January Round-up

Well January is over and I can't say that I will be at all sad to see the back of it! January is just known to be the most depressing month and for good reason, the miserable weather is doing nothing to lighten the mood, and speaking of light, that is about the opposite to how I felt post-Christmas gorge!

My January has been an absolute fun fest, filled with never-ending reading, crazy amounts of essaying and endless packing. 2014 brings big changes to the T household, with Mama T, Papa T and HT all moving to Singapore in only a few short weeks. I will be left representin' and holding down the fort in the UK for a while, or as I like to say.....when the parents are away, the BT will play!

January hasn't all been doom and gloom and actually started off rather nicely with a wonderful party to bring in the new year. The champagne was flowing, JM was dancing and I wore a big, sparkly gold necklace. Can you imagine anything more wonderful?.....I thought not!(I can only apologise for the quality of photos, my photo taking abilities were seriously impaired by the amount of alcohol consumed). 

(Photo taken by BM) 

Family T were lucky enough to hit the slopes (maybe for the last time for a while) and we enjoyed the perfect blue skies, fresh powder snow and empty slopes. Of course there was a little time left for some apres-ski (HT) and some sipping of vin chaud in cafes (Mama T) as well as lots of merriment all round. 

Mood - So ready for February! 

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Notting Hill Carnival

I have been a horrendous blogger recently, I am not sure why really but I subconsciously decided to take a little spontaneous blogging holiday. I do apologise, please forgive me?

As if I hadn’t been a bad enough blogger by taking several weeks off, I also am uploading a post about something I did several months ago! Shock horror, but my blog, my rules.

NT and I decided this summer that we needed to jump on board the Notting Hill bandwagon, or should I say carnival float, and what a fabulous decision we made. I had never been before, not sure why really, but I put it down to sheer ignorance and now I have been educated, I won’t be making the same mistake again. We had such a ball watching the parade go by, dancing in the confetti showers, catching mardi gras beads and just soaking up the summer sun and dazzling costumes.

London often is seen as a grey city and it is clear why. Drizzle sadly dominates our weather forecast and gloomy skies define the London cityscape, so it is even more exciting when colour bursts on to the scene, filling the city with rainbow costumes, glitter and all-round joy. A world full of glitter is quite frankly a world that I want to live in.

After dancing away we stopped to sample some of the wonderful street food on offer and we sat on the pavement enjoying the spicy goodness of jerk chicken and watching the world go by.

I have no idea where time went, but the hours seemed to fly by as we watched live music, dancing away and being part of the incredible community of fellow revellers. 

Mood - Super happy! 

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Jammin'

The beautiful LP and I recently decided to give jam-making a go. With very little experience under our belts, but with an optimistic outlook we rolled up our sleeves, dug out the jam pans and got stuck in! (And believe me, we got very sticky!) After several minutes we realised that we had actually no idea what we were doing and quickly consulted the jam-making gurus……our mothers, who provided us with the idiots' guide to jam-making.

Our first stop was a trip to Borough market to pick up supplies. After shopping round for the best deal and choosing the freshest fruits we managed to buy several bursting bags of raspberries, persimmons and several unidentified fruit given to us by the very friendly market-man.

Next step, lay our your ingredients, wash your fruit, test a couple and then pretend to be Amelie by eating raspberries off your fingers.

Always make sure you test the jam-goo-mixture at every stage, this is a crucial step…..do NOT miss it out!

As you stir, do not forget to do you best witch impression, cackle loudly and murmur “hubble bubble toil and trouble”.

Pour into jars, leave to set, give it a good sniff and then clean the pan….with your fingers!

I would love to be able to give you a recipe, but we followed our mothers’ instructions, stirred in some experimentation, added a generous dollop of “make it up as you go along” and finished with a pinch of LP/BT love. I am pleased to say though that we ended up with fifteen jars of crimson red, sweet, raspberry jam, perfect for spreading on toast or scones, so it can’t be all bad.

At this rate I am going to be a domestic goddess in no time!

Mood – Sticky! 

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