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october

Cocktail of the Week | Purple Monster

Purple Monster

With Halloween creeping ever closer, the ghoulish activities start to take over. We have pulled out the ‘BOO’ candleholder and our pumpkin is going to be carved this weekend. We have also started to stock up on the treats for any trick or treating monsters that might appear at our door!  Any excuse for a party also means a need for a cocktail.  With that in mind, we decided to try our hand at making our own Halloween themed cocktail.  For our creation, this week’s cocktail is the ‘Purple Monster’.

We have been making cocktails each week for six months now and hopefully something has started to rub off on our own skills in cocktail making.  Here’s hoping our researching, mixing and sampling will pay off! Additionally, looking in the drinks cabinet we found some of the lesser-used bottles and tried to find a cocktail to make use of them.  I am not entirely sure what we will be making from the Amarula, but the rest are suitably coloured to make something interesting!  We found a few cocktails that used the ingredients we have, but none that we wanted to try leading us to give our own mix a go.  Based on our knowledge of colours we started out to make a purple drink.

For this week’s cocktail, you will need;

  • One measure of curacao
  • One measure of spiced rum
  • One measure of cranberry juice
  • ½ measure of pineapple juice
  • Ice

Add the curacao, rum, cranberry and pineapple juice to a shaker filled with ice and shake well. Add some ice to a glass and pour the mix in. Nothing fancy to creating this week’s cocktail the Purple Monster.

The drink gives a suitable purple/black colour for a Halloween themed cocktail. The fruit flavours from the cranberry, pineapple and curacao do come through with the rum giving a pleasant kick. Sadly not a classic like the many we have tried, but with a bit of tweaking, we might have something!

Purple Monster

Purple Monster

27th October 2016
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How to Style an Autumn Porch

Posted in Dwell by
Autumn Porch

Have you noticed our love of decorating with pumpkins yet? Big ones, small ones, blue ones, glass ones! It is turning into a bit of an autumn obsession.  But it makes us happy so we’re not going to apologise. So we have decided embrace autumn and pumpkins for all it’s worth!

Autumn Porch

Our Autumn Porch

We are currently staying at Rich’s folk’s cottage whilst we are midway through buying a new house. They live in a very cute 17th Century cottage. The front porch is a tiny little doorway that we both struggle to get through without banging our heads.  We have hit our head more times than is funny in this low ceiling-ed home!

Autumn Porch

Pumpkins and Chrysanthemums

To make the tiny front porch more autumnal we decorated with pumpkins and chrysanthemums.  We also used our lovely autumn wreath that we found in Homesense and used some heathers, some hardy herbs and some old garden boxes and terracotta pots.  Chrysanthemums were thought as criminally old fashioned for a very long time, but in recent years they have had a bit of a rehabilitation.  In terms of Autumn colour, there really is no competition to the masses of blooms on each plant.  Our local garden centre had a great selection of autumn shades to choose from, we opted for a soft purple and a golden yellow.

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What do you think?

Do you decorate your outside for autumn, or just for Halloween? We love the colour and interest at the front door and have received many nice comments from our visitors and neighbours about our Autumn Porch. What do you think, let us know in the comment’s section?

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Autumn Porch
19th October 2016
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Top Five | Mellowness

Posted in Top Five by
Top Five

The weekend went by in such a flash, sometimes it feels like we haven’t had one at all. The rain put hold to our plans to head out on an adventure but we still managed to fit lots in. Let’s take a look back at last week’s top five:

One

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When we take Hettie, our dog, onto Horsell Common for her walks we’ve been noticing lots of people foraging for mushroom.  It seems to be a bumper year. We know nothing about mushrooms (and in fact Calum is alergic) so we stay well clear. We assume this is a poisonous one as nobody has picked it!

Two

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We like nothing more than a Sunday pottering around a home or antique shop. On Saturday we headed to the Packhouse in Farnham. A treasure trove of antique, vintage and new homewares that we’d recommend visiting if you are in the area.

Three

Blue Pumpkin

Our pumpkin obsession continues! We were actually looking for a blue pumpkin for use at our Harvest Dinner but didn’t have any luck.  We stumbled across some this week, in Lidl of all places, it has now joined our autumn collection!

Four

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You can’t stop a cat from hunting! On Saturday afternoon we found Annie prowling around the garden. She had spotted a little field mouse that she was determined to catch. Luckily we intercepted her, rescued the mouse and sent it off for a happy life on the common. It was tiny and adorable, we hope it stays safe now!

Five

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On Saturday night we headed down our local for a few pints. It was raining outside so we may have stayed for one pint too many. Sunday Morning was a little bit slower than normal, but to make ourselves feel better we had sausage baps! All was good with the world!

17th October 2016
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Top Five | Hello October

Posted in Top Five by
Top Five

This morning there was frost on the ground, the first this side of Summer. It made getting out of bed a bit more difficult than a normal but is was a glorious day so very much worth it. Today was the type of crisp autumn day that writers wax lyrical about.  With an autumnal state of mind lets look at our top five:

One

Chobham Festival at Chobham St. Lawrence Church

This weekend was Chobham Flower and Music Festival. Rich’s mum did a couple of displays so we took the time out on Saturday to admire her work. Chobham Church is a beautiful building, it brings back many memories of Rich’s schooldays in the village.

Two

Nordic Ware Autumn Wreath Bundt Cake

This weekend we had family visiting. It was a great excuse to get ur our Nordic Ware autumn wreath cake pan. We made Nigella’s Pumpkin Bundt cake. We are not being half-hearted about embracing autumn here!

Three

Autumn Wreath from Homesense

We picked up this wreath at Homesense to add to our ever growing supply of Autumn decorations. We love Homesense, especially for quirkier decor like this. We were also excited to see the start of their Christmas range in store, but we can’t get to excited about that, it is only just October!

Four

Glass Pumpkin from Lights4fun

Look, if you haven’t realised this by now we love decorating the house for autumn. We are especially loving this Pumpkin lamp from lights4fun we have plans to use this as a table centre at an upcoming dinner party, watch this space!

Five

Crockpot Slow Cooker

Hooray, it is the season of stews and casseroles. On Sunday night we had the first of the season in our brand new Crock Pot (we accidently broke our last one). We are looking forward to many more slow cooked dishes. Any recipe suggestions?

3rd October 2016
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