Blessings.

Today I've had many reasons to count my blessings. To start with I've had a lovely day working in the Studio and have an appointment next week to take some of my work to a popular shop in the New Forest. It's a small start and they may not like my pieces, but making the call was nerve wracking enough, although I'm grateful to the lovely person on the phone who was so helpful. I've worked so very hard for this over the last few months and it's hard to believe that my efforts may begin to pay off. It's helped to have a book of ideas and plans and tick off the work as each item is completed. Most of this work is to test what's popular and to have an example of the sort of art I produce. I hope it will be helpful at the conference next month and maybe I'll sell some things there as well :)

Also this week, I've been given the opportunity to go for a great little job. It has everything I could want, is close to home and with ideal hours. I won't say any more at the moment, because I don't want to jinx it, but I could sure do with the income and it would still give me time to paint, sculpt and look after the house and family.

At the weekend we had a new addition to our household. He is a tiny speck of a hamster. He seems to be very young and sleeps an awful lot, to the point that I got up at silly-o-clock to see if he was still alive. He was back in his bed, but his little cage had been totally rearranged, so I guess he had been active but we just hadn't heard him!



Of course, the daughter is totally smitten and the feeling could be mutual, but it's early days yet and he could get sick of this much love! Although, he did want to snuggle inside her jumper and even settled down for a little grooming session :)



The weather has been wonderful this week, but today was quite chilly, so I made a comforting dinner of sausage plait. It's quite simple, but very delicious.

Take a slab of puff pastry, roll it out and cut slits either side, leaving an area in the middle for the sausage.



Lay the sausage in the center. I put some onion and tomatoes at one end, and left the other plain for fussy children.



Then lay the strips across each other in a plaited fashion.



Bake in a moderate oven until the sausage is thoroughly cooked. We had ours with baked potatoes and veggies :)



There are many things that I can count as blessings and today has been one of them. I hope all my lovely blog friends have had a good day and know that the sun is shining somewhere, it's only resting for now, but will be back soon :)