This is my November calendar page, oh it's a long time since we had four dogs and a cat sprawled out all over a cosy living room.
I do love turning the calendar over to a fresh new month, no scribbles of dates for workmen, solicitors or appointments to do with Mum, it's like a new start and always a very welcome one. There are just two things already written on the month, the date the cleaners are coming in and the date we are moving. These are set in stone and we are working hard to meet both deadlines.
Talking of calendars, Alan bought me the Emma Bridgewater Advent calendar when we spotted it in Booths last week, they always sell out so quickly. Online I also purchased my yearly Jacquie Lawson calendar at the weekend. It's always well worth the £8 cost, I'm still playing the games from last years and I have all the previous years saved on my computer.
This year it's set in the Lake District, with The Bridge House being just one of the very recognisable features on the main page.
The end of October snuck up on us so quickly, and we just about managed to go and grab our free coffees at Burnside garden centre on Saturday morning. Drunk alongside a very nice cooked breakfast, it was a very civilised way to see out one month, and get ourselves ready to welcome the next one in.
As usual just click on the links to Amazon to read more about these books, and to get other peoples views on what I read last month.
For the past month I have been determined to look through my cookbooks in an attempt to really downsize the collection. I'm finding that these days I am cooking more and more simply, and I am just not following recipes as much as I used to. Some books are worth keeping for ideas, but a lot of them I have already taken what I needed to from them, and if there has been just one or two things worth saving I have photographed the page and added it to my Recipe file on the computer.
Another of Miguel's books, yes I used to have the full set but one by one I have been whittling them down. It was a good book to look through, but nothing caught my attention enough to make me need to keep it.
There's a real theme developing here isn't there. 😄
I took a couple of photographs and then this came with me to Booths when we went for a coffee last Friday. By the time we came downstairs my books had been snapped up and were nowhere to be seen. Hopefully, someone will really love them and find something useful in them.
It's good to share books, and even better when sharing them raises money for charity in the process.
In a bid to break away from reading through cookbooks, which while though very satisfying is a very samey thing to do over and over, I decided to try this book. It was recommended to me a long time ago and I bought it soon after. At first I was really into it, but then I found myself not in any rush to pick it up again. So it's gone back on the shelf so I can give it a fairer trial another time.
It's funny but I don't remember buying this. It's a signed copy and a special edition with extra recipes at the front, so you would think I would remember getting it. Their recipes are very good but tend to use a myriad of ingredients to develop the great flavours that they create, I'm a much more simple soul these days.
Someone is going to get a real bargain on the Booths charity book table.
Donated
And that was it for my October reading, the month seems to have flown by and tomorrow we will be in November, and with the move coming up very soon, I doubt there will be too much time for reading.
Sue xx
I would just like to point out, that although I provide links to Amazon for all the books that I read each month, not all my books are bought from Amazon. If they are some of them were bought from the Used section rather than full price.
I share the links so that you can learn more about the books that I write about for yourself, or read reviews from others that have read them. Of course most of the books I talk about would also be available from your local library, and if you are very lucky you might even find them in charity or thrift shops.
There are so many ways to bring books into your home if you love reading. 📚
I was up in Alan's top floor en-suite bathroom this morning. We had emptied the main bedroom last weekend, moving the double bed down to Alan's middle floor bedroom after selling his large king-sized bed on Facebook Marketplace, so it seemed sensible to also empty out the bathroom.
That room was only ever used for the occasional overnight guests. We decided when we thought of downsizing, that it made no sense whatsoever to have a spare room for guests that might only use it once or twice a year. If people do want to stay with us we can make use of both our bedrooms for the length of their stay, and not have to pay extra to own a little used room.
Anyway, sorting out the bathroom made me realise just how many toiletries were up there. I spent half an hour decanting myriad half used items into one bottle of each type and then relocated them to Alan's bathroom cupboard. It made me realise that my way of only having the toiletries that are in use on show in my bathroom, and having one backup in stock for a refill, is my much preferred way of doing it. My products tend to last me a long time as I decant shower gels and shampoo into a dispenser bottle each.
I have whittled the products that I use down over the years, and now there are just a few that are in constant rotation. It's partly for simplicity, partly as my sensitive skin doesn't react to them, and also because still having no sense of smell, I do like to be able to remember what my products actually smell of, and these products have stood the test of time.
A couple of things that I have been experimenting with though are my Olay facecream ...
... and my Arm & Hammer toothpaste.
Both my usuals have shot up in price over the last couple of years, and there have been fewer and fewer offers to take advantage of when stocking up. So I felt it was time to try some replacements. Happily both swaps worked out well and will save me quite a bit of money overall. Now, I don;t mind spending money on something if the quality is good and I can see a value in it, but when a cheaper, but just as good alternative is available I am very open-minded about giving it a try.
Of course I still want to get every last little bit of product out of the cheaper swap, something that is much easier when it is not in a pump dispenser style bottle.
Have you made any swaps recently to save money or to find better products?
He ended last week doing the job he was really not looking forward to, a day up in the loft, firstly rearranging the insulation that was already in place, and then adding another layer to it. It was a day of crawling around, cutting insulation to fit all the gaps, making sure the walkway to the solar panel control board was clear, and then finally pushing the new rolls up through the now edged trimmed loft hatch, and rolling out all the new insulation.
To be able to do it all safely, he had to wear his waterproof, elasticated cuffed jacket over his t-shirt to stop all the fibres from bringing him out in a rash, and to stop him from breathing in all the fibres, a mask over his face. So it was a hot, sweaty and very uncomfortable time.
This week it's a bit of a sigh of relief as it's all about the decorating, white undercoat and gloss on all the woodwork and silk emulsion in either cream or white on the walls. While the woodwork is all currently just raw or primed wood, the walls have already had two coats of paint, so this week will see them all getting their final coat.
As we get towards the finishing line, my man's stamina is being sorely tested, but he's loving seeing it all coming together so that is spurring him on. Our main aim is to get all of the slightly dirty or mess making work done before the 10th November, as that is the date we have a cleaning company coming in to give the bungalow a thorough deep clean, ready for us moving in the week after.
Meanwhile back at home I am making sure he has two nourishing meals a day. One delivered at midday to fuel the worker, that we have nicknamed 'Meals on Wheels' much to the amusement of our new neighbours, and one when he gets home after relaxing in a hot bath for half an hour.
*
Also slowly but surely I am working my way through all of our possessions in a bid to get rid of a much as possible in the run up to moving day. I didn't realise just how much stuff was in my little shed, where does it all come from, I don't really know ... but we have both decided that a lot of it has to go.
Here's the final walkthrough before everything is finished.
It's the time of year to cosy on up in the house with books, hot drinks and good things to watch on the television. But at the moment I am finding less and less to watch on 'normal tv', and so I find myself instead sinking into some of my favourite YouTube channels, in a bid to wind down during these darker evenings.
So just as I used to on my old blog 'A Smaller and Simpler Life', I thought I would share some of my current favourite channels. I used to do a sporadic series called Weekend Watching which I thought I could incorporate here instead. After checking out the channels that I used to share it's quite funny to see that I have recently gone back to a few of them more recently after quite a break.
She seems to have had another baby since I used to watch, and now lives in their beautiful 'new, old farmhouse'. I do love watching people effortlessly cook large quantities of food for a big family, but it also makes me glad that I'm usually just cooking for one or two. 😄
Like so many other people, over 250,000 now in fact, I watch Rewilding Jude every week.
He's still doing amazingly well, and has come on in leaps and bounds with his building and cooking skills. I'm glad he's phased back on his cottage redevelopment plans, the cost he was quoted for the work was exorbitant. He has an army of fans and 'grannies' cheering him on from the side-lines every week.
One of my real favourites at the moment is Kezia over at The Whole Home, it's just very simple family meals on a tight budget but done in a carefully considered and more environmentally friendly way. She has some good morals with food, life and all, as do her family. It's her monthly budget videos that I like the best, so I am sharing the first week of one of them here.
A channel that I only discovered very recently and really binged watched, Bob Dickinson. He reminds me, both in looks and cooking skills, of a young, first starting out Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, indeed I have seen them both together online a couple of events, so they do know each other.
Sit back and watch some lovely autumnal breakfast cooking and then carry on to some of his other videos.
One weird thing that I am finding when I spend any time watching YouTube these days is that at the end of a video when YouTube is suggesting what I may want to watch next, my own videos are in the little box in the corner.
No thank you, I filmed them, but thanks anyway. 😃
I hope that you liked at least a couple of these suggestions for viewing, a lot of you most likely watch these anyway. If there's any channel that I haven't mentioned here that you think I might like please suggest it in the comments.
