Zoom 🎶 singing

Posted on July 14, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Cheerful, Choir, Friends, Fun, Humour, Laughter, Life, Music, Online meeting, Random, Singing, Webinar, ZoomLeave a comment

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Last night we had fun trying to sing together as a group on Zoom. It was a laugh, we all tried to sing together but the delays on the line meant that most of the time we were badly out of sync with each other….

Then my cat jumped up and kept getting in the way. She was walking backwards and firwards in front on my camera, so I grabbed her for a couple of minutes, I must have looked like a Bond villan! My friend who was hosting the meeting, tried to play music for us to sing to, but we couldn’t here it. At one stage he had three screens and two mice and keyboards on the go trying to get it to work. I admired the effort as it was the first time he had tried to do it!

Next week we will have another go, but it might be best to mute everyone and just sing along with someone leading the choir. As it was we were too busy falling about laughing instead of trying to sing the tune. I’ve never heard Molly Malone sung like that except as a raucous chorus in a pub on a boozy night out. It was a fun night though with friends.

Trifle with cherries and blueberries

Posted on July 12, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Blueberry, Cherries, Cherry, Dessert, Food, Glass bowl, Random, Recipe, Sunday tea, Sweet, Tasty, Trifle10 Comments

Sunday tea. Trifle. Raspberry jelly with cherries and blueberries, raspberry blancmange, whipped double cream.

I made up a pack of sugar free raspberry jelly with half a pint of boiling water. Then I added almost half a pint of cold water (you can substitute a small amount of sherry) and mixed it up. I washed and pitted the cherries and put about a mug full of them into the jelly liquid so they covered the base of an ornate glass bowl I use to make trifles. I added about the same amount of washed blueberries, spreading them out with a spoon to give an even coverage. I put the bowl in the fridge to let the jelly set fully. (there are alternatives that don’t contain gelatin). This afternoon I made up a pint of raspberry blancmange (you could use custard instead). I left it to cool in the pan rather than putting it directly onto the jelly as it’s heat would melt the set jelly. Once the blancmange cooled I spooned it onto the jelly. After a couple of hours in the fridge I whipped up a tub of double cream. I added a bit of sweetener before I whipped it. That goes on top

Serve in a glass bowl if you want to be posh. I just got the breakfast bowls out. In this case the cream slid off the blancmange and the jelly broke up because I’d put too much fruit in. So beware spooning it!

The result was delicious. Yum

At the boating lake

Posted on July 11, 2020July 11, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Boat house, Broken, Housework, Life, Park, Random, Toy Boat, Walking, Washing machineLeave a comment

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My hubby went out with his remote control boat today. He took it to the boating lake in the park. This park is beautifully tended with floral borders and a restored boat house.

I wish I’d gone, but I was busy sorting things out as we are having to get a new washing machine. The old one has finally given up. The thing works but it keeps coming up with error messages. E8, E9. Don’t know what they mean but it’s stopping it finishing the programmes. I can only get it to work on one, 30 minutes 30 degrees…

But what’s this got to do with parks? Only that I didn’t go on a walk. They did about ten miles. I wish I was fit enough to do it. Humph!

1980’s drawing

Posted on July 7, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1890's, Art, Derwent pencil colours, Drawing, Friend, Pencil drawing, Random, Sketching, StylisedLeave a comment

Photo taken from my computer screen which explains the distortions and shadows. But it was a drawing I did in the 1980’s. I used derwent pencil colours to do the shading. I did a series of drawings that were included in an exhibition in Stafford or Lichfield. I don’t remember it’s so long ago.

I would like to go back to some of my old ideas. I’m going to try and find the pencils again. I don’t think they will have degraded over the years.

Home made lunch

Posted on July 6, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Coleslaw, Colour, Food, Fun, Home made, Plate, portmeirion, Post modern painters, Random, Still life, TasteLeave a comment

Home made coleslaw (cabbage, carrot, red onion) with reduced calorie mayonnaise. A small piece of brown seeded bread with a bit of pate, a couple of chopped up tomatoes, half an avocado pear and some de-stoned red cherries. Also a few cheese and onion potato crisps. On a Portmeirion plate. Why? Because I liked the colours mainly. I watched a programme about still life last night and the interest that images of food created was fascinating. At one stage still life was seen as the lowest form of art, but the innovations of artists gradually made it more accessible and acceptable. Artists like Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso bought new definitions of what still life meant. Art is fascinating. It’s funny the ideas you can get by staring at a plate of food. X

Ride a white horse…

Posted on July 5, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Ditties, Fun, Getting old, Humour, Memories, Nostalgia, Nursery rhymes, Old memories, Opies, Poems, Random2 Comments

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Ride a white horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

I’ve started to remember old nursery rhymes…

See saw Margary Door,

She shall have a new master

She shall earn but a penny a day.

Because she can’t work any faster.

They just popped into my head. They are things I used to recite or sing to myself when I was about six or seven.

I’ve asked my hubby and he remembers

“if you stand on a nick, you’ll marry a brick and a beetle will come to your wedding’.

And ‘I wish I was a wooly worm, with wool upon my tummy, into a honey pot I’d squirm, and make my tummy gummy!,”

Nostalgia!

There was a couple, Mr and Mrs Opie that collected them and they lived in Salford, near Manchester, England. There is a whole collection of this type of verse there. I only remember this vaguely. They worked out that a rhyme could travel from the south up to the north of the country (Britain) in a week because of children repeating them. If I remember rightly. But I am getting older.

Playing with paint

Posted on July 3, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Black and white cat, Blogging, Fun, Moon, Painting, Pattern, Picture, Random, StylisedLeave a comment

Oh I do like playing with paint. For example this is a little canvas I’m working on, it’s a WIP, (work in progress). I was thinking of adding some patterns and decorations to it. Maybe in the sky. Some stars, a comet, maybe a pattern in the glass. I haven’t decided yet. It’s another acrylic on canvas. I was trying to make more of a stylised character out of it.

Better get on and do some more work on things.

Pool

Posted on July 3, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic, Acrylic on canvas, Art, Blogging, Drops, Found art, Fun, Pool, Random, Reflective, Splodges, WaterLeave a comment

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I use a piece of plastic to keep my acrylic paints moist between using them. A little bit of each paint sticks to the plastic. So I pressed it against a tiny 3 inch square canvas. I did it over and over, rubbing the plastic down onto the canvas and turning it round each time. When I looked at the result I thought it looked like reflections on a pool so added curves to look like ripples from drops of rain. Just simple…

I might turn the orange splodges into goldfish….

Happy cat

Posted on July 1, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Black and white, Blogging, Cat, Heart murmur, Life, Photo, Random, Sad, Sleeping cat, Ultrasound, vets, Waiting2 Comments

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They seek him here, they seek him there… And then I found him on top of the kitchen cupboard. Or on the microwave, sometimes on the laundry pile. Often asleep on my chest, keeping me in pinned down!

Snoozing for hours on end, keeping his nose under his paw. What a character. So sweet.

He’s not been well, he as got to have an ultrasound. I want him to get better, I really want him to have a long, good life. He has a heart murmur. Grade 4. The worst is grade 5. What can I do, his life may be shirt, but he is and will be loved.

Hedgehog dining.

Posted on June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Blurred, China bowl, Eating, Environment, Feeding, Food, Food bowl, Fun, Garden, Glad to help, Hedgehog, Humour, Nature, Photos, Poem, Poetry, Random, Rattle a bowl, WordPress2 Comments

A shady, spikey creature

Banging bowls together.

Clattering crockery,

Hog food left out for him.

Gobbling and scoffing quickly.

I opened the back door.

A glint in his eye and..

He scuttled off into the dark…

I imagined him saying

“I’ll be back……..”

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Random