Chapelhill Steading

It's been busy here lately. We had a luvverly visit from our pal Marie last weekend, and spent most of it in the Eden Court Theatre. The theatre had loads of money spent on it and got done up something super and was reopened last year. It's pretty terrific and has various sized performance spaces as well as the main theatre plus exhibition spaces and the rest! Verity has been going to acting classes on a Saturday for nearly a year now, and last weekend she had her first proper show. All the little kids in her class were ladybugs, and they had to sing a number 12 song from Sesame Street about ladybirds who have a picnic.
Today we have had snow. It has been very beautiful, but very cold. We are forecast some more overnight and possibly temperatures of minus 5 over the weekend. With the caravan being quite chilly this week, we have been spending more time in the steading - sorting out the roof insulation. It is a long and tedious job, with each strip having to be carefully measured in various places and cut to fit around beams and other obstacles that are part of the structure of the old roof. We reckon we're about two thirds of the way thru with about two or three full days of work left.

The other thing we got really excited about today was a parcelforce delivery we have been eagerly anticipating! A few weeks ago Verity and Stuart went to our friend Brodie's house and climbed up all his apple trees and collected all the apples. Stuart has been very keen to have a go at making some cider, and once Brodie had heard of this he seemed keen to donate as much fruit as possible. So we have lots of apples...

The apples have been sat waiting for something to happen for a while now, and I've been a bit worried about them going bad and going to waste... but today we got a big box delivered, full of cider making equipment.

Tomorrow I have to go to the Nigg Hall's annual coffee morning, in my role as toddler group treasurer (HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? The responsibilities that come with the post get more bizarre!!). I hope to be able to pick up some nice home baking, as I know one of our favourite local ladies who is a star in the kitchen is having a stall!! Following that I am official face painter at our friends daughters birthday party. Once that's all done I'm coming home to press apples... hopefully we might have some nice cider by the new year? It will be an interesting experiment whatever it tastes like...and couldn't possibly be any worse tasting than some of the scrumpy I have had the delight of sampling in Somerset!