What a great weekend!

I had the best fun this weekend. Friday night was a bit of a non-event; the hubby & I stayed in, watched some crap tv and went to bed early. Saturday saw me having a monster cleaning session in preparation for an invasion of relatives! We had invited my parents, his parents my sister and her hubby for a feast of epic proportions. Thank goodness I didn’t have to prepare it all myself otherwise I’d not have had time for a quick gym session before everyone arrived

We started nibbling on bowls of olives, spicy pepadew peppers, gerkhins (yuck – I don’t see the appeal of these myself!) and we had bread to dip in some fabulous olive oil that my parents brought back from Italy and 12 year old balsamic vinegar that was so thick and goopy it may as well have been treacle.

My big sis made a fab beetroot soup as a starter which you crumble feta cheese into. I’m going to have to get the recipe for that from her as it was absolutely delicious even if it is so chock full of beetroot that it makes your pee turn pink – that’s quite alarming the first time it happens!! My hubby made a spicy goose stew with cannelloni beans and I made 2 pheasant, leek & mushroom pies for our main course all served with an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes and not forgetting some lovely 2005 Lussac St. Emillion that I’ve been saving for ages. It was definitely well worth the wait.

Finally we finished it all off with a lovely lemon meringue pie & a boozy cake courtesy of my mother-in-law and a glass of bubbly out of one of our remaining stock of wedding champagne! We had a really lovely evening with good food and good company – couldn’t ask for anything better!

The following day my sis & her hubby scarpered at an ungodly hour of Sunday morning. Although they did help tidy quite a bit of the debris from the previous night away before they left for which I am eternally grateful. Most of the morning I lounged around feeling very hungover until I could stand it no longer and went back to bed for a couple of hours for a bit of R&R and didn’t surface again until the early afternoon! I managed a few little bits and pieces (most importantly getting some greasy food in to help with the hangover) before having to head off again.

I went up to the big smoke of Belfast to stay with Annabee and to go to watch Ame du Pole (or the soul of the pole in English) which was a mammoth show put on by Polercise Ltd in the Empire Bar. I was completely flabbergasted by the show. The girls & guys who performed were of the highest standard and the show was so well put together it really did take my breath away. I’ve added a few photos from the night so you can have an idea of what went on!






Oh, and of course! I forgot to mention that we got a new chicken. I think she’s a suffolk but she’s much bigger than all the rest of them so hopefully that means that she’ll be able to hold her own against the rest of the flock until they finally accept her in.

Poultry Magic!

After getting over the trauma of losing one of our chickens last week I am finally getting back to enjoying going out to feeding and watering them. I think I could sit and watch them clucking about indefinitely. We’re starting to get a good crop of eggs from them considering it’s only just beginning to be spring time and hopefully their outside coop will be finished soon so we can finally get them out into the garden without fear of them being taken by foxes. Currently they’re in a big room in our shed with open windows for fresh air, plenty of sawdust for them to scratch around in, some chicken acrobatic apparatus for them to hop about on and keep themselves occupied and a few nesting boxes which they are most definitely using!

We’ve a handful of pheasants now too, although I’m not so sure about the likelihood of getting any eggs off them we’re definitely hoping for more pheasants to emerge! They are unfortunately still very flighty and are definitely not used to us yet so we try to disturb them as little as possible and hopefully they’ll settle down into their new home soon. I’m still not 100% sure how many pheasants we actually have as they are really good at hiding – every time I go down and count them I never get the same amount but I reckon maybe we have 5 (1 male and 4 females).

I’m not sure how many more birds my hubby intends to bring home to inhabit our back garden but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the last of it! I did hear talk of turkeys at one stage but we’ll have to see about that…