Mansfield Park, Kettle and Coffee ..................

I've recently purchased this pretty edition of Mansfield Park in order to read along with The Book Snob.  I'm ashamed to say that I haven't got very far, yet The Book Snob was already half way through it yesterday.  Usually I am a voracious reader - I'm not sure what the problem is at the moment, apart from the fact that I seem to have been extremely busy - doing what?   It's surprising how quickly a day can pass just by doing the school run (a one hour round trip of approximately 22 miles) twice a day, making beds, putting washing in and out of the machine, changing sheets on beds, clearing out cupboards - and so it goes on - preparing dinner, deciding what to eat for dinner, shopping, visiting parents after school, cleaning, are you asleep yet?

These little "flipback" books are so sweet and quite easy to read - the paper is a little too thin really - but they are a great size to pop in your handbag for reading on the train.


I did spend last Friday helping my sister-in-law with the painting of the doors in her hallway - don't you just hate painting doors!  I did owe her though, she had kindly spent a day with me a few weeks ago making a new pair of curtains for youngest daughter's bedroom.  Still, she bought me some coffee and vanilla syrup - rather delicious too.  I'm looking forward to having this coffee poured over ice cream.  I'm going to buy an ice cream maker so we can have delicious homemade ice cream - another intention for this year - I really want to try and eliminate as many unnecessary ingredients, flavourings and colourings as I can this year (shhss - I know the vanilla syrup is over ingrediented - I know that's not a word but it fits).

Finally, my new kettle arrived today, but what a disappointment.  We're not having much luck with kettles lately.  A few years ago I bought an Eco Kettle which I really liked and worked well for a few months, then following a few problems with it the company replaced it with a new one - unfortunately this wasn't great either, after boiling a full kettle of water it would switch off and not come on again until it had cooled down completely - so rather than send it back again I bought a cheap kettle to use and put the Eco kettle in the garage (just in case - in case of what - oh just in case).  The cheap kettle lasted quite a while (as is always the case) and in the meantime I kept looking and looking for a kettle that I could love!  In the end the cheap kettle gave up, so I bought another okayish cheapish kettle which only lasted about six months!   So we reverted to the Eco Kettle until we could replace the more recent kettle, finally took it back to the shop the week before Christmas for a refund, couldn't see anything I wanted so thought I would leave it until after Christmas.  Then just after Christmas, the Eco Kettle packed up (who knows what we do to kettles - it's probably the husband) but then I had seen this lovely Kenwood Kmix Kettle in magenta.  Anyway, to bring this boring story to an end, the kettle arrived today - but it's too small!  How did I not read that it had a 1 litre capacity?  So, that's going back and I'm going back to the drawing board - in the meantime when the Eco kettle gave up we bought a cheap (and I mean cheap - £5) kettle until the new one arrived - I really hope that in a year's time I'm not still using this cheap kettle, I must make a decision and get something that will hopefully last a bit longer than the last few.