Friday 1 July 2011

Sweet Peas, Buttons and Charity Shops

Well hello friends. Thank you to Jane and Louise who tried to help with my two (of many, many) problems. Jane - I fear my sweet peas might be past the pinching out stage. What say you?


Some of the stalks are pretty thick - I'll know next year I guess, and what I do have smell divine. Louise - I think I'm going to have to wait until I get the new Blogger dashboard. Mine is old-stylee. I'm sure there must be some way of adding the HTML code but I'll wait and do it the dork-friendly way!

I got a couple nice useful bits from a charity shop in the city centre on Wednesday. I try to buy things I can make a profit on or that I know I'll use. Having said that I've bought lots of stuff for Red and Mr Charming in the past that I thought would be great for them, only to find it thrown in a corner of their respective rooms. I won't do it any more now.....hope I've learned my lesson. So anyway, I'll show you what I bought.



Two rolls of Spiderman wrapping paper for 99p and two rolls of Cat in the Hat wrapping paper, also 99p. My nephew Little Baby Jack loves Spiderman whilst Carb Addict likes the Cat. The rolls are nearly 3' wide and are 5' long so I thought they were a good buy. Then I got something to use when baking.



It's a volume measure, for dry goods. At the risk of telling you all what you already know, rather than weighing flour, sugar, rice or whatever out you just pour it into this cup, which has handy 'weight' measures for a variety of different stuffs. Does that make sense? I should've photographed the inside to make it really clear. I have a lot of baking to do this weekend so it will be getting  some use. It's brand new and I paid £1.99. We are celebrating July 4 at work so I am making brownies, cupcakes, scones, apple tart, lemon meringue pie and muffins (yep, I know.....I try too hard). I also found a recipe for Red Velvet Cheesecake that sounds delish so I'm going to make that too. Nom nom nom. Then I bought this Jenga knock-off for £1.99.



I bought it for the old people I work with. Their current favourite is Connect Four but I thought they might like this, and I'll get reimbursed for it so it's all good. Finally I spotted this and paid £2.99. It's also brand new, originally from Lakeland. I have bought a couple of these in the past for Babcia - usually Brown Bag Cookie Molds  - so I picked this up for her Christmas stocking.



 What do you think of my buys? I also bought something yesterday for my swap partner's parcel but I'm not going to post that in case she sees it. Did anybody else find that they have bought things for Lakota's swap then keep seeing things that you thing your swap buddy might like more? I've been doing that for a month so far....  :(  I suppose I'll be happy with what I've got at some stage.

Plenty of other stuff has been happening but I'll save it for a couple more posts. It looks like Red's landlord problems have been somewhat sorted out but it has cost us the best part of £700 and I'm a bit gutted to be honest. Our emergency cushion has been severely deflated but....o well, that's what parents are for, right?

As well as my baking sesh I am hoping to go car booting on Sunday before I go into work - don't usually do Sundays but I've arranged a little party for the tennis finals and I need to go and supervise the strawberries and cream. Though whether the residents'll be interested now Murray is out is debatable!

What are your plans for the weekend?

7 comments:

  1. Great buys. Hours of fun with Jenga. I want to have a huge tidy up this weekend as I have really slacked off this last week or so. Its beginning to look like a jumble sale !

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  2. Blogger is causing me real problems tonight.

    Was trying to say, you've made me want connect 4 now, I need to get to the charity shop and find it lol. x

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  3. I'm a fellow Cat in a Hat fan, in fact anything Dr Seuss does us just fine by me. Yes, I've been swapping and changing what I have planned to send you, it still doesn't feel good enough. It's my birthday on the 4th, so wish I was going to be eating all your baked goods. After that, its strict diet time, none if my summer clothes fit. I'd like one if those cup measuring devices, much easier.
    We're off to a barbecue today, sort if a birthday celebration. I have to bake some gluten free bread and go for a 4 mile rub first. All I really feel like doing is drinking tea and making cards for a couple of friends who have birthdays coming up. Have a lovely weekend.

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  4. Oh dear, a four mile rub? That doesn't sound very nice. Using my phone on blogger is incredibly clumsy, hence millions of typos.

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  5. Okay, it is toooo late for pinching out those sweet pea plants :O)
    I think I see a lot of curly tendrils tho, and they'll be grabbing onto and twisting around the flower stalks, so cut them off and then you'll have long straight stalks to arrange elegantly in a vase :O)

    The volume measure looks very interesting - where did you buy it?

    Rattlebox

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  6. You are going to be having a busy weekend with all that baking! Good finds - hope you are just as lucky this weekend.
    Liz

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  7. Hi, thank you for becoming a follower of my blog. I hope you enjoy visiting. I've enjoyed having a read of yours. Here's a link to 'pinching out sweetpeas'.

    http://thegardensmallholder.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/pinching-out-sweet-pea/

    For adding side buttons go to your 'dashboard' and click on the 'design' tab, you should then be able to 'Add Gadget'. Choose one of their gadgets or if you have HTML code choose their gadget that says add HTML and java script. Hope that works for you. If it doesn't shout and I'll think again. What buttons do you want to add?

    Love from Mum
    xx

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