Pre-Birthday treat....

Hubby took me out for Afternoon Tea on Friday.  I knew all about it and it was at a British Store/Restaurant close to where we live.  We went for breakfast there the other week, and I wrote about it here.

The cost per person was $42.50 plus taxes, which worked out too around $48 each, with tip we paid a total of $110.  There was a lot of food!  The top tier included a shortbread cookie with jam in the middle, dark chocolate mousse, and Eton Mess.

Middle tier one plain and one cheese scone each.  It came with jam and clotted cream which was homemade.  We had to ask for butter for the plain scone, and she brought a container of margarine 😐

Bottom tier there were 3 Coronation chicken (cooked chicken, mayo and curry powder) sandwiches each, 3 cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches each, and 3 egg mayo and spring onion (salad onions) each. A mini broccoli and cheese quiche, and a mini bacon, egg and cheese quiche each.

Drinks was unlimited tea or coffee, we chose coffee.

As the scones and quiche's were warm we ate those.  Due to having different flour over here in Canada, the scone's were very dense, but putting the clotted cream and jam on the plain one, made that taste better.  Putting marg on the cheese scone didn't help; I suggested they supply butter in future as it had a better taste than cheap margarine.  The lady was surprised we asked for butter as she thought we would put the clotted cream and jam on the cheese scone????

The quiches were just the standard store bought quiches, or at least the pastry cases were store bought.

We had to eat the Eton Mess and the Chocolate Mousse as we couldn't take those home with us.  The Eton Mess was good, the chocolate mousse was nasty.  I love chocolate but this mousse was again very dense and bitter,  and I could taste the cocoa powder in the teaspoon I tried.  The lady said that the mousse seemed to be left most of the time.  I suggested a light lemon mousse as by the time you have worked your way through the bottom two tiers you are looking for a lighter finish.

We tried a sandwich each and they were fine.  The bread they used was really nice.

We took home the rest of the sandwiches and the cookie and had them for supper.

So all in all it covered both our lunch and supper.  The sandwiches wouldn't have lasted any longer as they were already drying out by supper time.

Overall we thoroughly enjoyed it.  It made a super nice treat and the coffee as I said before is really good.

Overall well worth the price for the amount of food we got, they just need to make a couple of adjustments in my opinion to make it even better.

P.S. I just wanted to say I loved all your comments you made about the sugar sandwiches.💖

Sugar Sandwiches.........

I was talking to my mother the other day and she was telling me how after the war and with food being rationed, how parents wanted to "fatten their children up and treat them," when more food became available.

One of the things my mother remembered eating was sugar sandwiches.  Bread was buttered and sugar sprinkled over it.  She also remembers eating sandwiches of bread and butter with condensed milk spread over the buttered bread.

Once bananas became available, they would mash up a banana, sprinkle sugar over it and pour condensed or Carnation milk over it.  They would also mash up bananas to put in sandwiches as well.

Jam sandwiches were a staple, as my Nana made jam, bramble jelly was my favourite.  

Every night before she went to bed as a child, my Nana would crumble an OXO cube into a bowl, pour boiling water over it, mix it up and crumble in a slice of bread and my mam would eat that before bed.

I had never heard of sugar sandwiches, as we were never given them.  

Is this something you have heard of?

Guaranteed to please..............

As you know I have multiple grand children between the ages of 4 through 13, yep one's a teenager already!!  Anyhow to eldest five are ages  nearly 10 to 13 years old.  They are past the easy to please with cheap chocolate and toys stage, cash is key with those guys....LOL

I will be seeing those five over the next week or so and I am not sure if I'll see them before Easter, so decided to be organized and get their Easter gifts sorted.  Of the five, four are girls and one boy.  I headed to Dollarama and this is what I got!

In each bag I placed four bags of candy and a $10 Dollarama gift card.........

I popped them into a brown bag lunch bag, and decorated it with Easter stickers, remember they are tweens and teens, so baby things are not cool!!  They will tolerate a few stickers ....just...LOL I always do seven hugs and kisses on everything of theirs, one hug and kiss per grandchild.

I realize it is not a healthy or nutritious treat bag, but they will be thrilled with it, plus they get a gift card to go and buy more sugary treats!!!

By the way I use the brown bag lunch bags, to store my mushrooms in the fridge, they last way longer when you do that!

I haven't forgotten the two youngest ones, both boys, but as they are 4 and 7 they are still okay with just a toy and candy, oh and stickers!!!  I will get them closer to the time as we live closer to them.

Two Things................

MP3 Players and Leisure Arts.

Again when I was sorting through some paperwork I came across this pattern:

I hadn't thought about MP3 players or the company Leisure Arts in years, have you?

I had a MP3 player, and loved it.  I am sure if I went through some drawers I could find it.  I used it a lot at the farmhouse when I was cutting the grass.  A lot of people had the Sony Walkman; remember when that was all the rage?

Leisure Arts was a popular company for arts and crafts back in the day.  I haven't heard of them in years?  I looked them up at www.leisurearts.com  and as they're an American company, I am not sure if they ship up to Canada anymore?

Another blast from the past, eh!

The Hobby Horse Quilt Shoppe

 While going through some papers I found the following:

It's the newsletter from the Hobby Horse Quilt Shoppe in Glen Williams, Ontario.  That is where I learned to quilt back in 2006/2007.  

I took the Beginner Class.

 Making us do everything by hand was the best thing for a first timer, as we learned so much.  I went on to make a cotton flannel quilt (machine sewn class) for hubby after that and we still have that quilt.

The neat thing about this place was it was located in a converted barn.  They had the most gorgeous stock and by looking at their website still do.  I haven't been to the store in years, as we no longer live in that area.

As you know I rarely quilt anymore, when I did though I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I am also selling some quilting supplies I found.  I had forgotten I had the following:

Someone else may as well get the use of them.

The 1980's called............

I have been having a clean out of things we stored in our basement laundry room.  We hauled everything out to  renovate it, and before putting everything back in, I have been going through things.  I have been going through a box which was marked "Sewing Stuff!!"

I found a pile of paper sewing patterns and have listed them on Facebook Marketplace.  I thought I would share a few of the photos of things we brought over with us from the UK in 1989.

I ordered the two Family Circle ones and paid  90p each for them.  I remember making our daughter one of the outfits on the bottom right pattern when she was a baby.

The ones below remind me of Princess Diana.......even the hairstyle; especially View C.

You could get away with wearing style's B & E now couldn't you?

I then went through a folder of things I cut out from magazines and here are some things I found from the 1980's.

This screams the 1980's doesn't it?  Even the colour's.

Do you remember when Cafe Curtains were all the rage?

Then finally from 1984, Hilary James' "Sew Easy Gifts for Christmas" Series from December 1984.  These came from Pebble Mill at One.  I honestly have no recollection of watching this show?  I had to look it up.

So as far as the laundry room goes, we have got some more done, but it's not quite finished yet.  We still have to buy the cupboards (kitchen units) to go in there, hopefully in the next week or so.

I hope you enjoyed my blast from the past?

Fun Sunday Morning

On Sunday we had a scheduled hydro outage from 8am until 6pm in our area.  Hubby suggested we should go to the local casino for a pre-birthday treat for me.  I will say we are not big gamblers, in fact it's not something we do very often and we do play within our limits.

As we had never been to this casino before, despite it being under 20 minutes from where we live, we "joined the casino" and got a players card, that gave us $10 in free play each.

I had a great time and tried many games, including the ones below.

This one was my favourite.  San Fa Tigers.

We used our free play, and then we had $20 each, then hubby used another $20.  So in total we put in $60 in cash.  I cashed out my ticket after just under  3 hours for around $215, so all in all we came home $150 up.  We had budgeted $200 total, so I was able to to put that $200 back and have the $150 to use to put gas in the car and spend on "useful" things!!!

We arrived at the casino before 10 am and left just after 12:30 pm and we were shocked at how many people we in the casino on a Sunday morning.  

In the Dominican there was a casino in the resort we were staying at.  I had budgeted $20 USD each per night for us to spend on the slots.  We went one night and it was so small and not enjoyable at all, that we never went for the rest of the week.  I felt it was a total waste of money, so as you see we have enough common sense to walk away.

Do you go to the casino?  Or gamble?