Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 26

Week 26, so we are halfway though the year. In fact today (Wednesday 26th) is my eldest son's birthday, and when he was born I worked out that Christmas Day is the middle day of his year!

You may wonder why I am writing Friday's post on Wednesday. Well normally I prepare it on Thursday but tomorrow I will be in Almeria hospital for most of the day, hopefully having my hand operation. So I thought I had better make a start today in case my right hand is out of action for the rest of the week.

I have been stocking up on prepared meals that Chris can easily finish off for us, and also getting plenty of fruit ready to make my smoothies and flavoured yoghurts that I love in this hot weather. So yesterday I prepared a pineapple and open froze it in chunks. They add a great flavour to smoothies. 

Today I diced half a large melon and that is now freezing, and I poached some apricots that weren't quite ripe enough to eat raw as I usually do. 

We also get some big peaches out here in the market They look more like oranges than peaches, but they are slightly furry, and nearly always have no blemishes on their skin.

Although they look lovely they are not actually all that nice to eat. They remain quite firm and have little juice or flavour. But poached they are delicious and look and taste just like the yellow cling peaches that we used to buy canned in England.  We have a drink here called gaseoso which is a cross between a cheap lemonade and soda water. It is actually water, citric acid, a little sweetener and plenty of gas! It is used a lot in white wine spritzers and as a general mixer, and I like it as it has no actual sugar in it. I find it is perfect to poach fruit in without adding anything in the way of sugar or sweetners. So yesterday at the market I bought four big peaches, and soon they were stoned and sliced and I just covered them with gaseoso and pressure cooked them for four minutes. Now they are frozen in my oversized ice makers, in just the right portions to add to drinks or icecream. So it was a useful day.

Today had some milk that was just out of date, and I used it up to make some scones. I cooked them in my Ninja Foodi and they turned out really well. We enjoyed some for our tea today and the rest are already in the freezer for a later date.

Almeria hospital is an hour's drive from here and I have to be there for 8.00 in the morning, so we will be up with the larks. I won't be able to have my usual breakfast, but I will need to shower, and we will be on the road even before the sun is fully up. I am not usually up in time to see the sunrise, but maybe tomorrow I will be. But just in case I have borrowed this lovely photo from a friend who was up early enough on Tuesday to catch it.

And finally I am sharing a project I completed on my laser cutter this week. (Sorry if you have already seen it on Facebook). The Christmas decorations I showed last week were practice pieces while I worked on the settings for speed and power to engrave and cut my wood. So this week I felt confident enough to try the project that I was saving. It turned out so much better than I expected. It is not perfect, but I am pleased with it. I have gifted it to a dear friend, but I shall be making it again soon.

And that is it for this rather short week. If I am able, I will add a brief update before linking up with Annie's Friday Smiles and publishing this on Friday.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 25

I am having trouble with my photos today, but hopefully I will have sorted something out by the time I publish this.

I actually have very little to talk about this week. It is always the same when visitors go home. There were a lot of extra towels and bed linen to wash, but laundry was no problem this week. It has been baking hot all week with temperatures in the upper thirties most afternoons, and fierce winds that blow warm, and send furniture and garden debris all over the place. So the washing is dry half an hour after I hang it out. I just have to make sure I have double pegged everything.

This week my garden photos are focussing on the beautiful Hibiscus. They have a long flowering season but this is the month when they really shine. I have an orange one, a yellow one and a pink frilly one as well as the usual red ones, and a double pink one that is really next door but hangs lots of flowers on our side of the fence. I love their long stamens that entice the bees and other insects down into the flower to find the nectar and gather pollen.

When it is so hot - and it is only June so goodness knows what it will be like in July and August - I spend many afternoons sitting in a shady corner of the porch reading. But I have also done some work with the laser cutter, making small Christmas decorations while testing out various settings for the different types and thicknesses of wood I have got. This week a pack of 3mm mahogony plywood arrived. I love its colour and grain, but I have learned that it is not ideal for engraving pictures, but it does cut very nicely. Next I will be testing some basswood ply. Here are three completed decorations, which, while not perfect, did turn out okay. I have a couple of larger projects lined up to do, but I want to get the setting just right first, so for now I will keep trying the smaller ones.

Last night we almost had a nice sunset, and I almost got out in time to see it - but not quite. So here is what I did manage to catch before it all faded away.

You can see from how the clouds are feathering out at the edges, how windy it is up there.

And with that I will tidy this up to link with Annie's Friday Smiles and publish in the morning.

P.S. Thanks for all your kind enquiries. The hospital check-ups last Friday all went well, so now I am waiting for the hospital to phone with a date to go in.

Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 24

Our visitors' week went by so quickly. Little Aisling has grown up so much since I saw her last year. She is three now, very articulate and chatters all day.  So I had a new little fish in our 'pond'. Chris has done his best to keep it clean ready for their visit, even though he is not allowed to hoover it as that sends the water to waste. I think she would have jumped into it whatever it was like. I could do with it being a bit warmer but she loved it. Her parents take her swimming regularly at home and she was very confident in the water. 

She wanted daddy to throw her up high. She thinks she can fly too. My first attempts to photograph her I only caught her toes in the top of the picture, but I did eventually get a full one.

She wasn't the only one visiting the pool this week. One morning we found this little fellow sitting on one of the chlorine floaters. I zoomed in to take this but he was no more than two inches long, so I guess a real baby. Aisling insisted it was a frog, but of course it is actually a toad. I relocated him under some bushes in the green zone.

They had a morning at the beach, and another day they went to the local water park. One afternoon we went up to Mojacar pueblo for a wander around the trendy shops, and then went for a meal at one of the open air restaurants. From the railings around the plaza there, you can see all of the surrounding town, beach and fields. It is a favourite place for photos.

Sitting on the wall to take a breather after walking up the hill.

On Sunday afternoon I took them to Vera Laguna. Sadly there were not many water birds there, and those that were, did not seem very interested in the oat flakes we took for them. So we had a walk along the prom. What little one can resist a wall to walk on?

On their last afternoon I told Aisling I needed a new photo of her for my family clock, as the one I had was when she was a baby. Surprisingly she sat still while took this one, and she was delighted when I quickly printed it off and added it to my clock.

After a very dry winter and everyone praying for rain, just as my visitors arrived, it rained!! Fortunately the main storm came late in the evening, but it brought lots of desert sand with it so everywhere needed a good clean the next morning. We have had a few more showers, but nothing very significant, but the surrounding towns have been badly flooded. No-one is complaining too much as we all know how much it is needed. The rest of the time was very hot, in the upper twenties and into the thirties, so the fans and air-con had their first work-out, and the rain brought some light relief. It has remained cloudy with the odd shower all week, but I think after today it will be clear again. I hope so as I have a lot of bed linen and towels to wash. Hopefully some of the flood water will raise the level of the reservoirs a bit too.

Tomorrow I will be at Almeria hospital for much of the day. I have to have an X-ray, and ECG and an interview with the anaesthetist to make sure I am well enough to have my hand operation. Here's hoping I am given the all clear.

I will link this up with Annie's Friday Smilesnull and try to get it published before I go out.

Friday Smiles 2024# Week 23

It is only Thursday morning but Chris has gone to fetch my son and his family from the airport and they will be here within the hour, so I am making the most of this little window of peace. They are only here for five days, and my grand-daughter is a lively three year old, so this is probably my only chance to get this done.

Not that I have a lot to write about. This is my smile of the week so far. My three little fur babies are in the kitchen waiting for me when I get up every morning, wanting a quick rub 'Hello' and then breakfast!

When I was making up a bed for little Aisling I knew she would be bringing her beloved 'Plum', (a plum coloured rabbit who goes everywhere, dragged by one of his long ears), but I wanted something to make her bed look less stark, so I dug out 'Duckie'. We bought him for Ben when he was two, thirty-five years ago, and apart from a little fading he is as soft and cuddly as he was when he was new. He was greatly loved all through Ben's childhood and I still put him on the bed when he comes to visit.

I always like to see Annie's photos of her flowers, so yesterday I walked around our little patch and took photos of all of ours' to make a collage. I ended up with so many that I decided to make a collage of different coloours. So here are the red ones,...

 the pink ones...

and the other colours. 

With everywhere around us looking so brown and dry from the lack of rain, it is good that we have managed to keep these going with only the 'survival watering' allowed.

And that is it for this week, but I will just close with a little picture sent to me by a friend. It made me smile so I hope it does you too.

So now I ready to link up with Annie's Smilesnull in the morning. Let's hope I can get up first and do it quiickly!