Winter?

Yesterday I told you that it is winter!

Well today I took my camera on Lucky's morning walk

Geramiuns






Holly Hocks making an early appearance
















Lemons just ripening















Bougainvilleas putting on a good show















Hibiscus

You can just make out the red flowers













This village in the distance is where our house that we are renovating is.

Greek Epiphany

The 6th January brings an end to Christmas, so it's time to take down all our decorations and store them safely till next year.

Here in Greece they celebrate with the blessing of the water. The priest blesses a large crucifix and hurls it into the water, then young men dive into the cold water to retrieve it. They throw the cross into the water three times.The first person to retrieve it gets gift and good luck for the rest of the year. Orthodox belief says it's the day that Jesus was baptised. There may be other references to the Three wise men too.

Hope you enjoy this little video that I took of the proceedings. As you can see its a beautiful day, only to be followed by a thunder storm, but what the heck it is winter after all.

Its 2009. So what are we going to do this year?

Happy New Year to all.
Sorry I have not been about much, but I have had my eldest son, his wife and 2 children here for Christmas and New Year. The weather has not been good to them, we have had rain and more rain and it has been cold. However yesterday the sun shone in a cloudless sky and it was very much welcomed. Nevertheless we have had a lovely time.

The house is now quiet as they left for their home in Germany aboard their camper van today.
I wish them a save journey home.

I never made any New Year resolutions, but today I have been thinking about trying to lose a bit of weight. I can feel my clothes getting a bit tight,why do we have to over-indulge at this time of year?
Then the next resolution will be to get busy up at the house we are renovating so that we can move in really soon. Then I can get back to some handicrafts, saw some lovely wool the other day and I resisted the temptation to buy it. Don't know how long I can keep it up though!

Its nearly time to take down the decorations for another year, but doesn't the place look really bare when you do.

The Rainbow Choir

Before we finally put Christmas to bed for another year I have to show you this. Saturday evening the 13th Dec. we went along to Aghios Nikolaos to see the Rainbow Choirs Christmas Concert and what a lovely evening we had.
The Choir was founded in 2003 and has a lot of different nationalities. Jude sings in this choir.

Fried Green Tomatoes and Chutney

starting to cook
Fried green tomatoes are something that we have not tried before and as we had lots of green tomatoes we decided to give them a go. I found the recipe while looking for Green tomato chutney.
The recipe sounded so simple so I got to it.

I sliced them about 1.4inch thick and coated them in flour,cornmeal and salt. Very easy.
Then I put them into the frying pan with some heated oil and fried them on one side till golden brown, turned them over and did the other side. Hey presto Fried Green Tomatoes.
the finished product
Yes they were really nice. One we will try again next time we have green tomatoes.

Green tomato chutney.

the chutney just stating to boil
Ian likes some chutney with his meat, so seeing that we brought plenty green tomatoes from the garden, I made some chutney. The recipe was easy enough. I chopped up the tomatoes,onions and apples. Put them into a big stainless steel stew pot and added all the other ingredients and let it boil away merrily till it was thick. I put it into sterilized jars and now we have a few jars for him to enjoy.

the chutney ready to go into jars
The chutney in jars

It says store in a cool dark place.......... Hmmmmmmmmmm. Ian's tummy I expect!

More Hard Work

Yes this is me working hard as usual. I'm busy painting the ceiling. Its very hard on the old arms. Now I need a good bath to get rid of all the white speckles all over my hair and face. No peace for the wicked they say!

Saturday Evening out.

After a busy day in the garden we went out with Geoff and Jude (cariadincrete) to our local cafenion, and a good meal was had by all. Souvlaki, village salad, potatoes and a few drinks to wash it all down.

A Bountiful Harvest.

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day, so instead of going up to the house to do some more hard work we decided to go to the garden. As if gardening is not hard work too. The garden has taken the back seat a bit and has been seriously neglected these last couple of months. The order of the day was some tiding up and weeding. I cleared a small piece of ground and turned it over, if I can get some cabbage plants I will plant them there.

Ian cleared all the dried up weeds and we found that the tomatoes had been fruiting away to themselves. There were a few nice red ones and the rest were green. I set about picking these and chutney seems to be on the cards.

What with the weeding and the sunshine we got very thirsty but we had forgotten to bring along a bottle of water. Then it occurred to me the perfect solution! Pick an orange fresh off the tree. Oranges straight from the tree are delicious. Just the job....

I had a quick look at Judes (cariadincrete) garden and there standing like soldiers were her leeks.
Whatever you do don't tell her that I pinched 3!

Welcome Angela

Pleased that you have come along for the ride Angela. Hope to get back into crafting soon after all this hard work we are doing with the renovation. We are wanting to be in our new home by Christmas. I think your work is really great.

Its four in the morning!!!

Last night we had a thunder storm! It did not wake me fully but I was aware of it. All of a sudden there was this clap of thunder and our little Lucky came flying into the room. She was jumping up at the side of the bed and as I opened my eyes there was this bright flash of lightening that lit up the whole room. Poor Lucky was shaking like a leaf, she was terrified. She is not normally allowed on our bed but the state that she was in, we let her sleep with us till the morning. It took us ages to settle her, I have never known such a scaredy in all my life. Dear knows what she would have done if we had not taken her in and she was still wandering the streets.

This old house

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Malia Beach in November

This is what the beach looks like when all the holiday makers have gone home. No sun-beds,no umbrella's just sand, sea, sun and us! We love walking along this beach in the winter months, sometimes there are other people doing the same thing, but mostly we are all alone.

Are we going to be in by Christmas???

Yes thats the big question at the moment. Our little house that we have been renovating since May is slowly taking shape. The builders have almost finished there work and then we will have the pleasure of turning it into our new home. For ages it has looked just like a building site or bomb site as a friend calls it, but now I cant wait.

I have had the paint brush out today and started painting the windows and doors a lovely blue, which should set them off against the white walls, well they will be white eventually.



Not a very good photo, but if you look hard you can make out the blue

A Dog Named Lucky

Awhile ago we went up to our local cafenion for some lovely souvlaki.
You know how it is, there are always a few cats waiting around for some juicy morsels, but tonight it was different for this little dog appeared looking for a bite to eat too. She got her fair share of the offerings.

We had already met up with this little animal earlier in the week. We had let Sandy our tortoise out the front for a change of scenery, shutting the gate so he could not escape. Later when we went out to check on him he had come face to face with this dog, for unknown to us she had been living on our roof and of course could not get out. She was very timid and frightened and ran away back up the steps.

After a few day she had started sleeping behind our trailer next to our door and always ran away when we approached her. Anyway after a few days she finally plucked up the courage to let me touch her and that was that, we had become the owners of this little lady for she was here to stay. We decided to call her Lucky for she was very lucky to find us.

My Photos

These are just some of my photos, the ones that I really like. I got my digital camera for Christmas 2006. I like to experiment and have took some really nice images. There are many things I still have to learn about photography and the manual for my camera is quite thick. Must really make more time to devote to this hobby.

As you can see I like taking close ups of flowers and plants, landscapes and the odd animal.

I also have an SLR camera but it takes film, this too has a thick manual but I still like to have a go, trouble is developing costs. Digital is so much more convenient and you can snap away to your hearts content and just delete the ones that just didn't work for you.



Gazinias

Couquet Island. Northumberland




































Lovely scented rose from my old garden in Northumberland






















Poppies and daisies in a meadow.











Duridge Bay sunrise with a sprinkling of snow




















Felton ,Northumberland on a winters day
















Kitten having a relaxing time in plant pot. Sissi Crete













A happy family nap

The Journey Here

The journey here was a long one. It really started in 2003 or there about. We knew that we wanted to come and start a new life in Crete, but getting here was not going to be easy, as we found out. We had lived in our house in the North-east of England for 17 yrs. It was only when we decided to put our house on the market that we found out that the bottom part of our land had been registered to a builder and not to us. Then started a long battle to get the land transfered back to us. Eventually, at a great cost the land was given back to us. We now could put our home on the market. We moved out August 2007.
Our old House

We said our farewells to family and friends and set off on our travels leaving Dover on the 10th September. 2007








Some of our guest at our farewell party

We traveled to Calais on the ferry and then drove through Belgium and on through Luxembourg. We then traveled back into France, down to Nancy and then onto Basel, into Switzerland via the scenic route. Our intentions where to travel through the St Gothard Tunnel, but when we got there at 04.00 in the morning we found that it was closed. The only way forward was up and over the Pass! We stopped the car on the top to get out and have a look at the sky, my was it impressive. The stars could be seen clearly and there was billions twinkling away.





Some of our family members


In Italy we pressed on towards Milan hoping to miss the rush hour traffic. Talk about all roads lead to Rome!!! Well I can tell you they all lead to Milan as-well. We spent ages trying to get away from the place but kept getting lost and found we where heading back towards Milan. Talk about a nightmare. Once we managed to find our way we traveled onto Venice to catch the ferry to Patras in Greece.

This ferry took nearly 3 days so we had plenty of time to get over our virtually none stop journey.

Ian watching the sea on the ferry





















Me enjoying the journey
























One of the ports that we stopped in to pick up passengers
We drove from Patras on to Piraeus to catch the overnight ferry to Heraklion, Crete.