STOP PRESS: The winner of the luxury hamper is..
Danny has done the draw for the luxury picnic hamper for two from www.hampergifts.co.uk! The winner is Su who writes the blog Living On The Edge. Congratulations Su, all I need now is you to contact us by email with your address and telephone number to arrange delivery from the sponsor. Commiserations to everyone else who did not...
read moreHere is your invitation to the Cottage Smallholder Summer Party!
Together with their menagerie of chickens , bees, fish and Min Pins Fiona & Danny invite You To The Cottage Smallholder Summer Party Saturday, July 21st 2012 From 1pm till late in the evening At home in their cottage in Cheveley, Suffolk RSVP via the contact us tab above or leave a comment below We had great fun last year and do hope that you will be able to come. This is a very relaxed and informal event. There will be an all day buffet and a barbecue in the evening. Quite a few people stayed at local B&Bs in the village or...
read moreGIVEAWAY COMPETITION – Win a Luxury Picnic Hamper for Two
At The Cottage Smallholder this week, www.hampergifts.co.uk is giving away a very generous Picnic Hamper for Two. As usual this will be a grand draw, there are no tricky questions to answer, just make a comment below describing why you would like to win this hamper and you will be automatically entered. This gorgeous, luxury hamper includes absolutely everything that you could need for a luxury picnic – this is the crème de la crème of food hampers. Including a mixture of snacks and treats for the more discerning palate, this hamper...
read moreQueen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. A personal response.
“I remember watching the Queen’s Coronation at the cinema. I was pregnant with you at the time.” My mum sometimes recalls. How far we’ve moved on since then. TV in every home, computers, mobile phones that can access the Internet. Throughout, Queen Elizabeth has remained at the helm. Steadfast and true to our nation. I like the Queen and enjoy having a monarchy – the idea of a family representing us as a nation. Of course there are politicians too but I wouldn’t feel very happy about being represented by a president of any party as...
read moreAnd the winners of our Direct Line sponsored Grand Draw are….
Danny pulled out the two winners of the Direct Line/Cottage Smallholder Grand Draw this morning. Direct Line sponsored the prize of two B&Q £50 vouchers. He announced the winners at the end of the comments section of the post. Just in case you missed it, I thought that I’d put up a short post. The Grand Draw entries drew my attention to a lot of fabulous ‘new to me’ blogs and ideas as to how everyone would use a £50 voucher. As always, I want everyone to win – which of course is impossible. However, our Grand Draws are always...
read moreGoogle author feature puts your photo on Google search results
We changed our old WordPress theme recently. We wanted a new look and a responsive theme that could adapt to every size of screen from a desktop huge monitor to a tiny mobile. I love the new theme SimplePress – it has a lot of fantastic features that mean I can sometimes help Danny with the task of maintaining the techie side of the blog. Changing the theme of an old WordPress blog can be fraught with difficulties. There are a few idiosyncratic features that we wanted to maintain from the old blog – and these need coding skills to...
read moreLucky break
Many years ago I popped one of those overpriced beer and a glass sets in Danny’s Christmas stocking. It was Stella Artois which we were very keen on at the time and actually I do still enjoy a ultra chilled pint in the summer. This glass remained Danny’s own – I never used it until last week. We both have our own special mugs too – is this a Virgo thing? Back to last Saturday night. It was rather a chilly evening so I was wearing a thick outdoor jacket as I worked at my laptop at the kitchen table towards the end of the day. Danny...
read moreI made two litres of dog food by mistake
On Monday I decided to test out the theory that cottage pie is best made with pieces of beef rather than minced beef. Danny made encouraging noises and disappeared upstairs. “This should be a doddle.” I thought as I quickly piled the ingredients in the slow cooker/crock pot. And that’s where I fell down. I was busy with other things and in a rush. For me distraction has spelt disaster on the slow cooking front several times in the past. Our slow cooker has an auto setting – this means that it will bring the contents to the correct heat...
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