You know the one about the effects of passing time…..

Who else but my Elly?  You know how it goes….

“Mum, I think you need updating!”

There are days when I am glad that I had only one daughter.  What must it be like to have an army of young ladies surrounding you like a gaggle of geese pointing out all those little faults.  Too fat, too thin, well the first never applied to me so that is something I suppose.   Then there is the “Take that off it makes you look….. look… look OLD!”

So I had a long think about this face lift.  People wonder why I seldom sleep!  So what options are open to me: a do-it-myself jobbie or let the professionals run riot all over the shop?

What exactly would I like them to do?

• A little Resurfacing to smooth the faded and tired layers.  A chemical peel or laser resurfacing.
• Pulsed light therapy to stimulate the middle layer.
• Creams & pastels to enhance and soften.
• Tissue augmentation to plump out deep wrinkles with injections of collagen or other types of filler.
• Botulinum toxin injections?

Are you joking?  I certainly do not want to last two.  I want a clean healthy make-over.

Facelift surgery is common in springtime.  However, in order to make an informed decision and give my consent, I need to be aware of the possible side-effects and the risk of complications.

• Staying under wraps while the work is executed.
• Being out of reach or contact for a couple of days.
• Acceptance of the new look

Right, I think I need to go over those photographs again.

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WARNING

The facelift I am talking about is for my blog and not me.  It will not happen today and I will give you plenty of warning before we have a break in transmission.

½ lb Chicken Breast cut in strips
¼ Sliced Green Pepper
½ cup Pineapple Chunks drained
Chicken Broth or Stock
4 tablespoons Oil
2 tablespoons Cornflour mixed to a thick paste with water
1/8 teaspoon Sesame Oil
1 teaspoon Brandy
1 teaspoon Soy Sauce
1 teaspoon Sugar
Dash Salt

Heat the oil in a pan and fry green pepper and pineapple until pepper is crisp-tender.  Add enough chicken broth to cover, and a dash of salt.  Cook for 1 minute.  Add chicken and cornflour paste, sesame oil, brandy, soy sauce and sugar.  Cook for 2-3 minutes stirring constantly.

Serve with salad and crusty bread

You are not in full time employment, doesn’t mean you don’t need to eat.

You are on a diet, doesn’t mean you cannot peruse the menu.

You are alone, doesn’t mean you are lonely

It is Sunday, does not mean the sun will shine.

If the sun don’t shine, does not mean you cannot be happy.

]]> http://www.grannymar.com/blog/2010/02/07/just-because/feed/ http://www.grannymar.com/blog/2010/02/06/caricatures/ http://www.grannymar.com/blog/2010/02/06/caricatures/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 06:12:03 +0000 Grannymar http://www.grannymar.com/blog/?p=6424 A few weeks ago there was talk of caricatures.

Baino way down under in Sydney was the first to strike.  She digitally played with one of my Podcasting photos from way back.  Right now I am unable to turn my hand to the original.

GM by Baino

Then moving a little further west, we have an entry from India.  Ramana sent this one.

GM by Ramana

And Finally…

GM as you have never seen her before.  I am not sure if it represents a woman of many parts or the fact that I am made up of so many odd pieces that it is impossible to make them all fit together.

GM by Maynard

I love them all.  Thank you!

]]> http://www.grannymar.com/blog/2010/02/06/caricatures/feed/ http://www.grannymar.com/blog/2010/02/05/the-visitors/ http://www.grannymar.com/blog/2010/02/05/the-visitors/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:48:18 +0000 Grannymar http://www.grannymar.com/blog/?p=6338

The brave souls Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Gaelikaa, Ginger, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria, Ramana of the Loose  Blogging consortium (Helen is on sabbatical & Ashok might be otherwise engaged right now) once more entertain us with their offering on the topic for the week, chosen today by me.

Visitor or Visitors

We had the yanks coming home to visit, from time to time.

They were relations who had emigrated many years earlier, flute relations that might have emigrated many years earlier, friends of the relations who emigrated many years earlier and sometimes friends of the friends who emigrated many years earlier.

Some how they all landed on our doorstep at some stage of their visit. The landing at our door always coincided with or included invitations around mealtimes. Sure it was easy, the door just pushed open and the kettle was always on the boil. . I often wondered if there was a hidden mark on the gate post announcing – ‘Drop in Centre’ or ‘Free fresh home made food here’.

Dublin was the hub, and we were no distance from the airport, sea ports or major train stations with tracks that headed north, south, east or west.

Back in those days if Mary Kate* was travelling from Cork to visit her married sisters in London or Birmingham, sure she had to come to Dublin by train to catch the boat to Holyhead in Wales with onward travel to her destination by train. It was a long journey and the poor girl would need a rest along the way. It would also be insulting to go to Dublin and not visit her uncle and aunt.

Naturally she would phone a few nights in advance to ask if it was alright to call in for a short visit. Mary Kate was not daft, she knew full well that if her uncle heard he would offer to collect her from the train and bring her home to a 5 star meal made by my mother. Once she was fed and watered daddy would call time and Mary Kate was whisked away to catch the boat. As daddy waved her on her way, he assured Mary Kate of a repeat performance (in reverse order) on the return journey.

When the yanks were coming things were a bit different.

Well they were coming from AMERICA, and we all knew they were living in great big white houses with decks and dens and basements. They wore long sparkly dresses and dinner jackets and bow ties all day long while sipping on Martinis! Their bedrooms were the size of a warehouse with beds as big as football pitches dressed in satin sheets and large animal print rugs on the walls and the floor. Plenty of space too practice the tango and not a dirty sock in sight.

We knew all this was true, sure we saw it on the movies.

So when the yanks were coming……  It was time for a coat of the whitewash!

Living in Dublin we had no outhouses, so there was no whitewashing to be done, but we had to give the place a lick of paint and plenty of spit and polish. The best china was washed and the silver put out on display.The orders were dished out; the girls sent to the kitchen to bake up a storm while the windows were cleaned and the garden tidied up by my brothers.  There were plenty of moans, the boys were never very fond of working in the garden in the summertime, never mind on a bleak dull and dreary February day.

On one such visit the ‘yanks’ were friends of friends and they arrived early…. ‘too early’ was written on mammy’s face as she removed her apron on the way to open the front door. We never met these people before, daddy was forever dishing out these invitations, telling mammy what to cook and how to cook it, but of course he never lifted his hand to help. My mother was left to organise everything but today there was no time to check the handiwork of her sons.

The visitors were welcomed in and since it was a cold February day, they were ushered up close beside the fire.  Mammy sat and chatted as I carried in the tray of tea things.  The warm glow from the flickering flames, the tea, along with the scones and the cake fresh from the oven, soon had the visitors feeling like returned prodigals as they relaxed into a life where they felt they had always belonged.  Looking around the room their eyes were drawn to the view through the French windows…… With surprised exclamation they remarked on how colourful the garden was for this time of year, and as Mammy looked out, to her horror she noticed the garden was sprouting a rainbow of plastic flowers.

Brothers!  They would hear all about it when mammy returned to the kitchen to make a start on the dinner!

*Any one of my paternal relations

I hope you have a good day.  Any plans?

I am busy with running repairs so I will be back at 3pm for a rest and a good read.

See you then.

At the town of,

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

they stopped for lunch, and one of the tourists asked the waitress,

“Before we order, I wonder if you could settle an argument for us.

Can you pronounce where we are, very, very, very slowly?

The girl leaned over and said,

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Burrr….    Gurrr….  King…

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Thank you David for this weeks story!

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a small town on the Island of Anglesey, which is located off the northwest coast ofNorth Wales.

Pattern and Design.

Where to start?

Paper and pencils - Set your hand on a piece of paper and draw around it.  Yes!  Just like a child does at Kindergarten.  Already you have a design.  Remember no two hands are the same.  A series of straight lines thick or thin, or circles overlapping provide ideas.  A page of text forms a pattern, how many times have you looked at a printed page and seen an image, not from the meaning of the words but the shape of the words, sentences and paragraphs?

Give a young child some paper and pencils and leave them to play for a few minutes and they will provide plenty of abstract designs with their doodles.  Come on, we have all seen similar pieces hanging in Art Galleries and wondered what they are doing there or what they were supposed to be.  Time to begin doodling in monochrome or by adding some colour.  Hold two pencils together and draw with them as one.

Threads, string or knitting wool - Take a length of any of these and loosely gather it into your hand then drop it from head height onto a piece of paper and it will give an abstract pattern.  Soak the string in poster paints or randomly paint along the string and drop on the paper, then cover with another sheet of paper and place a heavy book on top or roll with a rolling pin to help transfer the paint to paper.

Rubberbands - Dropped on paper as suggested with the string. Try this on the scanner or use the digital camera and print out a copy of the photo on paper. Sometimes the shapes and not the lines become important.

Keys - particularly old ones form great patterns.  Arrange in repeat form, in a circle or in mirror image.

Kitchen utensils - graters, sieves and cake cooling trays all give pattern

Fruit and vegetables - whole, in segments or cut crossways.  I once used a cross section of a savoy cabbage as a design for a brooch.

Natural sponge and seaweed

Driftwood

Feathers

Peeling paint - can give wonderful colouring and layer effects.

Trees and branches - Great for pattern

Leaves - particularly skeletal ones give magical lacy effects.

Back when I was working for the City & Guilds, among the names we looked to for inspiration were Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn.  In those days we had to cross the channel to mainland Britain to attend a workshop or hear them talk.  Now they have joined forces and the workshops come to us and in the video below we can see how Needle Art has developed in recent years.

If you are hungry for more ideas follow this link to another video by Ele Carpenter, Curator of the Open Source Embroidery Exhibition in San Francisco, California.  Now did you ever think of using GPS as a beginning for Needle Art?

I feel I need sleep, but nature thinks otherwise.

I have tried

• reading
• listening to the radio
• getting up and making a warm drink
• doing chores

None of this seems to help so I have resigned myself to just resting in the dark.  No way will I go down the road of sleeping pills.  I have enough trouble with the medication that I need to keep me going.

So, tell me, do you sleep?

What tricks do you employ to aid a good night of uninterrupted slumber.

6.18am, I think I’ll try and catch forty winks now…. zzzzz!

Preheat the oven to 190ºC

Filo Pastry to line flan tin

3 large pears of equal ripeness, peeled cored & halved
Apple juice or water
70g hazelnuts, finely ground *
60g caster sugar
50g butter, softened, but not melted
1 large egg

Put the pears in a saucepan and cover with the apple juice or water. Bring to the boil and simmer very gently until the pears are just tender. This can take 12-40 mins, depending on the variety and ripeness of the fruit.

Line flan tin with 4 or 5 sheets of filo pastry overlapping the sheets. Mix together the hazelnuts, sugar, egg & butter to form a smooth paste and spread over the pastry base.

When the pears have cooled a little slice in 5mm slices and arrange on top of the nut mixture. Bake for 25-30 minutes and ideally, serve immediately with whipped cream or ice cream.

* I like to use roughly crushed pecan nuts to ring the changes in this recipe.