On the Home Front in October

Here are just a few little things that have been happening at home since we returned from our trip.

We have a little shelf in the kitchen that I like to decorate seasonally.  The display for spring this year is rather minimalistic, which is very out of character for me, but it looks nice and fresh.

The weather has been all over the place, so when we had a couple of nice, sunny, warm days I took advantage of them and took my EPP outside and sat on the seats in our raised vege gardens and did a little stitching.  I’m glad I did, as there haven’t been very many nice days at all.  Hopefully, we will have some nice days soon.

The Bathurst 1000 car race was on the weekend after we returned home.  We are not car racing enthusiasts by any stretch of the imagination, but as the weather was bleak, we sat in front of the tele and watched a fair bit on both the Saturday and Sunday.  It was also a good excuse to do some hand stitching, both on my EPP….

And the outdoor chair pads.  The race will go down as one of the most eventful ever, as the weather was so wet on the Saturday that, for the first time ever, they didn’t run the top ten shoot out.  In the race there were only two cars that were not involved in some sort of  “incident” or sustain damage.  Quite incredible.

Mum had her 93rd birthday during the month.  My brother and his family gave her some beautiful flowers.

We had a little family afternoon tea for her at home. I made a new cake, “Queen Elizabeth’s Cake”.  

I was looking through Mum’s cookbook for her Christmas cake recipe and came across a loose piece of paper with this recipe on it.  As you can see, it is not to be handed on, rather to be sold for charitable purposes.  I thought it was rather appropriate to try it out, since we have just recently lost our Queen.  It is a date and walnut cake with caramel icing.  All in all, it is rather similar to a sticky date pudding.  It turned out well and I have now moved the recipe to my recipe book, so that it can be made again.

Finally, on the 31st it was Halloween.  Lots of kids go around our neighbourhood, all dressed up, doing the trick or treat thing. Our street is particularly active, so we like to join in by giving out lollies.  This year we hung a rather happy looking pumpkin decoration thingy out the front.  Not very classy, but bright enough to let the kids know there are lollies to be had.  Sadly, the weather did not play nice.  It got windy, cold and then wet.  Some braved it, but in the end, we were running the bowl of lollies out to cars to save the kids getting out in the rain.  It must have been so disappointing, as this is the first year that it was a bit back to normal.  That rain was the start of a very wet night.

And so ended October on the home front.