Book Review: Discovery at Rosehill by Kathryn Brown

Camilla Armstrong moves out of her flat in the city centre and into an old farmhouse in the rambling Scottish countryside.

Camilla is a spiritual medium, who ends up falling for the local vicar, but will their relationship be able to survive their conflicting beliefs? Or the return of an old flame? Why was she drawn towards buying Rosehill by the spirit of her grandmother? What secrets lay hidden in this old house in the country?

Part paranormal, part love story, part mystery, this book will appeal to everyone. If you are not a big fan of the paranormal, please don’t let that put you off, as there is a lot more to it than that.

I found the book to be a bit slow to get going. I wondered where The story was going for a while, but then, all of a sudden, I just couldn’t put it down! I had to find out what happened next. The book has nice, short chapters. I kept thinking, “I’ll just read one more chapter before going to sleep”, and ending up reading three or four chapters!

All in all, I thought this book was great. So my advice would be, grab a cuppa, curl up on the sofa, and start reading – you won’t regret it!

iPhone vs. Blackberry

I got my first smartphone in October 2010. I had a great deal, £15pm for 300 minutes, 300 texts, and 500mb of Internet.

The phone is a HTC wildfire. For the first 6 months at least, I absolutely loved it. I couldn’t understand why anybody would pay all that money for an iPhone, when they could have a phone like mine, for just a fraction of the cost.

Then, the problems started. Things had been niggling away at me for a while – the fact that the phone had practically zero internal memory, and that there are very few apps in the android market that can be saved to SD card, started to bother me. My phone kept flashing up warnings telling me that it was getting low on memory, even though I had only a few apps on it.

I was having trouble with the touchscreen. It was laggy and slow, and even now, I have trouble typing on it. The web browser is slow, and very temperamental. I keep having a ‘force close’ message popping up on the screen, but I have no idea what’s force closing! I even restored my phone to factory settings, to see if that would solve the problem. It didn’t.

The android market is fragmented. It must be hard for developers to make apps work for the many different phones that run the android OS, therefore very often, when an app works perfectly on one phone, it is buggy on others.

My 4yo kindly put an apple sticker on my phone, so I could pretend it was an iPhone!

My contract is up for renewal in September this year, and although I am aware that this is many months away, I have already started looking at other phones. Wishing to steer clear of android, and not being a big fan of windows phones, that basically leaves me with 2 choices : iPhone, or Blackberry.

I have an iPod touch (4th generation) and I love it. I do all my social networking on it, surf the net on it, and instagram is turning into a bit of an addiction! The touchscreen is not half as laggy as my phone, and typing is so much easier on it. My 8yo, however, does not want me to get an iPhone. She is worried that that I’ll be on my phone all the time, whereas if I have a blackberry, I won’t, as it’s more like a ‘normal phone’! I can see her point though, I am a bit worried that I might not be able to put it down!!

The thing that worries me about getting an iPhone is the signal strength and the call quality. From reviews I have read, this can be a problem with iPhones. I wouldn’t want to pay all that money for a phone only to find that it drops calls and has poor reception. Also, having another touchscreen phone concerns me – how do you answer an iPhone when it rings? On my phone, you have to swipe the touchscreen to answer a call and the screen often freezes, leaving me unable to answer.

The one and only thing that I don’t like about my iPod is the email. The only way I can get my emails is by checking my inbox, and, much as I don’t like my phone, email is something it does very well, it has push email, notification tones, and a blinking LED light.

This is why I am curious about Blackberry. I know they’ve had a lot of bad press lately, but they are famous for their push email and the thought of being able to push a physical button in order to answer a call, does sound tempting. They are also quite a bit cheaper than iPhones (depending on what model you get) and , I might be wrong, but call quality and signal strength seem to be better with Blackberry. However I do see a lot of people on twitter, complaining about how their Blackberries are not working, which worries me a bit.

I really don’t want to make the wrong decision again – 2 years is a long time with a phone you don’t like. Which phone do you think I should get?

Have you heard the one about…?

My 8yo just told me a brilliant joke:

A boy was in school when a teacher asked him for his homework, to find out what the first four letters of the alphabet were. He asked his mum “Mum, what’s the first letter of the alphabet?”
“Shut up” the mum replied. The boy went to his dad, who was watching rugby at the time. “Dad, what’s the second letter of the alphabet?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” replied Dad.
The boy went into his big sister’s room. At the time she was listening to Michael Jackson. “what’s the third letter of the alphabet?”
“Michael Jackson! Michael jackson!” his sister replied.
He then went into his little brother’s bedroom. His brother was playing with a red lorry and a yellow lorry. “What’s the fourth letter of the alphabet?” he asked him.
“Red lorry, yellow lorry” replied his brother.
The boy goes back to school the next day. “What’s the first letter of the alphabet?” asks his teacher.
“Shut up” the boy replies.
“Do you want to go to the headmaster’s office?” asks the teacher.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” replies the boy.
“Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?” asks the teacher.
“Michael Jackson! Michael Jackson!” replies the boy.
“how do you think you’re going to get through school with that attitude?” asks the teacher.
“Red lorry, yellow lorry!” the boy replies.

Pretty funny for an eight year old! The funniest thing to me was that, before telling me the joke, she said to me, ” mummy, I want to tell you a joke, but it’s got swear words in it, is that ok?”
You can imagine what was going through my mind….! After she had told me the joke, I asked her what the swear words were.

The offending words? “Shut up!” 🙂

It’s Christmas

I am sitting here, in my living room, 3 days before Christmas.

All Christmas presents have been bought and wrapped. I have visited family, and delivered presents to them.

All carol concerts and nativity plays have been attended. Letters to Santa have been written, and replies received.

Cards have been posted, the Christmas T.V guide has been purchased, and our festive T.V viewing has been duly planned.

Advent calendars have been opened, the house has been cleaned ready for Christmas, and the Christmas stockings have been dug out, ready to hang at the ends of beds on Christmas eve.

The Christmas cooking has already begun. The groceries have been delivered, and everything is in its place.

The house is eerie and quiet, and I’m waiting for the whirlwind to begin!

All that’s left, is for me to wish you all a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year xx

My trip to London

My sister has a learning disability and had to go to London for an appointment with a specialist. I’m a real city girl, I love the bright lights and the hustle and bustle, so when my mum offered me the chance to come with her and my sister, I jumped at the chance!

It was a long journey. I got on my first train at 8am, and didn’t arrive at paddington station til 12.30pm. Our train was delayed, and although we had booked seats, because of the delay the train company had been unable to reserve our seats for us, so we had to sit somewhere else. Inevitably, those seats were reserved by other people, who then also had to find other seats!

Being from a small town in Wales, even Paddington station impressed me! The amount of shops, and places to eat….it seemed more like an airport than a railway station! Our first stop was the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. All the doughnuts looked amazing, and the strawberries and cream one I had was gorgeous! The cappuccino was a welcome pick me up after a few disgusting train station powdered coffees.

We got a taxi to Oxford street, starting at john Lewis. Oh my gosh! It was huge! We felt like celebrities, because the ladies at the perfume counter were making such a fuss of us. A little walk further down the road and we came across the Disney store. I felt like I was five years old again. Just standing in the doorway, taking it all in, made me gasp in awe at all the amazing things there were to see. There were so many great things, I didn’t know where to look first! There was a whole section dedicated to toy story, one for cars, another for Disney princesses, a section for rapunzel (all to herself), one for the Disney fairies, Mickey and Minnie, and billions of cuddly toys. There was even a little room that children could go into and watch Disney films in!

We had to go to my sister’s appointment after that, and by the time we came out, it had got dark, and the lights had been switched on. Wow! They were like nothing I had seen before. It was like our local town lights times 100! John Lewis’ lights were particularly pretty, as was Boots. House of Grazed had lovely lights too. After having a bit of a wonder, we found Selfridges. The lights outside the store were beautiful and inside was just as amazing! We spent ages just walking around their Christmas department, looking at all the gorgeous decorations and ornaments. We also went to the Cath Kidston shop, and saw loads of cute little girls aprons and bags. Then we visited their tech department, which was like heaven for me! We had a play with all the mobile phones and tablet computers, before time started getting on and we had to leave to get back to the train station. It struck me that London was not that busy for the time of year – I thought there would’ve been a lot more people about.

We got back to the station, and grabbed a Mcdonald’s, before catching the train home. As our train was once again delayed, we had to change at cardiff, otherwise we would’ve missed our connection. The other train we had to catch, added an extra hour to our journey, so it was gone midnight, by the time I got home, and much later for my mum and my sister.

Today I am tired, but I am so happy I had the chance to visit London – and I’ve already started saving for next year’s trip!

Review: Vtech Mobigo

 

I bought my 4yo the vtech mobigo for her birthday in September this year. As she is a very girly girl, who loves pink and princesses, we got the pink one that came with the Disney princess game included. I also bought her the Disney’s tangled game, to go with it.

I was a little worried that the games would be too difficult for her, but she enjoys playing with it, and I have found that there are both easier levels and more advanced levels on both games, meaning it should keep her interest as she gets older. I also connected the mobigo to our computer, and we downloaded 3 extra games for her to play with, which were free, as we received 3 free v-coins when we registered online. The games include a colouring game, and one where you have to count how many bunnies are hiding – she really loves that one!!

It’s easy for her to set up and switch on by herself, and she can work the touch screen and the buttons well. Battery life is not amazing, but that may well be because my daughter plays with it all the time! It might be worth investing in some rechargeable batteries though, just in case. I also found that because my daughter is quite little, she found it hard to hold the mobigo in one hand, as is is quite heavy. All in all though, it’s a great buy, and it gets a big thumbs up from us!

 

Slow Cooker Chicken and Mushroom Curry

Serves 2-3.
Ingredients
4 chicken thigh pieces, or 450g  diced chicken breast
1 onion, chopped
1 tin low fat condensed mushroom soup
150g sliced mushrooms
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 teaspoons dried mixed herbs

Method

1. Fry the chicken in the frying pan to brown it, then place into the slow cooker.

2. Fry the onions until soft, then add to the chicken.

3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the chicken and stir.

4. Cook on low for 6hrs. Serve with rice or naan bread.

Silent Sunday

A-Z Of Me

Thank you MishMash for tagging me in this meme.

This meme originated from Lauren of The Real Housewife of Suffolk County

ANORAK – Do you have a sad side?

Yes, very much so. I am an emotional person. I love a good ‘weepy’ film. Sometimes a sad song, or even an advert on T.V can start me off crying! Usually I’m sad for other people. If I know someone has been hurt or treated badly, this upsets me.

BODY – What physical attribute would you most like to change?

I would love to be taller. I’m only 5’3″ and I have really short legs – I have terrible trouble finding trousers to fit me.

CELEBRITY – Which one would you most like to date, and why?

I love Tim Minchin. I like men who make me laugh, and he’s very easy on the eye!

DEBUT – Tell us about your first ever blog post. What made you start blogging?

I am new to blogging. I did start a blog a couple of years ago, but I was so busy with the kids, I had no time to post anything! They’re all in school now, so I started a blog in September, in order to keep my mind active and to build my self – confidence.

FUNNY – Who’s making you laugh?

My kids make me laugh all the time. The things they come out with are hilarious – especially my youngest, if she’s not on stage when she is older, I’ll be very surprised!

GRAND – If we gave you one right now, what would you spend it on?

Driving lessons. I would love to be able to drive, but with only one wage coming in, we just can’t afford for me to learn at the minute.

HOLIDAY – What’s your favourite destination?

I have to say France. I love it there.

IRRITATE – What’s your most annoying habit?

I have to sleep with my feet sticking out of the duvet. My hubby wraps his feet up in the duvet, but I pull mine out.

JOKER – What’s your favourite joke (one that makes you laugh every time you hear it)?

A man goes into a seafood restaurant – one of those ones where they have their own tank, you pick your food whilst it’s alive, then they kill it and cook it for you. This man really wanted a squid, but the only squid that was left in the tank was green, and had a really big hairy lip. “I’ll have that one please” says the man. “Ok”, replies the waiter, “Gervais!! Gervais!” A French chef appears, with a meat cleaver. He’s just about to kill the squid, when he sees a little tear run down the squid’s face. “It’s no use” says Gervais. “I just can’t kill the squid”.

“No problem” says the waiter. “Hans!!” At this point an enormous German waiter comes out from the kitchen with a rolling pin. “Sir” the waiter says “this is Hans, our dishwasher. Hans! Kill the squid!” Hans lifts up the rolling pin. Just as he is about to kill the squid, he sees the squid cringe and start to cry. “I am sorry” says Hans, “but I cannot kill ze squid”. “well sir”, says the waiter ” it just goes to show …….

That Hans that do dishes can feel soft as Gervais, with mild green, hairy lip squid”
Badum tish!

KENNEL – Do you have any pets?

No, we have no pets.

LOVE – Are you single, married engaged, living with a long term partner?

I have been married for 8 1/2 years.

MEAL – What’s your ultimate starter, main course and dessert?

Starter: garlic mushrooms
Main Course: lasagne
Dessert: cheesecake

NOW – If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be and who would you be with?

At the beach, in Tenby, with my hubby.

OFF DUTY – What do you do in your spare time?

I read a lot. Lee Child and Sophie Kinsella are my current faves. I also love baking, watching T.V and playing on the Wii.

PROUD MOMENTS – What are you most proud of?

I am proud of my family

QUEASY – What turns your stomach?

Seafood. Cockles, mussels, crab etc. Yuck!

RELAX – How do you relax?

With a big glass of wine! Listening to music also helps.

TIME – If you could go back in time and relive it again, when would you choose?

My wedding day. I was so happy, I could have burst! I’d love to relive it again.

UNKNOWN – Yell us something about yourself that no one else knows?

When I was 15-16, I used to work in a bowling alley. I was ‘Bolar Bear’, I used to dress up as a bear and entertain the children at their birthday parties!

VOCAL – Who is your favourite artist?

I love Adele, her voice is beautiful.

Work – What is your dream job, and are you doing it now?

I would absolutely love to own my own cafe. I would have big comfy sofas and armchairs in it, like the ones in ‘Friends’ and I’d serve fancy coffees and baguettes and cupcakes. I am not doing this now, I am a stay at home mum.

X – RAY – Any broken bones?

I broke my elbow in primary school, playing football on the yard.

YIKES – What’s been your most embarrassing moment?

When I was 8 years old, my school choir won a competition to sing at the child of achievement awards at the Guild Hall in London. I was so sick with nerves, I threw up all over the floor of the Guild Hall!

Zoo – If you were an animal, which would you be?

A giraffe! I’d be well tall then!

And now I must add some other people to take part in this piece of history:

Penelope Boone
Alex Watts

Lotus Flower Lily

Giant Cupcake recipe

Since I posted the photo of my giant cupcake this morning for today’s silent Sunday post, I’ve had a lot of inquiries about the recipe.

This is the one I used:
350g unsalted butter
350g caster sugar
6 large eggs
2tsp vanilla extract
350g plain flour
4-5 tbsp milk
5tsp baking powder
4tbsp raspberry jam.
(if you want the chocolate version, like I made, substitute 50g of the flour for 50g of cocoa powder)

For the buttercream icing:
150g unsalted butter
450g icing sugar

Method:
Mix together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. This usually takes about 2-3 minutes with an electric mixer. Very gradually add the beaten eggs and stir in the vanilla extract. Sift together the flour and the baking powder and fold in to the cake mixture. Add the milk and mix until smooth. Share the cake mix between the 2 greased cupcake tins. Place in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees. Should take around 35-40 minutes. I cooked mine on a slightly lower temperature and I think it took about an hour to cook – I timed it for 40 minutes then checked on it every 5 minutes after that.

The best tip I can give you for using silicone giant cupcake tins is this: invest in some ‘wilton cake release’ . I got mine from lakeland but I’m not sure if you can buy it anywhere else. It’s a non hydrogenated oil that greased and flours pans in one step. I put a fair amount of it in both pans, and spread it around with a pastry brush, before adding the cake mix. I don’t know why it works, but it does! Also you must resist the temptation to take the finished cake out of the pan before it has cooled completely, or the top half of the cupcake is liable to crumble!

After removing the cake from the pans, spread the raspberry jam evenly over the top of the bottom half of the cupcake, and sandwich both parts together. To make the icing, mix the butter and the sifted icing sugar together and spoon into a piping bag. Pipe swirls onto the top half of the cupcake and decorate with sprinkles, or edible glitter.