Nearly Here

Exciting things are happening, I am currently waiting for the text message that say that my sister is in Glasgow, and I can get on the bus and meet them at the train station in Edinburgh. So basically this is me trying to contain my excitement so I don't head into town super early and sit in the train station for two hours. And thus this is the run up to getting the house ready for Caryn and Jackson staying over.

The room took a lot of work and it was so worth it, it is so nice having a spare/computer room that is clean and isn't full of junk. I can't wait for the proper computer desk and BOOKSHELF to arrive, I'm pretty excited about the bookshelf. It really looks great in here too, I just need to find a comfy chair and get all my books in and I'll probably never leave.

So here's a whole bunch of photos of us doing the patterned walls, we did pretty good for doing it by ourselves! It was more work and time consuming than you would think to pop up some paper, Dixon's dad really makes it look easy. 

And what would a post be without pictures of Edinburgh

I had some pretty good soup this week, felt the need to showcase it here! And a wee spot of drawing to cap it all off. Hopefully I wont be too lax and I will share all the adventure I have with Caryn and Jackson Soon.

100 Happy Days 29-35 and More

So at the beginning of this week I though that my next seven of the 100 Days Happy would be all about the new cross stitch I was starting, buuuut  I had amazing news on Friday. My application for permanent residency has been approved. So that shifted the whole week completely! Not that the new cross stitch isn't going well haha. But here they are, seven more days.

1. Mailing Birthday cards to Canada

2. New Cross stitch pattern, its gonna be huge!

3. Walking to get more thread, and the castle was being beautiful

4. Making Leak and Potato soup, YUM!

5. Celebratory Thai!

6. Lemsip for the cold

7. Sherlock and the Great Mouse Detective comparisons for the win!

To go into Friday a bit more, Dixon and I went for a meal, and to see the paper lantern terracotta warriors, that were on display too. I popped to see them in the daylight and at night, and it was more impressive to see at night but way harder to capture. But still really cool. And afterward we went to Chang Thai, for, you guessed it, Thai food! The food was so nice as the service was brilliant. I got a type of curry I had never had before, and Dixon had steak, and was feeling manly, and got it spicy, it was really spicy. But everything was so good even if it numbed Dixon's lip! So it was a brilliant day all around.

So this weeks Friday will be a Happy Day that will be hard to top!

We also had Champagne and Gingerbread with Gail and Gordon on Saturday, so that would have probably qualified for Saturdays happy, but I totally forgot to take a photo! I suck.

Ginger

So I have been on a wee kick of wanting to make new things, because always eating the same food its a bit boring and so even if you eat something new and don't like it, at least you aren't having the same old same old over and over again. So I found a new soup recipe online for Curried Carrot and Coconut soup, which sounded really good and all I need to buy extra was the ginger and the coconut milk, which was on offer so it was even cheaper! How brilliant, its like it was meant to be. As it turns out £0.61 worth of ginger, is actually a heck of a lot of ginger! About half a pound to be exact! So what do I do with this new found ginger windfall?

I found out that candying something is actually relatively easy, who would of though! So I made a whole bunch of candied ginger and it is excellent! I am hoping to make cookies with it later this week!

Now if I was a good food blogger I would have a picture of the soup, the process the whole shebang, but I am not very good at this. Perhaps next time with the cookies I will do better! But here is the ginger in all of its candied glory!

So for the candied ginger, there are loads of different recipes for it so the one I followed went a bit like this,

I peeled the ginger, apparently if your use a teaspoon it is way easier to get in all the wee nooks and crannies, unfortunately I didn't find that out til after I peeled all of it. Once peeled I weighed it as most recipes call for a pound of thinly sliced ginger I had about half a pound. so I used two cups of water to boil for 35 minutes. after boiled drain and reserve 1/4 of a cup of the boiled water. Rinse the ginger and add equal amounts of sugar to the ginger and boil in the reserved water until a thick syrup forms, stirring occasionally. Once satisfied with the consistency you can either drain and toss in sugar or pour it into a jar and leave to cool in its syrup. Though if you do drain it, the syrup is lovely for cocktails, pancakes and loads of other things. Its pretty easy.

Now the soup, the soup was lovely so I will be making it again, so fear not I will get around to pictures and sharing cause it is also super easy too!