Halloween!

We had a halloween party on actual halloween (since it just happened to be a Saturday).  There were sparklers, a little bonfire, mulled cider and apple juice, a slow cooked ham and lots of autumn fruit pies!

My mum grew the little gourds last year for my sisters wedding and I dried them to use again this year.  The colours aren't as bright as they were last year and they are really light and hollow sounding but I think they still look pretty nice on the mantlepiece.  This year I've added some fresh pumpkins (which will end up in a soup or something in a bit) and some leaves, twigs and pinecones picked up from various walks as well as some poppy seed heads from the garden.

The smaller guests dressed up, George was a cat and meowed lots.

We had sparklers and a little bonfire in our cast iron garden stove outside.  It was so mild we even ate our tea outside too.

The sticks for the bonfire proved more interesting than the sparklers for some of the guests.

There was lots of food, including tonnes of sweets as well as these three pies which are from the left - boozy rhubarb (made with the rhubarb I strained out of my rhubarb liquer), blackberry and apple and the last one is apple.

This one was my favourite - I bought the little leaf cutters on eBay.

No party is complete without bunting in my opinion so I spent the Friday night before the party making some out of the pages of an old book and a sharpie marker!

George makes all sorts of marvellous art projects at nursery so I added these to some black and white string to make a spooky garland.

I love this glittery bat!

My sister gave me some spider web decorations which came with their very own spiders.

An autumny flower arrangement.

I had planned to carve lots of pumpkins but in the end I just did this one simple one.  Will try harder next year!  I made a pumpkin cake with the stuff I scooped out of it but after cooking for what seemed like an eternity it was still the most squishy inedible thing unfortunately.

I made this garland out of a sponge painting that George had done.  It was full of lovely autumn colours so I used my star paper cutter and cut out lots of stars and glued them to some black and white butchers string.  I love the idea that every halloween I'll be able to get this out and hang it up - whereas  the painting would have been up on the fridge for a while and then got put in a pile with the many other masterpieces he has produced. ;-)

Some more bunting, this time it's just ordinary printer paper and a sharpie marker taped to black and white butchers string.

We strung some rope lights along the bench in the hall which I really love.  They are so sparkly!

All in all it was a great party, now the back yard is pretty much finished I'm hoping we can have lots more gatherings out there.

Autumn

It's been such a long time since I posted anything on here but it's been such a lovely autumn over the past few weeks I thought I'd finally get round to posting some pictures of what we've been up to lately....

We've been working on finishing off the patio area at the back of our house, helped abley here by George and ducky.

I tried to go courgettes from a plant my mum gave me. As far a I knew courgettes were supposed to be the most productive plants ever and I figured I would end up with a great glut, but no it wasn't to be, my courgette plant only managed one little courgette! Rather than stir fry it or whatever you do with just one courgette I decided it would be best off as a cake. It was yummy.

We had a lovely sunny day out in rowallane, far sunnier and warmer than most of the actual summer days!

There have been many pies and I have used my enamel dishes at every opportunity! The top one is pork and apple with a creamy calvados sauce and the bottom one is fig, pancetta and goats cheese. They were yummy too.

We had another sunny day out in castle espie looking at the ducks, and a wheel barrow of course.

We had nosy neighbours.

And occasionally Belfast city centre looked a bit like Paris.

We had fun exploring the newly cut field on yet another sunny day.

And inspected the new decking.

We crowned the winner of our first annual sunflower growing competition. (I came last)

I made a lot of jam and chutney!

(Some free downloadable labels will be up soon on the shop)

We had some froggy visitors when we put down the new stones at the back of the house.

I spent a couple of days in the autumny loveliness of stranmillis college for work.

And I treated myself to a new scarf which is as big as a blanket, but what with all the sunshine this autumn I have been roasting wearing it!

We also had a Halloween party but I'll save that for another post!

Bluebell hunting in Castle Ward

On Bank Holiday Monday we took the camper van down to Castle Ward for a picnic and a spot of bluebell hunting.  It was a lovely sunny day but a bit breezy but we found a nice spot by a tree that was a bit sheltered and had a rather nice view of the lough in one direction...

And a view of the gothic side of the house in the other direction.

After a picnic of crusty bread, cheese and ham, George and his dad played a spot of football and we packed up the picnic things then headed off looking for some bluebells.

They weren't hard to find!  We used to come to Castle Ward when I was little and I always remember the seas of blue along the paths.  

Portaferry was looking lovely in the sunshine.

I really liked this little window, it turns out that it was where a person would stand to weigh things that were on the weighbridge.  They would have had the window open and inside there were a set of scales so they could determine the weight of whatever was on the weighbridge outside.

Having a look at the ducks.

And the goats.

Just before this shot a gust of wind blew George's sun hat into the duck pond.  Dee had to rescue it with a branch, and was cheered on by some other visitors!

A view of Audley's Castle from the end of Temple Water.  I love how they must have planned the view so the Castle was framed in the middle!

The wild garlic was amazing, it looks so pretty and smelled fantastic.  In fact after we got home we decided we really wanted some for our garden so I had a look on eBay and found a Scottish lady selling some from her garden so I just had to buy it, I've planted it at the back of our house so hopefully next spring we will have scenes like this in our garden!

More bluebells.

There were some gorgeous patches of daisies too.  I wish we had more daisies in our grass but we are just overrun with dandelions instead. :-(

There were some elegant swans swimming about on the water.

I liked these fancy gates.

When we were walking back to the camper van George fell asleep so we stopped on a bench in front of the house for a cup of tea and a bun.  The camper certainly stood out a bit amongst the cars!

Island Hill

One breezy Sunday George and I took a trip to Island Hill, the last time we were there it was a lovely sunny day but unfortunately the tide was right in so we didn't actually get to go out to the island.  Determined not to make the same mistake twice, this time I actually checked the tide tables to make sure the tide would be out and it certainly was....

The place looks so different when the tide is out.

There was some beautiful blossom in the hedgerows.

This is the path out to the island.

I spotted these walls and steps and wondered if maybe there had been a house on the island at some stage?

The view towards Scrabo tower.

The branches of the hedges had all this moss growing over it, very magical looking

There is a small airport in Newtownards and there were lots of small planes tootling about in the sky.

I loved the mustard yellow of this rock, it reminded me of this coat!

Island Hill is off the dual carriage way between Comber and Newtownards in County Down.  It is free to visit, there is a car park and the walk is pretty accessible apart from the bit from the main path across the lough to the island path which is a pebbly beach.  There are picnic tables near the car park and it would definitely be a good spot for a picnic or even a fish supper ;-)