Milestone: 200 Posts and another give-away!

I  have got a few good reasons for a give-away with this post!  Firstly, this is my 200th post; they seem to have gone by in a flash and I have really enjoyed writing them! Secondly, another birthday is just around the corner and I don't want to think where that time has gone!  Thirdly, this month sees our 30th wedding anniversary and what an amazing 30 years it has been.  Sadly, we will be  spending the day in different countries, but we can drink to each other over a video call on Skype. Celebrations will come later!  What would we have done without Skype during our long periods of separation? - life would have been even more difficult, so a big thanks to them!  I would like to say thank you so much to Nigel for a very happy 30 years,  I hope it will be very soon that we are together in France and separation  will be a thing of the past.  We have done so much together, but so much apart; retirement, hopefully, will be a long and happy period of togetherness.

I have made the choker, bracelet and earrings, shown below, to give away; all you have to do to win them is to be a Google follower of my blog and comment on this post. Easy!! I will then select the lucky winner in two weeks time with random.org and notify you all of the result.  The winner can then  provide me with their postal address  and I will send the package off!

I will finish this post with a few interesting statistics from the last 199 posts and my thanks to my loyal followers:-


All time history of page views = 26,890

Number of comments to date: 6,953


Blog with the most views = Mystery French classic car update 401 viewings
Second = Some bugs and insects around our Charente garden 205 viewings


Top 3  page views (by country) =
United Kingdom   6,245
United States      6,124
France                4,770


My blog has been viewed in 105 different countries; I am amazed and delighted but I think there are still another 60 countries out there which I must attract!!


At this milestone, my sincere thanks go to all my followers for their  dedicated interest and comments to date; however, the most viewings from one person, have  been made by my blogger friend Jean , so my thanks  and appreciation go especially to her. I hope I can continue to find and write about subjects which will continue to attract and interest my followers.


Good luck with the give-away competition! 

Another win, a recipe with no name!! and 100 plus followers.

Over 100 followers of my blog, I am amazed and delighted....... I thought this could take some time to happen, if ever it did.  I had also planned another giveaway when or if it happened and have therefore been caught unawares, as all my little gifts are in France. On my return there at the end of next month, I will try to put this straight, so watch this space......

It was with great delight that earlier this week I received my Valentine’s giveaway from quaypocooks. This is the second gift that has so far arrived; one more to go!!   For those of you who said that I ought to get a lottery ticket, the way my luck was running - I did and I am still waiting for the call!!

Please take a look at quaypocooks blog; it has some amazing recipes on it, many with an oriental flavour. The gift was beautiful homemade jewellery -  a bracelet and two pairs of earrings. Only the other day, I was trying to find earrings with pink in them and guess what; not only were there pink earrings, but a beautiful pink bracelet as well in this package, not of course forgetting the blue earrings as an extra. Thank you so much for this delightful gift, it is really appreciated.

This morning, as I did not feel like going out in the rain to the shops for bread or rolls, I thought that I would make some soda bread for lunch to go with the pate and cheese. Having turned up many recipes, I realised that I did not have the correct ingredients for any of them, and as I had no yeast I could not make ordinary bread! I eventually made up this recipe as I went along. The end result was not quite what I expected; it was more cake  than bread, but it went very well with the cheese and the pate, so I thought that I would publish it here anyway.

No Name Soda Bread/Cake??
3 cups wholemeal flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 slightly heaped teaspoon of baking soda
⅓ cup of white sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg lightly beaten
2 cups crème fraiche
¼ cup melted butter.

Oven temperature (I have a fan oven) 160C (325F)

Mix the first 5 ingredients together, then mix the egg and the crème fraiche into this mixture. I did not mix it a lot. but made sure all the flour from the bottom was blended in. I then added the melted butter, mixed again and spooned it into a dish that I had sprayed with non-stick spray.

I baked it for 1 hour and then checked to make sure that the skewer came out clean; it did! I allowed it to cool slightly then turned it out on to a wire rack to cool. 

As I said previously, it was not quite what I expected, but sliced and buttered, it tasted pretty good and it was just fine for a snack lunch.


It would though be ideal for tea with some yummy home made jam :-)

Click to see enlarged pictures.

I see that Mary has put her recipe on today for Irish Soda Bread so for those who want to do the job properly take a look at her post at One Perfect Bite.

Meeting the Happy Frog and winning Dolly Dimple

I have really had a run of blogging luck, the fortunate recipient of three giveaway wins in the last month, and then on Friday I had the pleasure of meeting the Happy Frog.

The Happy Frog lives in a very happy house with a very happy owner. I so enjoyed meeting them both, and over a cup of herbal tea (the only tea that I drink) and a delicious slice of battenburg cake, we just talked and talked. I felt as if I was meeting an 'old' friend, and that we had known each other for ever. Thank you Froggy for a delightful morning and I hope we manage to meet again in the not too distant future. Please go and visit the Happy Frog HERE. In her own words: “In 2005 I moved to Reading from London and Happy Frog was given to me as a house warming present. We have been through our ups and downs but through it all Froggy has kept me smiling. Now we are in agreement that we want to create a heart-warming, fun, at times surreal, happy blog; chocked full of nostalgia with the quite rare, but still evident, odd serious bit thrown in for good measure.”

Here is a picture of the Happy Frog whispering in my ear!  Note the replica of the Tardis on my left, if only I could fit inside!

My first giveaway arrived on Friday and I was delighted to meet Dolly Dimple. Thank you Diane (the other one!) for not only sending me Dolly Dimple, but also for sending me the pattern, so I can make some myself and hopefully find a market for Dolly in France. My thoughts are also running along the lines that maybe I can make a young French lad on similar lines with a rope of onions around his neck :-) Diane (the other one!), as you can see from the photos, is very handy at crafts and here as well as DD, are photos of her card (note the Parisian touch for me) and label that came with her. You can see Diane’s blog at Heart Shaped.

It is full of beautiful photos around the UK and from time to time updates on the beautiful crafts she makes.

Thank you to Diane’s daughter for pulling my name out of the hat, and for giving me the pleasure of winning and meeting Dolly Dimple. Just so you know how big she is I have just measured her and she is 800mm tall (about 2 foot 8 inches).

Follower Milestone and Jewellery Give Away

I have just realised this morning that I have achieved my 50th follower. Thank you Javier, for being number 50.  For me, this is quite a milestone, as when I first started blogging, it was simply to allow friends and family to see what I was up to when I did not have the time to send out individual emails.

I am both amazed and pleased by the number of people  with whom I connect  on a daily basis, from every corner of the world, through my blog. I thank each and every one of you, many of whom I feel as if I know personally.

As a small token of appreciation to all my readers, I have decided to have a blog giveaway of some of my home made jewellery. To be entered in the draw, you have to  leave a comment on this blog post, and be a follower before 30 November. Tell me also why you would like the jewellery and who it is for. I will close all comments for this post on the 30th and randomly draw a winner through random.org, I will contact you through a blog post announcing the winner, and you can then provide me with your postal details. This is open to everyone wherever you are in the world!

Matching  zebra earrings and Africa necklace. The earrings have non-allergic hooks.

Wishing you all the best and hope that you win these in time for Christmas.