Cosy home

UPDATED TO ADD.....
The fish bowl isnt actually as small and cramped as it looks, because the bowl is round is magnify's the fish so that they appear a lot bigger. But if you were thinking its abit bare, your right, i should put something in there for them to hide in - in fact i was just saying that to my mum a few days ago.
Ive had the fish for about 9 years and they seem healthy so i assume that they are not stressed. They were in a bigger aquarium until it cracked and so i bought this bowl for them about 4 years ago. I think its big enough for them, although of course the bigger the tank, the better.
Now back to the original post...

Today its so windy outside and the sky is covered with grey clouds. I'm sitting here with the hum of the radiators wrapping me with comfort whilst the wind swirls around the inside of our chimney, its very cosy in here. On days like this i love to potter about the house tidying, rearranging, and sorting. Little D follows me around and i involve him in as much as i can - it takes twice as long but its much more interesting and he enjoys it.


The fish tank has been scrubbed and refilled with fresh water and it looks so beautiful on the kitchen worktop with the light glistening off the glass stones and the bright orange of the goldfish makes me feel happy too. Its a shame my camera couldn't capture the scene more honestly.
Laundry has been sorted through and put away, a million pots have been washed (i used almost everything in my kitchen yesterday making jam and then Caribbean fish stew so there were lots of pots left over to wash this morning), photos have been transferred from one album to another, outgrown clothes have been packed up ready to be stored in the attic for baby number two one day insha'Allah, and little D's baby book has been updated.
Next stop - scrapbooking all of the magazine clippings ive collected in recent months.....

veg growing joy

When we moved into this house in early April i knew that i wanted to quickly dig up a small area of our garden in preparation for planting vegetable and salad seeds. I finally got round to it at the start of May, a little later than ideal but still with just enough time to anticipate eating our own home grown food this year. At our old house, the garden was so small that i never felt that it was realistic enough for me to attempt to grow our own fruit, veg and salads and the furthest i got was chives, coriander, mustard, tomatoes, rosemary and thyme.

Now that we have a much bigger garden im hoping that within the next five years i should have put in enough effort to have an established plot which will insha'Allah provide us with something to eat on nearly every day of the year. Now that would be wonderful!

I think the most productive plant so far has been our courgettes. We've eaten two big ones in a tuna and courgette flan and a tuna and vegetable pasta bake, with some to spare for my mum to take home.

There are at least another four on the plant at the moment. Ive only put two in the compost bin so far due to them being dark and soft. Fortunately they were only small ones.

The courgette flowers have been fascinating, opening and closing throughout the day depending on the weather. And such a glorious colour!

Im not partial to orange and red flowers in the garden (i prefer pretty pastels and creams instead) but i have been pleasantly surprised by these courgette flowers.

I don't know many other people who get so excited by nature and i quite often exclaim my joy at these little things only to be faced with an awkward silence and that's when i realise that most people have overlooked the beauty of the natural world. Ive always had some of this enthusiasm but i think that my faith in God has given me a huge desire to dwell in the outside world and learn all of its ways. I just cant overlook it! Alhamdulillah little D is revelling in the delight of the garden too, im hoping his enthusiasm doesn't fade as he grows older. I want him to be my little garden buddy for as long as possible!

Golden apple teacake

When we have guests i like to make sure we have something to serve with tea - biscuits or cake for example. I feel really embarrassed if all we have is something from the supermarket, it seems like a really half hearted effort lacking any kind of care or thought. If i have the time, i will always bake something especially for the occasion, it just feels right to me. I enjoy baking anyway and at the moment we have an abundance of apples from our back garden trees, which i have been using to make cakes, tarts, and crumbles. I honestly must have close to 100 apples wrapped individually in newspaper (to protect and preserve them) in one of our kitchen cupboards. And these are just the windfalls, the trees are still heavy with fruit. Alhamdulillah, its such a blessing to be provided with so much, but it weighs heavy on my conscience that i am not using them up quick enough to prevent there from being any which end up going to rot.

So of course, when my husband informed me that we would be having guests last night, i had to bake up something delicious with some of our apples. I chose to make a golden apple teacake as we had all the ingredients in the house already...

Ingredients.

175g butter
175g unrefined golden caster cane sugar
3 medium eggs
175g self raising flour
half a teaspoon of dried ground ginger
2 or 3 apples, peeled, cored and chopped into small chunks
40g unrefined demerara cane sugar

Method.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180c / 350f and line your baking tin. I find that the easiest way to line the baking tin is to tear off the correct size sheet of baking paper from the roll, line the tin and then tuck the edges under the tin. When you add the cake mix the paper will get weighed down and it just makes filling the tin so much easier.

Cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy, and then gradually add the eggs.

Gently fold in the flour, and then the ginger and apples.




Spoon the mixture into your lined cake tin and level out the top with a spoon. Then i always take a pair of scissors and trim all around the edge of the tin to make the baking paper neater - it prevents any overhang from getting in the way.

Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top evenly.

Bake for 45 to 60 minutes (until a skewer or knife come out clean) and cool on a wire rack.


This should feed 6 people, and its delicious! Its very moist and the top turns golden and crusty, im certainly going to try making this one again insha'Allah.

Aqeela xx

Small pictures

In our old house my favorite rooms were the kitchen and our bedroom, they were the rooms which felt the most like my home. At this house, the kitchen is already my favorite room although i will admit that our dining room, bedroom, and little D's room are all close runners up. In our kitchen i like to allow clutter to become decoration, and i think it fits well in that environment where as in other rooms it may look contrived and too stylised (or just look like clutter).

I enjoy spending a few pence or a couple of pounds on little pieces of someone else's unwanted brickabrack. I'm in and out of charity shops throughout the week and if i really like something then i will quite often bring it home with me. Its usually small things which would look out of place by themselves, but in a small collection they really say something.

By the back door in our kitchen i have hung a few small pictures on the wall. Each one was less than £1 and together i think they look sweet hung on the plain white wall. It just adds a little something to the space. Below them is our peg bag, i made it from an Indian top. Just remove the sleeves and sew up the bottom, and the neckline becomes the opening of the bag. It was really simple.

I would love to know if these kinds of small pictures have a name? I have a few more dotted around the house, and hope its a collection that i can keep adding to.

Today i made a golden apple teacake as we have guests coming over this evening. I'l share the recipe with you tomorrow insha'Allah.

Aqeela xx

Newts

I was out in the garden this morning hanging the washing while little D wondered around collecting the fallen apples at the bottom of the garden. We stayed out for a while so that he could point to the trees swaying in the wind and tell me all about them. The way the garden constantly moves and changes fascinates him and he always finds it engaging. Yesterday he noticed something before me and pointed and inquired in his high pitched tone, and i turned to look and saw an absolutely enchanting hawker dragonfly. I referenced it in my British wildlife guide and found out that it was a male common aeshna (aeshna juncea). It circled us and my sweetcorn plants for about 5 minutes before it headed off to somewhere else.

SOURCE

We have an abandoned and ugly old patio area just around the corner of our garden (the garden is L shaped) and im hoping to pull up the slabs next year and use them to make paths elsewhere, then i can use the patio area for flowers which would be much more appealing. I wanted to test how easy the slabs where to lift so i called little D over to see if we could haul them up and see what kind of creatures were living below. He is interested in spiders at the moment so i knew that this kind of thing was sure to delight him.

Amongst the woodlice, worms, slugs and centipedes i was very pleased to find newts - four of them in fact! Three of them were very dark, almost black, and then there was a smaller one which was shades of brown and sand. This afternoon i went back out with my camera and found two them still in the same spots as before.

Ive always hoped to own a garden which would be a habitat for newts ever since i first discovered them as a young child (perhaps 5 years old?) in my great Aunts pond. I remember her garden as being wild and large with flowers and grasses and a pond just full to the brim with newts. We used to catch them and hold their shiny black and orange body's in our small hands, and absorb their tiny details before releasing them back into the pond. Time spent at my Auntie Rene's is one of my most vivid childhood memories. She lived in Belper, a small Derbyshire town, and her garden backed onto open fields i think. She was a wonderful woman, never had children but always loved having us around.

Today's discovery has really inspired me to find out more about her life. I bet there's lots of things i could learn from somebody like my great Auntie Rene.

Eid 2010

We have just left the month of Ramadhan behind us, which means that Eid has now been and gone. Eid to Muslims is like Christmas is to non-Muslims - a celebration spent with family and friends, where delicious food is shared and gifts are given. Theres a strong presence of the love and warmth that family and friends can bring to ones life. We have two Eid's in each Islamic year, and this was little Dave's first Eid where he is old enough (just) to enjoy it. I was really looking forward to him opening his presents, i love the feeling of nostalgia i get from it - it reminds me of the pleasure i felt whenever i had Christmas or birthdays presents to unwrap when i was a child.

I had lots of small pieces of wrapping paper left over from previous years, i hold on to all the little scraps just in case. So a few of his gifts had a patchwork effect wrapping which i really liked. It made it easier for his little fingers to slip under the sheets and tear the paper away. He didn't go wild with the unwrapping, he did it very slowly and carefully (just like i do so that i can preserve the paper for another time). It is much more fun to crazily rip it all off though isn't it!?

As little D is only 16 months old, we really struggled to decide on his gifts, everything seemed either too babyish or too advanced, so we ended up buying him much less than i thought we might. But he seems to enjoy each thing we bought so im pleased with the outcome.

I really enjoyed Eid this year, i will admit that previously (before little D came along) ive always found it a little boring and 'nothing', but this year i really appreciated the time spent with family and the good food we shared. After a month of fasting it felt good to relax for a few days. Not that i didnt enjoy the fasting though, i enjoyed it more than ever this year. This was my sixth Ramadhan and i feel like it is the one where i have benefitted the most insha'Allah. Im feeling a strong renewal in my faith, and a general feeling of peace actually. Its really appreciated and something a most definately was in need of.

autopilot

Ive been existing on autopilot these past few months, but slowly im beginning to actually live again and grasp hold of the simple pleasures and blessings bestowed on us here in this little house. Settling in has taken time, and im still trying to find my feet in this new neighbourhood, but this house does feel like home now, although not quite our home. Its all rather bland and uninteresting still, but i do have ideas and plans and hopefully insha'Allah next year is going to be packed full of decorating projects, and my husband shall be wielding a huge hammer to knock down one of our walls for abit of an exciting renovation. So until then i am just trying (and on the most part succeeding) to appreciate what we already have here. On the whole though, id say life is good right now, alhamdulillah.