Crazy Florida

OK, so this is an old piece of news, but pretty funny in a funny-unless-it-happened-to-you sort of a way! I think I would have been unimpressed! See the story here. Why would you need a concealed weapons permit anyway?!

Red Sky at Night

Autumn sunsets are the best! This was the view from our front door a couple of evenings ago.. I'm not so sure about "shepherd's delight" though, it's getting freezing! I've had to put the heating on already, the blanket has come out, and I've gone down with a horrible cold thing, yuck! I think I caught it off the dead-ish/highly drunk looking guy on the train back from London on Friday, who sprawled himself all across the seats opposite us, blocked us in by lying half on the floor, and repeatedly spluttered on us in his sleep.. all the way home.. niiiice! Either that or it's some kind of lovely freshers flu that I'm specially entitled to as an added perk of being married to a teacher.. hehe.. =)

Autumn Sunset

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Autumn Sunset
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Autumn Moon
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Progress

Pumpkin plant
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Well, today I spied 2 little flower buds on the biggest pumpkin plant, yay! I think it must like living on top of the radiator, nice and warm like its Mexican homeland! I don't think that's half bad going though, there's still hope for my Halloween pumpkin/pumpkin pie - c'mon c'mon.. a month and a day to go!!

Well hello there husband o' mine..

welcome to the blogosphere! You have somehow managed to write more posts in one night than I have in the last 2 years, perhaps I need to raise my game! =)

The coolest view in London at night

View from the Millennium Bridge
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

The middle of the Millennium bridge at night, has got to be just about my favourite view in London at night! We went up to Vinopolis on Bankside last night for a comedy night, and we decided to go for a walk along the South Bank afterwards - absolutely beautiful at night, and not full of tourists! We walked past the Globe Theatre, and up to the Tate Modern, then up across the Millennium Bridge.. I love the way they've placed the bridge so that it lines up directly with St Paul's Cathedral, all lit up at night, and to the left - London Bridge - it's pretty much as central London as you can get I think! There look like some nice restaurants along the South Bank, there was one with great big flaming torches and drum music outside which looked pretty cool. It makes me want to go back with the big camera, and go up the London Eye at night too, I think that would be amazing.. one day!

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

View from the Millennium Bridge

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

View from the Millennium Bridge

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

View from the Millennium Bridge

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Southwark Cathedral

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Pumpkin plant experiment

Pumpkin plant
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Hmm.. well the other day I decided I quite wanted to grow a pumpkin! I think it's just because it seems like a really Autumn-y thing to do, plus it would be really cool to have a home grown pumpkin to carve for Halloween! I also have this really random curiosity about pumpkin pie at the moment -for some reason I'd really like to try it! I'm really interested to know if it can possibly be nice.. I have seen a couple of recipes involving pecans and maple syrup, which do sound quite promising, although with pumpkin?! I just don't know! (I do realise I could just go and buy a pumpkin, but where's the challenge in that..)

Anyway, the closest thing I could find to a pumpkin plant was a packet of pumpkin seeds, which I picked up in Denbies the other day.. funnily enough, it even said 'New England Pie' on the packet..

The only trouble is, the guidelines say:

Indoor planting: April - May

Hmm.. how about September?! Well, I'm far too impatient to wait until April, so I planted up the seeds in the propagator a few days ago, and already I've got 4 pretty big plants! Now I just have to figure out a way of keeping them alive through the frost.. I think it might get a bit like The Day of the Triffids in here! It'll be interesting to see how they do though. By my calculations, they should be producing pumpkins by January.. we'll see!

James May's lego house warming!

James May's lego house
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Well it seems as though today is the day of James May's lego house warming! I read on the Denbies blog yesterday that the house was complete, so James came to collect me from work today so that we could go and take a look!

We were slightly disappointed when we got up to the top of the hill to find that the house was a bit more fenced off than last time, and was surrounded by security guards.. we initially thought, ho hum, we'll get a few photos from a distance and then be off again, but then I thought I'd be cheeky and asked one of the security guards if there was any way we could get some photos from the other side.. he told us that we could walk around a whole load of grape vines over to the left, and that way we could get to the top barrier.. cool! Just as we got there, we were lining up our photos, and who should appear out of the house, none other than James May! =) Hooray! Good timing!

James May's lego house

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

According to another one of the security guards (who was helpfully holding on to the barrier for me while I climbed on it to take some photos), this evening was the climax of the whole project! We watched James May and another guy pouring out champagne, and drinking from champagne glasses made out of lego! If you zoom in on that photo you can see them..

James May's lego house

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Not sure how much he liked it though, judging by this one!

James May's lego house

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

We also saw them smashing the lego champagne bottle, although no photo of that because the security guy was telling us all about his dog at that point! hehe..

James & Tiff Needell

Originally uploaded by kipperfrog

Then came the coolest surprise, we were just walking back through the car park and we spotted Tiff Needell sitting in his car! He was on his mobile, but he waved to us (probably because James was saying "it's Tiff, it's Tiff!!", and I was saying, what are you talking about?! That's a man! Hehe.. we were loitering about a bit near his car wondering how rude it would be to take a photo of him while he's on the phone, and we'd just decided that the answer was *very*, when he called us over saying "Are you waiting for me?".. it was quite funny, he was hoping that we were going to give him a lift up to the lego house for the house warming! We told him that probably they wouldn't stop him driving up there, but we'd probably get escorted off the premises! Anyway, he was a lovely bloke, and kindly agreed to let me take a photo of him with James! =) It was kind of tempting to hang around Denbies for a while to see who else was going to show up, but dinner called.. we'll soon find out when we watch James May's Toy Stories - I can't wait!

Update: Mo has just pointed out another celebrity in these photos! The bald guy with James May drinking all the champagne is Oz Clarke from Oz and James' Big Wine Adventure, and Food & Drink!

Update Update: Oh my goodness, I just had a look at the 'Save James May's Lego House!!!!!' group on facebook, it's got pictures inside! It looks amazing!! More here too..

Egg Yolk Candy of St Teresa (yemas de Santa Teresa)

Avila
Originally uploaded by canduela

These Spanish sweets from Ávila de los Caballeros are really interesting! After trying one at work, I was intrigued and decided to check out how they're made.. I found this cooking video (Spanish, dubbed into English).. I guess, knowing the ingredients, it tastes exactly as you would expect! Really sweet egg yolk flavour, slightly vanilla-y, with a soft but slightly crunchy outside, with a centre that's runny! They're a strange texture, but surprisingly tasty! Who would have thought you could make a candy out of just egg yolk, sugar, and lemon rind?!

I <3 Eva Solo

We went to John Lewis in Kingston today to pick up our wok from Mum and Dad, and also to spend our wedding vouchers, and we managed to find some super good bargains! =) We managed to pick up a lovely Tefal non-stick wok for half price - through James' amazing bargaining skills, and then we spotted one of these...

Yay! It's an Eva Solo CafeSolo - it's funny actually as we were talking about this thing on Friday! When we were on our honeymoon, we stayed one night with some friends of ours in Germany, and they had the coolest coffee purcolator that they'd bought in Denmark.. it's a glass flask which wears a kind of surfer wetsuit type jacket to insulate, and on top it has a clever bung thing with a filter attached. It works in such a way that your put the ground coffee in the flask, along with about 6 mugs worth of boiling water, and the filter keeps all of this in, while allowing the filtered coffee to pour out around the side of the bung - it's all very clever! Anyway, after remembering about this thing, we decided to look it up on the Internet on Friday, and it turned out to cost around £70?! We thought we'd give up on the idea, but then what are the chances.. we saw it in John Lewis today for £25! Brilliant! They actually had a whole stand of stuff from the same designer, and we actually ended up getting these too..

2 thermal cups for £11, not bad! We just tested them out with the coffee from the purculator and it was crazy - I'd poured boiling water into the CafeSolo about 10 minutes before, and just left it while I was doing some washing up, then poured it out into the cups.. the cups just stayed the same temperature, so we were thinking maybe the flask wasn't so great at retaining heat as we'd thought.. then we went to try the coffee and the water was pretty much as hot as it had been when it came out of the kettle! Amazing design all round, I can see why they've won so many awards. Highly recommended. I now have a bit of a wish list from their range!

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Buffalo
Originally uploaded by cewoldt

I can't believe that is a grammatically acceptable sentence! But if Metro says it's true, who am I to say it isn't.. hmm.. it took me a little while to get my head around it, actually I had to look it up on Wikipedia! Apparently buffalo has 3 meanings: 1. buffalo the animal (bison), 2. Buffalo the place in New York, 3. to intimidate, confuse or deceive (I don't really see what's so confusing or deceptive about buffalos, so I'm not really sure how buffalo ended up meaning all that! -maybe someone found out how deceptive they are, and was confused about it..). It's quite funny, I've never heard that expression before, but it reminds me of an American lecturer I had at uni who used to refer to scary things as bears, like "this exam is a bear". I can't really think of any English examples apart from saying that something is mammoth if it's huge.. I'm sure there must be some!

Anyway.. I did find out what all those buffalo in a row meant.. in case you're interested, this is how it goes:

[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.
THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.

OK, William J. Rapaport has single handedly made buffalo confusing! I do find it pretty funny he was an associate professor at the University of Buffalo, typical.

Vermont in Autumn

vermontspacelucy
Originally uploaded by ninjabathy

Here's a beautiful desktop image James made up for me last night, it's a photo of Vermont in Autumn with an image from the Hubble Space Telescope as the sky.. =)

Baby Buddha Pears

Rishon LeẔiyyon
Originally uploaded by ralphreijs

These pears are amazing! This guy in China is growing these in baby Buddha shaped moulds! I just love some of the things you find in Metro! You can read all about them here. It certainly would be cool if they did start selling them in the supermarket. Not sure if I'd really want to eat one though.. :-S It just reminds me too much of the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells!