Tales from The Shire

rtandon27

Wow Fortune - just incredible! 🐙🐙🐙

themadvix

It’s beautiful! Also, love the clock(?) in the reflection!

Jessy103

Looks amazing fortune! Well done!

Cheery_Daff

Wow, that's ace Fortune!! Great idea to paint on the slates too x

Fortune_Smiles

Awww thanks guys.  Yes, MadVix, it is a clock.  We picked it up from the county show when we lived in Kent.  It's a slice of a tree stump which has blue tits burnt onto it.

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

Expanding

I tried out my new to me yoga dvd this morning.  Really enjoyed it but some of it is quite challenging - planks, side planks, etc.  I think I'm ready for something a bit more demanding now though.  I certainly need something as I'm developing a little bit of a cake tummy 😮

Lunch and supper for yesterday and today were the last of the Winter Minestrone and an Oven-Baked Leek & Bacon Risotto.  I have one bag of risotto rice left and still can't get any more from T£$co so risottos are an endangered species in the Fortunate household 😆

Checked on the on-line T£$co shop.  No pasta either but there is a slim hope of getting some tinned tomatoes and tissues this time.  More importantly I've ordered us each an Easter egg.  I don't buy them every year but little treats seem important at the moment.  The scales would probably advise against it though 😄

Mr F has been told to take 70% of his holiday allowance before September so we need to book some dates in.  The paint has arrived so a week off to get some decorating done would be useful.

Hope all is well with you guys

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

Glad to hear you've got Easter eggs on the order Fortune. I love Easter egg choc, the shape just makes it taste different somehow. 

I'm going to take some holidays soon, although we can roll ours over. Doesn't seem much point doing that in my case, and it would be nice to hang out with Mr Cheery a bit more while he can't hang out with anyone else!

Fortune_Smiles

Cheery_Daff said:

Glad to hear you've got Easter eggs on the order Fortune. I love Easter egg choc, the shape just makes it taste different somehow. 

I'm going to take some holidays soon, although we can roll ours over. Doesn't seem much point doing that in my case, and it would be nice to hang out with Mr Cheery a bit more while he can't hang out with anyone else!

I may have started mine 🥚🙄

I think Mr F's employer is worried that people won't take any holiday at all during lockdown and then want to take it all at once when lockdown is over.  Mr F has been glued to the laptop/phone every day so we've only been gardening/DIY-ing at the weekend.  That's more than usual as we don't normally have every weekend free for pottering, but it's not enough if we want to get some chunky jobs done.

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

Pasta!

T£$co delilvered yesterday and bought pasta!  Not the wholewheat I ordered but pasta nonetheless.  Also tomatoes.  Again, not the chopped I ordered but they're easy enough to chop yourself with a pair of scissors.  And toilet roll.  Although I found a local delivery for toilet rolls, in the meantime, so we have plenty now.  No tissues or flour but pretty much everything else I ordered came.  I'm extremely grateful for anything frankly.  I asked my delivery driver about future slots and he said they were just getting snapped up immediately and those in real need were missing out.  A gentlemen on his round has just come out of hospital after heart surgery and he can't get a slot.  I offered my next one but I'm not on that route 😔

The Easter Eggs were included 😋 plus an extra bar of fruit and nut as it was Mr F's birthday.  I made the Banana & Pecan Cake for him as requested and it turned out really well.  We had a mexican inspired salad for lunch to use up a few bits in the fridge.  I went foraging in the fields and added some young hawthorn leaves and forsythia flowers to special it up a bit.  Supper was just a cheese and pickle ciabatta roll as Mr F disappeared off into the barn for hours and turned up to the table late.  We did open a bottle of red wine to go with it in honour of the day and the pickle was a special one we picked up from a local show last year.  Birthdays in lockdown are strange.  I'm not sure we'd have chosen to spend our days any differently but it's not having any choice about it that makes things odd.  Mr F said he had a pleasant day anyhow and I wrapped the books I had delivered for him just so that he had something to open.

We have been without heating and hot water since yesterday morning.  The boiler has sprung an oil leak and the whole house stinks 😮  We've found the guilty connection and boiler man is coming out to fix it this morning.  We will be keeping well out of his way.  I thought we'd seen the back of our boiler woes.  Ho hum.  I'm grateful that the engineers are still allowed to come out to us and we have our emergency fund to meet the costs.

Hope you've all had pasta moments recently.

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

Happy birthday to Mr F! Glad you managed to do some things to make it special. 

Sorry to hear about the boiler though - again!! What a nonsense! Hope they can sort you out soon. Our minor boiler issue never got fixed but I'm not remotely complaining as in our case the heating just doesn't go off with the thermostat - you just have to turn it off at the wall when it gets too hot (which is what happened in our old house anyway so we're quite used to it). There are far worse problems to have than ours! I'd be proper moaning if I had no heating or hot water though!