We all need to be heard for a little while.

Waves_and_Smiles

Good morning tea from the nightshift!

I hope it all goes as smoothly as it can do when/if FOH moves. Have you got anything nice planned out for yourself for after he is due to move in? It might be an idea to have something special for you to look forward to.

I am sure there are more things than we started with, somehow the clutter quadrupled as we took it out of drawers. It all mostly has a home now, the floors still need mopping and the cooker hob needs cleaning but otherwise we are ready. So we are being very proactive...(Yes, we have sat down for another mug of tea).

Stoodles

Ah, the spare room. At the weekend my daughter is coming to take away the bed for her new house, So all the stuff under the bed will just be …stuff

Waves_and_Smiles

Eeeeek! That would have been my worse nightmare a few months back, Stoodles! I had boxes and bags of 'stuff' lurking under the bed that had been there for so long that I had forgotten what was in them! Now there are still (less) boxes under the bed but at least I know that they are full of things that I need.

jobbingmusician

Gosh, well done to the night shift! My bedroom is in a terrible mess - I wish I had the motivation to clear it up.

This thread has A LOT to answer for - I wasted most of yesterday on hanjies!!!! I used to do them in the paper - there was a big one in the Saturday Telegraph in a period when the Telegraph were keen to give me a free paper every day.....

Very simple recipe for a cake which cannot fail (honest!) with a built in cheat.

175g butter (don't be tempted to use inferior spreads)
175g sugar
(These things are group A)

3 eggs

250g SR flour (now edited!)

EITHER some vanilla essence, or a lemon and some more sugar. Or something else creative that you would like to put in a cake (apple? Raisins? Chocolate? - warning, white chocolate just disappears. It does taste good, but you'd hardly know....)

You start with the cheat.

Bung the butter into the microwave for 40 seconds. Use this 40 seconds to put the oven on - about 180 deg.

Take butter out and fluff up with the sugar. (Wasn't that easy! No-one ever tells you to start the butter off like this! )
Add the eggs and mix it all up.

EITHER put your vanilla essence in, or grate in the rind of your lemon (or do something else creative - chocolate chips anyone? Coffee and walnut?)

Sift the flour in, and mix it all up. If it seems too dry, add about a quarter of a cup of milk (you could use water if you've run out.) About twice as much as you'd put into an ordinary cup of tea.

Grease a cake tin with an old butter wrapper, put the mix in and bake for 40-50 mins. It's done when a knife in the middle comes out clean.

You now either have a vanilla cake, or a lemon cake that is waiting for you to mix lemon juice with sugar over a low heat, and throw over the cake. Or something else (you are unlikely to get a lemon cake if you used coffee flavouring, I find.)

Try to let the cake cool before you eat it. (Normally a FAIL in this house.) If it needs icing, you make that by mixing icing sugar, butter, and whatever you want to flavour it with. (No flavouring actually necessary.)

If you don't have a cake tin, this recipe also works for cupcakes, but look at them after 12 mins when they are cooking, and keep testing until they are done.

Honestly, this recipe is so quick that I made a cake AFTER the timer on the meal had gone the other night, and put it in the oven before I served up, and nothing was burnt or anything.....

Georgiegirl256

tea_lover wrote: »

I always seem to get stuck in that 'worse before it gets better' stage of sorting. Most of my house is fine, as clutter freaks me out.

I hate clutter too. Doesn't stop me having one of those 'worse before it gets better' piles and it's really bugging me. :mad: It's a sort out for charity shop and eBay pile, I keep on meaning to start it, but can I heck as like get motivated to do it!

Re the baking, everyone actually seemed really surprised that I'm actually quite good at it! The mil says I make good scones and DH likes the lemon drizzle cake I make. I find baking quite relaxing, but I don't do it very often as everyone always seems to be on a diet!

Hope all goes ok with the insurers WaS.

Hugs to all that need them.

Stoodles

But i don't like cake. Can't we make buns instead?

jobbingmusician

MUCH more complicated! They involve yeast, normally!

purpleshoes_2

I bought my mum the marie kondo book and I read it before I handed it over. I'm not following it to the letter but I have way too much stuff. I've been here 19 years this year. I have a tendency to hang onto stuff I don't use, clothes mainly. Anyway the charity shops have done very well out of me this year.

I hate people being in my house too, made much worse by a flood last year, kitchen tap came off in my hand, rotten floor, not caused by that that no one would fix which delayed a new kitchen going in and caused 6 months of stress, numerous visits from various people, some exceptionally rude to me leading to me having to involve an msp.

I think the whole saga upset me so much because I've been living here so long under the radar but also suffered abuse from a notorious family that no one did anything about, yet the decision not to repair a floor that one joiner made sparked off a 6 month chain of events, more stressful than the last. And my new kitchen is lovely but when it was going in someone burst a pipe in my bathroom and a few months later I flooded my downstairs neighbours again.

The workmen were also really horrible to my cats. They went around the house singing we hate cats. One of my ginger toms hated being in a big pen I had bought and he was walking backwards and they thought it was funny. My other cat was a wee star which surprised me as I wasn't sure how he was going to react. After being in the pen for 8 hours the workmen put the empty pen my ginger tom had been in on top of his pen. As you do.

I think I did the happy dance for a week when everything was done and I got quiet again.

I really needed the kitchen, the old one was literally crumbling. If I hadn't had pets it would have been less stressful. I've had workmen in in previous times who were lovely. This lot were horrible to me from the off and hated my cats.

Pyxis

That looks easy! Might give it a go later as I can eat today!

Once I know the flour amount, that is!

Georgiegirl256

Does anyone here like Lush? I used to buy loads of it but then thought it got too pricey and the novelty wore off somewhat. Well, when we were down in London there was a massive new store opening on Oxford Street (2 days after we left though, bah!) and it's reignited my interest in it. The new shop has over a hundred exclusives (another trip needs planned I think!) and hopefully my online order should be coming today!