Fooooood, glorious fooooood.....festival

Hello chaps and chapesses! 

 It's that time of year when the mornings are getting crisp and cool, the central heating is getting switched on, and nothing quite matches the satisfaction you get from a comforting, hearty meal. Quite possibly the best time of year to go to a food festival. 

 I went to my very first food festival on Saturday, in Llangollen. It was a heady mix of cheese, chutney, specialty meats, pate, liqueurs, chocolates, cakes for humans, cakes for dogs (yes, really!), pots, pans and cider, and it was great. 

Source 

Graeme and I were like children in a sweet shop, going from stall to stall tasting samples of pretty much everything. We ended up buying no less than five different kinds of cheese (because you can never have too much cheese), three jars of chutney (to have with our specialty cheese and biscuits), three enormous pork pies, two bottles of perry, some fancy pork and black pepper sausages, and a top secret gift for Graeme's birthday. Not bad for two hours. 

 After all that, we needed a Sit Down And A Cup Of Tea, so we headed outside to the fresh air, picking up a cupcake each on the way out (because what is a cuppa without a cake?). On our way in to the festival, we'd been given vouchers for a free doughnut with every hot drink, which I'd forgotten about until we actually got to the tea stand. This meant that we ended up with a cup of tea, a scrummy cupcake, and a warm, sugary doughnut. Each. Sugar rush? What sugar rush? 

I love those little cupcake pods, by the way.  Glad someone is taking the safe transit of cupcakes seriously.

 There was a male voice choir performing outside too, so we had some music while we sat with our cups of tea and more sugar than you can shake a stick at. It was a lovely moment, actually, enjoying the sunshine and the singing, particularly when they sang Calon Lan, which always gives me goosebumps. All in all, I think my first ever food festival experience was a success. 

 I used the fancy sausages to make this scrumptious casserole for dinner that night. Yum! 

Have you been to any food festivals lately?

Life is short

Hello chaps and chapesses!

It's been a topsy turvy couple of weeks here at Happy Chapess HQ.  I won't go into detail, but suffice to say that lately it's become more and more clear to me that life is short, much too short to waste on things that make you feel miserable and sad.  

I think Mr Bean sums it up perfectly (excuse his language):

Source

I've realised that life is too short to waste time on negativity, and I'm going to make a conscious effort to look for the good in everything.  It's so easy to focus on the negative, and to lose sight of all the shiny, happy things in life.  Here are some things I'm grateful for: 

My health.  My body is still in one piece, and it still works.  If I ask it very nicely, it'll even run a few miles at a time. 

My chap.  I'm endlessly lucky to have Graeme in my life, and even if we do wind each other up from time to time, I'd be miserable without him. 

My home.  Our house is rented, and there are a few things we'd like to change about it, but it's our home, and it keeps us safe and cosy. 

My job.  Sometimes my job drives me potty, but I work with a decent little bunch of people, there's always something to learn, and at the end of the day, it keeps a roof over my head. 

My people.  I've been lucky enough to have some great people in my life over the years - parents, grandparents, and friends that have become more like family.  I wouldn't be the person I am without them. 

What I'm trying to say is, don't waste your life focussing on all the things that make you miserable.  Spend as much time as you can doing what makes you happy, and make time every day to count your blessings.

There endeth today's lesson.

Belated Blogtember: Nike running app

Hello chaps and chapesses!

So Blogtember is running on a little past the end of September but that’s no bad thing – I’m enjoying it so much I thought I’d keep it going a bit longer.

I’m a bit of an on-off runner.  I used to run quite regularly, and I liked it, but over the last year or so I’ve fallen out of the habit, and tried to make an effort to get back into a routine, and fallen out of the habit again so many times I’ve lost count.

Enter the Nike+ running app.  This is a free app that tracks your time and distance as you run.  It uses GPS to plot your route, and it times you.  It also lets you choose a playlist from your music collection to listen to while you run.  Pretty standard, you may think, what’s so special about that?

What I love is that at the end of each mile you run, a little voice tells you how far you’ve run, your total running time, and your average pace.  This is great because it really motivates you to keep going.  I’ve heard an update and thought ‘ooh, that’s a good time, I need to keep this up!’  Other times, I’ve heard an update and thought ‘bloody hell Rach, put your back into it!’ and it’s spurred me on to ramp it up a gear.

The other good thing is that you can share your stats on Facebook and Twitter after you’ve finished.  For people who like to show off, like me, this is a winner.

For me, the only downside is that as I tend to strap my phone to my upper arm, I can’t see my progress.  I've used running watches before, and it's good to be able to glance down at my wrist and see how far I've got to go before completing another mile.  You could get around this by holding your phone in your hand, but as I frequently trip over my own feet, this would be a recipe for disaster.  The more graceful and co-ordinated amongst you may be ok with this, though.

As a general all-round running app though, this is great, and I recommend it.