...a lady who lunches

Welcoming entryway

On Saturday, before going to A Dizzy Girl's quite frankly spectacular wedding reception with a few other bloggers(which I'll let her tell you about, not spoilers here), I met my not-so-little little sister and my auntie in Glasgow for a celebratory lunch. Did I mention my sister is about to graduate with a 1st? She's a smart cookie!

Chandeliers, stairs, crockery everywhere

Hazel book as a table in the newly opened upstairs room of The Butterfly and Pig Tea Rooms. I've been in before, and Dave and I had our engagement party in The Butterfly and Pig's bar, so this is a place I am already quite fond of. This visit has only added to my appreciation of the place.

Plates, and very Scottish paintings!

Walls with mismatched paintings, chandeliers, plate displays. Cabinets loaded with mismatched china. Cornicing, fireplaces, sweeping staircases, an assortment of wooden chairs. If I lived in a Victorian house, it would look very much like these tearooms! The staff are lovely helpful, and not too intrusive, and the atmosphere is homely and comfortable, but still a wee bit grand.

The very large fireplace in our small room

We each had a cream tea, and they were wonderful. The basic elements of a cream tea were there - steaming hot tea, sandwiches, scones and cakes. The sandwiches however, rather than being dainty little ones, were hearty and generously filled - chicken and bacon, chicken salad, cucumber, but with cm thick cream cheese, ham and mustard- on home-made bread. The scones were big and light, filled with cherries and heaped with rhubarb jam and cream. The cakes were flavourful, dense, and icing topped. Add to this steaming hot tea, oatcakes with salmon and cheese and plum chutney, and cucumber pickles and you have happy people.

Cherry Scones with rhubarb jam, chocolate slice, coconut cake,
jam filled cupcake, banana loaf with coffee icing

lovely chunky sandwiches(and crockery!)!

I should explain that the thing I was most impressed with, I didn't actually eat! My auntie is Coeliac, which means she can't have gluten or wheat. When Hazel booked, they asked about dietary requirements, and having explained, we went feeling sure they would have at least gotten some bread so that my auntie could have a sandwich, and maybe made a cake. When Hazel and  I ordered our Afternoon tea, my aunt tentatively mentioned that the she was Coeliac, and was promptly offered an afternoon tea of her own. She got the same fillings we had on home-made gluten free bread, three kinds of cake, wheat free crackers, and the same extras we had. Having frequently gone to places with her where she could have maybe one thing for the menu, it was an utter delight to see her given more options than she could actually eat.

Auntie's gluten free cream tea, with
three kinds of cake and pickles!

 We sat, we chatted, we drank tea, we ate. We marvelled at the artwork and the beautiful fireplace in the wee four table room. We ate a bit more, and we realised we weren't going to be able to finish. It's a sad thing, the thought of leaving cake. We didn't have to though, as we were given the cake we couldn't eat to take home. Another rather generous touch I think. We left with our little bags of goodies, full-tummied, happy, and saying we would definitely be back!

...has grey stairs (Hallway Stairs makeover phase 2.)

Well begun is half done...

 When I posted about the beginning of our stair makeover, I really thought we'd be finished by now. Remember the plan to strip and varnish the stairs and paint the uprights? Oh how optimistic that was. The week after, I went down to Paisley on the Friday and started the arduous and ultimately pointless task of stripping the old paint from the stairs. The paint turned out to be thicker than we thought, which meant the sander melted it rather than removing it, so I moved onto plan B, paint stripper. Rather than the paint stripper removing the paint, it mixed with it and became a bit tar like. And then I realised the bottom layer was more than likely lead paint(our flat is about 80 years old, I suspect the bottom layer of paint is too) and I shouldn't really be pouring chemicals on it. Realising this four steps in was a bit of a worrying moment!

The stairs after 4 hours of me attempting to strip them -
hopefully you can see why I gave up.

At this point, we decided it was going to take a hundred years to remove all the paint, so two weeks later (this weekend) we bit the bullet, sanded the stairs, removed the square metre of cork tile topper board nailed atop the landing floorboards (I have no idea why they didn't put them on the actual floorboards, we keep expecting to find a dead person or something), hammered in the millions of nails we couldn't remove, and painted the stairs grey(Dave painted them. I wasn't allowed. I have a tendancy to spill things).

Cork glued to board nailed to floorboards. I don't understand!

Dave doing some painting

For the moment, the uprights are grey too. They have A LOT of bent nails hammered in as far as possible, and it would take a few more coats of paint to even vaguely even the surface up. It's a bit unsightly at the moment. Originally, we were going to paint them yellow, and I was going to stencil a pattern of some sort on, but it seems we night have to use something a bit sturdier. We have considered wallpaper, but anything I think nice enough is well out of our price range(the most we can spend on this is about £30, and also, we'll only need about two metres, it just seems like a waste).  I have been reading up on wallpapering with fabric, and I think starching thick fabric and then varnishing over it might be the trick as it might smooth over where bumps are.

HURRAH! Grey floorboards!
(excuse the mess at the bottom, and paint on the walls)

I thought stripping the stairs would be fine though, so we'll see! Next task is to give the walls a new coat of white and find something for the uprights.

...trying very hard to be positive.

this used to be where our telly was. now it has newspaper and
various vessels to catch the drips. Every time it rains.

This week has been pretty awful for us. Dave submitted his thesis corrections on Tuesday, so now we are playing the waiting game till he gets his results. On Wednesday, the ceiling started leaking, bringing for both of us flashbacks of exploding pipes and a completely soaked flat. Fortunately, it's in the Dundee flat, and we aren't financially responsible for it. Unfortunately, the problem is an outside the building one, meaning the other flat owners are responsible for it as well as our landlords, and they have to go through all the stupid bureaucracy and money issues for it to be sorted out. so that's another waiting game. And it dripped on our telly. Work has been extremely challenging for me this week, and I an utterly done in. Dave has a  bad cold and with it, a quite large eczema outbreak. Life is not what one would call fun. We have done pretty much nothing other than lounge and read and listen to music this weekend, and my goodness we need it.

Added to this, once we had decided we were aiming to move back to Paisley, I sort of mentally moved.  The plan has highlighted stuff in our life here that is not at all ideal. I love my job(there are no words to explain how much), and the thought of not seeing the kids all the time is heartbreaking. Still, I think ahead to another winter of snow and bus travel, taking up to 4 hours to get home, being cold and wet, and I want to cry(sometimes in winter I did cry). When we are in Dundee for the weekend and it's nice, I fret about the Paisley garden becoming overrun. We are paying for the upkeep of two places (though curiously, since we probably will move back, it's seems to have been the means to an end). And our wee nephew is growing up quickly, and we only get to see him every few weeks. It feels like we are missing an awful lot.

Having the plan, while helpful, doesn't mean we don't have to wait though. I am trying very hard to remind myself of the reasons I like Dundee, and this flat. About the skills and experience Dave has gained in his job. About the lovely family I work with, the respect I am given. AND, Dave and I have each other through all this, an that makes it manageable. I have been looking for ideas for the rather neglected Paisley flat for when we do eventually move, and small things we can do there in the interim. I have taken pictures of the bits of the flat I like here, not to replicate, but perhaps to incorporate in some way.

Clockwise from left - my corner of doom, cluster of hung objects(Painting, the love knot
was a wedding gift, Dave's bodhran, Winnie the Pooh) our fireplace headboard, the corner sofa.

It's not all bad. We will be alright. I love my job. We have a roof over our heads, food to eat, and people we love to help us. We'll move when we can. But I might need reminding of this occasionally.

...Last Year's Girl (guest recipe post)

For my first ever guest post, I have a recipe from the awesome Lisa-Marie of Last Year's Girl, a quite frankly brilliant music blog! As well as our name, Lisa-Marie and I share many things - a love of tea and cake,  of punk/folk music, of photography (though Lis actually also has a talent for it!), of  reading until later than we should be awake, the need for many, many 50s style dresses, and a penchant for skinny punk boys with acoustic guitars. We also share our very own hashtag on twitter - #LisaMariesAreAwesome .

#LisaMariesAreAwesome

This post came about a couple of drinks into a Friday night gig, when Lis was being VERY excited about this cupcake recipe. I love eating cupcakes, but I don't enjoy the faff of making them, so this seemed like the perfect guest post!

So, here's the girl herself :

I am a lady who likes her desserts. And when these little beauties - combining two of my all-time favourite things in the form of cupcakes and cookie dough - I couldn't resist giving them a go.

There's just one problem: I'm not exactly your 1950s housewife type. But hey, what I lack in a piping bag and the knowledge of what differentiates between baking powder and baking soda I make up for in enthusiasm. Much batter was consumed in the making of these cupcakes.

The original recipe makes 24, so I cut the quantities substantially to avoid drowning in baked goods all weekend. I'd recommend using muffin cases rather than fairy cake sized ones, because there's a lot going on here.

xxx

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

(From Tidy Mom)

For Cupcakes

• 3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
 

• 1½ cups light brown sugar, packed
 

• 4 large eggs
 

• 2 2/3 cups self-raising flour
 

• 1 tsp. baking powder
 

• 1 tsp. bicarb 0f soda
 

• ¼ tsp. salt
 

• 1 cup milk
 

• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
 

• 1 cup chocolate chips

For Cookie Dough Filling

• 4 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
 

• 6 tbsp. light brown sugar
  

• 1 cup plus 2 tbsp. self-raising flour
 

• 7 oz. sweetened condensed milk
 

• ½ tsp. vanilla extract
 

• ¼ cup chocolate chips

For Icing

• 3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
 

• ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
 

• 3½ cups icing sugar
 

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
 

• ¾ tsp. salt
 

• 3 tbsp. milk
 

• 2½ tsp. vanilla extract

Make the Cakes...

1. preheat the oven to 350° F.
2. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy,
3.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
4. Mix  flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in bowl.
5. Alternating, ad a bit of the dry ingredients then a bit of milk to the wet ingredients bowl, till just incorporated
6. Add vanilla.
7. Add chocolate chips.
8. Divide the batter evenly between 24 cupcake cases. Bake for 18-20 minutes, allow to cool, then remove from pan to cool completely.

Make the filling while they cool...

1. Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy
2. Add flour, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla and beat until smooth.
3. Stir in the chocolate chips.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the mixture has firmed up a bit, (approx1 hour).
5. Cut a cone shape from the middle of each cupcake, and add a blob of the cookie dough mixture

Make the icing

1. Beat butter and brown sugar till fluffy
2. Mix in the icing sugar until smooth.
3. Beat in the flour and salt.
4. Mix in the milk and vanilla extract until smooth and combined.
5. Add to cupcakes and sprinkle on chocolate chips

As the first image of the post suggests, these should be accompanied by a cup of tea! 

Thanks Lis! x

p.s. Siobhan, Dee and I have guest posted our experiences of 'becoming a bride' on Cakes and Bunting! Please do have a look!

p.p.s I have no idea what is going on with the HTML in this post, the spacing is all weird. SORRY!