Vintage Sunday

Hello chaps and chapesses!

Last Sunday I spent a jolly afternoon with my pal Alycia, wandering around the Vintage Village in Stockport.  Once a month, the market hall is filled with stalls selling all things vintage, from clothes and jewellery to books and brooches. 

We paid our very reasonable £1 entrance fee and got our hands stamped on the way in, like a twee nightclub.

When we walked in, I was overwhelmed.  There was just. So. Much. Stuff.  It was an Aladdin's cave of quirky vintage bits and bobs.  I felt like I was walking around with great big eyes, trying to take it all in and not miss anything.

 

I loved all the old-school dishes - I lost count of the number of times I found myself saying "Ooh my gran had one of these!"  or "I remember these from when I was a kid!"

The clothes and shoes were amazing, but I was more taken with the cute dishes and kitcheny stuff.   And the tea sets.  Ohhh the tea sets!  They were so twee and dainty and pretty. I'm now left with an overwhelming sense that I need a tea set in my life.  I don't know when I would use it, but that's not the point, is it?

I'll definitely be going back again.  After all, I'll need to start my collection of twee teacups.  Or tweecups, as I will call them.

Friday Feeling #1

Hello chaps and chapesses!

Happy Friday!  I know traditionally Friday is meant to have that woo-hoo-it's-the-weekend-I'm-so-giddy-get-me-a-Crunchie feeling, but it doesn't always happen.  We all have those long and busy weeks where you get to Friday and feel drained.

So, to try and bring a bit of end-of-the-week giddiness back into the world, I'm going to start a series called the Friday Feeling.  Every week, I'll post about some of the things that have made me smile over the past few days, in the hope that they'll spread a little weekend cheer.

Here are a few things that have made me feel good this week:

Katy B - 5am
I've had this song in my head for days and days.  I've had to keep an eye on myself to make sure I don't accidentally end up singing along to myself and serenading everyone around me - nobody needs that.

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Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl

I don't often read crime and thriller books, but I love this one. There are so many twists and turns to the plot - just when you think you know who the bad guy is, Flynn flips it around. I've found myself thinking a lot about the the idea that we present a certain version of ourselves to the world, and how that can be different to who we really are.  I love a book that makes me think!  I'll do a proper review when I've finished reading the book, which won't be long!

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Using my brain

I went down to London on Tuesday for a training day for work.  Although it was a long day (up at 5am, home at 9pm - ouch!) it was well worth it.  I met some interesting people and learned loads. It felt so good to use my brain, and to actually learn stuff!  I've been missing that feeling since I graduated.

What's been making you feel shiny and jolly this week?  

Have a splendid weekend!

Recipe: Simple avocado pasta sauce

Hello chaps and chapesses!

This is a recipe for a really quick and simple pasta sauce.  I originally found this recipe on Pinterest.  There are a few variations out there, but this is my Happy Chapess version.

Here's what you'll need:

an avocado

a dash of olive oil

a good splash of lemon juice

a smattering of salt

as much black pepper as you can shake a stick at

a blender

some pasta

I don't use precise measurements because this is one of those recipes you can tweak to suit your taste.

First of all, cook your pasta.

While your pasta's bubbling away, dice your avocado, and put all the ingredients into a bowl together.  Don't use too much oil, as you don't want your sauce to be greasy. You can always add more later if you think it needs it.

Use a blender to jhujjj (real word there) all the ingredients together.  If, like me, you use a hand blender, you may want to start off by gently pulsing so that you don't get bits of avocado flying around your kitchen.  Believe me, it gets everywhere.

Blend it until it's smooth.  This will take approximately 10 seconds.

Taste your sauce and add more lemon juice / salt / pepper.  Keep playing with it until you get the right balance to suit your own taste.

When you're happy with it, stir it through your cooked pasta.  I tend to add mushrooms, ham and sun dried tomatoes to mine.  Tomatoes work really well with avocado, and I will take every opportunity to add in a mushroom where I can.  The ham is kind of an afterthought, but it works.

The creamy texture of this makes it feel like proper comfort food, even though it only uses a few ingredients and only takes a couple of minutes to create.  Bon appetit!

The beach is for life, not just for summer

Hello chaps and chapesses!

With some parts of the country still recovering from the Biggest Storm Since The Eighties, I think we can safely say that summer is over.  But that doesn't mean that you can't still enjoy a good old day out at the seaside.

Not to be deterred by the gale force winds, we spent last Saturday exploring what is apparently the best beach in the UK, and the third best in Europe: Rhossili Bay.  With three miles of clean, unspoiled sandy beach, a shipwreck, and a rugged peninsula shaped like a worm, it's not hard to see why it's received such high accolades.

We spent the afternoon exploring the beach (trying not to get blown away), throwing stones and watching Toby playing in the waves.  He had a great time, splashing about in the sea, and running after the seagulls.  We had one sleepy pup that evening!

I can imagine that Rhossili Bay is jam-packed full of people in the summer when the sun is shining - and rightly so, it's a gorgeous place to spend the day.  When we were there, we almost had the beach to ourselves, which was great as it meant Toby could run and run and terrorise the seagulls to his heart's content.  

Best beach in the UK?  It's certainly up there for me, although Newborough Beach on Anglesey is equally gorgeous.

Tempting as it may be to hide from the grim weather at home, getting out there amongst it is well worth it.  Just wrap up warm and get out in the fresh air to blow away the cobwebs. When you do finally hunker down in front of the fire in the evening, it'll feel all the more cosy.

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. 

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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):

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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.