A Walk On The Beach

After spending all morning packing boxes for our move on Friday, we went to Malia to get somethings my husband needed for the house. We took our little dog Lucky with us, as we like to take her for a walk on the beach. She hates the water but loves the sand. Thought you might like to share some of the things that we saw there.



The rocks here are very jagged and sharp. Just look how they are formed.















There are small ridges. I think it was caused by volcanic action many millions of years ago.














A strange feature out in the water.

















This looks like a fossilised tree root.












A rock pool. There is lots of life in there and some pretty colours too.















There are a lot of round holes in the rocks. I think this was formed by molten lava.















Pretty flowers blooming away to themselves.















Its well seen that the sun has been shining for the last few days
















Everything is bursting out.












I know this one, it is a century agave, it is about 30 to 36 inches high. They supposedly live for about a hundred years then flower and die. The flower spike rises over 10ft in the air. There was a lot of small plantlets around the base of this plant as they send up offsets.

When they are fully mature they are really wide. On the leaves there are sharp spikes so beware. Well we enjoyed our walk and thank you for coming along with us.

Don't forget you can click on the pictures to get a full sized version so you can see the detail more clearly.

Knock Knock.

At long last we have a door to our upstairs bedroom. This door leads out onto the roof from which we have lovely veiws. You really got to see this door, it's great and I'm very thankfull to the person that made it for us.




































Look at the workmanship on that lock. I love it!

















These are the veiws from our roof. It will be lovely waking up in the morning and just walking out onto the roof.

Thanks Geoff.
(Jude's husband.)

I'm Back!

Well I have had a forced break from my blog, the telephone has been dead for over a week. I was as if someone had cut off my right arm. But I'm back now, thank goodness. It took me ages to catch up with everyone, you all have been so busy in blogland. So this is what I have been doing.















This is my living room floor that I memtioned in an earlier post. Its coming along very nicely. In fact it is nearly finished only needs a bit more grouting done.
































We have curtain rails up, hooray! Its starting to look like a house now and not like a bomb site.


We still have snow on the mountain, in fact there is more snow than you see here. The weather has been cold, wet and thundery. Its been horrible, definitely long john weather. Must get our solar panel and the central heating connected!

A work in progress! Understatement or what?

As you know we are renovating a house in mountain village in Crete, well I am packing things in boxes in the house we are renting and look what I came across today. This quilt started off life many, many years ago. There are pieces of my favourite dresses, the kids shirts and rompers, its full of memories.

I think that this needs to be finished after all these years, dare I tell you how many?



Well my eldest son is 38 and my youngest is 34 and I think that I started it after my youngest was born. It was going to be a cot quilt then a single bed size now its about a double beds size. Only thing is our bed is a king size! Watch this space for future developements.

What is this? Snow!!!

Last night the weather was really cold and wet. This morning the sun was shining feebley. Looking up to the village where our house is and the mountain behind was covered in snow. Yes snow! As long as it stays up there we will be ok. Last year we had snow on the 17th Feb, it didn't last long but it caused some chaos on the roads. The Cretans don't know how to drive in snow as they don't get much practice.

Rainbows

Today has been sunny with scattered showers and a bit on the cold side. However I caught this lovely rainbow in the valley. I took this photo from the roof of our house. The rainbow was eyelevel with me.

What have I been doing this week.

On Sunday I went with Jude cariad in crete to two bazaars. I bought some lovely woollen jumpers, not to wear but to unpick and rework the wool. To see a tutorial on how to do this go to laughingpurplegoldfish. It is not difficult. I also bought some cotton shirts which will get cut up for some project or other.




I have been working hard up at the house we are renovating. I have been laying tiles in the living room. Not just straight forward laying tiles but in a pattern. I want to get this finished soon as we hope to be moving in by the 7th March. When this room is finished the whole of the lower floor will be tiled. Will let you all see the finished article very soon.
















My DH has been fitting the pipeworks to the central heating system and doing a bit of concreting.

Modes of Transport

I see these everyday, but today I thought that you might like to see them. The Greeks have these mechanical donkeys, so to speak, they really are very handy.


This one is a rotorvator

This one must be a deluxe model!

A Smashing New Year

Oh dear, whatever is the matter with my hubby and I? At the beginning of the week I broke a wine glass, then he broke one. Yesterday he broke another and yes you have guessed it, I broke one this evening. They always seem to have something in, spilling the contents all over as they shatter.
Looks like I will be on the look out for some new ones. Hope this run of bad luck will soon go away.

My Mug of the Day

Everyone is showing photos of there cups and mugs, well this is mine. I bought this mug as a jokey present for my dad and he kept it in his china cabinet. Sadly my dad passed away in 2000 when he was 79. I got my mug back and have been using it all the time.

I drink only tea with milk no sugar.

Did the earth move for you this morning???

Well, did the earth move for you this morning? Well it sure did for us. At presisely 8.13 am we had an earthquake, which measured 5.3 on the richter scale. The quake was in the Aegean Sea northeast of Crete, and about 211 miles from Athens. Luckily there where no reports of damage or injuries. Its quite scary when your lying in bed asleep and the room starts shaking.

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