Weekend Recap

Ever have weekend's when you just get loads done? I had one of those this weekend just gone.

We had a lovely little lie in on Saturday morning, then Mr H got up and took Dolly to the vets. This is the only bad bit of the whole weekend. The vet has found a lump the size of a grain of rice in a place where the sun does not shine. We've got to take her back in a month and we're obviously keeping everything crossed that whatever it is will have gone and was just irritation, I think it's going to feel like a long month!

When he got home we jumped in the car and headed down to Ikea. I reckon we must visit Ikea about 1 weekend in every 4 these days, it's quite a scary thought. We were relatively restrained, we took the stairs to completely avoid the marketplace and just headed straight for the self service and then the checkouts.

To say I was excited at our purchases would be a lie, I'm positively squealing inside. First of all, we got a kitchen trolley thing on wheels. This now lives inside our giant cupboard in our kitchen and homes all (yes ALL!) of my baking things. This includes my KitchenAid, my baking trays, most of my ingredients housed inside a super pink bread bin, mixing bowls, cupcake cases, sprinkles, sparkles, etc, etc. It's a one stop baking shop that I can just wheel out of the cupboard anytime I fancy baking. It gives me a bit more workspace when I am baking and also has freed up a stack of space in our fixed cupboards and drawers to put other things in.

The other two purchases we made were for our spare room. We've been working from room to room in our house trying to make improvements to the layout and design of things (as I don't think the builders thought about the practicalities of living in a house with no loft storage). The spare room has been a work in progress for a while now. We're trying to de-clutter it by bringing all the media stuff (books, CDs, DVD, etc) downstairs to our living room so we can get rid of an enormous book case that has been housing all this crap for the last 3 years. We've been buying a few bits and pieces over the last few months and the latest two purchases were a desk and a chair. Welcome to 'Craft Corner'.

I think Mr H would die a little inside if he heard me refer to it as 'Craft Corner' :P. We've got a spangly new red desk and a totally awesome plastic chair (which looks like it's not really there). That's my new sewing machine hiding out beneath that plastic cover and my work in progress picnic basket and my new sewing box under neath the desk. The lamp is also new, I picked it up with leftover wedding vouchers (over a year since receiving them) from John Lewis. The base is clear glass and the black squiggley line is the excess cable pushed inside. It's a little hard to see from this photo, but the picture above the desk is Mr H's creation. Isn't it cool and colourful? It is made up from some of the AAA passes he's got from the show's hes played with his various bands over the years. We've got a box full of these and I think the plan is to make another frame or two out of the rest.

Whilst not new, here are a few other things that lurk in our spare room (taking deliberately to avoid showing you the mess thats in the middle of the room right now!!).

Some funky red filing cabinets and our new lampshade (all have been bought from Ikea over the last month or so). The red came about because when we first moved in we bought some vinyl stickers for the walls in our spare room of Robots. The robots are various shades of blue and red. Once we've got the furniture right, we'll repaint the room and get the sticker up on the wall.

The only other thing we finished this weekend is our holiday memento frame. Most people might perhaps remember a holiday by putting up a picture of them sitting on some glorious beach or something. We prefer to remember our holiday for different reasons. The Small Brown Bike show poster is from our holiday to Chicago in December 2009. We flew all the way to Chicago and planned a holiday all around seeing this band. The show tickets cost like $11 each. Best.Show.Ever. Not only are the band probably my all time favourite, the whole atmosphere was just spot on. American venues from my experience really do seem to get it right in terms of sound and American crowds seem to get it right in terms of attitude. The whole thing comes together in a really good way. I think what also made it a special night was that Mr H had contacted the band to say we'd flown 3,000 odd miles to see them and we got a shout out and a cheer :). When the evening ended it started to snow when we were waiting for our cab, totally amazing. If you've never been to Chicago I'd really recommend it, I absolutely loved it!

The poster at the bottom was pinched off the wall at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC in May 2009. We had our honeymoon in New York and as Mr H's wedding pressie, I gave him two tickets to go and see his favourite band. Now for anyone in to metal, the line up of this show was mental. In the UK each of these bands would be headliners in their own right, out in the states (I guess as its closer to home for most of these bands) we got to see a stack of awesome bands all on the same lineup. We'd had a long day pacing the streets of NYC, but the show was incredible. The bass drops made my t-shirt move. It was incredible.

Anyhoo, back what this blog should really be about! I made 4 new meals this weekend. Thai Green Curry, Steak Salad, Butter Bean and Chorizo Stew (with sundried tomato and pumpkin seed bread) and Gnocchi with blue cheese sauce, spinach and bacon.

This is the homemade (well sort of) bread and the Butter Bean/Chorizo stew. Mr H still is totally off Chorizo after the 'possibly food poisoning but I was fine' incident of last year. So I've got this all to myself. He did like my 'risen in my car' bread though :)

All the meals were yummy, the steak in the salad I made was cooked to perfection. Substiting Philly Light in the Thai Green Curry worked suprisingly well and was clearly much less calorific than using coconut milk. The meal with Gnocchi was also good, I'd never had Gnocchi before and I'm not entirely convinced I liked the texture but the blue cheese sauce tasted fab. Again I used Philly Light to bring down the calories by mixing it with a small amount of Saint Agur. Food wise, this weekend was therefore great, I love trying new recipes and most of these will definately be on my list to do again. The only one I might not do again is the Chorizo Stew, but only because Mr H won't eat it. I think the next time I might have that is in October when he's away for a week.

I guess I should also mention the 10k run we did on Sunday, poor Mr H was suffering, he'd over done it at the gym on Friday night and was a bit sore. However, despite his aches and pains we got round 4 minutes faster than the last time we ran it! I burnt off a respectable 879 calories. I also monitored my heart rate for about 16 minutes after the run (whilst we cooled down by walking the dogs) and that stated another 145 calories burnt just in the cooldown. Awesome huh! I treated myself to a chocolate brownie at Starbucks in the afternoon with a friend. It wasn't actually that nice, but I guess thats the problem with chain places and Sunday afternoons.