cheery snow/cosy spaces

 In spite of the snow and greyness I'm in quite a good mood - the snow that fell last night is actually very beautiful on all the trees, reminding me of the snowy scene from Narnia. Thought these cheery pics might help lift my mood a bit more though, especially as they're quite cosy spaces...

 above 3: source unknown

Turner and Lane via the design files

 Jubella

above 2:  Lo Bjurulf

The house

snow again

I'm just beginning to recover from a crazy weekend of snow and chaos. Our boiler leaked in its cupboard on Friday night resulting in ALL the sheets and towels which are stored in the same cupboard being soaked. I had to wash them all then dry them on Saturday while we tried to work out how the boiler had leaked and arranged to get it repaired. Heating working but still no hot water by Sunday so we all had a bath the old fashioned way - boiling water on the stove and having a bucket bath! Fingers crossed it'll all be back to normal by tomorrow. Meanwhile heavy snowfall arrived on Saturday night which we stupidly went out in and took 1 hour to get home from 5 miles away at 1am, then went across London again in it on Sunday - LOL!

more snow...

I thought it was exciting to have snow on Friday but yesterday this happened (see below) and there are no signs of it melting!

our back garden

sun and snow

This morning we had a mini snow storm - it was wild for a very short amount of time. Then the sun came out!

snow in the sun

just in case I haven't posted enough images of the snow, here are some pics from yesterday when the sun shone on all the brilliant whiteness - magical!

yet more snow!

this is the view from my kitchen window this morning

and by the evening the amount of snow on these trees had doubled!

More ice

It's still icy outside - this morning we woke up to fog and heavy frost everywhere. It's unbelievable to have snow still on the ground - completely unmelted - for a sixth day running! (the 5 bottle-brush plants I have growing in pots on the patio seem to have survived the frost - they're now in their third year and this is their first winter being left outside)

Snow!

Today we woke up to snow! This is about as heavy as London snow gets, and it will all be gone by lunch time, but nevertheless, it is snow!

Chai

so I am making some chai to keep warm... here's the recipe for 2 mugs of chai:

Add one mug-full of water to a saucepan. Throw in half a teaspoon of bruised green cardamom seeds, a teaspoon of fennel seeds, half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a dash of ground black pepper.

Grate some fresh ginger into the saucepan.

Add 1 teaspoon of loose tea (preferably an Indian brand) per cup and sugar to taste (usually requires more sugar than a normal cup of tea).

Add one mug-full of milk and bring to the boil. You need to reboil it about 3 times to get 'the taste'.

Pour through strainer into 2 mugs and enjoy!

yum!



More Snow

I just took some more photos (not so good quality from my mobile phone) of snowy fields near my son's school - absolutely beautiful!

and coming out of the house we saw some fox footprints in the snow - how cute!