A weekend at home..

I was lying in bed on Friday morning in Uni, and had not planned anything for the weekend. so I thought why not go for for the weekend?! It was a very spontaneous decision resulting in me packing like a maniac and hot and bothered-ly (new word) running to catch the next train at Leicester Station. But it was well worth it as I had a lovely few days with the family :) I was also glad to use a washing machine that dosnt charge me £2.50 to use each time i wash my clothes... Uni problems..

Anyway! i pulled my weight and made a lovely roast Lamb dinner for us on Sunday which was very scrummy, and went for a lovely walk with Scott, mum and the dogs.

I love the colourful orange carrot peelings! I roasted carrots and parsnips with butter, olive oil, and honey and they were DELICIOUS! Have I ever said that my favourite vegetable is a parsnip? If not i'm saying it now! Theres is no comparison to a overly roasted parsnip :)

I just drizzled a little olive oil over the lamb, seasoned it and added a few sprigs of rosemary from the garden!

Mum took a few snaps of us on the walk! This never happens.. I'm usually the irritating one that likes to take pictures of EVERYTHING ...
Scott and the dogs were quite excited to be walked ;)...

I really like this photo of Scott, and Ella running on ahead as she does :)

Molly (Seabear) patiently waiting until we turned around so she could carry her lead home ... this happens every time, and she refuses to walk unless we let her carry it :)

The girls and myself! I wasn't expecting to be snapped in my lovely painting coat and farmer wellies but this is the kind of terrible dog walking outfit I usually wear so theres no point kidding anyone I guess!

And lastly Molly basking in the delightful, stinky, Sheep poo ridden pool she manages to always find on any walk we go on....

Christmas, Turkey and family photographs

Christmas Agiain!It's been and gone and it's been so lovely seeing all my family, friends, animals etc! I've eaten way too much as per, but it's all been worth it :)

Here was our delicious Turkey that we had for Christmas day, it's 15lb and is was ridiculously heavy, and had an impressive coloured skin this year which always makes it

look beautiful.

My Christmas dinner :) Turkey and all the trimmings! All home made of ccourse, even the cranberry sauce ! We never make our own Chistmas pudding though, so many thats something to think about for next year.

I had a wonderful new Instax Fuji film camera which I'M IN LOVE WITH.  I already have a Polaroid and Canon camera which are my old faithfuls and I couldn't live without, but I felt it was time to get a newer Polaroid as the price of the old film is ridiculous now Polaroid have stopped making the film.
Here are a few snaps I've taken so far :)

Scott and I in hats playing card games with my family. it's a little blurred as I was just figuring out all the buttons and angles etc.

The Clough's! My mums side of the family always come over just after Christmas as it's my Grandmas Birthday shortly after. It's such a wonderful time full of card games, cheese and a heck of a lot of competitive treasure hunting...

more of my family with the fujifilm camera. I will do a blog post soon about the camera in more detail, as it's an awesome camera to have. And now fuelling my photography hobby!

Lastly my Dads side of the family who all come for bacon butties of Christmas morning :)
I hope you all had a fab Christmas and wish you all a Happy New Year !!!!

A weekend in Ireland

I've just got back from a lovely weekend away with Scott and his family to Northern Ireland! I'd never been to Ireland before and it's always interesting to visit a new place/country :) For those of you who haven't been, it's a lot like Wales !! E.g landscape, weather, sheep etc, but has it's own special edge too....

We went as part of Scott's Nana's 75th birthday and there were about 15 of us in total!We stayed in a nice hotel in Cooks-town (about an hour from Belfast) and explored lots of attractions, and ate a lot of food, as per for us really :)

I've finally got Scott to buy some desent trainers/shoes, so here are his new navy blue converse (FINALLY) and my Topshop burgandy thick Mary Janes , for those of you who know me I rarely wear shoes that are not red, so this is a step forward at least...

The blob in the middle of the photo is a rain droplet on the camera, the weather was pretty bad the whole weekend, but we still had a fab time.

We liked the freeebies from the hotel (who dosn't?!) So we had sparlking water in a glass bottle and some chocolate chip cookies as a snack.

We visited the Giant's Casueway which is a landscape on the northern coast of ireland that has been weatherd by conditions such as ice age's and general poor weather conditions to create these fabulous effect in the rocks. 

The rocks look hand carved or even part of an art installation, but all is done naturally by the erosion of the bastille rock by the weather conditions.

Tourists always find a way of cramming coins into tourist attractions, and here was no different. I liked how many of the crevasses in the rocks were crammed full with coins, some badly weathered and some new. The rust was pretty too (I'm sad with things like that), I tried picking some coins out but they were too tightly packed in!

More of the corseway! 

We drove along the coast and stopped to take some snaps of the coastiline. The waves were ridiculously high in some places. I always like the chalky rocks that surround a lot of the Brisish coastline. They looks so pretty with the grassy hilltops!

 It was very windy so we both had eyes and mouths full of my hair flying around for a lot of the weekend!

Scott and I are both hige fans of the Titanic. We love the film, and like nerding up on our facts about the real thing. This meant we were very excited to Visit the museum in Belfast dedicated to the Titanic (as most of the hull, and ship were made in Belfast). The building is shaped like the stern of the ship on each fours sides. It was full of interesting facts and reconstructions of parts of the ship. I particualy liked the room where they showed artifascts and videos of what people have recovered from the wreckage e.g shoes, glasses, bottles etc. It reayly was fascinating :)

But embarrassingly enough, I was mostly impressed by THE DRESS !!

This was the original dress from the film Titanic with Kate Winslet who is one of my favourite actresses. It was even tinged brown and grey from when it had been worn in the water for filming, which was pretty cool!

 We visited the Bushmills Whisky factory and went on a tour. I'm not a big drinker and usually don't like whiskey, but they had a type blended with honey which was delicious! ( I had mine watered down, as I am a big pansy with alcohol) but that helped the honey flavour and sweetness come through :)
It was very informative and interesting to see, and makes you really appreciate why it is so expensive, as the most basic variety has to be held for at least 3 years and be 40% to be considered a whiskey

 Scott in the causeway museum/fact place. (Inside a shark mouth....)

Lastly a bauble I wish i'd bought in the factory shop of the whiskey factory. :(But I was being stingy and didn't want to pay £6.50!

I'd really recommend going to Ireland as it was very pretty and the attractions were really interesting to see ! but if you go in Winter wrap up warm as it's very VERY nippy !!! 

Stewed Plums

Stewed plums are one of my favourite child hood puddings that I had when I went to my Grandma's house. They came from a Chef who used to work at The Midland Hotel In Manchester, and then found their way into my grandma's amazing recipe book which is full of yummy timeless recipes that she has collected over the years.

 The recipe is potentially the easiest recipe ever, Providing you are not horrified by the amount of sugar!

Ingredients:

roughly 6 plums

5 ounces of sugar at least.

1/2 Pint water.

Place your plums in a pan along with the sugar and water. Bring to the boil, and simmer until the plums are tender but not falling apart. Once this is done fish them plums out with a spoon into your desired serving bowl. With the juice left in the pan, turn up the heat and make a syrup with the sugary plum water. You want the juice to thicken and be sticky and sweet. Once this is done pour over the plums. You can serve them hot or cold,  but I personally like them cold with a scoop of clotted cream.

If you have left over juices, it makes a wonderful salad dressing or a sauce for the top of ice cream and other puddings.

As you can see the water takes on the plum colour which is the most wonderful rich pink! I love when food looks good, but to me it's more about the taste, but this sauce really has a wonderful aesthetic to it which makes it all even better!

This is the recipe from my Grandma's recipe book. It is such a special book and is now one of our family's prized possessions. The book has a hand written index and is meticulously labelled from large cakes to soups, main meals and cooked meats. The cover and pages are that used that it all has to be kept in a large bag so it doesn't deteriorate. I love how precious it is to my Grandma, and how she has always shown me how to do recipes from there since I was young.

I served the plums for dessert as part of my family meal night on Thursday, and it was enjoyed by all!

Drink sampling with the family

Sampling is so much fun, and it's interesting to see the difference in people tastes. I tend to like anything with elderflower, ginger, raspberry or apple, whereas my grandma prefers citrus flavours, and my mum prefers beetroot and tomato juices.

carrot and apple, beetroot juice, pear, cherry and apple, elderflower, cox's apple, lemon , summer berries, raspberry

I personally liked the pear ! It was refreshing yet still had a lovely sweetness to it. The carrot and apple was really not to my taste! I think that was batting for the healthier side, rather than flavour! The apples and elderflowers were good, and the tomato juice had a spicy kick to it. There were a few other flavours not listed here, like tomato juice, orange, ginger beer etc. The tasting panel consists of my mum, dad, grandma, Scott and I, which is a good balance of old and young, male and female and we came to a decision of our favourite 5 flavours!

I can't wait for the tearoom to open, it's been so exciting helping making all sorts of decisions from interiors and props to food and drinks. We've all put so much time and effort into making sure the little attention to details are just right.

I think the jewel tone colours are beautiful, and I feel inspired to mix a couple of my own drinks after tasting these! What are your favourite flavours to drink?

Food, Family & Friends

 This is just a snippet of our Chistmas table

I love these fairy lights from Paperchase, they have these wonderful vintage colours and they are battery powered so they don’t need to be next to a plug!

This is my Nephew opening his Christmas presents from my sister Nia

Boxing Day we went for a walk to the beach with the dogs. This is Molly; the name of my blog (Seabear) comes from this lovely lady, as I’ve always thought she looked part dog, part bear, and part sea lion, and so Seabear was born!

This is Ella, my other lovely lady.

Lastly the 28th is my Grandma's birthday, so Scott and I made her a lemon drizzle bundt cake. We had a slight accident as the cake broke in half as we tried to get it out the tin, but it still tasted yummy.

We went for a meal, and ended the night with loads of wonderful games such as Treasure hunts, cards and quizzes. Such a lovely night, and yeh, that’s my cow one-sy.