Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Despite having lived in our current house for eight years and having done a huge amount of work to it, it has been sadly lacking in some of the finishing touches that would make it feel really like home. We took another small step towards rectifying this last month.

February gives us Valentines Day and for my husband and I, a wedding anniversary to celebrate.

We decided to commemorate these romantic occasions by purchasing a new mirror to hang over the fireplace in our front room.

Just before Christmas I bought a mirror for our living room. I always imagined buying something oak framed to match the fireplace but when I saw a spangly mosaic framed mirror in a local warehouse, I had to have it. I had no idea if it would work in the room or if my husband would take one look at it and refuse to hang it but I took the risk. My worries were unfounded. My husband loved it and I think it looks gorgeous.

Buying a second mirror to live up to this one was a big task. I wanted something grand and ostentatious.  The sort of mirror that you could imagine finding dusty and forgotten in a dark and unwelcoming antique shop with a creepy owner. The sort of mirror that may hold dark mysteries.

Unbelievably, I found it.

We went to the same warehouse (which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places for a browse). It wasn't instant love. I had reservations that the finish of the frame would not complement the colour of the chimney breast. There was an easy solution. I re-painted the chimney breast.

I  absolutely love my new mirror, pictured here while the paint was drying and then in pride of place.

I do feel that I have taken another small step towards the home I want.

The Breakfast after the Romantic Night before

For my Anniversary meal, I served heart shaped toast to accompany the mushroom pate starter. I hate wasting food, so my breakfast the following morning looked like this:

Unbelievably tricky to spread the butter and marmalade around the gaping heart shaped hole but it made me smile as memories of the romantic evening flooded back. It also provided me with a reduced calorie start to the day to compensate in some small way for previous overindulgence!

Wedding Rings

February is a lovely, romantic month for me with Valentines Day and my Wedding Anniversary. It has been a very champagne, chocolates and red roses sort of month complete with a home made card (and terrible poetry). It would take a harder heart than mine not to be charmed by it all. It has left me feeling all rather loved up and content.

There has been a lot of sitting opposite each other in a dinner for two fashion with a lot of hand holding. I can't help but feel stupidly happy when I see our matching wedding rings - the symbol of our commitment to each other.

Of course, my life wasn't always this way. There was another marriage before this one. Another wedding ring. That particular symbol of commitment inspired a completely different set of emotions.

I actually had two wedding rings in the duration of my first marriage. The original one had been ripped from my finger that many times in the big I don't love you anymore and I don't want to be with you gesture that it stopped having any of the weight and solemnity that an important symbol should be imbued with. It was just a ring. Sometimes I wore it, sometimes I didn't.

In a rare moment of optimism, we decided to make a fresh start with new matching rings. There was no ceremony to accompany this. I liked my ring very much, Clogau welsh gold in a celtic design, but a ring alone is not enough to save a marriage.

We divorced. The ring came off for good.

A survey has revealed today that Britain has the highest divorce rate in the EU.

There must be an awful lot of obsolete wedding rings .

So the question is, what should one do with a wedding ring that maybe once meant something good but now stirs potentially damaging, negative feelings?

In my life, I enjoy the beauty and magic of ritual and symbolism. I wanted closure on the bad marriage chapter of my life and I am almost too embarrassed to admit that I attempted to wash my lovely wedding ring in my own blood to cleanse it from the bad emotions attached to it. It didn't work and I still have a stupid scar where I cut myself to harvest the blood!

I'm not keen on the idea of giving the jewellery I don't want in my life to my loved ones, which would be an option (although that is exactly what I did with my engagement and eternity rings). A bad ring does not deserve to be given 'family heirloom' status.

A better option perhaps would be the cash for gold route. An indulgent treat could be bought with the proceeds.

My new husband is a good man and he expressed a desire to donate his old wedding ring to a worthy cause. He vaguely remembers handing it to a friend in Switzerland for safe keeping but doesn't know what became of it since.

 My unwanted rings lie mostly forgotten at the back of a drawer.

The ideal solution for me would have involved an epic trek through hostile terrain, the final part of the journey featuring an ascent up the deadly slopes of an active volcano. Upon reaching the summit, the ring would be ceremoniously cast into the fiery molten rock - Tolkien's Mount Doom style. That would certainly have given me the closure, the ritual and the symbolism I desired.

If, perchance, that ring could pass through the all consuming lava and land in a collecting box for a worthy cause to convert to cash, I wouldn't be at all unhappy about that either.

A Curry to Remember with Oruna

Indian cuisine lends itself well to the vegetarian diet. Different combinations of vegetables and spices can produce a range of dishes limited only by imagination, each with its own identity. The wonderful people at my local Indian restaurant have a perfect understanding of this.

In a recent blog post, my sister wrote a very damming decsription of the town where we both live. She is desperate to move away saying that the high street was a depressing collection of charity shops, bargain shops, kebab takeaways and not much more.

I have to agree that we have more than our fair share of charity shops but far from depressing me, I love to have a leisurely browse and often find a good bargain. As for the 'not much more' I have to disagree. I always stop to look at the beautiful window displays of lovely things for the home in Lloyds Interiors and the mouthwatering chocolate creations in the specialist chocolate shop, Tuesday's. I dream of my next manicure or facial when I pass by the sumptuous Ivy Suite and search for an excuse to stop for coffee when I see the warm and welcoming Jones' Coffee Shop with their displays of original art works. There are many shiny gems in Market Drayton's (albeit slightly shabby!) crown.

The gem to which this particular post is dedicated is my local Indian, Oruna Cuisine.

Monday night is a quiet night for Oruna but as Monday this week happened to be the anniversary of my wedding day two years ago, it was the perfect night for my husband and I to treat ourselves to a meal out. We are regular customers to Oruna but despite the extensive menu that caters really well for vegetarians, I have been guilty of choosing the same main course, Paneer Tikka Massala, time and again. I choose it because I love it .

Paneer Tikka Massala is described on the menu as cottage cheese skewered in the tandoori and cooked in a rich sauce. Cottage cheese always makes me think of being on a diet, or worse, baby sick. The cottage cheese used for this dish is a far cry from that image, The cubes are surprisingly meaty in texture, like very tender chicken breast, and they carry the flavour of the sauce perfectly. To describe the sauce as 'rich' is very fitting. It is rich in flavour and colour which is a beautiful, deep red not dissimilar to the colour of emulsion my daughter chose for her dramatic bedroom walls. I remarked on it at the time we were painting and it made us both crave takeaway!

When we were offered the chance to have a specially selected vegetarian banquet prepared just for us by Oruna for our anniversary, we jumped at the chance. To keep me happy, my favourite Panner Tikka Massala was included as one of the main courses. The dishes are all prepared fresh and the chefs pride themselves on being able to adapt the menu to cater to individual requests. As a vegetarian, it is good to know that the speciality dishes on the menu need not be off limits - the meat can be omitted and substituted with vegetables. The dishes prepared for our banquet were to showcase the possibilities.

While the chefs worked their magic in the kitchen, we tucked into a platter of starters.

Pakoras, onion bhajis and samosas are a familiar sight in the supermarket nowadays but freshly cooked, they are so much better than any shop bought relatives. Beneath the tomato rose garnish was a delicious garlic mushroom but my absolute favourite part was the puffy bread folded over to conceal a lightly spiced mixture of potato and chick pea. This was Aloo Channa  Chat and it was divine.

There was a visual feast to enjoy before a single forkful of curry passed our lips as the dishes for our main course were placed before us.

The range of colours and textures was exciting to the eye and I loved the garnishes. The aromas were equally enticing. Could the tastes live up to the high expectations?

Of course they did. Was there ever any doubt?

On the far left of the photograph is my trusted Paneer Tikka Massala (nice colour for bedroom walls don't you agree!) and next to that a lightly spiced potato dish with courgettes. The middle dish was a personal favourite - Aloo Kofta Kyberi - which was spicy deep fried potatoes cooked in the Chef's Special Sauce with chunks of capsicum and onion. Next to that is Chilli Chuna Mattar Paneer which was an interesting combination of fresh chillis cooked with chick peas and garden peas in a semi dry sauce laced with cottage cheese. It was good to try Paneer in a different way to my usual and it had the sort of heat that builds in your mouth  - I love that.  Finally is a Jabra Dhall. I use a lot of lentils in cooking and I think that Dhall is the very best use of this vegetarian staple. This particular dish of spicy lentils cooked with fried garlic in Chef's Special Recipe was the best Dhall I have EVER had.

Without even mentioning the three different rices and two varieties of naan bread that accompanied our banquet, I think you can guess that I was more than impressed.

I cannot praise everyone at Oruna enough for their efforts and especially for the helpful notes they provided me with explaining what the different dishes were for the benefit of this post. They really went beyond the call of duty to make my special anniversary meal one I will remember for a very long time.

And of course I have to thank my husband for marrying in the first place to give me something to celebrate!

In case you're wondering, we did not manage to get through that amount of food in one sitting. We were provided with a doggy bag that means I have it all to look forward to again tonight!

Sylvanian Families

My eldest daughters are 23 and 20 years and old. When they were little girls, they had three big boxes under their beds - one full of Barbie dolls, one full of Disney figures and playsets and another full of Sylvanian Families. They were all very well played with.

I never minded tidying away with them after a particularly far reaching game of Sylvanian Families. I enjoyed handling the little figures and the gorgeous miniature accessories.

We had a tree house, a mansion, a picnic bus and, my favourite of all, a bakery. The observant reader will note my use of the word we in the previous sentence. I really was as fond of those Sylvanians as my children were.

Sadly, the breakdown of my first marriage and having to move from our family home, necessitated a ruthless sort out. I needed to travel light into my uncertain future and the girls were growing up and happy with computer games. The Barbies, the action figure and the Sylvanians were all victims of our streamlining. Had I known that within a few short years I would be a mother again to a baby girl, I never would have parted with so much. (I still would have gladly said goodbye to the matted haired Barbies but I deeply regret losing the Gary Barlow doll that lurked amongst them!)

Reminiscences aside, this year, Sylvanian Families are celebrating their 25th Anniversary.  I was thrilled to be sent the Wedding Celebration set and Motor Car and Sidecar to review so that I can introduce my latest daughter to Sylvania and begin a brand new collection.

The packaging and the essential qualities of toys themselves don't seem to changed much over the years. They are every bit as lovely as I remember. I really like the emphasis on 'family' which is something that always features in my daughter's play.

 The characters themselves are very appealing with their shiny black eyes, movable limbs, tactile skin and highly detailed outfits but for me,  it is the exquisite miniature accessories that accompany them that make Sylvanians so special.

Although my children would have absolutely no idea about the seventies British sitcom George and Mildred, the humour in the naming of the Sylvanian characters in the Motorcycle and Sidecar set is not lost on me.

Geroge and Mildred Mulberry have everything they need for riding around the country lanes and both motorcycle and sidecar have storage spaces to store their maps, licences and information books.

In the light of the  Royal Wedding fever that gripped the country, the Wedding Celebration Set featuring Katherine and William Balmoral was one of the most successful Sylvanian products of the year, and deservedly so. The dog-collared Reverend is ready to preside over the nuptials of the beautiful bride and her groom, attended by two adorable bridesmaids and a page boy. A bridal bouquet of pink roses adds the perfect finishing touch.

The bride and groom could easily be used as a fun wedding cake topper and the set itself would make a lovely bridesmaid present.

Twenty five years of popularity is quite an achievement and I'm sure that with a product this good, the Sylvanian success story will continue.

For details of stockists and retail prices see www.flairplc.co.uk

"I did exactly what it said in the recipe..."

My mum said that she couldn't imagine it happening. But it happened. My husband made me a cake for our anniversary.

Not just any cake.

A heart shaped chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing studded with bite sized pieces of vanilla fudge, presented on a silver heart shaped board and in a white cardboard cake box tied with silver ribbon.

OK, so he hadn't left it in the oven for long enough so the liquid middle sank in leaving a surprisingly pretty heart shaped hollow, which he tried to disguise - hence the bite sized fudge studding - but I enjoyed every gooey, globby crumb and drip.

"I did exactly what it said in the recipe..."

As well as my beautiful undercooked cake, he gave me ivory roses like the ones that had made up my wedding bouquet and diamond earrings. I could not have felt more spoilt.

I was delighted by all the lovely wishes from blogger friends, reduced to tears by the song my daughter Ivy wrote for us and slightly concerned that the world would not be ready for what my sister had unleashed on it.

My girls have a regular babysitting booking every Sunday night while my husband and I have our ballroom dancing lesson. This time, they extended their duty to enable us to have a post lesson takeaway curry and champagne without the worry of the baby trying to pinch the naan bread.We toasted our first year of married life together to round off a lovely day.