Snow, Songs and Foxes

Well December is here but alas no snow.... I must admit one of the reasons we got homesick in Australia last year was hearing about and seeing the pictures of the double whammy of snow that you got here in the UK.  We were very jealous!
I had a visitor in my garden last Wednesday, a beautiful fox.  I saw him right down at the bottom of the garden in the little wood that we have but then he disappeared and I thought he must have gone into the fields next to us but just as I was about to turn away from the window he appeared from behind the shed and proceeded to peer into the fish pond then sniffed underneath the bird table...how cheeky :)  Even though he is very handsome as you can see from the picture I now have to walk down to the wood banging a stick before I can let the cats out to play.
Www.lilyesque.com is ticking along nicely in the run up to Christmas, it was only a matter of time before word got around about how well priced my jewellery is, and there really is something there for all the ladies, young and a little older ;) so make sure you have a look at www.lilyesque.com .
Another reason to love this time of year is we can start promoting the Christmas Song that Colin and his friend Tony wrote in 2010.  Its a fantastic rock n roll style Christmas tune called "All I want is Christmas" by The Summats.  Its available on iTunes http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/all-i-want-is-christmas-single/id402973211 .  This year I have promised the band that I will get it played on BBC Radio, so far I have sent it to Fearne Cotton, Chris Moyles, Chris Evans and Dermot O'Leary but not heard anything back from them.  If you do buy it and like it make sure you get in touch with your local radio station and tell them to play it.  It would be great to have a proper Christmas song at No 1 not an X Factor song AGAIN, although I do like the idea of the Military Wives song that will be released on 19th December, good luck to them as all the proceeds are going to charity.  Have you all done or at least started you Christmas shopping yet?  I have started mine but will have to carry on this weekend.  We are going to check out the Christmas Market at Canterbury on Saturday or Sunday so I will let you know how that turns out. 
We went to The Conningbrook in Kennington for a meal on Sunday evening which was very nice, they have a huge outdoor area that I am looking forward to going to in the summer.
Well happy shopping to you all and let me know what you think of the blog :)
You can folllow me @lilyesqueonline :)
TTFN

Babes in the woods.

As I said in my last posting, Colin and I went to our local pub for a meal on Saturday night.  Its a small country pub but it has won awards for its food so we were both really looking forward to it. After the long walk (about 2 mins, tops...lol) Colin bought us a drink whilst we looked at the menu, he has been trying the local ales the last few times we have been in, which have great names like Spitfire, Shannons and one over Halloween called Spooks I think.  Anyway they had one that he hadn't tried called Seafarers which he enjoyed very much, even though the ale in the South never seems to have a head on it like it does up North.  The landlady said to let her know when we were ready and she would show us to our table, we had a choice of one right in front of  the fire or one just through into the next room, we opted for the latter as the fire was roaring and we were already quite warm.  I opted for the pan fried salmon with new potatoes and vegetables which was cooked to perfection with a lovely crispy skin and Colin went for the homemade steak and mushroom pie with new potatoes and vegetables that was also delicious apart from the crust being slightly over done.  So our pub definitely gets the thumbs up from us and next time we will both be a little more adventurous with our selection now we know that they can get the basics right.
We decide a couple of weeks ago that last weekend would be a good time to start letting the cats out for short periods of time until they get used to where we live. Well out they went on Sunday afternoon and they had a ball.  They were into all the nooks and crannies looking for mice and squirrels but I'm glad to say they didn't find either.  The best time they had was in the little wood/copse we have right at the far end of the garden there are loads of leaves for them to scoot about in and lots of trees for them to climb so you can imagine when they finally did come in the were fast asleep in no time. Aww bless :)
Thanks for reading TTFN
Please leave a comment if you like :)

Remember Remember .....

It's been a pretty uneventful week apart from Bonfire Night on Saturday.  We have missed the last 7 Bonfire Nights as we lived in Australia and Dubai so we were really looking forward to this one.  The weather forecast didn't sound too good, wet and windy for the whole weekend. I'm not a fan of rain but wind and rain together...yuk!
Anyway we decided to go to the display at the local rugby club, they had a bar, food stalls and a band on.  After paying on the door we made our way to the bar and we couldn't believe our eyes they were at least 10 deep, OMG! Well we got into the queue and waited and waited and waited for about 20 mins.  When we were about 3 rows from the front one of the organizers shouted that they were just about to light the fireworks and the bar would be closing until after the display had finished.  I was gobsmacked...all that queueing for nothing...we were not very happy bunnies.  So we went outside and watched the fireworks, they were fantastic, money well spent.  After the fireworks we looked around for something to eat but the queues were ridiculous, so we decided to get a pizza and go home to the X factor.  I'm guessing the upshot of this story is that sometimes we remember things to be better than they actually are.


On Sunday we plucked up the courage to go into the garage and get some boxes out to sort through them, but that was as far as we got before we decided to go over the road to our local the Kings Head for a couple of cheeky ones. We have booked a table for next Saturday to sample the food there as its supposed to be really good, I will blog with the verdict next week.  The boxes are here still unpacked but I'm sure we will get round to it sometime this week.
There's a new addition to our family as of 9am 7th November, a little niece for us called Ella and she is beautiful.
I thought my beadmaker was on the blink but I have discovered that it was human error that ruined 2 loaves yesterday...anyway enough about that :)  
I did say it was an uneventful week :)
Please leave a comment TTFN.

Monkey Business

What a lovely weekend we had here in Kent.  The weather was amazing for October still lots of sunshine around, the wildlife in the garden are loving it.
On Friday Colin and I paid a visit to our new local The Kings Head, it's a lovely little country pub, we have been told the food is superb so we will definitely be checking that out at a later date.  We had a couple of pints and I had a couple of cigarettes (my other vice when I have a drink) Colin was brilliant, he had hypnotherapy last week and hasn't touched one since.
Saturday morning we went to the local market, well that's enough said about that! 
In the afternoon the three of us went shopping in London, well mainly to the Oxford Street Primark, OMG, they should have T-shirts printed that they give away free at the checkout counter saying "I shopped on Saturday afternoon and survived".  The people are so rude and the baskets that Primark provide don't help at all they are so awkward to carry and manoeuvre around the isles.  We had something to eat at The Marlborough Head, Mayfair, which served decent pub grub, the prices were what you would expect being in Mayfair but hey it's not like we do it everyday. 
We were meeting my eldest daughter, Samantha, at the O2 Arena in Greenwich to watch my favourite band The Arctic Monkey's. We had decent enough seats, yes seats, I do love the Arctic Monkey's but I know exactly how old I am and even though I know that all the fun seemed to be in the "Mosh Pit" that was no place for me at my age, more's the pity :)  Anyway they were awesome and for anyone who knows the band they do a track called "505" which features a guy called Miles Kane playing guitar, anyway he turned up right at the end to play on 505, it was a very special thing.
On Sunday Colin spent most of the day sneezing (he's allergic to our male cat Becks) and moving wood to our little wood/copse at the bottom of the garden ready for when we get our wood burner. Sunday night we caught up on the X Factor, Micha B in the bottom 2 what's that all about, anyway at least the right one went home.  Frankie you're next!
Today (Tues) a very nice man from GGS Kent Ltd came and fitted my cooker...hurray!! I can now cook proper meals instead of everything in the steamer or microwave. I'm very excited...lol.  The cookie jar is just about empty so I will have to get some made tomorrow I may even put my recipe on here for you all, its not a secret, I can't remember where I got it from but it's never let me down yet.
Well thank you for reading and please leave a comment if you get the urge.
TTFN :)

Virgin Blogger

Well I have finally done it and got myself a blog!!
I actually don't know what I'm doing but I am a fast learner and hopefully will have some fun along the way. 
There are 2 main reasons for me setting up this blog, the first being that I have recently started a small online jewellery business and need all the help I can get to make a go of it, and secondly we have just moved into a new house (we being me, Mandy, my husband Colin and my daughter Mel) which has a stunning back garden with lots of wildlife.  The house is definitely a work in progress, although its perfectly habitable, we have lots of ideas to make it our dream home and I thought it would be fun to mix business with pleasure.

The first incident started last Saturday 22nd Oct 2011 when Colin and I went to our local Curry's to buy a new cooker.  I should tell you at this point that we don't have mains gas or an electric point for a cooker.  So we knew from the previous owner that we needed a LPG cooker, armed with that information we set off for Curry's.  The assistant was very helpful, thank you Richard, and informed us that the kit to convert the cooker to LPG should be inside the grill, and sure enough it was.  So we asked if we could get it installed when it was delivered and was told that yes for £85.00 we could have it installed.  Great! "When can you deliver?"

Richard said "We deliver everyday except Christmas Day and Easter Sunday".

So we paid an extra £22.00 to have it delivered the next day.

I was very excited about getting a new cooker as we had been living off food cooked in the microwave and steamer for 2 weeks.

So Sunday finally came, bearing in mind it was also the Manchester Derby on that same day and we all know how that turned out, the delivery arrived and was immediately unpacked for me to inspect...lovely. 

"Where's your gas boiler?" the delivery man asked me.

"We don't have one, we only have LPG but we've been assured that you can convert the cooker and connect it too".

"No I can't, in fact there isn't anybody at the depot who can do it so I don't know where that information came from.  They won't pay for us to go on the course so we're not qualified to do it".

So no cooker and we lost the derby 6-1....sniff sniff, oh the shame.

So I think the moral of this story is PLEASE retail businesses, make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, because we the customer are the ones who are inconvenienced and we all know that bad experiences get repeated more than good ones.

I will just add that when I went back to the store on the Monday to get my money back, there was no problem whatsoever, they couldn't have been more helpful, so once again Thank you Richard :)
So TTFN and speak soon x x x