Chatiryworld

Two weddings and a blocked drain

I think it's a good sign when you have to walk along the shoreline to get to a wedding, passing by a harbour and having time to sit on a bench and watch the boats on the Forth and the sun set.  We were at an evening do at the Forth View Hotel in Aberdour, Fife.  We plan to return there for a meal sometime, and more pottering around Aberdour, which is a gorgeous little village.  It's gone on our list of Places We Wouldn't Mind Living In.  The wedding was lovely: bunting, vintage crockery, toddlers running around, kids playing football, great music and a very happy couple.

We also went to a wedding on Friday evening, whilst Saturday's had a good countryside vibe, Friday's was more of a city do, again with great music and a very happy couple.  And about 5 billion breakfast rolls.

In between we dealt with a blocked drain.  A communal one, and probably not our fault, but as we found it we felt we should deal with it, as it was pretty much a biohazard.  Edinburgh City Council get a bad rap but they sorted it out very quickly.

Weekends are for...

Admiring the cherry blossom in the local park. Much of it is on the ground now.

Hanging out with friends and penguins at Edinburgh Zoo.  We liked the monkeys too.

Helping out at the Made in the Shade Springtime Jamboree.  I had such a lot of fun, I was on the door for the first hour and it was so lovely to see so many happy crafty people!  I know that sounds silly but my day job involves sitting at a computer doing informationy type stuff so it was nice to do something totally different.  And hello to my blog reader, I'm sorry, I was very rude and didn't ask your name or if you had a blog.  I guess I'm not used to many readers saying hello.

Eating delicious cupcakes (well, one) from Auntie M's, who provided the tea and cakes at the jamboree.  By far the best cupcake I've had, I've noticed a tendency for them to be dry, this was lovely and moist and the icing tasted of real fruit.  I definitely need to get over to De Courcy's Arcade in Glasgow to see the Made in the Shade shop and eat more cake.

Me vs a Magimix blade

Oops.  I spent most of last week trying to fight off a cold that kept doing impressions of flu.  Finally perked up and decided to help with household chores by doing some washing up, first of all I needed to dry and put away the things in the draining rack.  One of which was a grater/cutting blade from the Magimix.  And whilst I took care around the grater bit, I totally forgot about the massive blade and hacked into my finger.  And had a bit of shock.  Not having ever cut myself this badly before I wasn't sure if I needed stitches, so whilst following the old rules of pressure and elevate I called NHS24, who directed me off to the minor injuries unit at the Western General.  Thank goodness I had remembered about that place because they wanted me to go to the main A&E at the Royal Infirmary.  On a Saturday night?  With a non-life threatening injury?  Yeah, that would have been a fun time.  Don't believe me?  Follow that link - it says 'Scotland's busiest A&E department.

So I was seen by a lovely nurse within about ten minutes of getting there who patched me up with paper stitches and the large dressing you see above.  Brilliant service.  I had, in a moment of wooziness, considered calling Kal, but just because your mate is a paramedic it doesn't mean that they are your personal medical service.  Plus he would either be dealing with real patients or having some well-deserved time off.  I just kind of thought it might be easier if a friend sewed my finger back together in the comfort of my own living room.  Then I remembered I was 31 and needed to sort myself out.

Big love to Jon who's having to do pretty much all the cooking and washing up at the moment, in addition to washing my hair and making sure I don't have any more accidents.

In other medical news, it's been a Very Big Day for Emily as she has had her tracheostomy tube taken out.  I understand it was all pretty traumatic but hopefully things will settle down soon. Very, very brave little girl.  And very brave parents too.

We spend our lives eating cupcakes

That sounds like the start of something that could be quite profound, doesn't it?  It's not, it's just that I seem to be blogging about cupcakes recently.  Jon and I don't actually spend our lives eating cupcakes, mainly because it would make us fat and unhealthy.  These are some slightly squashed (they travelled in Jon's bag from North Berwick) mini ones from Cath's Cupcakes.  Isn't that a great packaging idea? 

We headed out to North Berwick today for a food fair organised by Slow Food East Lothian.  We recognised a few stalls from Edinburgh Farmer's Market but there were several that were new to us, including Cath's Cupcakes (incidentally these are very tasty and highly recommended.  We didn't spend that long at the fair and I was disappointed at the lack of hot vegetarian food available, all there was for lunch was a cheese platter, and that may not be much good if you are a strict vegetarian, or like me, can't eat too much cheese.  Jon enjoyed his burger and I created a sandwich of sorts using marinated olives and feta and a roll I was kindly allowed to buy separately from the meat soup.  We finished off with chocolate ice creams (sorbet for me, and that tasted pretty rich!) from The Chocolate Tree, who produce an amazing array of chocolate goodies.  A wander along the beach rounded off our time there nicely.

Yesterday I met fellow blogger, knitter and librarian Catrin from everyday life (wearing her gorgeous candle flame shawl).  She has come over from Sweden to have a little tour of the UK to celebrate her birthday.  We went to knit and eat cake at K1 Yarns, and managed not to buy the entire shop, then enjoyed lunch at The Elephant House.  Lovely to meet you Catrin and enjoy the rest of your stay here!

Summertime

We got the River Cottage Preserves book as a wedding present and a few weeks ago Jon made the yummy strawberry jam that you can see above.  I made some elderflower cordial from Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook , using elderflower heads we picked along the Union Canal.

So life's been quite summery, even if today has seen terrible rain in Edinburgh.  Saturday was very sunny and made even more so by Emily and her family coming to see us.  We plied with them lots of good food (including waffles from our new wafflemaker, wedding present from my dad and M) and then had toy lawnmower/buggy races in the back green.  'Two hands, Mummy!  Two hands!' was the insistent declaration of rules.

Be thinking of Em and her family on Thursday, she'll be having the first operation to take out her tracheostomy tube.  She's come so far since Jon and I first met her as a little baby in ICU at Yorkhill, go for it Emily!