Last weekend was busy but fun. I keep meaning to have a nice relaxed weekend where I do domestic things like rearrange the kitchen and cook and garden, but they never seem to happen. This time round we spent most of Saturday in Southampton spending our wedding gift vouchers. We'd been given vouchers for four different stores, so there was a bit of a juggling act to get all the things we needed, making sure we bought the smallest and lightest things from the shops furthest from the car! We did pretty well in the end, getting most of the things from our wedding list that weren't bought, or had been bought but discontinued. We also changed our mind on a few of the more expensive items (notably tablecloth and napkins) since I didn't really like any of them that much and decided I could probably get them much nicer and cheaper from Ikea anyway.

Parking in Southampton was a nightmare! I think the boat show was still on, and everywhere we went had queues backed up to the main roads. I'd been driving round getting lost trying to find a car park that I knew existed but couldn't remember how to drive to, but in the end gave up and paid the rather higher fares at John Lewis' car park just for the convenience factor.

The next day I got up silly early since the cats woke me up, but made good use of my time by baking before heading into the New Forest to meet my parents, brother, and Will and Shilpa who happened to be around for a walk, picnic, and sloe-picking. The sloes this year are quite plentiful but not that large - still, they felt juicy and decent. I think I have about 2lb of them in my freezer now, as well as about 1/2 lb of rosehips with which I am going to attempt to make rosehip and apple jelly tomorrow. I cannot be arsed this year to sit for evenings at a time pricking my sloes, so I'm going to attempt the freezer method - simply freezing then lightly crushing them before adding gin and sugar. I also need to buy some large containers in which to store the gin while it is flavoring, since it's not easy to add the berries into narrow-stemmed bottles. I think I'm going to have enough sloes to make about 3l of gin this year so hooray! Everyone will be getting it as presents again. I might even give some to the nice old lady over the road, though I don't know if she likes gin or not since she's a brandy drinker.

After sloe-picking we walked to a nice stream for a picnic BBQ. We cooked sausages and peppers and chicken and drank sloe gin with champagne (amazingly tasty!) before some early birthday cake for me, and then built a damn across the stream. I have some nice pictures which I will upload soon. :)

It was a very fun day but apart from the early-morning cake I didn't get anything on my to-do list done, which means I'll have to do things during the week! I already made a start on my Thankyous from the wedding last night, but it's a long and mildly tedious job. Tom's bemoaning having to hand-write his list and wants me to do it since I have better handwriting! Ha! Nice try, buster. ;)