... is excited!!

I have just gotten off the phone(I have a picture in my head of me physically sitting on the phone now) with the Mum I was meeting to discuss being nanny to her one year old. I got the job! I am very excited about this, as she and her husband are lovely, and their baby is a bright, cheerful child. I will, for the first time in a long time, have a job that I actually feel is of value, and that uses my degree!

I start on Tuesday, and I can't wait!

Hmm, I wonder if I should get some new nannying clothes? (Dave would totally say I already

have jeans and jumpers).

I think my autumn wardrobe(haha, listen to me sounding like I separate clothes sesonally, I live in Scotland!), will have alot of dark teal and mustard, with some purpley winey reddy colours. I love dark jewel tones!

.. some blog award giving out, and some goodness and happiness

As I posted before, the lovely Hannah gave me a Lemonade Award for my blog (squee!), and there are a few loely bloggers I'd like to pass it on to. I'd give Hannah one back if I could, but I don't know if it's allowed? Her blog is awesome, quirky, fun and cool, and people should check it out!

It seems customary to pass the award on, and so some people I would like to give the award are

Kerri of Your Wishcake who is lovely, and full of optimism, and makes crafty goodness

Serena of Cowdy Calling who is quirky and freindly and multi-talented, and always encouraging

Julochka of Moments of Perfect Clarity who is bright and funny and quirky and has great taste

Lisa of Happily Ever After in Seattle who is awesome, and lovely, and who's blog is one of the first I read, and who has become my freind in real life.

All of these ladies are lovely, and encouraging, and full of the good!

In the life of me things are becoming more settled, and I am much less stressed. I have finished up work in Paisley, and actually live full time with my husband again! I am beginning to love our little flat, and with each load of stuff we bring up, it feels more like home. We started properly clearing out the Paisley flat on Saturday, no small task as Dave and I both hoard things. We took 6 bin bags of stuff to the dump, and 6 boxes of paper to the recycling point. The flat looks as bare as a Travel Inn rooom for the most part, and though I'm sad to leave it, It means that the little flat in which I sit feels much more cosy, and more like home.

In other good news, tomorrow I am meeting a couple to discuss being a nanny for their one year old 2 days a week. As well as making me feel better about our financial situation, it's also something I would love to do, and something I would find rewarding! I am really, really hoping they will hire me, and that I can perhaps do the same thing for another 2 days in the week.

For today, I am watching lots of cooking programmes, as I have been stuck in waiting for the boiler man, and we have a shiny TV on which i can watch food channels!

... my last week at work, and my shiny blog award!!!

Thursday this week was something of a roller-coaster of emotions for me. As well as being my last day at work, my little sister was going into hospital to have a fairly intrusive operation on her face.

Though I wasn't actually worried about the procedure, the operation was to be about 4 hours long, and my big sister neurosis kicked in. Having been told she would probably be out of surgery by lunch time, I phoned every hour from half past 12, getting no information really. She ended up getting back to the Post-Op ward at 5.30 by which time I felt physically sick. Added to this was my leaving work sadness, so I spent the majority of the day fighting back tears and anxiety. The good news is, the operation went very well, and she got to go home yesterday! Hurrah.

I came home to have a look at my blog reader to distract myself, and to my surprise and delight, the lovely Hannah, who writes one of my very favourite blogs, and is just lovely, has given me a Lemonade Award! This is my first blog award, and It made my day! Thank you Hannah!

I stole your polaroided version Hannah, it is just too cool!

Having noticed I wasn't having the best day, my lovely sister and brother-in-law took me to the cinema in the evening. We decided to see Dorian Gray, which was made in the UK at Ealing Studios, and was brilliant.

Ben Barnes anyone?

It isn't a happy film, as it follows Oscar Wilde's " The Picture of Dorian Gray" almost exactly. It does, however have a fantastic cast, very accurate and detailed costumes, and beautiful, and realistic sets. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of the fantastical, period costumes and a story with a strong moral.

Yesterday I went for lunch and browsing in expensive shops I can't afford anything in with my sister and stepmum-in-law, and then went for dinner and to a ceilidh with Dave and some people from the department he worked in in Glasgow. If anyone has been to one before, I am sure they will be aware that they are VERY tiring, so today I will be relaxing, and pottering around the Glasgow flat, tidying and packing.

...flapjacks for the new season.

Today is the first Sunday Dave an I have spent in our new home. Since if finished Uni, Sundays have been the one day in which we have a fairly set routine. I get up before Dave does, to watch Something for the weekend on BBC2. I hae a cup of tea, and about half way through, I make waffles, in the waffle iron I'm sure I have mentioned before. I realised yesterday that we hadn't brought out waffle machine, so as a subsititute, we bought a roll of Pilsbury Croissants( after looking around tesco for 10 minutes for it, due to a random nostalgia trip of Dave's), and I made them instead. I was a bit dissapointed by them, but Dave says they are as he remebers, so at least he was happy!

After having our waffles, I bake on a Sunday. I love baking, and its the one day I can do so without interruption. Today, I am baking a variation on a recipe I use alot. The recipe is for Coconut-Cherry Flapjacks, but I have always just used raisins in place of the coconut and cherries!

My standard version of these is lovely, but for my first bake in our new home and with the onset of autumn, I wanted something with deeper flavours. For me, cinnamon and treacle achieve this.

I normally follow the other ingredients exactly, but today, I have subsituted treacle (though less of it) for golden syrup, and used a mixture of muscavado and caster sugar instead of demerara for a bit more of that deep, burnt toffee flavour.

Flapjacks with Cinnamon and Raisins

adapted from Home Baking Cook Book by Love Food

200g butter

200g demerara sugar (I used 125g muscaado and 75g caster)

2tbsp golden syrup (I used 1 heaped tbsp treacle)

2tsp cinnamon(added to recipe by me)

275g porridge oats

2 big handfuls raisins

• pre-heat oven to 160c
• put butter, sugar, treacle and cinnamon in pan
• cook on medium heat till ingredients melt together
• take off hob, stir in oats
• add in raisins, mix well
• put into a 8inch pan(line and grease if it ins't non-stick)- the recipe says a 12x9 pan, which gies thinner, crisper flapjacks, but uning the 8inch gies thicker, gooier flapjacks which I like.
• bake for 30 mins, till golden and a bit bubbly (use you judgement here, and check aftr 20 mins)

These are nice hot with a bit of ice -cream, good for a breakfast on the go, and are good for taking on long journeys. I have made vegan ones with soya spread, and you can substitute a sweetener like Splenda for the sugar if you want to make these healthier - They still taste good!

...is settling in

After spending the past two weeks travelling between Glasgow and Dundee, In the best impression of a human ping-pong ball ever, I am pleased to say I'll be spending the next 5 days mostly in Dundee.

We are settling in, and with each trip, and each new load of our stuff, this new little flat is looking and feeling more like home. I still don't have my camera(I forgot it again), but as soon as I have any, I will post pictures. I was very, very nervous about moving, but in reality, Dave works roughly the same hours, and we both come home to a flat with each other, and the material stuff that makes us comfortable in it, and though we've moved half way across the country, our routine hasn't changed that much.

Today, I am giving myself a day off, as I have the cold, and am sick of ping-ponging. The nice Virgin Media man came and set up our internet, phone and cable TV today, and even tidied up the wires so they run nicely along the skirting where you can't see them(the previous tenants of the flat had TV hooked up in each room, and did not do it tidily). We don't actually have a TV or a phone here, so thats a trip to Tesco waiting to happen, however, the internet works, and is VERY fast, so I am a happy Lisa.

A little bit of news on the job front is that I had an 'informal chat' with the manager of Beaverbrooks (posh jewllery shop), where they are looking fo someone to work full time for 6 months. If everyone could cross their everythings for me that would be lovely!

For the rest of today, my plans are ; go to Lidl to get ingredients for dinner(lamb chops mmmm), finish reading my book(Samantha Smythe's Modern Family Journal by Lucy Cavendish), drink alot of tea, go to Tesco.

The job hunt shall resume with force tomorrow!

... has a new flat!

I've not really been on the interwebs much over the past week, first because of packing, and then because I didn't have any!

On Sunday, Dave and I started moving to Dundee. We are moving our stuff up a bit at a time, because I have 3 more weeks of work down here. Due to some complications(long story, but a freind messed us around, and we lost a chunk of money), we ended up moving into a flat we hadn't actually seen. I was pleasantly surprised though.

The bad points are that the living room is quite small, and has the tiny kitchen in it. The kitchen is essentially a cooker, a foot of work surface and a sink with cupboards above and below. It is made up for by the fact that our bedroom is huge, with original Victorian cornices and ceiling rose, molding and a huge bay window with a seat! I didn't take the camera up with me, but I'll take some pics when I go up on Sunday! I've moved in the important stuff - Boxes of books, pictures and cushions, kitchen stuff - so the flat looked like it was ours on the first night, which was lovely!

Now, it's down to the business of trying to find a job there. For us to not worry about money, I have to have started by the beginning of this month!

For the next few days, I'll be in Paisley, as I'm working Thursday to Saturday. The rest of the time will be spent packing more stuff, seeing freinds,and catching up on whats been going on in blogland!