Pennypincher's guide to summer bubbly!

Unfortunately, I won't be making any this year, due to being in the throes of half unpacked boxes and impending building work, but as I've noticed the flowers already appearing, I thought I would share my tried and tested method of making Elderflower champagne (or more correctly Elderflower fizz, so as not to offend the French, heaven forbid this is compared to their champagne, it's much nicer!).

I've made Elderflower fizz and cordial for the past few years and use tried and tested country recipes I was given on a chicken and smallholders forum.  They are good, there is no faffing about with yeast and demijohns or anything remotely terrifying like that.  Just flower heads and a few basic ingredients, and Bob's your uncle!  The good thing about Elderflowers is the season is fairly long for a wild flower, usually four or five weeks.  This gives you plenty of time to pick enough to make a decent amount of drink. As all the magic is in the pollen with elder, it acts as a yeast and causes the fizzing, don't pick flowers just after it has rained.  Best to try and pick the flower heads in the morning too.

Elderflower fizz recipe

675g sugar, 

4.5 litres water, 

2 tbsp white wine vinegar, 

finely pared rind and strained juice of a lemon, 

4 large (or 8 to 10 smaller) unwashed Elderflower heads with flowers snipped from stems.

Pour the sugar into a large bowl or pan and add the water.  Stir until sugar has dissolved.  Stir in vinegar, lemon rind, juice and elderflowers.  Cover and leave to stand for 48 hours. I use these large 5 litre buckets with lids,

Strain the mixture through scalded muslin or a jelly bag and pour into clean screw top PLASTIC bottles (at this point the liquid is not fizzy) and leave to stand for three weeks, by which time it will have become wonderfully fizzy,  Chill before serving.

Right, a few things I have learned over the years; don't snip each individual flower off it's stem, just cut them all off roughly in one go.  You can use glass bottles if you use ones which have held a fizzy drink, as these will have been made to withstand the gasses, but be careful.  You must unscrew the bottle tops each day to relieve the fizz, otherwise you end up with a fountain of froth and sticky walls (don't ask me how I know!).  Use plastic bottles that have held fizzy pop, the lids are better.  Don't pick Elderflowers if they smell like cat pee, the drink will taste like it!  

And finally, the finished product does contain alcohol (typically 2%) so be careful who you offer it to and make sure no-one drinks too much and drives!

Enjoy!

The water in Majorca don't taste like what it oughta

The one small thing I have encountered here in the countryside that is so different from living in the city, is the water. Sounds odd, but the water in Birmingham is piped in from mid Wales, tastes lovely and is soft! Here, our water is sourced from a bore hole about a quarter of a mile from the village and is pretty hard, and has been tasting and smelling of chlorine lately. So much so, that we've had to buy a water filter jug. I'm quite surprised that something we take for granted normally, now has implications for our appliances too. We were getting build up in the kettle, and no doubt the washing machine and shower too.  I did notice it had an effect on my hair as well, but as it is classed as fairly hard, it's actually given my poker straight, and rather limp hair, some body.

We had a lovely walk around the village on Sunday morning, here's a few shots  

The grass in all the meadow fields is now more than knee high on me, and full of clover and buttercups as well as those pretty grass seed heads which ripple in the breeze and have a lavender hue.

As far as the house goes, we are still waiting on the architect to deliver plans the builder can work from, but now we are allowed to convert the garage, building regs have been applied for.  It is so frustrating, all this waiting around, as the house layout is so bad. Unbelievably, the house was extended 12 years ago and the layout was done then, the downstairs loo and utility are off the one rather oversized lounge and the walls are thin, need I say more!  We will be creating a second lounge, by sacrificing a bit of the oversized one and utility/loo, and moving them into the garage.  There is room for a shower room and an office too. 

It has suddenly dawned on me that we need to think about tiles for the utility and shower room, and I'm trying to stay away from black and white, as these colours just don't suit a cottage.

Anyway, back to this week's shopping.  I had a bargain on eBay the other day.  I love zip up cardigans, I think they are such a useful piece of clothing, and managed to snap this one up for just 99p plus postage.  Of course the postage was £2.80, but the cardi is lambswool and mohair and feels brand new.

 I'm a big snowflake fan, so was pretty chuffed that no-one else bid on this!

I didn't actually wander around the charity shops this week with the intention of buying.  Although once I had been to a couple and found nothing I started getting a bit impatient!  So I was delighted to find this Peter Ellis 100% polyester gown for a fiver, and it is in perfect condition.  It actually fits me perfectly, although the sleeves tend to fall down, and I have seen examples without the sleeves and just a strap online, which are probably better for me. 

The lining is 100% nylon, which of course gives you a free static electricity display when you walk around!

I am trying to figure out why it is dry clean only though.

On to my favourite chazza, the one I used to help out at until I moved.  Here I found this lovely Morgan blouse for 50p and Per Una knitted jacket, or jacket style cardi, whichever way round you prefer, for £2.50.

 The blouse is black, and looks a lot better in the flesh than this!

The cardi/jacket has got lined sleeves, and as the outer sleeves appeared too long for me, I unpicked the cuff stitching and sewed the edge directly to the lining, now the sleeves are around an inch shorter, which suits me much better. 

Well, that's all the news for this week, I am hoping that we will be able to move on something in the coming week, even if it's just buying drawer boxes for the unit we need to complete the kitchen, they appear to be out of stock everywhere at present!  

Say no to cotton wool

I first blogged about these little make up cloths I made on my old Typepad blog in 2011, and am still using them!  Thought I would share the idea for you again:

A couple of years ago I decided to stop buying cotton wool to clean my make up off or cleanse and tone my face.  I wasn't going to save much money, but I would take a small step in a green direction!  I understand that cotton is a very intensive crop, requiring lots of water whilst growing, and heavy machinery or lots of low paid workers to pick the final product.  Of course, once used as cotton wool it just gets thrown away, so it can be landfill as well, depending on what your council does with your waste.  I don't need cotton wool to clean my face, there are alternatives!

I soon found an alternative, in the form of a surfeit of face cloths collecting in the bathroom cupboard.  I cut each of them into four, and hemmed the raw edges .  Voila, I had little make up cloths!  When used they are just thrown into a bin and once a week they get put in a little laundry bag and washed with the towels.   Here are the ones I made;

I have found that making this one small change has been easy, helped along by me treating myself to some Liz Earle cleanse and polish a few years ago.  With that, you get a muslin cloth to clean your face.  After using the cleanse and polish (which I no longer buy, there are cheaper alternatives now!) I got into a routine of using a reusable cloth, and haven't looked back.  

Now, going back to cloth hankies would be a different matter!!!

Coats on at Coughton!

After a pretty poor week for charity shop bargains, OH and I headed out for the day on Friday with picnic loaded in the car.  It was a cold and soggy day and we were intending to go back to Croome, but the thought of wandering around the grounds in the rain was too much so we decided on Coughton Court in nearby Warwickshire instead.  

When we arrived, almost everyone who was already there had chosen the hard standing car park. We went for the grassy side, as you can see, plenty of space and some great Vicar of Dibley puddles! 

There was also a pheasant casually strolling around, oblivious to us approaching

I do love Coughton, it is very grand and castle-like and has beautiful grounds.  As with a lot of Midlands stately homes, it has connections to the Gunpowder Plot and Royalty in some way.

Excuse the sometime rubbish photos here, I forgot to put new batteries in my camera so had to use my phone which also ran out of juice eventually!

 Love this view from the inner courtyard

 Towards the gardens

 Throckmorton family private quarters

The family silver 

Bishop's cape allegedly sewn by Catherine of Aragon

Chair made from the bed allegedly slept in by Richard III the night before the Battle of Bosworth in 1485

 The Throckmorton's secret church, masquerading as a grand hall.

Those sofas are very soft. Note the footwear, in bad weather overshoes have to be worn to protect the floors. Stylish, no?

We returned to the car for lunch and cake, and had to sit out a rather sudden downpour, which saw other picnicers dashing back to their vehicles, some holding half eaten sandwiches!  Oh the joy of an English summer!

After an hour we were safe to continue our exploration of Coughton's grounds.  The wild garlic has now gone over, still smells very strong though, and the signs warning us of the aggressive grey legged geese we heeded, until they saw the floating duck food we had and came over to chase us for it.

 The riverside walk was very lush after the rain

This little fellow was one of twins, very nosey and loved having his forehead scratched!

On Thursday I had a bit of a baking bonanza and made a coffee cake 

and a lemon drizzle loaf

At this time of year it is a bit of a battle to use up eggs that the girls produce, we aren't too good at eating them unless they are in cake!

I did manage to bake OK despite sustaining a sledgehammer injury earlier by dropping it onto my right hand whilst trying to wield it with my left!  Not sure how, as the darn thing is so heavy I can barely lift it with two hands.  What a trouper!

Also not sure why this is as bad as the bruise got!

My only bargain of the week was this free pair of ballet type flats from Shoezone, courtesy of a voucher given to me by a friend (thanks Kate!) for my birthday in January.

I managed to visit my first car boot sale in many years on Saturday morning and bought ... precisely nothing!  It was a small car boot sale, around 30 sellers, and there were some nice things, just nothing I needed. It will be held again in a fortnight and I might go back for a return visit.

On the house front, we have had good news this week in that the local authority are allowing us to convert the garage into part of the house, something you have to ask permission for round here and not helped by the fact that we are in green belt and just outside of the village zone.  Our architect is finalising drawings and submitting building regulation applications as we speak, just need the builder to be free soon for work to progress.

Baby got back (from town)

Weeeeel

I like free stuff and I cannot lie

Those other shoppers can't deny

When I go shopping with an empty purse

I wave my vouchers in the air

Yeah

Uh huh

Apologies to Sir Mix a Lot, and I think I'll stop there as I'm finding it hard to rap!  

One of the things that constantly amuses OH is that I will pop out shopping and usually come back with a full bag of some charity shop bargains or shopping freebies and most if not all of the money I left the house with.  I can't deny that I find it amusing and get a rather smug feeling from spending little or nothing for things, let's face it, if I had spent hundreds I would still look the same, so why part with the money? 

So on Saturday morning I took myself off into Birmingham hoping to spend over £60 worth of vouchers I had accrued through various (legitimate!) sources.  I had seriously had enough of the shops after one hour but fortunately in that time I managed to spend £18 in M&S.  Surprisingly on a pair of jeans which were not reduced but at their normal price and under the Ozone label.  I actually liked the shape that much that when I got home I took off the old bootcut jeans I had been wearing and copied the shape, using these as a template. 

The daftest thing about these jeans is the size though.  They are a 10. I am not. They are actually a little generous on me too, so if I had the patience to try them on I may have opted for the size 8. This is vanity sizing gone a little mad.  I actually managed to purchase a vintage M&S skirt a while back and the same measurements then were a 16.  Daft, just plain daft!

On over to BHS, where I had even more vouchers to make a dent in.  Here I managed two purchases, this nice (I can't really think of a nicer word, the other word I was thinking of was boring!) ditsy print top, half price at just a fiver in the current sale.  Again, the sizing is a bit odd, it is a 14, so must be quite a skinny fit 14!  No matter, I like my tops generous so it isn't a problem, and it was honestly the only top I could find in the shop that I liked before I began to lose my temper and want to go!

Lastly, and I'm quite pleased with these and am hoping to get plenty of wear out of them this summer, these lovely and surprisingly comfy sandals, with cushioned insoles, were again reduced, from £25 to £20.  This time I was able to stick with my actual foot size and they are a size 4.

 These sandals are also available in a really nice faux nubuck finish nude colour and lots of bright jewel colours too.  

So there you go, again I come back home with all my money and plenty of vouchers still to spend, but I do have an outfit to show for it, so can't be bad! 

There have been very thin pickings for me this week on the charity shopping front, not that I'm feeling the need to buy loads of stuff, now I've found time to do a bit of altering of clothes I've already got, the need for something new or even new-to-me is seriously diminished.

I did manage to grab this orange vest top for just a pound, from the same shop as I bought the orange crocheted top the other week.  It was actually there on the rail when I purchased the crocheted top, but it only dawned on me when I got home that I would need something to wear underneath to make it decent!  It is also H&M, the same brand as the crocheted top too.

On the home front, I managed to make an orange and almond cake the other day. 

 I am trying to make a cake or two each Thursday for weekend consumption and to use the eggs up that we get from the girls.  Last week I made a lemon sponge with lemon drizzle on the top, sliced some of the leftover lemons (job lot for a pound from the market) and stuck them in the freezer for use in drinkies.  This week it was of course, Eurovision, so we were able to try out the frozen lemon slices in the gin and tonics we drank during the show. 

 Unfortunately it didn't make the songs sound any better.  Neither did using my 1998 Eurovision mug.

We haven't had any trips out this week, just a few walks around the village again.  Everything is now so green and after the heavy rain we had the other day, everything is around two feet taller than last week!

See what I mean?

As we have had some fairly decent weather intervals, we also managed to finish the wood shed, and split some of the logs that the tree surgeon left us when he felled the three trees in the garden in February .

  

A bit Heath Robinson, but serves the purpose.  The gap you can see on the far side is because I miscalculated the size of the roof off the old metal shed, that we have re-used here, against the size of the old fence panels we have also re-used, oops!  It just needs filling in and then it is watertight, almost.  We have also used the back of the old metal shed as flooring, just to stop the water coming up from below and rotting the wood.  Ivy and other plants have been planted to grow up and disguise it and also help with the weatherproofing.

Freshly split wood, really hard work!

They do say wood warms you twice, once when you cut it and again when you burn it, I can vouch for that!

I am hoping this cool but dry weather continues for the rest of the week so that we can get a few more outdoor jobs done, and am also hoping that we can start the garage conversion soon, these things do drag on!!