kokeshi

This is my Japanese kokeshi doll. It took me at least an hour to choose her from the Nakamise marketplace by the Asakusa temple.

cafe

I am very attracted to things that look warm at the moment, something to do with this 4 degree weather. Spring cannot come quickly enough for me.

black and white

When I see a black and white picture I sometimes wonder which colours they are in real life. This gerbera was a vivid orange.

glimpse

This shot looks like it was taken on a warm summer's day, but it was 4 degrees today and the wind was making it seem even colder. You can just catch a glimpse of the sea at the end of West Street, Brighton.

bird

The beginnings of a new (ad)venture.

is it ready yet?

Easy Vanilla Cheesecake

180g digestive biscuits, crushed into fine crumbs
75g butter, melted
500g full fat cream cheese
100g icing sugar
200ml double cream
1 tsp of vanilla essence

1. Grease and line a deep, round cake tin. Sometimes I cut corners and don't line it.
2. Add melted butter and digestive biscuit crumbs together in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
3. Place butter and biscuit mixture into your prepared tin, pressing down firmly and evenly, until flat. Put in the fridge to set for about 30 minutes.
4. Beat cream cheese and icing sugar together until well mixed.
5. Add vanilla essence and carefully fold in double cream - don't add in all at once. Who knows what would happen if you did that.
6. Empty mixture onto your biscuit base, leave in the fridge to set for at least an hour, longer if you can manage to leave it alone.
7. Top with with either fruit (thereby turning it into a healthy snack) or perhaps some chocolate chips or crushed Malteasers or Crunchie bar. Whatever you like.

8. Enjoy and try not to eat it all by yourself.

Serves: 8
Preparation time: 20 mins
Cooking time: 0 mins

Setting time: minimum 1.5 hours

home

Home. Still not exactly sure where that is.

graffiti

There's some great graffiti here in Brighton, it's hard to choose a wall to photograph.

keys

I think we've been to IKEA a few too many times. Here are just some of our Allen key collection.

time

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once - Albert Einstein

We bumped into a friend last night who reminded us that we'd all met up in Bangkok exactly one year ago today, it seems like a long long time ago (something to do with the cold weather here) and at the same time like it happened only a couple of months ago. Explain.

fast

We took the back road from Steyning to collect Charlie from school and whilst there was the beginning of a vibrant sunset on the right hand side of the road, this pastoral scene was on our left. We could have slowed down to enjoy it but then we wouldn't have seen it from this speed.

I've reached day twenty-one of this project, they say that repeating something 21 times creates a habit.

knitting yarn

These are some of the yarns at The Wool Bar in Worthing, where I go to knit, roll my eyes and curse at my efforts on Thursday nights. Apparently knitting is the new yoga.

bluewater

The 'arty' sails at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Rumour is they spent £4m on art works when it opened back in 1999.

eighteen

The Hindu epic Mahabharata has eighteen sections or parvas, involves eighteen armies and a war lasting eighteen days. The Hebrew word for 'living' is חי  (chai) who's numerical value is eighteen - donations and gifts are often given in multiples of 18 as a blessing for long life. In China the eighteenth floor of a building is often the most expensive as the word for eighteen is normally 十八 (shí bā), but it can also be read as 幺八 (yāo bā), which sounds like 要发 (yào fā), meaning 'to prosper'. But in Northern China, eighteenth floors are avoided as Chinese myth dictates that hell has eighteen levels and you can't return from hell. Hangar 18 is a song from Megadeth's 1990 album Rust in Peace. Quite an interesting number.

tube

I went to Oxford Circus station and didn't even make it to the shops. Which is good because I am so over shopping.

holidays

What is it about the dark, cold, wet winter afternoons that make me want to check out holiday possibilities? I say 'possibilities' because, well...anything is possible right?

venus flytrap

One of our venus flytraps started to flower and has four small blooms on a massively long stalk. But apparently we shouldn't have allowed it to flower at all as it can pretty much kill the plant by diverting it's energy to the blossoming. Fingers crossed.

new shoes

I wouldn't normally buy red shoes but they were shiny. And comfy.

hoop

My son has got back into his hula hoop habit.

tea

Cliff and I enjoyed a Thai lunch at Unithai in Hove today and lots of lovely jasmine tea.

foredown tower

Some beautiful cloud formations over Foredown Tower this evening.

carpe diem

Carpe Diem, latin for 'Sieze the Day' sprung to my mind today when I saw this effect from light and shadow on my wall. The other day I'd seen an unusual shadow and had thought 'I'll take a picture in a minute'. Of course only seconds passed, the sun moved  and it was gone. So today I seized the moment. I hope I can remember this about life in general.

kite

It was a beautiful day so we popped up to Devil's Dyke to fly the kite Liam got in Mui Ne, Vietnam.

run

We managed to drag ourselves from our beds this morning for our local Park Run. Cliff and Liam ran and I watched, encouraged and took photos.

books

These are the books I'm reading at the moment. What are YOU reading?

lego

We go to our local Lego shop in Brighton every month for their free monthly build. Today was full of exitement; Liam built a Lego polar bear and Cliff witnessed a young boy trying to steal FIVE boxes of Lego by stashing them in his rucksack. The boy's eagle-eyed mum thwarted his little plan though. 

last of the Christmas cake

This is the last of the Christmas cake, which I polished off this afternoon. This means that I ate the whole cake by myself - not in one sitting, just one day at a time.

leaves

I ought to sweep them up really, otherwise we won't be able to get out of the front door.

the party's over

It's that time of year between the Christmas and New Year holidays and real life.

hiding the grey

These are the venetian blinds in our bedroom. I don't want to open them yet because behind is .. well, grey. Don't get me wrong, I do like grey; clothes, walls sometimes - just not sky.

getting started

I've yet to give this project a lot of thought, I just know that I'll be taking a photograph every day. I'll try to stick to my first thought or idea and not be too contrived or precious about the whole thing.

So, here we have 'Ghost'. The little fella in question was a $2 impulse buy from a Walmart in Minneapolis. The other impluse purchase on that shopping trip was a pack of Hello Kitty sticking plasters; not shown and luckily not yet called into use. Ghost was of course intended to be used at Halloween but I didn't have any tealights at the time, so here he stayed on the kitchen windowsill. For the first time in years I didn't get around to carving a pumpkin. I will try better this year.

Behind Ghost is our spurtle. It's for stirring porridge oats and I got it for Cliff in Paoroa in New Zealand, although spurtles are traditionally from Scotland. I bought it from the wood-turner who made it. Behind the spurtle is our rolling pin; no story there and I can't remember where it came from. The pink carabiner has of course never been near a mountain or a rope, it was probably used to secure something to one of our rucsacks during our trip.

Oh and Happy New Year.