best eaten within a day of making.

This week I made a birthday cake for a friend of my grandmas who turned 88 yesterday, I made this cake for her as a surprise gift. She loves to sew and embroider, I found the beautiful silhouette of a girl sewing which suited Eva nicely.....

Have a good week, I hope you enjoy the recipe,

Priscilla x

Panto and Buddies Award

Hi all, I am sorry it has been a while since I last blogged. I can not believe how quickly the time has flown. The panto went well, I have added a few pictures although I am still waiting for everyone else to share theirs! I also completed a cake whilst the panto was on for a friend who's nephew loved land rovers....... I have a few cake orders at the moment so I am a happy girl, its something I love to do.....

On my last post I was making the wanted poster for the wizard, here is how it turned out, tea stained and altered using photoshop...... 'He whose name no one can remember' I wanted to keep this poster. I thought I might make a scrapbook of the plays and props and things, I have seen so much amazing work by all you crafters you have inspired me to start a scrapbook of Theatre memories!

Panto Pictures
Here is a rather blurred photo of me in the Frog Prince costume....... don't you love the bloomers!
This is backstage at the church, I hope to show more soonFrog prince before and after! the young boys name is Leo and I am currently making a cake for him with a V-Rod Harley Davidson on it.......



Here are a few of the other cast members........
This is Angela, the 'Crone Witch' Leo is her son, it was Angela's nephew I just made a cake for. Her scenes were funny, there were three witches, maiden mother and crone.........

And this is Amelia Sweetheart, Wendy- she played my frog prince's true love........ we also sang a duet, 'Iam a believer' by the monkey's! We had a good laugh!

The next show we are hoping to do is an 'old time music hall' songs such as dont 'dilly dally' 'daisy daisy' 'roll out the barrel' and many comedy acts, should be good I'll let you know whats happening soon..........

I want to say a really big thank you to Linda from somewhere in time for awarding me this lovely award, and what a nice award it is, 'blogging buddies'. I am really honoured to be thought of for this award, it means a lot. It feels great to be connected to wonderful people through my blog, Thank you again my dear friend Linda xxx

Wishing you all a wonderful week

Priscilla x

Trouble in Panto Land......Play

Hi Everyone, I hope you are all having a good week and that spring is slowly coming to your area! This week I have been busy getting ready for the pantomime that officially starts tonight. Last night was a full costume rehearsal and tonight we have girl guides and scouts in, wed its a full open night including adults and general public and it all finishes on Saturday. The title of the panto is................'Trouble in panto land', there is a bad guy of course and a good guy, I am the goody............. I was once a frog (the Frog Prince) who gets turned back in to a prince and defeats the evil wizard! ha,ha

I have been handing out posters all week, here it is.........

Today I am making the wanted poster for the evil wizard, I have a photo of Bernard in his costume which I have played around with in Photo-Shop to make into a sepia photo. I am currently staining an A3 piece of paper with Tea, to make look like old paper, I have stuck bernards photo on the front, the poster reads.............

Wanted

He Whose Name no one can rememebr

Reward

You will NOT Die!

These are words taken fom the script, I will post a picture of the finished poster later.

Here is the photo bernard gave me of himself and the one I have turned sepia

Notice his orange face! Yes he is orange he used orange face paint, I think he looks pretty evil what do you think? ha,ha

Since I am the one holding the poster I wanted to make it myself, Its quite good in a way as I get to be a bit crafty for a good reason, and as all you crafters know, its great to find any reason! here is the sepia verson, although I chose to keep his face still quite orange, and added a bit of green to his coller.

I am in a bit of a rush this week, besides the panto and other normal day to day things I am also making another cake! One of the ladies in the panto loved bernards cake and has requested a cake with a Land Rover car on it, so I am having quite a productive week! Slightly crazy, but good.....

I hope to share photos of this panto with you, a lot of photos have been taken so I hope to get my hands on some!

I am also singing in the panto, has anyone heard Kermit the frog sing 'Its not easy being Green?' Well, thats the song I am singing, I was not sure at first but I quite like it now, we changed a few words, as I am no longer green! but it makes a sweet song........

You can hear it here if you like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbCI68eSNsA

Have a great week, see you again soon

Priscilla x