Rocking my world 2014.Week 49

I am once again experiencing problems with the internet. Tonight I can get access to my dashboard but not to my blog. Neither can I open either of the lovely blogs where I link this, so I am going ahead and preparing it, and if everything goes to form, I will suddenly be able to do it all at around mid-night!

My first smile today is this happy chappy, who is my ten year old grandson. Annie loves to share photos of her grandies, so I though I´d join her this week. He is looking very pleased with himself because he had just achieved his Rookie Lifeguard bronze award.

And on the very same day he had a letter in the post which contained a much coveted Blue Peter badge. His daddy actually has two of these precious badges still, and he had told his lad about them. He decided he wanted one as well so he wrote them a poem about this, and he got his badge! His brother is a very laid-back seven year old, who wasn´t at all bothered by all this attention his brother was getting, and apparently he was quite happy to settle for a bag of jelly beans. A great attitude to have! (I have refrained from using the boys names as their dad only refers to them as big bear and little bear on social media, so I must respect that).

My second smile today is two of my lovely sky photos. My long-suffering husband probably thinks I´ve lost the plot when I stop in the middle of feeding the dogs to grab my camera because "there´s another face looking at us in the sunset". I have to do it straight away as the clouds are shape-shifters, and each image is only there for a very short time. So here are the two little peekers. I think they both look quite friendly ones, so I smiled back!

I´ll be linking those up to Annie´s Friday Smiles as soon as blogger lets me open her blog.

But I have a few other happy moments to share with you too. When it was my turn to host our Life group here, a couple of weeks ago, one of the ladies was going home to pick her olives because her husband was away, and they were too ripe to leave. So I asked her if I could buy some of her oil when her olives were pressed. I left it too late last year and she had sold out when I asked her. The very next Sunday she came up to me with a 2 litre bottle. It doesn´t come much fresher than this! 

For those who aren´t familiar with the way things are done here, if you have your own olive trees and you pick the olives as they ripen, you can take them to a local press. There are several around here and they open to the public from November to late January I think. It doesn´t matter whether you have one crate load, or a lorry full, you join the queue, and your olives are weighed. Then you are given a ticket to say how much oil you can have, which you redeem from further along the line. So you may not get the actual oil from your olives, but it is all freshly pressed, and it is Extra, extra virgin oil! You may think it doesn´t look very appetizing, and it really is this murky green, but it is beautiful to use. I have already decanted some of mine because I am not good at pouring from the big plastic bottles, (even when they only contain water!), so my oil drizzler is a safer option for me! At the press you can opt for the slightly more refined oil which is clear, but for using on salad, or drizzling on bread, this is the best.

Via a friend of a friend.. etc, a lady in our choir heard that I make mincepies, mostly to sell for charity, but this year the mincemeat is too expensive for me to make as many as I usually do. Well she makes her own, something I have never done as in UK it never seemed worth the work when the bought ones were so good, and she decided to make one batch for me. So on Tuesday, at choir practice, she gave me this beautiful jar full of yummy home-made mincemeat. She even put a festive cap on it. Isn´t that lovely? Two batches of my pastry mix, makes around seven dozen pies, and this jar exactly filled them. Perfect!  I have made around fourteen dozen mince-pies for the sale tomorrow, but I don´t intend to make too many more this year.

Early last year I showed some little tri-pots that had languished in a corner of the garden ever since we came here, and I had given them a new lease of life by planting them with cuttings off several cacti and succulents that we have. I have watered them when I remember, and on the whole they are still doing very well. Here is one as it looks now.

I have a pair of them, and I ran out of cuttings for the second set, so for the last pot I used a few self-seeded baby gallardias, which did well in the Summer, but they are not as tolerant of my hit and miss care in the Autumn. Recently I noticed that all that remained of them was a clump of dead, brown sticks that resembled a rather untidy birds nest! I thought they were dead but decided that I would not replace them until next Spring. Then it rained, and when I walked past them again, look what I found!

It is actually quite hard to kill anything out here, and all these little babies wanted was a long drink. I shall nurture them now. They deserve to be shown some love, and hopefully, come the summer, they will reward me with some flowers.

Fortunately, although we have had some much-needed rain this week, most of it has fallen during the evening and night, and the days have been glorious. It is not that warm any more, but when the skies are blue, you don´t notice that the sun has lost its power. And some days it has warmed up quite a bit for a few hours around lunch time. I was able to sit outside to eat my lunch today which was nice. And one day in the week, I sat here at my computer and was warm enough to have the window right next to me, wide open. Of course Arwen thought this was for her benefit, and she immediately laid along the sill, enjoying the sun on her back for a couple of hours. And woe betide me if I tried to move her.

I am very happy that I managed to write all my Christmas cards for posting last night, and today I took them all to the post office. (The bill was 59€. Ouch! But as I said to a friend who was also bemoaning the postage costs, I enjoy making the cards, but what´s the point if you begrudge the postage. It is only once a year, so I pay up, and hope they all give someone as much pleasure to receive as they gave me to make them). I thought I was a bit late this year but I just made it by my target date. Tomorrow and Monday are both red days, or bank holidays, here, so the post office will be closed, and I try to get mine away before that. So today I was just in time.

I have been very busy this week making and finishing off cards, and also items for my second craft fair. This is the Gallarte expo in our village tomorrow and Sunday. It is a fairly simple affair, just for the folk in the village really, and I don´t expect to sell much, but I like to set out a good table all the same, and what doesn´t sell will be used by us, or put away for next year. I went up to the hall to set up today, but I didn´t get around to take any photos. Hopefully there will be time tomorrow. It will be busiest in the evening but I can´t be there then as it is our first major choir concert, so a friend is keeping an eye on my things for me. Hopefully by next week I will have written posts about some of my ´makes´for my craft blogs so I will be able to put some links on here.

I started with some sky photos and of course I also have some to close with. I like the first one just because you can see all the little birds flying home to rest. (You may need to click on the image to enlarge it to see the birds!).

The rest of these were taken in the morning for a change. I woke up late to see a blue sky outside with little fluffy white clouds all over it, so I jumped out of bed and rushed outside with my camera to take this.

By the time I was washed and dressed, lots more clouds had moved up from the south-east and they joined up to partly obscure the rising sun. 

I rather liked the look of this even though it didn´t bode well for a sunny day. But it stayed clear enough, and warm enough, for me to dry all my washing out on the line so I was grateful for that.

Then I went round to the back of the house, which doesn´t get the full sun until later in the morning. Here the clouds were also gathering and they reflected the rising sun with a lovely pearly pink sheen. It was so pretty I had to take one more picture.

So that´s it for this week. As soon as I am able to link this up I will, so I´ll see you at Annie´s Friday Smiles, or over at Celtic House. 

I am truly sorry that I didn´t manage to visit many of you last week. The only spare time I have had to come down here, has been in the evenings, and I have not been able to open any blogs at that time. If it is no better this week, I may have to manage some morning sessions, instead of doing the housework. That sounds like a good idea to me!

Rocking my World 2014: Week 48

I have had a busy day today, so there is no way this will be ready to post by mid-night. I have a very poor internet connection tonight so I may have to wait until tomorrow to post it anyway, but I will get it written just in case it works.

I had an idea ready to post for my Friday smiles but I need to get the OK from someone to use the photos, and I haven´t had time, so I will keep it for next week.

In the meantime here are a couple of my lovely dogs, showing of their good manners at mealtimes. Because the path at the back of the house is narrow, and I don´t want to be bowled over by them, I make them sit at the gate while I walk around to the kitchen door where I feed them, and then I call them. (I think I showed this photo last week, but I can´t open my blog to check right now). Once they are round, I dish up their food and then tell them to sit in their places. They always go to the same spots, and sit and wait while I put all three dishes down. They don´t touch it until all three are served, but look how Kim´s eyes are fixed on his, just in case it disappears if he looks away. Miki´s much more laid back and she is just looking at me as much as to say, "How long do we have to wait?".

Once I give the word, "Good girls", (Kim´s a boy but he doesn´t mind!), they all dive in and there are soon three empty dishes. Kim finishes way before the other two but he never bothers them, or tries to take their´s. 

They aren´t the best trained dogs, and don´t always pay much attention to me, but they know not to mess with me at food time unless they want to go hungry!

So what has kept me smiling this week. 

Good friends for a start. I´ve had a few issues to mull over just lately and I´m grateful for good friends to talk them through with me.

Last week I told you I was able to help a friend by translating for her at the medical centre. Well a few days later she surprised me with this lovely rose. Isn´t it pretty?

Some of you will think I´ve lost the plot a bit, but I am grateful for the arrival of Winter - Spanish winter that is! We have had just enough rain to make everything grow, and turn the county side green.

We still have lots of sunny days, but it is nice to change over to my ´mid-season´wardrobe and wear something other than a flimsy sun-dress all day. 

It is nice to finally need a douvet on the bed, even if it is only a tog 4.5 rating. Most of the year we only have a sheet over us, but it is somehow comforting to have a douvet back for a few months.

It is good to enjoy warming casseroles and soup. We mostly live of ´something and salad´, but there are limits to how many ´somethings´you can come up with. I love soups and my super blender makes lovely ones.

This one, that we enjoyed this week, was based on chicken stock from boiling up a chicken carcass, but the rest of the ingredients were  raw vegetables, a couple of carrots, the stem from some brocolli, half a red pepper, a small hot pepper, some chopped up cabbage  and the leaves from some  celery, plus some lightly sauted mushrooms and leeks, a cooked potato, half a tin of baked beans, and a little rice from the day before´s curry. So it is a great way to use up the bits that might otherwise be wasted, and it is bursting with goodness. I am rather lazy about food and I could live off soup like that quite happily.

At my sewing group this week, several people were finishing off the lace decorations that they started last week. As promised I sat with my friend and talked her through doing hers. She wanted to give up the first day but I have told her we are going to do it, but I am not doing it for her, so I watch her all the time and stop her if she makes a wrong move. She is struggling a bit, and I can see that she is hampered by being left handed, but she will finish it!

She is sitting at the end of this table, just out of the photo, and I am sitting beside her knitting. The bag with the red and white wool in it is mine. The lady standing up in the orange top is Pam. She is the expert at lace-making and is leading the workshop.

Further down the table the people who chose not to make a decoration, are knitting, sewing and chatting!

And over on the other table there are more knitters and sewers. Look at the lovely Christmas quilt that Elzabeth is making. She is a very talented lady.

So you can see we are a busy little group. We all have our own speciality, but we share ideas and patterns, and help one another when someone wants to learn a new skill. They are a great bunch of friends and I am so grateful for our times together.

This morning Chris and I went to a Christmas Fair at the camping site just outside our village. It was organised by the Vera Town Lions Club, and I try to support them as they have been very helpful to families in this area. It was well supported and there were some lovely hand-crafted items on sale. Needless to say I was tempted by the baking stall, and bought two nice meat pies for our dinner, and a big slab of carrot cake.

Some friends of ours were there with their jewelry stall, and there was a lovely necklace on display. Chris knew that I liked it and he bought it for me. He let me take a photo of it to put on here, but now it is all wrapped up and will be hanging under the Christmas tree in a week or two.

This photo doesn´t do it justice. The little beads are a much brighter turquoise than they look here, but it was very hard to photograph it against black card, in artificial light. The silver chains are in fact all tiny sterling silver beads. They must have taken for ever to thread. Apparently they are know as liquid silver.

Before we left the camp site we called in at the little shop on the site and bought tickets for a concert there on the Saturday before Christmas. We will have just finished two weeks of entertaining other folk with the choir concerts, so it will be nice to sit back and be entertained ourselves. And there is a full Christmas buffet meal before the concert, so that is something to look forward to.

Then, when we got back home we went up to our town hall and booked our seats for the village pensioners Christmas dinner. We pay a little for this but it is well subsidised by the town hall. They take us in a convoy of coaches to a venue just off the motorway towards Almeria, and we have a lovely five course meal with as much drink as we want, and some sort of entertainment too. Because it is meant only for the pensioners in the village, it is at midday, and we will be back in the village by early evening. We went last year and had a lovely time.

After dinner I decided to go and do the monthly food shop. It is not my favourite outing, but I knew it would be quiet mid-afternoon, so it is a good time to go. Once a month I do the rounds of Lidls, Mercadona, and Iceland, and for the rest of the month I just need bread and milk, and fruit and vegetables from the market. One of the things I bought today was this bag of big oranges. The orange season has well and truly arrived and I got this bag of five and a half kilos of oranges for just 2.75€, (that´s around 18p a pound for my UK friends). They look really nice ones, so there is plenty of vitamin C for us there.

When I was taking Kim for a walk the other day I was really pleased to find this branch down under a pine tree. It is fairly straight and has so many cones still on it, so I brought it home. I shall do something with it before Christmas. I kept it outside at first, and sprayed it well to make sure it doesn´t have any livestock hiding in the cones, but I have brought it into the garage now so that it is properly dry before I spray it with snow.

It has been quite a difficult week, I have shared three lots of sad news. Not sad for me personally, but sad for people I am fond of, so I have shared their sadness too. But I am glad that I have still found plenty to be grateful for.

Now before I do my linking up with Annie´s Friday Smiles, and Virginia at Celtic House, I will just show you this week´s sky pictures. I can´t help myself can I? I could sit and watch the sky for hours, though these are all taken between about 5.30 and 6.30. The colours change while you watch them, and a few minutes later they are gone. It has been quite windy some days, especially up high, so the clouds have broken into fanciful shapes, that each catch the rays of the setting sun. I love that short time when the sky is still blue, but the sun  is setting. Some of these are so peaceful. A couple of others are more stormy, and of course, there is the inevitable fiery face peeping over the hills at us! Enjoy!

I forgot to add last night, how grateful I am that you take time to visit me and leave a lovely comment. I do enjoy hearing from you all. I apologise that I only managed to get back to a few of you. I had major issues with my new computer. As you may remember, I only had it new back in October and I love it. But in good faith I bought some down-loaded files from a firm I have used before, that is widely recommended among my Silhouette cameo group, and along with the files I imported a load of malware/viruses. They scrambled my internet and made it almost impossible to use, and seemed to be multiplying by the hour. My poor long-suffering husband spent days working on it, trying to clean it up, and hopefully everything is back to normal now. Where would I be without him!! So this week I will do my best to visit you all. Thanks again for following me.