I demand to have some booze

Here at J and P Towers, thoughts have well and truly turned to booze production.

It's that time of year, it seems to me, when you look at your tough, leathery runner beans and think "What the devil am I to do with these!".  (Come on humour me, dear readers.).

We all know that we can pod the beans and save them to plant for next year, but, here at J and P Towers, we are making runner bean wine.


That is when we're not posing for silly photos....

Here it is - two whole demijohns worth of delicious runner beano vino:

Remember Mr J and P's magnificent beetroot?

Well, magnificent it may look but, unfortunately, a tad woody to the tooth.  A drop of beetroot wine anyone?

When Mr J and P's neighbour at the allotment offered him some grapes to make wine with, he thought he was just getting a few bunches.  Never in his wildest dreams did he think he was going to get this ginormous boxful:

There's kilos of the little buggers.

Mr J and P is going to be a busy little bee this weekend that's for sure:

OK, that's enough from me.  Tonight, I'm off to a 50th birthday party where I shall be downing copious amounts of wine I can tell you.   Cheers m'dears!

Missing out on a Jumble

I've been grumpy all week since I realised that I missed out on a jumble sale last weekend.  And not just any old jumble sale, dear readers, - it was advertised as "probably the best jumble sale in the world".   Aaaargh!

And what the devil was I doing last Saturday morning?  Tending to ailing pets (see my previous post if you must) that's what I was doing.  When I could have been jumbling to my hearts content.  Bah!

Luckily I have the spoils from a jumble sale earlier in the summer to show you.

So what are we waiting for?

Let me introduce to you my gorgeous Hornsea mugs (a John Clappison design):

Mermaid

A Chinese temple theme going on here

These mugs go for silly money on eBay so I was more than happy to pay 50p each for them.  Quite frankly, dahlinks, I wouldn't drink out of anything else.

I was delighted to add this wooden handled ermmmm utensil thingummy to my ever-increasing collection.

I think it's some sort of mashing implement.  I dunno.  Who cares.  I love it anyway.  10p.

My first proper Pyrex casserole dish complete with lid.  30p.

Since taking the piccy of the Pyrex, some clumsy oaf (mentioning no names) dropped the lid and smashed it.  *Sad face*

Doilies galore for 20p:

A selection of linens - some of which will be perfect for patchwork purposes when I have the time:

I really wondered what I was doing when I picked up my next item and found myself paying 50p for it.  We already have 4 colanders at J and P Towers and this one was in a very grubby and sorry state.  Well, it scrubbed up brilliantly, as you can see and is now doubling up as a fruit bowl in the kitchen!

Mmmmmm, what do you think this little beauty is?

It's an Empire made garden umbrella with a clamp that you can attach to your sun lounger.  How genius is that!  It's in fabulous nick and only cost 50p.

I cannot, for the life of me, remember the make of this.  I'm not massively keen on the design but I quite like the shape and it's a perfect receptacle for my vintage knitting needles (40p for the receptacle and the knitting needles - bargain).

A rather manky letter holder but I'm going to spruce it up, you see if I don't:

I'm a bit OCD about flasks.  Yes, I did say flasks.  As you know, we are a family of 3.  We now have a grand total of 3 food flasks and 6 ordinary flasks plus one of those insulated mugs and I have, for my own personal use, a NATO issue flask mug.  (I know exactly what you're thinking).  Anyway, we are very fussy about our flasks.  No cheap rubbish for the likes of us.  We favour the Aladdin and the Stanley makes of flasks - the Mercedes Benz and the Rolls Royce of the flask world.  I'm sensing that I'm losing some of you non-flask aficionados out there, so I'll cut to the chase and suffice to say that I was jumping with joy when Mr J and P scored the Aladdin Adventurer food flask, brand new and unused in its box for a mere quid.  Result!

Well, that's all folks.  Mr J and P is cooking dinner and I'm off to quaff some vino.  It's Friday night after all.

May you have a bargain filled weekend.  TTFN. xxxxxx

Linking to:

Thrift Share Monday
Flea Market Finds

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It's been pet pandemonium at J and P Towers this week.  One of our guinea pigs squeaked her last on Monday and her little sister is in a deep decline - she's stopped eating and we're all on hand feeding duty.  Meanwhile, I'm secretly fearing for our ageing hamster - he's not long for this world - poor ickle thing.  Blimey, readers, I didn't realise pet care could be so exhausting.

Our holidays seem an age ago now.  I can't believe that a week ago we were in the Lake District visiting Grandpappy J and P and the week before that we were in sunny (and extremely hot) Slovenia.

Yes, dear readers, this is the bit where I bore you senseless about our holidays.  Hurrah!

In Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, we spent a lot of time taking pics of grafitti art:

and relaxing in the "library under the treetops" - yes an outdoor library in the park, under the shade of some trees (did I mention that it was darn hot) reading English mags - bliss!

 In the north west of the country, we spent a lot of time jumping into lakes and rivers to keep cool.

We even did some white water rafting!  While Mr J and P was praised by the instructor for his "strength" and Little Miss for her "very good back paddling", little old moi had to make a fool of myself when we were deliberately capsized.  I got caught in quite a strong current and in my panic forgot what you're supposed to do.  What you are supposed to do is let the current take you to where it ends, then swim at an angle from where you came.  NEVER swim against the current for you will never win.  I, like a fool, tried swimming against the current and was quickly getting nowhere.  Strangely, my feeble cries for help were roundly ignored by Mr J and P, and another fellow rafter hauled me to safety with his paddle.  What a drama!


Talking of fools, when  we left Ljubljana to go up north in the hire car, Mr J and P was very busy extolling the virtues of the spacious car boot, only to arrive at our destination some hours later to discover that little wonder the boot was so capacious, the silly twit had left my bag back in the hotel in Ljubljana!  While Little Miss and I relaxed by a lake, poor Mr J and P spent the rest of the day driving the capaciously booted car to Ljubljana and back in order to reclaim my stuff.   Awww, bless.......

Our trip to the Lakes to visit Grandpappy was wonderful as always.  The highlight, for me was visiting the Ennerdale Agricultural Show.  Now I do like a good agricultural show.  My favourite event had to be the Cumberland wrestling:

It was brilliant and they even had a team from Brittany (France) participating.

My second favourite thing was the Horticultural and Produce Marquee.  Mr J and P and myself did enjoy looking at the vegetables.  Our very favourite category was entitled "Monsters made from Vegetables and Cocktail Sticks".  Oh no, I fear a new obsession coming on.......

This won first prize a penguin made from an aubergine atop a bed of purple sprouting broccoli.  Genius.

Personally, I think Mr J and P should have won a prize - brace yourselves, dear readers, and feast your peepers on his unfeasibly large beetroot:

Crikey, it's almost as big as his head!

And on that note dear readers, I must go as it's my turn for guinea pig hand feeding duties.  Bye bye. xx