Our $6.50/lb Turkey

Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

Me: I ordered our turkey for Thanksgiving.
Hubby: Ok, sounds good. Will it be fresh?
Me: Yup! It’ll be a 5-6.5 kg (11-13lbs) turkey at £8.99/kg or £4.08/lb or about $80.
Hubby: WHAT?!?!
Me: It’s a happy turkey.
Hubby: Well, that’s fine. BUT, that damn turkey better have a smiley face, a birth certificate with its feet print on it and a photograph of it being treated well while it was alive.

Turkeys are not cheap in the UK! Even though our US turkeys have ranged in price from $2.99-$3.99 (they’re free range, grass fed, no antibiotic turkeys from a local farmer or Whole Foods) and when buying food I do a £1:$1 exchange rate (if you don’t, you’ll never eat or buy anything here), the $6.50 actual conversion did give me a bit of a pocketbook jolt. BUT, since it’s only once a year and the one thing we splurge on are vacations and food, we’re going to happily pay. Plus, I have no place to defrost a turkey. Our UK refrigerator is not as big as the US ones and we do need the space for our daily perishable goods.

We’ll be sharing the day with a few friends. I need to confirm one still… I’m not even sure if hubby has invited them or not… but either way, we should have a great day! I can’t wait and between now and then I’ll be busy making place settings and finding little gifties for the kids’ goodie bags.

Oh, question for my American friends… do you prepare goodie bags (like birthday goodie bags to take home) for the children at all the parties you host or go to? The parties we go to here, the host always have something for the kids to either enjoy there or take home. I didn’t socialise much before we moved here so kind of curious.

On the crafty side I have this little card to share. I made this the other day but didn’t get to photograph it until today. I used a Christmas set by WPlus9: Classic Christmas. I am going with flat this year so you’ll be seeing a few more flat holiday pieces from me (postage is just getting more and more expensive).

Have a great weekend!

Start of Christmas

Posted on | November 6, 2011 | 2 Comments

I know, it sounds wrong, right? I mean it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. But, since Thanksgiving is not a UK holiday, Christmas preparations has started here.

Today I went to a Christmas food tasting event at a local farm shop, La Hogue. They were giving visitors samples of their free range turkey, chicken, ham, geese, etc. There was a little craft market too which was really fun to go through. After a bit of sampling, Emma and I decided on getting a golden turkey for Thanksgiving and unsmoked ham for Christmas. The turkey was sooooooooooo good and the ham succulent! Can’t wait to cook with them!!

Besides the food tasting we had a night of fireworks and bonfires. It was Guy Fawkes day yesterday here in the UK. Our village had a huge fireworks display and our neighbour invited us to a bonfire party after. Hubby made a super mean BBQ pork ribs. They were divine! Seriously!! And everybody loved them! We will definitely have to do a BBQ next summer so that our friends can get a taste of the awesomeness, HA!

Then my project… it’s a gift card wallet inspired by a folding card sketch by Waltzingmouse. I know it looks like a card but it isn’t. With a Scor-Pal I scored this 4.5×9 piece of paper at the 3″ and 6″ mark and then fold. The reason I used this method to create my wallet was so not to make the tag and ribbon visible from behind. Let me show you what I mean:

See? Clean on the back!

I need to make a few of these because I have a couple gift card gifties. I know it seems so not thoughtful to give a gift card but ya know, while we all love gifts, sometimes it’s just nice to pick our own things and have the money (the gift card) to pay for them.

I hope you’ve had a great weekend too and until next time!

Conwy, Wales

Posted on | November 5, 2011 | 2 Comments

Can you imagine having the above for your bedroom? FYI, THAT is the whole bedroom area with a little dresser on my left.

I finally have a little bit of time to download the north Wales images from my cards onto the computer. I’ve been soooo busy! I FINALLY got rid of a lot of things from the study downstairs after weeks (or months) of procrastinating. Next week: The upstairs!!

Before I get to the pictures let me tell you this: Accidentally going to Wales for our October mid-term holiday was the best thing ever! At first the girls and I were going to visit a high school friend of mine in the Netherlands. But at the last minute hubby said he got the time off and after hours of looking Wales was the only place that had cottages for rent that took dogs, children, near a lot of great sights AND not cost an arm and a leg. I decided on northern Wales because from what I read the northern side acts more Welsh than the southern region. Since I wasn’t sure if there will be another Wales visit I wanted our one visit to be the most Welsh and north it was. Before Wales I always thought that France is the most beautiful place but now… I don’t know!

Even though I still think France is gorgeous there was something about Wales that touched my heart. Even now, thinking about where we were, my heart somewhat skipped a beat. Sounds really cheesy, huh? But oddly, it’s true. I was even very motivated to walk the trails and did wish it was summer and dry so that we could hike up a bit. Hubby was impressed since I’m not a big fan of walking – I am only a city or shop walker (sad I know) or hiking (I don’t even own hiking boots).

I hope to go back in the summer. I’m not sure which summer, but I’d like to go back before we leave this island. I want to play on the beach with the girls, take their photos, and do more walking. We were though very, extremely I should say, lucky to have a dry week. It rained one day but only en-route to Caernarfon (a 25 min. drive from our cottage). All-in-all a glorious fall week we all had in north Wales!

While Wales was only planned in a week, I think we were meant to go there all along. That weekend we were there the Conwy Food Festival was going on. If you’ve been following my blog for a bit you’d know how much I LOVE food. It was great to have all sorts of Welsh food, and more, in one spot!! Sunday morning after breakfast we headed out and walked from our cottage (you can read my review on there dated 30st of October), across the estuary from Conwy, to the festival which was held right next to the castle. The walk was a pleasant 20 minute one and once we got to the bridge connecting Deganwy (where our cottage is at) to Conwy we took our time.

The first thing we did after we got to Conwy was go into the food festival. We tried a bit of this and that and listened to an Irish street band play some really awesome music. These guys were serious musicians, playing the streets before performing at one of the beer tents, and they made everybody want to dance. Very cool!! We passed by the smallest house in Great Britain too and wow, tiny!! Can you imagine this 6′ guy living in there? Living up in that bedroom? Then we went to the castle. The price was only £7 for the whole family because of the fair and it was THE best £7 spent on castle entrance ever! We didn’t know this but during the food festival the castle comes to life with folks dressed in medieval costumes, village, army, musicians, fights, etc. We were at the castle early and with not so many people in 21st century clothing roaming around I felt like we entered a time machine and was blasted back in time.

After the castle we had tea at a cafe next to the castle and hot fresh mussels from the fair. We were the last customers before closing and the cooks gave us two extra bowls of mussels (after the five we purchased). YUM YUM YUM!!!

Do browse the photos and read the little captions that I put on each image. I have a little video too of the fights but will have to share that on a later date. It needs to upload that onto YouTube first. Have a great one!!!