Another speedy weekend!

Maybe it's because I'm trying to pack in lots of stuff but weekends speed by so quickly!!

As well as painting the final coat of white satinwood (HOORAY!!!) in my utility room I had a wee bit of retail therapy too. I discovered that my local TK Maxx has an upstairs with tons more home items!! No idea how I missed that!  They do have some things downstairs but more than half the floor space upstairs is home stuff!  Luckily I only had loose change in my purse or I could have spent so much more.  I've been on the lookout for a white fruit bowl and they had a choice of 4 different ones.  This one was £7.99.  I also picked up a purple candle for my bedroom reduced to £2.  So less than a tenner was spent!

I collected a wee embroidered bee cushion from M&S for my living room I had on order.  

I managed to spend some more time tidying up the garden.  On Gardeners World Monty Don recommended pruning pumpkin/squash vines to encourage them to put their energy into growing fruits instead of more flowers.  My butternut squash is now the size of a pear.

And I found another one hidden under all the leaves! I doubt it has time to mature now but we'll see.

The mystery green squash is now the size and shape of a rugby ball.  Despite this week's high winds it's survived.  Now that I've successfully (albeit accidentally!) grown some pumpkin/squashes I'll put more effort into them next year.  And remember the varieties!!

Another lovely colleague at school gave me some apples.  Over 13lbs to be precise plus some windfalls.  She doesn't know what varieties they are but they were a mixture of cooking and eating.

I've cooked some of them into chunky applesauce.  Then I froze them in 1 cup portions for making baked apple oat cups (if they're good I'll share photos and recipe) and made an apple sponge pudding.

I've also made 6lbs of apple and beetroot chutney.  Lidl had loads of reduced bunches of beetroot.  It's a lovely red colour although you can't see it in this photo.  And there are still more apples to use!!  I'm planning to make some spiced apple jelly.

And so it's back to work tomorrow.  There are 3 weeks of term left until the October break.  I have big plans for my week's break so must get all the wee niggly jobs in the utility room and living room finished off by then.