Challenges

At the beginning of the year, I gathered together some of the as-yet-unread books from my to-read collection and put them all together on one shelf - the idea being to have read the whole lot by the end of the year (along with reading other books).

I think I gave up on three of them (life's too short to read a book you dislike when you're reading for enjoyment), but otherwise finished the last one earlier this week. So now I have refilled the shelf with the next lot - as the first lot took me over half the year to get through, I'm not sure I'll finish these by the end of the year, but let's see ...

I also decided to set myself a (non-reading) challenge for August. I considered various things, including a photo a day and blogging my dinner, but in the end decided on a quilt challenge (maybe I'll do one of the others another month).

My quilt has been sadly neglected for a while and has not progressed at all for at least a couple of months. Here's how it is at the moment. It looks closer to a square in the photo than it actually is.

So my challenge for August is to add at least one hexagon each day.

I'm turning into one of those people who blogs their dinner

Well, the lemon curd didn't set. It did make delicious ice cream, though.

We went out for lunch today for a belated anniversary meal, so I didn't want much to eat this evening. After much deliberation, I settled on a bread roll (freshly baked today), cheese, tomatoes and grapes.

Sometimes, the simplest meals are the nicest!

Not quite success - but not disaster either

I have been so busy while I've been freelancing, that I've not made much at all. I did manage to bake bread one evening last week, but something is not quite right - perhaps it's because I got distracted, lost track of time and left it for too long before putting in in the oven, but although it tastes fine, it dries out very quickly.

 Makes good toast though!

I now have a week off before I start my new job and have decided to put the time to good use making things. I thought I might not achieve much other than a sock heel flap today, as I was feeling really grotty, but an afternoon dozing on the sofa and a hot bath have made a difference, so as for quite a while I've been wanting to make lemon curd and the recipe looked straightforward and not too demanding, I gave it a go.

It's still warm at the moment and I'm waiting for it to cool and set. Worryingly, it looks like it's separating out, which I'm sure it's not supposed to do. It tastes good though, so if it doesn't set, I shall call it lemon sauce and experiment with turning it into lemon ice cream. Perhaps with meringue bits. Ooooh! Maybe I should try that even if it does set!

How do you do it?

Those of you who blog every day, or even once or twice a week, how do you manage it? I keep intending to blog more often. Of course, it doesn't help that I've not been making much since I started freelancing as I've been so busy with work - I've been out of the house for more and longer (with travel) days than previously when I was working from home a couple of days a week. This in turn has led to me being too tired to do anything other than sit in front of a computer/TV in the evenings. I've not knitted at all this week - that is shocking for me! But plenty of blogs that I read are written by people who are just as busy, or busier, and some have children thrown into the mix as well. So how do you find the time?

Secondly, how do you find things to blog about? I can't help thinking that my life is mundane, I don't do anything interesting to write about and people are just going to be bored. Having said that, if I don't mind inflicting details of my life on people on twitter, why worry about it here! I think I am going to take on board what london bakes wrote yesterday and blog for myself. Maybe it will bore everyone, maybe not. Maybe I will lose all of my followers, maybe not.

Finally, how do you all take such good photos? Is there a secret to photo-taking that I need to learn? Other than practice, of course!

I want to make good use of my blog. I'm hoping I can work out how.