Heidi, will you marry me?

I asked Heidi if she would marry me and this was her response with a 'rude' vegetable!! :-0 (shocked!).
I made some beers last weekend and bottled them up Wednesday night, didn't finish till 12am, I was knackered. I am going to try to make some beer tomorrow, it's going to be my last batch (horayy!!) I think I will have about 200 bottles of beer in my storage cupboard once this last batch is done. It's so tempting to open up the cupboard to have a few, but I'm restraining myself.

We have been listening to tunes people have e-mailed us to see what they are like in order to get a list to give to the DJ. We are going to visit our friend Alex tomorrow (Saturday) to listen to his tunes.

Panic Station

Heidi said to me the other day that she was getting abit stressed with organising the wedding party. I said "Don't worry, it will be ok".
I'm suppose to be organising the food side of things and 7 weeks to go, I'm beginning to panic...AhhhhhHHHH!!! 7 weeks to go and I'm no longer a single man!! AhhhHHHH!! and I have to organise the buffet!! AhhhhHHHHH! (take a few deep breaths....huh...)
Ah well, I suppose I can always bake loads of potatoes :-)

Elderflower and wedding rings

I've just tasted my latest batch of Elderflower ale and it's delicious. I must make sure I save them for the wedding and not drink them before the wedding.

Heidi and I have now got our rings from the friendly local jewellers, and done the formal thing with the registrar office (on Friday 13h of Feb!) :-) . It was quite daunting having the interview at the registrar office, it felt like we were kids giving our details. After 5mins it became more relaxed and we both felt at ease. We both celebrated at the Beltane bar with a coffee and a hot chocolate.

We are both very excited about the wedding and can't wait. We also feel abit nervous about the organisation of it, so far everything seems to be going smoothly and coming together (cross my fingers).

I'll end this post with finishing my pint of Elderflower ale! :-)

Bob

Snowdrop hunting

Heidi and I went for a walk on Saturday (30th Jan) looking for snowdrops. While walking we saw some King Alfreds Cakes, I was very excited as I could use it for my bushcraft. It was on a dead branch and underneath there were loads of very thorny bushes but I managed to clamber on the thorny bushes and while trying to get hold of them with one hand and balancing myself on another branch, I told Heidi to take a picture of me getting the fungus. She scrambled into the bag, found the camera (after 2mins) then had to find the batteries (after 5mins) and when she manage to get them one of them fell back into the rucksack amongst other stuff. At this point she got fed up and told me to just get the fungus. Grumpy points (grumpy P) for Heidi! She was forgiven later when I found some more of the fungus and she did take some pictures of me getting them :-)

It was a lovely walk to Butterton, we walked by the river and saw loads of birds in the hedgerow, a Jay, a deep burrow underneath a large Ash tree and I saw a small mammal burrow into the drystone wall. We had a pint at the Greyhound pub before making our way to the car and back home for some delicious homemade lasagne...yum.

Bob :-)

Hidden Talents & Lavish Spectacles

We've had some lovely offers so far: Elderflower champagne from Alison, a silver mercedes from John (!) handmade ceramics and baking, including a wedding cake, which Anne has kindly offered to design and make...We are really looking forward to sampling things made and shared by friends. It really will be a ''bring what you'd like to find'' kind of day. Which is always good.

I'm going round muttering things under my breath 'two hundred wine glasses, and bread, we need bread, and labels, and fairy lights'

Agghh! Somebody sedate me, before I turn into Bridezilla. But hey, maybe I'd be like this even if I was just organising any big party. It is funny the effect weddings have though, its hard to keep your head when there's so much hype and consumerism around. So many things that are part and parcel, the perfect bride (false nails, me?), the lavish spectacle. Weddings: old fashioned, romantic, spiritual, patriarchal, a symbol of hope? Seems to elicit all these conflicting responses.

Have steered clear of those glossy magazines on the shelves of WHS Smiths, but reading blogs like Indiebride makes me realise there is some sanity out there.

Heidi x

Music - Please post here!

Ok, if you've got your invite and letter information, you'll know that we would like people to recommend music they would like to dance to. At the bottom of this post is 'comments' if you could put down your music selection. :-)

Hectic Times

This weekend Heidi and I have been busy trying to do as many of the wedding invites as we can. We have also started buying some of the wine for the wedding. I also aim to brew about 250 bottles, I have about 150 so far, I better get cracking!

Vegan caught in action!

Heidi and I spent Christmas Eve at my sister's we had a fantastic time. Here is Heidi caught in the act of going for some 'foie grais'. I'll have to send this one to the Vegan society! We had roast beef, and it was funny hearing the discussing about the proper way to cook beef, as the French say, "English people don't know how to cook beef" and vice versa. Lots of wine, champagne, delicious food, Jenga and Jules (Fred's brother [my sister's boyfriend]) favourite game 'The really nasty horse racing game".

We also had Fondu on Christmas day. All in all a fantastic Christmas eve & Christmas before travelling up to Buxton for Heidi's mum Boxing day family do (more delicious food).

*Note: Heidi did not eat the Foie Gras...(Heidi hit Bob's head)...ouch!

Christmas Deco

We decorated the flat before going down to my sister's on Tue 23rd Jan. We put greenery around the flat and hung the Christmas cards. We also manage to make the wreath, please see the slide show on the left 'Christmas Deco' for the beautiful wreath.

Deja poo

I recently came up with an expression "Deja poo" i.e I've heard this 'poo' (I'm putting it politely here) before, it came into my head while I was driving in the car. I thought it was pretty good. When I told Heidi, she just shook her head. hmmm....I'm wondering if she thinks she is marrying the right guy. Maybe I should try to be abit normal for the time being until we get married.

By the end of this weekend we hope to post out the wedding invites to friends and family.

Cold December day at the allotment

Heidi and I thought of planting some bulbs recently. The ground was too hard to wotk on and my fingers were absolutely freezing. In the end we chickened out with planting bulbs, instead we did some pruning of the roses and fruit trees.

Wedding Card

Heidi's friend Gabs has helped us alot in coming up with designs for the wedding card invite. We finally decided on a design which Heidi came up with intergrating some of the ideas and design Gabriella had. Heidi has been working hard trying to get it finished. Here is a quick look at the template. We're going to put a gold sun around the birds as an extra touch. I think it looks beautiful (you can click on the picture to view it more clearly).

Holly Wreath

I decided to make our own holly wreath this year. So I collected some willow and then some moss, unbeknown to me there were quite a few little snails in the plastic bag which I put the moss in. I left it in the kitchen and all the snails started to come out. Heidi was the one who found out that the snails were making an escape from the bag. When she told me about this sternly, I hummed the song for "The Great Escape", she was not very impressed. She put all the snails in the compost and tied up the plastic bag. The remaining snails are still in the plastic bag (I manage to get a picture of a snail clinging on to the plastic bag). Don't tell Heidi but I might open up the bag tonight and become the "Snail Liberator!", "Freedom for the Gastropods!"

Christmas cards

I have been very organised this year, got my Christmas cards done. I did the drawings then, got them printed than hand painted them. It took me ages.....the flat corridor was the production line after I hand painted them to leave them there to dry. God knows what Heidi thought of the mess!

Sage and Ginger beer!

Weddding plans going as planned. Heidi has been working on the cards, I hope to get some photos of it for my next blog post. We hope to send the invites out with the Christmas cards in order to save on postage!

I've just bottled my sage and ginger beer today, I gave Heidi a taste, she said it tasted like cough medicine..."Hump!"...well, I liked it anyway. I suppose this means she will not be eating her dress!. I said that once it matures (3-4 weeks time), we'll get some friends to have a taste and see what they think. Above is a picture of what it looks like.

Planting a new hedge - Sun 30th Nov

We spend the day planting a new hedge, we had got several small blackthorn, hawthorn, a dog rose, holly and a crab apple. As you can see from the picture, we prepared the outside of the allotment, we hope to get rid of the corregated iron once the trees are established. I left Heidi doing the hardwork (digging) while I took pictures for the blog :-)

Tree walk - Sat Nov 22nd

Oh dear I've not been keeping up with my blog. Here's a quick catch up, Nov 22nd Sat we went for a Ranger walk to learn to identify trees. Here's two, see if you can identify them (the answer is at the end, you can click on the pictures for more detail).
It was a lovely walk and we learned quite a lot about trees, especially the relationships with paticular species of trees with birds. For example, Waxwing eat the fermented berries of the Rowan trees asn as you can guess, they sometimes gets tipsy.
Ok, the answer for the trees, the first one is birch as you can see from the white bark, and the second is Ash, you might be able to make out the keys if you have super eyesight!

Next Brew - Sage & Ginger!

"What?!" I hear you say, "a sage and ginger beer!". Yes, it's going to be a herbal beer this time. We'll see how it turns out, hopefully it will be delicious (Heidi says if the beer turns out to be drinkable she will eat her own wedding dress!).

It's bubbling away ferociously in the kitchen, I just hope it does not explode! I've wrapped it with blanket just incase it does.

Wedding plans so far. Heidi manage to do a rough sketch of the wedding invites and had her friend Gabriella do some more creative work on it. Hopefully we can get the design sorted and printed by the end of this week (fingers crossed).

We have been working on the allotment today, planted the bulbs, daffodils and tulips, we hope they will flower and also be ready for our wedding day. There is a chance they might flower early or later dependant on the weather.

Halloween

Heidi and I celebrated Halloween/Samhain, we bobbed for apples in a bucket. Since I had juicy pear, I had a great idea 'bobbing for pears'. Unfortunately the pear sunk into the bottom of the bucket and I wasn't going to bob for it, as you can see from the pictures!



Here are some pictures of our success.

Bob Brewing

Well...the first batch of summer ale is done, I've sampled a few and it is delicious. I've managed to download some pictures of me messing up the kitchen and here it is! :-)